Nobody. Not a single person. Said that Japan or Germany doesn’t have the right to do as they wish. Not one of usbis advocating for a regime change in these countries to build more nuclear power plants.
I fully support Germany and Japan’s rights to do as they please as sovereign nations.
I will also share my opinion of those decisions.
This strategy only makes sense if there is a point to replacing nuclear power plants with renewable plants. There isn’t (at least, unless you have no coal plants already).
…if you want context on why we might not trust America or France when it comes to nuclear power, I’d direct you to google. But what I said wasn’t an ad hominem.
What you actually said:
Your description of how I’ve debated in this Great Debate can in no way be likened to the way that anti-trans people argue. That’s insulting. That isn’t correct. And I asked you politely to stop and you did it again.
I never claimed you did.
I said I didn’t trust someone.
You then accused me of ad hominem.
I replied it wasn’t an ad hominem. Because not trusting someone because of something they did isn’t an ad hominem.
And you replied with “I am not asking you to trust anyone.”
And I’m like: are you even reading anything what I’m writing?
As I’ve said over and over again, I’ll defer to the experts who were advising the response to Fukushima. They gave advice that the no-go areas weren’t safe to return. I’m not an expert. But I have no reason to question that advice.
For the final time: can you stop putting words in my mouth?
This isn’t my argument. This is a strawman.
I support trans rights because trans people deserve those rights. Because they deserve to be protected. Because they are being attacked right now, and are on the verge of trans genocide.
I honestly don’t care about the science. I care about trans people.
And I really hope this is the last time you use trans people against me in this thread. I’m sure you know how invested I am on that topic. And I’m sure you know how much it hurts me every time you use it against me. I bought it up earlier in the thread as an analogy. But you’ve used it over and over again to attack me. For the last time: just stop it.
What nuclear fearmongering? You mean the part where I said, if America wants to build nuclear power plants, that’s fine?
Is that fearmongering to you?
(Bolding mine) But there is. Cost. Investment. Replacement. We’ve discussed this.
I am mot attacking you, the person. I am attacking your argument, by pointing out it is entirely divorced from fact - something you acknowledge when you say that a cite may be factually correct but it “looks like propaganda” so you are dismissing it despite this.
I am making the comparison to Transphobes to demonstrate that you would not accept arguments divorced from fact in other contexts. Therefore I wonder why you do in this context.
If you prefer, I can compare your argument to other arguments divorced from fact, such as flat earthers or global warming deniers or scientific racists or JFK assassination conspiracy theorists or bigfoot hunters.
My argument is perfectly clear. You distrust entire countries because of what they did with nuclear weapins decades ago. Cool story bro. I’m not asking you to trust what the US or France say. I’m saying that if you have a problem with information that comes from them, you need to say what is incorrect about that information if you want others to take you seriously.
Right, you have no reason to question that advice because you dismissed citations that the radiation levels aren’t dangerous as potentially-factually-correct-yet-is-to-be-dismissed-propaganda because it came from The Great Satan.
The rest of us do have reason to question that advice, as we were discussing before you burst in to chide us for not considering how horrible US weapons testing in the South Pacific was and how this proves that they’re lying about nuclear energy, a different technology altogether.
Me, too. That’s why if the science said that gender affirming care is dangerous and ineffective, I would oppose it. But the science doesn’t say this, which is why supporting trans people is the right thing to do.
I’m not attacking you. I think you’re a smart and rational person, which is why I am genuinely baffled by your attitude towards nuclear energy. But if that’s honestly how you view my arguments, I apologize and will withdraw from discussing this matter with you further.
Because that’s how you determine the impact of your choices.
Let’s begin with the idea that closing nuclear plants slowed down their plans to reduce emissions. We all agree that this is bad. (BTW, if you disagree, you can say so, but I’m taking your lack of answering the question as an implicit admission that the answer isn’t accelerate or no effect because you would’ve said that instead of broadening the question)
Now, let’s open up the floor to the other effects, like cost, disposal and safety. Can we say that Germany was able to offset the societal cost of additional emissions with changes to spending, disposal of waste or safety?
There are all sorts of arguments to support that idea. However, I don’t know if they hold water. Do the cost savings help fund renewables? Are those savings even real, or are they a result of anti-nuclear folks making nuclear power so difficult to administrate that they themselves make nuclear power unaffordable?
It’s been a pattern of “nuclear powers” to detonate nuclear weapons in the Southern Hemisphere rather than their own (not universally - it seems China limited their testing solely to their own territory. Og only knows what the Russians were up to). The Southern Hemisphere has pretty much uniformly received literal fall out and negative effects from nuclear technology and received absolutely zero benefit. It’s hardly puzzling that they’d be down on the whole concept, or that they started declaring themselves nuclear-free zones from the 1960’s onward.
If every time you encounter someone that someone gives you a punch in the teeth it becomes reasonable to assume that will happen the next time you are near that person.
The Southern Hemisphere as a whole has had entirely negative experience of nuclear technology (possible nuclear medicine examples excepted). It’s hardly a surprise that people from that part of the world would be deeply mistrustful of any form of nuclear technology.
They can do as they please until what they please to do starts causing problems outside their borders. Then, in fact, other people have a right to criticize or more.
I am more trusting of the “nuclear industry” than @Banquet_Bear, but I still take any statement on safety with a large grain of salt. There is a long history of officials reassuring people that “everything is safe” when it isn’t, and not just in the the nuclear world but also the chemical industry as well.
I’ve looked into things to the extent that a non-expert layperson such as myself is able to do and I think there is probably some over-reaction on the part of Japanese officials but I also freely admit I could be wrong on this. Japan has more experience in regards to both the weapons side and the power generation side of nuclear energy than all other countries, having been bombed twice and having its own share of nuclear “incidents”, even some fatal ones, even before the problems at Fukushima.
Sitting here in my office chair literally on the other side of the planet from where these events took place it’s easy for me to be complacent. Not so easy from closer to the site of the problem.
They didn’t do all these things to study electricity, but they did commit multiple genocides while scientists with funny mustaches fiddled with electric power and coal generation.
I know very well what the US did in the South Pacific. It was terrible. So is what the British did in New Zealand while electrifying the home island.
The fact that people did bad things while using science doesn’t invalidate that science. That’s ludicrous. It would be like me refusing surgery because the Nazis did surgical experiments on my people.
It isn’t surprising, but that doesn’t make it useful policy for moving into the future. Some Black people in the US were hesitant about the COVID vaccine because of the US’s history of experimenting on Black people. Some Israelis opposed the government’s deal with Pfizer (early access to the vaccine in exchange for sharing information about its safety and efficacy) because they distrusted the idea of allowing a German company to experiment on Jews.
I can understand where these sentiments come from, and sympathize with them. I can respect people’s right to self determination and not force Pacific Islanders to build nuclear power plants, Black americans to be be vaccinated by the US, or Jewish people to be vaccinated by a German company.
I can at the same time recognize that these fears are not based in factual assessment of the situation, that they are irrational, and that they are harmful in that they prevent those who hold these fears from properly assessing the situation before them.
And in fact continuing to use coal power because of unfounded fears of nuclear disaster does harm others.
It’s interesting that you split off nuclear medicine. It was specifically nuclear weapons that harmed people in the South Pacific. Why do you split off nuclear medicine but not energy?
Because “nuclear medicine” is the one application of nuclear technology of any sort that I am aware of that is presently used in the Southern Hemisphere. The entire hemisphere has been declared a nuclear-weapon free zone, and as far as I know there are no nuclear plants in that hemisphere, either. I expect the nuclear energy knowledge of the average person in that half of the world to be largely headlines like “Three Mile Island!”, “Chernobyl!”, “Fukushima!”. So that’s why. Given that “nuclear medicine” is usually associated with advanced cancer making that more widely available might, for all I know, have the appeal of putting chemotherapy agents in the tap water. Or maybe not. At this point I’ll defer to the Dopers from the Southern half of the planet.
…in isolation, it doesn’t tell you the impact of your choices. It gives you a distorted view of the impact of your choices. It is obviously useful to compare. But it ultimately shouldn’t be the only thing that matters here.
Yes! Coal is bad for emissions! And Germany are also working to get rid of coal!
Don’t ask me. I’m sure Germany has a ton of data on this. If you want an answer to that question, feel free to look it up and let the rest of us know.
Can you give us some examples of things that anti-nuclear people have done, that importantly shouldn’t have been done, that have made nuclear power unaffordable?
Thank you, and likewise.
Thank you. Appreciate the time it must have taken you to compile that list.
Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that renewable sources are not developed enough to abandon nuclear power.
I assume she was concerned about having to burn so much coal because renewables were not yet ready to take the place of coal, and certainly not the place of nuclear, either.
That’s about what many folks in this thread have been saying.
She acknowledged that there were widespread concerns about nuclear energy, but said it was needed as a “bridge technology” until renewables were more viable.
That was 2010. But after Fukushima she did a u-turn and then it was back to “close’em all down!” The German public had freaked so Angela did too.
…I know that. I’ve said that twice already in this thread. Then she reversed course again, reverting to the original date.
But it was also a relatively conservative government that was replacing the social-democrats and the greens. Conservatives pander to their base just as much as the progressives do.
And yet, the plants closed according to the original schedule.
You say “freaked out.” I say, a prudent decision based on what was known at the time.
Not if you actually make the effort to understand the dynamics of the analysis. For all your efforts to make this decision seem like a really complex web of interconnected factors, that we normies are incapable of understanding, it is not.
Germany chose to close down all their nuclear facilities. It’s a stone cold fact that the electricity those facilities used to produce now needs to be produced by another source. Since they are also actively working to shut down coal facilities (and did not make the choice to shut down ALL of their coal facilities before shutting the nukes) that power is now produced by coal.
This is because coal and nuclear are essentially swappable sources of energy, were both in operation in the past, and were both planned to be reduced over time. Every new renewable source is poised to cut either nuclear or coal, and they chose nuclear first.
Or they don’t. I’m going to say that if shutting down nuclear plants had a benefit other than shutting down the plant, the German government would have said so. Instead they said
It’s clear to me that safety is their primary concern, and that emissions were secondary. Which is not some bizarre CT take on the matter, Merkel says “We need Nuclear until renewables are more established” then after Fukushima “Nevermind, we don’t need Nuclear anymore.”
It’s a completely normal political decision, but you’re trying to make it out to be a thoroughly objective weighing of the technical issues rather than a reaction to the perceived safety of these reactors.
This is exactly right. Germany phased out nukes due to safety concerns. The claim is that the risks of nuclear power are “ultimately unmanageable”. That’s a factual claim about the risks of nuclear power, and it’s a claim that is factually untrue. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy (potentially aside from solar depending on methodology). That’s a fact. And as you eloquently explained, every MW that is no longer coming from a nuclear power plant is coming from coal instead.
Obviously the Germans as a sovereign nation have the right to generate power however they’d like, but there’s no question that this decision was bad for the environment and for the health of the German people.
…but it is a complex web of interconnected factors. This isn’t about “confusing the normies.” It just simply is.
That power is also produced by renewables. It wasn’t a simple 1 to 1. It wasn’t binary.
And again, this comes back to decisions made 25 years ago. The German plan to close down coal plants is to close the last one in 2038. You can pretend that the decision matrix at play here was " simple", and that 25 years ago the priorities should have been swapped. But you are working from hindsight. You are working without the complete information. And you are working from your own, personal bias toward nuclear energy.
Which is fine. If you love nuclear: then fine.
But I’m not the one who is catastrophizing in this thread. I think that Germany has made reasonable strategic decisions based on multiple different factors and are on track to close down all of their coal plants at the same time as they will in the States.
I think it was reasonable to be concerned about safety. Especially considering what was happening at the time, firstly with Three Mile Island, then with Chernobyl, and then with Fukushima. Yes, nuclear is safe. But when things go wrong, they aren’t easy nor cheap to fix, and disrupt the lives of everyone that lives in the immediate surroundings.
I think its reasonable to be concerned about nuclear waste. As of April this year, Germany still hasn’t found a location for the final repository of high-level radioactive waste. They hope to find somewhere by 2031. But it might take them decades.
So even though the plants have been closed down, it isn’t over yet. It’s likely the last coal plants will be shut down while they are still grappling with this.
So I don’t think your concerns here hold water. Shutting down the nuclear plants later just kicks the can down the road.
Except, as I’ve just pointed out, it isn’t over yet. And they are adding renewables, and they are closing coal when they can. It isn’t a binary process.
I’m pretty sure they do.
What’s your issue with this statement? The Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage puts all of the liability on the operator of the nuclear plant. I’ve just been reading up on insurance and the nuclear industry, and it’s both fascinating and boring, often at the same time. But I don’t have an issue with what they said here. And I think its a mistake to take a pull-quote that is probably missing plenty of surrounding context, and to use that to represent the entirety of the decision matrix regarding closing down nuclear power plants in Germany.
As it should be!
It isn’t “secondary” as much as part of an overall, long term strategy.
Here’s the thing I’m not sure you or others in the thread understand:
You can do multiple things at the same time.
The closing of the last nuclear plant doesn’t mean the nuclear chapter is over. There are potentially decades more work to do.
And while some people are working on the nuclear waste problem and remedial work and decontamination other people are working on building renewable solutions and other people are keeping the coal plants going and other people are bringing old coal plants back on line and other people are closing coal plants and…
Multiple things are happening. It isn’t binary. Sometimes you run into problems, for example the war has complicated things, and all of the people doing different things sometimes have to make imperfect decisions in order to keep society going.
The decision to close the nuclear plants was made 25 years ago. But with the closure of the final plant, it’s possible we might have another 25 years to go. A 50 year project. Half-a-century. I turned 50 a month ago. That’s a very long time.
It also takes time to close down a coal plant. And there are plenty of logistics and remedial issues that would come into play. But you can see the difference here, right? The amount of time and work it takes to close down a nuclear plant is an order of magnitude different to closing down a coal plant.
Safety indeed played a part. But I don’t think that is wrong. Because safety is important. And when things go wrong with nuclear power plants they really go wrong.
But yes, I think that there was a thorough weighing of all of the issues both when the original decision was made, and both before and after they reversed course in 2010. You don’t start a multi-billion dollar project that will take you decades to complete because of concern over nuclear fishes.
But it’s okay. This isn’t a “binary” thing, after all. Germany can do two things at once, like closing nuclear plants and reopening coal plants. It’s a long-term strategy.
Actually, whether a particular plant is open or closed is the definition of binary. It is absolutely as simple as R + C + N = G (ermany’s electricity production) If you’re growing R as fast as you can, and managing G as well as you can, the remainder is C + N. Does shrinking N to zero make R grow faster or G get smaller?
An overall long term strategy that was deliberately slowed down due to safety concerns. It isn’t a lack of strategy that is being criticized, it’s the choice to slow down how fast you can reduce emissions because nuclear is unsafe.
You can’t reduce all emissions immediately, thus the long term plan. That plan includes a variety of choices, some that speed up the process, some that slow down the process. Shuttering nuclear is a choice that slows down the process.
That isn’t inherently evil, but analyzing that choice requires us to ask why do you shut down nuclear, a non-emitting technology.
Let’s pretend for a moment that Angela Merkel’s brother in law owned Germany’s only Nuclear Power Shutdown Service, and she made the unilateral decision to close down all of Germany’s NPPs. One might think this is not an acceptable reason to slow down emissions reduction.
Let’s instead pretend that all of Germany’s NPPs were found to have a critical design problem that put them at a provable high risk of rapid unscheduled disassembly that would throw deadly radioactive material all over a 100 square mile radius. One would think the decision to close them is a great reason to slow down emission reduction.
Well… it costs a lot when things go wrong, but that’s not a safety issue, it’s a cost issue. A safety issue is another coal miner getting injured or dying. Trading coal for nuclear costs lives. Hell, trading solar for nuclear costs lives. But we don’t talk a lot about the people killed in those industries, we spent a LOT of time talking about the 1 person who died when Fukushima was fucked up by a tsunami.
Guess what, coal and solar would be a hell of a lot more expensive if we demanded that literally zero people died providing that power, and nuclear would be a hell of a lot cheaper if we let a few hundred people a year die from radiation sickness.
At this rate, they’ll be back at 100% fossil fuels in no time! Fantastic news for the coal industry. They couldn’t hope for better allies than anti-nuclear activists.
Germany’s “strategy” of increased dependence on Russian gas imports has also paid off handsomely for them. Such long-term thinking to couple yourself to stable energy sources like Russia.
…well the emissions have been trending down for a while, including over the period as the nuclear plants were being decommissioned. So it seems like in the real world with the real numbers things aren’t as bad as some in this thread seem to think. But feel free to plug into the real numbers into your formula and let me know if they differ from the official numbers.
As I’ve said over and over again, we aren’t just talking about one thing. It isn’t just about emissions.
And slowing down is relative. We could shut down every single coal power plant tomorrow. That would fix the problem of coal emission immediately. But that would come with consequences. And its the role of government to make balanced, informed decisions. And if you are only focused on a couple of metrics, which is what you are doing here, then you aren’t making a balanced, informed decision.
Because of all of the reasons that have been outlined in this thread. The decision was made 25 years ago. Older nuclear plants have operating life-times between 20 and 40 years. Can you see what the first issue is here? They had to make a decision a long time ago on what the power supply would look like in the future. And when I talk about strategic decisions, this is what I’m talking about. The decision to either shut down, invest in extending the life cycle, or to build new nuclear power plants was one that had to be made well before we hit 2023. They couldn’t wait until now before making that decision.
I mean, lets not?
This thread is already muddled enough as it is. We know what really happened. Lets not confuse things with vague hypotheticals.
Can you explain to me why the area surrounding Fukushima was evacuated, and then due to advice from experts residents weren’t allowed to return to some places for over a decade?
I’ll give you the answer. It was due to safety concerns. The experts didn’t think it would be safe, so the authorities stopped residents from returning.
Safety isn’t only measured in deaths. That isn’t the only metric that is used. And I know that many people in this thread think that safety concerns were overblown. But the case that they have presented hasn’t been convincing, and they’ve given me no reason to question how the authorities acted here.
Ummmm…yeah.
Let’s not let a few hundred people a year die from radiation sickness.
It says right there in the preview that it is only a temporary thing, and they will be closing it down again in March 2024. That isn’t even a full year.
And the thing about coal is you can just spin up a plant for a few months again, then shut it down again. You can’t do that with nuclear.
It actually makes sense for a country in Germany’s position to have excess power-plant capacity that they can spin up for a few months if absolutely needed and shut down again when not. One would hope that America also has the ability to do this. Because you can laugh at Germany all you want, but it wouldn’t take a lot for many countries to end up in the same position.
Honestly: if Texas has to spin up a couple of old coal plants to stop people dying, then I’m okay with that. I’m not going to get the vapours if they do. Because:
If nuclear power plants would stop hurting those people, then by all means, hurry up and build them already. But what that Business Insider article shows is the uncomfortable truth: its regional authorities and private companies whose goal is maximizing profits that are largely in control. And the strategic future of the power grid would be made with maximising profits at the forefront.
I really don’t get what your point is here. This is a complex issue that the world has to grapple with.
And almost none of this has anything to do with Fukushima fish.