What kind of evidence would be convincing to you beyond what’s already been posted?
If you don’t think accelerating climate change is at the same scale as those things, then I’m not sure what else to say.
Here in California, we’ve (probably) managed to keep our local nuclear plant (Diablo Canyon) open for several more years. This is an unequivocal good for the climate. It’s been pressured to close for years now, with renewed effort due to Fukushima, but thankfully our leadership has managed to weigh the risks properly and has kept it open.
Such efforts were not successful in Germany, and that has been an unequivocal loss for climate change. It was a deeply stupid move on their part and harmful to the planet.
Unfortunately, it is all on the same planet. And therein lies the harm. All of those countries that slashed their nuclear power generation, they didn’t just cut their consumption of electricity. They replaced it all with other power plants, mostly fossil fuels, which are ruining the planet’s climate. And which also, incidentally, release more radioactive waste than the nuclear plants ever did (even including Chernobyl)
@Banquet_Bear , you want evidence that the public is freaking out? I refer you to your very own posts. You’re one of the members of the public who is freaking out.
I thought Germany was doing pretty well getting away from fossil fuels?
Germany has been a leading market and incubator for onshore wind power throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, as eager investors and guaranteed state support helped bring the technology to scale. While domestic expansion has slowed in recent years, the country still boasted the largest cumulative onshore wind capacity in Europe and the third largest globally in 2022. - SOURCE
~50% fossil fuels is not great. Especially when such a high proportion is from coal.
They continue to build out renewables and increase their efficiency. But that does not take away from the fact that they could be even further along had they not closed their nuclear plants.
If a country is already 100% carbon free, and can close their nuclear plants without burning more fossil fuels (whether by importing energy or otherwise), then more power to them. Germany is not yet in such a state. Every GW of nuclear energy that they eliminate is a GW of coal energy that they could have eliminated, but didn’t.
…evidence that they are “shutting down nuclear power plants due to falsely perceived dangers” for a start. Thats a pretty specific allegation.
But “accelerating climate change” and “nuclear power” are two different things.
For example, New Zealand doesn’t have nuclear power. Building a nuclear power-plant would very much likely bankrupt the country. So by choosing not to invest in a nuclear power plant, are we not doing our part in combatting global climate change?
Talk me through the logic here.
I’m not in the position to defend what is in the cite. I’m no expert on this. But I reject out-right the position that nuclear is the only way out of the climate crisis. That’s binary thinking. I think there are multiple ways, and different countries are making different choices.
Cite for all of this please. Because I’ve just provided a cite that seems to indicate that this isn’t correct.
Hey, I’m still waiting on that cite for this.
And a cite for well…anything you’ve asserted in this thread so far.
LOL.
If my posts in this thread are the benchmark, I’ll take that as a concession that the public are not freaking out. This is Great Debates. And I’m debating. If you can quote any post I’ve made in this thread that you could accurately characterize as “freaking out” that would be appreciated, because I honestly don’t know what you are talking about.
The nuclear disaster in Fukushima on 11 March 2011 was the cause for the vote in the German Bundestag - and the subsequent decision to phase out nuclear power.
The events in Japan triggered a socio-political debate on the continued use of nuclear energy. Following the catastrophic accident in March 2011, the German government immediately initiated the so-called “nuclear moratorium”: The safety of German nuclear power plants was to be re-evaluated within a fixed period of three months. Knowledge gained from the Fukushima accident equence was used to consider various scenarios.
Seems pretty explicit to me. Of course, there had been an anti-nuclear push in Germany for ages. Fukushima just gave it enough vigor to be reevaluated.
Nothing changed with regards to their plants. They were as safe after Fukushima as before, and since the events there were specific to the geography, it taught Germany nothing new about the plants. It was just a matter of “See? Scary!” and so the plants were closed.
Building a plant and closing a plant are not symmetrical operations. My position on new nuclear plants is that in the US, and probably elsewhere, it has simply become too expensive to open new plants. It’s cheaper and easier to go with solar+wind+storage+grid+etc.
But closing a plant that is already safely operating imposes no additional capital costs. Shutting it down is the expensive thing, both due to the decommissioning and the fact that it has to be replaced with something else. And that something else is almost certainly emitting carbon, since almost no one is totally decarbonized.
Yes, I’d have liked it if we’d all pursued nuclear with more vigor decades ago, and in that alternate reality we might have small, modular plants that would make sense in New Zealand and other smaller countries. Nothing to be done about that now. But we can not close the existing plants that we’ve spent billions on.
And just to emphasize, this logic is totally bogus. If you build 1 GW of renewables, and close 1 GW of nuclear, you don’t get to claim a win by saying that you didn’t make things worse. You could have built the 1 GW of renewables, kept the 1 GW of nuclear operating, and closed 1 GW of coal.
If your country is already fully decabonized, fine, do whatever. Germany is still burning loads of coal and doesn’t get that excuse.
Oh, it’s New Zealand that you’re in? That’s something of a special case, because New Zealand is one of the very few places on the planet where significant geothermal is practical. As a result, that one nation specifically is already very close to all-renewable electricity. Nuclear power probably really doesn’t make sense for you, for purely economic reasons: It’s safe, but geothermal is still cheaper. Of course, you do still have 18% of your electricity coming from fossil fuels.
…can you quote the “falsely perceived dangers” part of that cite? Because this:
Is just another assertion. This wasn’t an overnight decision. It was part of a very long national conversation that was significantly more nuanced than just “See? Scary!” The way that you personally perceive it isn’t a cite.
So we are pivoting from “an unequivocal loss for climate change” to “it costs a lot of money to decommission, and the alternative isn’t 100% perfect.”
Gotcha.
The thing is…you can. And they have.
No it isn’t. Not when you include the relevant context that you snipped from that quote.
We aren’t a “special case.” Geothermal is only 22%. You’ve still got wind, and hydropower, and solar, which are vastly underinvested in the US in comparison to the fossil fuel industry that still has over 60% of the power generating share.
Lets not pretend that the continued reliance on coal and nuclear in the United States isn’t in part due to well funded PR campaigns and lobbying from people with financial stakes in the matter. Its increasingly difficult for the layman to be able to tell what is “PR doublespeak” and what the scientific consensus is. And there are plenty of things being said in this thread that aren’t helping the matter at all.
And I’m still waiting for those cites.
Nah.
This is America.
And this is Germany.
The difference between renewables here are stark. Germany still has a long way to go. But there is clearly a strategy in place. What is the plan in America? More nuclear? It’s at 8% at the moment. Just a tad-more than Germany had before it shut down its last plant. Is this the game-plan? What is, do you think the correct percentage should be? How many more nuclear power plants do you think America needs? And how do you think that investment will help global climate change?
PR is a very specific sub-set of education. PR stands for public relations. Its defined in wiki as "the the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Bolding mine.
The goal of PR isn’t to help people make informed decisions. For example Johnny Depps PR machine successfully managed to portray him as the innocent party in many peoples eyes and Amber Heard as the perpetrator when the evidence showed that the opposite was true. Because that’s how PR works. It’s selective. It cherry-picks. It paints its subject in the best possible of lights.
The goal of PR is to win, often at any cost.
The Prager University Foundation has plenty of educational materials regarding trans issues. And yes, I consider every single thing they’ve produced to be propaganda.
It depends entirely on the context.
I mean, we aren’t famous for it. We are famous for this.
Lemon & Paeroa is quite simply the greatest thing our nation has ever produced and the best soft-drink in the world. Its better than Coca-Cola. Better than Pepsi. And I’m sorry to say…it’s better than Irn-Bru.
But you are very much missing the point. Nuclear isn’t the only solution to global climate change. There are other alternatives, and it isn’t wrong for countries to look at different ways to do things.
The alternative is continuing to burn coal. That is very far from 100% perfect. In fact it’s virtually the worst possible thing for the climate. Especially since so much of that coal is that shitty lignite!
Now, I think this fact is such an obvious logical consequence that it doesn’t need a cite, but since I expect you to ask for one anyway, here you are:
BERLIN, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions held steady last year, jeopardising its climate targets as higher use of oil and coal offset lower energy consumption and record renewables output, data from climate think tank Agora Energiewende showed on Wednesday.
Germany’s 2022 energy consumption fell by 4.7% year-on-year to the lowest since its reunification, thanks to spiking energy prices, mild weather and a government appeal for citizens to save energy in light of a sudden drop in Russian gas imports.
“However, the increased use of coal and oil nullified the reductions in emissions through energy savings,” the Berlin-based think tank said in a statement.
Left unsaid is that they wouldn’t be in this mess if they hadn’t shut down their nuclear plants.
By the way, we can also compare to nuclear-heavy France:
Meanwhile, in France, only 30% of electricity came from renewables. Add in nuclear, though, and low-carbon power sources made up 93% of the electricity supply. So France’s emissions for every unit of electricity were lower than Germany’s by a factor of nearly 10, at 51 grams CO2-eq/kWh, largely because of its heavy reliance on nuclear power.
You made a very serious error in your comparison which invalidates your point. I’ll let you discover what it is. It’s not difficult.
22% of the total energy usage. That includes vehicles. It’s a much higher percentage of electrical usage.
And we’ve already posted plenty of cites that the fear of nuclear power is unfounded, including quotes from the sources that you yourself are linking to.
…that isn’t the only alternative. Again: this isn’t a binary.
More hyperbole. This isn’t helping your case. This isn’t the “worst possible thing.” There are much worse possible things.
Its amazing that on the one hand posit that this is the “worst possible thing” then provide a citation that doesn’t demonstrate this is the worst possible thing. Your cite shows exactly what I’ve been saying: this is a complex issue with no simple answers. What your cite doesn’t show is that nuclear is the only way forward. Which is what I thought this discussion is about.
Maybe it was “left unsaid” because the assertion that they “wouldn’t be in this mess if they hadn’t shut down their nuclear plants” isn’t one supported by the evidence. Because America is lagging behind Europe.
If Germany is in a mess, then the United States of America is in an even bigger mess. Orders of magnitude bigger.
And America hasn’t shut down their nuclear plants.
What did you think my point was? I’d rather you stopped being cryptic and just get to the point.
Bold claim.
But first, let’s address the “plenty of cites” bit. I’ve asked you for evidence for specific verifiable claims that you have made. There is no “we” in that discussion. This is a you thing. The claims that you have made that you haven’t backed up. If other people in this thread had made the same claims that you had made I’d be asking them to support those claims as well. But they haven’t. This isn’t about “fear.” Its about your claim that “once all of the remaining buildings and infrastructure in the city had been inspected for structural damage, and the damage that was found repaired, there was no reason to continue to keep people out.” Show me the evidence that supports this.
No, it really is as simple as this: if you currently operate coal plants (as Germany does), then independently of anything else you do, closing nuclear means keeping coal plants open.
It doesn’t matter how many renewables you install. It doesn’t matter how much you increase efficiency. You still could have closed more coal plants had you kept the nuclear running.
It’s honestly hard to imagine much worse, climate-wise. Peat, maybe? Dung? At least those are biofuels and the embedded carbon came from the atmosphere to start with. Lignite is really, really bad.
Fine, since you couldn’t be bothered to double-check your graphs. Your cite for the US was all energy consumption. Your cite for Germany was electrical. Those are not the same thing.
Comparing like-for-like, we have the previous MIT cite:
On April 16, the day after the final nuclear plants shut down in Germany, the country recorded a carbon intensity of 476 grams of CO2 equivalent for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.
And in the US, we have this, for electrical production:
This equaled about 0.855 pounds of CO2 emissions per kWh.
Converting units, that’s 388 grams CO2/kWh. So the US is doing quite a bit better than Germany (but not nearly as good as France!).
…it really isn’t as simple as this. And as the cite I provided demonstrated, that wasn’t how it happened.
Or you work to replace coals with renewables and continue to close the nuclear plants down.
How about allowing lobbyists to have an outsize influence on the energy market? Allowing essentially unrestrained capitalism to dictate decisions instead of what’s best for the climate? Because what happens in America is pretty close to my personal worst case scenario. Where corporate PR substitutes for informed discussion.
In 2017, while all of the plants weren’t shut down, the average in Germany was 485 grams. In 2022 the average was 385 grams, and if you want to do a “like-for-like” comparison, then what you did here (comparing a single day with a yearly average) isn’t the way to do it.
And you’ve proven my point. With or without nuclear both America and Germany are about the same. Nuclear isn’t the big game changer. Nuclear isn’t what fix climate change. And countries that abandon nuclear aren’t the “worst things to happen, climate-wise.” Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Shutting down nuclear power plants due to them being “unsafe” causes people to die. If only because closing a NPP doesn’t actually free up resources to build more renewables, you can keep it open, build all the same renewables and close a coal power plant instead.
We had a whole plant destroyed by a tsunami and one person died, that’s what safe looks like. It cost a lot of money and effort to keep people safe, but they were absolutely kept safe. If Germany thinks Nuclear isn’t cost effective due to the resources needed to keep people safe, that’s a reasonable take, but thinking that people are directly endangered by Nuclear, due to witnessing the results of Fukushima, that’s just foolish.
And many other posts could be read as absolutely empty alarmism; in fact, that’s what turned me around in my own position from the beginning of the thread to the end. Many, if not most, of the posts in the thread on the side of “there WAS a nuclear distaster” simply did just come across as “NUCLEAR BAD!” with no clear reasoning.
Yes, PragerU is propaganda. So is much of what The Human Rights campaign puts out.
Since you like quoting definitions, here’s Dictionary.com’s definition of Propaganda:
Propaganda, like many things, is a tool. It can be used for good - for example, at this link, you can find propaganda that counters some of the right’s propaganda on trans issues at the link below:
The link deliberately spreads information (check) intended to help a group (check).
It has the benefit of being true, and of being intended to help combat bigotry. Those are both awesome things, so I’m all for this propaganda.
A page by the US DoE containing factual information about the dangers of nuclear radiation is also deliberately spread information (check) intended to help a movement (the nuclearization of America’s power grid). Like the trans page, it is intended to combat misinformation, which detractors of both trans people and nuclear power engage in constantly.
Statements like “Fish from Fukushima fisheries are dangerous” or “The release of tritium into the ocean will have harmful impacts on either the people of Japan or the environment” are every bit as false and misleading as statements like “children are being pressured into becoming trans” or “trans people using bathrooms of the sex they identify with are a threat”. I reject all four statements for exactly the same reason: the evidence does not support these claims.
It’s interesting that you mention PragerU, because in your fear that every bit of factual information about radiation is actually US Propaganda you seem to have turned to the informational equivalents of PragerU when it comes to this issue.
