Germany Shutting Down Nuclear Power Plants?

Great Debates
81

Sure we do. It’ll be in Barnwell South Carolina or Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Or the fuel will be reprocessed at some point. Or do you think the world is going to end tomorrow. :rolleyes:

Well I can just call up our Chemistry department and ask for the latest sample data - performed daily. I’m sure reactor plants in Germany do it at least weekly. Thanks for your glowing endorsement. I’ve worked in this industry for 17 years and have a degree in Nuclear Engineering so I think I’m pretty well qualified to tell you what types of wastes we generate and how well we can keep track of them. We know EXACTLY what’s in our waste tanks and in our spent fuel pool. Utter hogwash? I think this term describes your fear-mongering nonsense.

Germany is foolish to throw away a proven reliable method of electricity production that can safely coexist with other methods. Hopefully a more sensible government will in the future repeal this decision.

82

And the word “glowing” was definitely intended. :smiley:

83

Yes I did. But there are chemical reactions facilitated in generating fossil fuel energy too. Like the ones that make acid rain and the global warming I keep talking about. Maybe you Germans can get rid of your nukes and make do with cogeneration and greater efficiency. Good, but I do know that such a policy would not work in the US. You have given me a new perspective on the German energy industry though.

And again this is one of the long term risks that need to be weighed against the long term risks of fossil energy. In the very long run we will hopefully have fusion power, nanotechnology and a space elevator and can ship all this toxic shit into space and throw it into the sun. :smiley:

Yep, but our cities are probably too spread out to make direct use of waste heat. That’s another problem all it’s own of course.

84

or someone is drilling a hole there for some purpose, not having any idea what stuff is buried there, and is greeted with a blowout of hot, toxic, radioactive liquid.

Um, yeah. Listen, man, I happen to have a degree in chemistry, you can call someone else a fear-monger anytime. If it were for people like you, we’d still believe smoking isn’t detrimental to your health. You might have an idea about nuclear engineering, but sorry to say, you suck in chemistry. And if you want to tell me that every single barrel of waste ever created at your plant is tested daily, nice try.

I would suggest you open up a private little dictatorship of your own, since obviously, you are incapable of accepting a democratically made decision without insulting those who supported it as fools. I take it, then, that you consider it foolish to make millions. Coincidentally, it is at this moment as cheap to produce power by wind as by nuclear reactor over here. As I already pointed out. Which is why gasp a lot of power producers have no intention to turn around even IF the agreement were repealed. Cause you see, the modalities were set in an agreement with the power suppliers, and predictability is worth cash. They are already planning without nuclear power, and even if a different government were to repeal the agreement, probably the only effect would be that the old reactors would run a bit longer.

85

The reactions in fossil fuel use can be directly addressed. Acid rain is produced by sulfur oxides, which are nowadays removed from the exhaust. And again, you assume that CO2 emissions will increase, when they will actually decrease.

Is is a DEFINITE long term risk of nuclear power vs. POTENTIAL risks of short-term use of fossil energy that can be directly addressed NOW.

My birth town’s power plant has expanded well into the surrounding area. It might not reach far enough to supply a spread-out city like Dallas, but nothing says you can’t have several smaller plants. Losses happen either way, especially with the kind of power grid prevalent in the US.

86

Yup, you’re right, I want a dictatorship in Germany. :rolleyes: Let’s not go there…

The truth obviously hurts by your pretty harsh response. Nuclear power will be back; it’s already making a resurgence in the USA. The only reason Germany is closing plants is because the public is ill-informed and has been frightened by fearmongers.

And we do know what’s in our spent fuel pool and our waste tank regardless of your posturing. We are required to sample regularly per NRC regulations. Guess your chemistry degree needs bit of fine tuning.

87

Oliver, I’m curious how Germany plans to both close its nuclear plants AND lower greenhouse gas emissions. Surely, since the Greens are pushing to have the nuclear plants closed and greenhouse gases lowered, they have a fully-spec’d plan for how to transition Germany’s energy economy, right?

And I hope that plan doesn’t just involve buying more power from out of the country, because that’s not an environmental solution - that’s just pushing the dirt under someone else’s rug.

If there’s a website you could point me to that outlines in detail the Green’s plan for meeting Germany’s energy needs while reducing the overall production of greenhouse gases, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

88

Look Oliver I’m willing to concede your point about Germany. Maybe you can pull off the trick of cutting nuclear and cutting CO2. I’m still dubious even about that but who knows. I do know that this would not work here in the states. We do not do much heat/power cogeneration for example (which I admit I totally overlooked in talking about Germany).

Fair enough but I simply don’t see the risks posed by nuclear waste as being as threatening as those created by fossil fuel usage. Frankly, I’d rather have Yucca mountain poisoned for a few millenia than see New York and London become water parks.

89

They can only be somewhat removed, depending upon the technology and cost, and the majority of coal plants, even in the US, do not use flue gas desulfurization systems.

Acid rain is also a result of high NOx emissions (which also contribute to ground-level ozone), and much, much fewer plants have SCR, SNCR, or other post-combustion systems to remove NOx. Many, however, use combustion control to do so.

Outfitting a 1 GW coal power plant with a 90% removal efficiency FGD system and 90% removal efficiency SCR system would be about a $500M cost, perhaps more. The annual O&M costs would be somewhere on the order of $5M to $15M, although this could vary widely depending on one’s assumptions.

Using an SCR system also entails shipping large amounts of ammonia to the plant, which means you have to outfit residents nearby with gas masks and/or environment suits.

Coal plants also produce particulates, many of which are removed by ESPs and fabric filter baghouses, but some escape - especially very fine particulates under 2.5 microns called “PM2.5” by the EPA. These may have to be regulated as well in 2009; it’s unclear if that will actually happen.

Burning coal also produces emissions of many heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and so forth. The levels they produce have been somewhat exaggerated, but it’s still not good.

I’m the biggest fan of coal and coal power plants on this Board, and even I know that nuclear has some clear advantages on the pollution standpoint.

90

I would suggest you actually read posts you reply to, it helps avoiding talking out of your posterior.

There is plenty of nuclear waste, and spent fuel is but one part of it. There’s plenty of secondary material. And there’s plenty of barrels with trash that are under pressure from inside due to the heat.

But yeah, everything is safe. Much like the transport containers for spent fuel rods that the nuclear power suppliers advertised as absolutely safe and no reason for any concern -only for authorities to have to temporarily prohibit transports because the containers were found to be leaking.

Believe what you want. As I said, you probably still believe that smoking doesn’t cause cancer either.

91

I see, the argument got quite heated over night.
Nuke, as you seem to be an expert, tell me one thing: What has always bugged me about nuclear power is a sentence I once read in an official government statement. It said “the plants will be dismantled using technologies which will be invented by the time they are needed”. Apart from the fact that this is a unbelivable thing to say, basically admitting that you have no clue as how to get rid of the contaminated plants, what is the state of the art today? In other words: This was a statement from the late 80s, do you guys know by now just how to dismantle a used up plant safely?

This is somewhat along the line of OliverHs argument that it is pretty unresponsible to play with a technology that is in fact dangerous and not knowing how to handle it.

92

Um, I already described that. Maybe read the thread a bit more closely?

Well, obviously the german Green party has their webpages in German. So I am not sure where to refer you to.

93

** Sam Stone**, look here for the Greens in the European Parliament.
Click on Documents and check under ENERGY and NUCLEAR ISSUES.

94

Well they do here.

SCR is present in my birth town’s power plant.

And the plant above made over 6 Million in post-tax profits in 2002 to distribute among its shareholders.

[quote]
**
Using an SCR system also entails shipping large amounts of ammonia to the plant, which means you have to outfit residents nearby with gas masks and/or environment suits. **/quote]

No, you don’t. Only if you actually ship it as ammonia gas. The plant above uses ammonia in liquid solution at 25%, which is dehydrated prior to injection. Needs more volume and dehydration, and as such is more expensive, but also more responsible, since it drastically reduces the chance of gas release.

If you ignore the fact that coal plants are used for combined power and heat, maybe. But your argument shoots off the mark anyway, since I never argued for more extensive use of coal. Cf. the statement about high efficiency gas plants, and expansion of combined power and heat to increase efficiency.

95

Be careful asking me questions; obviously I’m only a shill for the nuclear power industry who wants to create a radioactive paradise… :rolleyes:

Plants are being decommissioned today safely with no great leaps in technology. Maine Yankee is a prime example:

Maine Yankee

Additionally, the Big Rock Point and Rancho Seco power plants are also in the process of being safely decommissioned and dismantled.

96

While I like to read that the operating company feels responsible for dismantling the plant rather than leaving it as it is when it is no longer profitable (I never really believed this, but there are people raising fears like this), the cite you gave also says this:

and this

IIRC, this is one of the main arguments against nuclear power, and may well be the point of T. Mehr’s question:
We do not know how to handle nuclear waste, so we let it be wherever it is and wait for some future miracle technology that will get rid of it.
I will not deny that this is only one disadvantage that could well be outweighed by some advantages and we should discuss that, but I sense a tendency of denial or avoidance among advocates of nuclear energy when it comes to that question.
Particularly, Nuke did not answer the question beyond the obvious (merely gave us some colourful images).
So: Does anybody know of significant progress in that matter?

97

DOE indeed has the responsibility for disposing or reprocessing of the spent fuel. This was part of the deal struck with electric utilities in the 1950s by the (at the time) Atomic Energy Commission. DOE is currently addressing the disposal issue with long term burial at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The idea is that this site will be built such that the waste can be monitored and retrieved (you can go back in say 100 years and retrieve the waste and reprocess it into new fuel if desired). There is no great leap in technology to do this.

The date of 2023 on the Maine Yankee is unfortunately probably correct. There is an ongoing conflict between utilities and DOE to get something going because our spent fuel pools are filling up and some utilities are resorting to storing their spent fuel in dry fuel storage casks at their sites (not the best solution, but the best for now). Utilities (and their customers) have been paying into a large fund for many years to get a disposal site built but this has been been repeatedly held up solely due to political considerations.

98

How many other industries do you know which ‘struck a deal’ to have the taxpayer solve the logistical and technical problems of waste disposal for them? Do chemical plants in your area rely on the EPA or some other government office to process their wastewater for them?

99

Nuke, Una Persson, Dr. Zoidberg, Sam Stone, WinstonSmith I would like to invite you to read this article:
15 years after Chernobyl : nuclear power AND climate change?
from the above mentioned website of Greens in the European Parliament.
Maybe start on page 7: “The German Case - The Nuclear Phase Out Plan”.

Can you comment on this? There are a lot of numbers and suggestions (both on how to solve the problem and how to invalidate pro nuclear arguments).

Now, of course this document is heavily biased, considering where it comes from.
I am sure, that you can come up with a very similar document proving the very opposite.
This of course renders the whole discussion futile. We might as well argue whether ManU or Real is the better soccer team. Or if it’s nicer to die by hanging or drowning (just to stay closer to the issue).
It’s a matter of belive.

100

The money to pay for spent fuel disposal is paid for by the rate payers, not by higher taxes. This is simply a cost of doing business; rate payers also pay for the fuel consumed to create the electricity.

It does not make sense to hold each utility responsible for their radioactive waste; otherwise every utility would have to dispose of its waste individually and you would have 100 separate disposal sites around the USA. It makes better sense (economically and otherwise) to have one disposal site for all the nuclear utilities. Thus the deal was struck with the utilities in the '50s that the government would take charge of the spent fuel. The original intent was that the fuel be reprocessed, but obviously times changed.