With the hot air produced by those inept stooges, there would be no need for nuclear power, they could power the whole country by talking into the turbine of a generator… ALL, I repeat, ALL power companies already told them multiple times that there is no reasonable way to reactivate those plants. Building new ones would take tens of years and would cost more than anybody is going to pay for it. There is no final storage for the waste, there are no places where the people would let them build one, there is no insurance that will insure them, as long as it’s not the country itself doing it aka the people…so why the fuck is nuclear power in demand by those fuckheads?
Another crazy part is also the decomissioning. All the highly and slightly contaminated material from dismantling an old atom plant is mind numbing. Germany is right now dismantling their last Plants (german source) and is confronted with these cost and e.g. France also will have to invest dozens to hundrets of billions for all their plants to decomission (and store the waste) in the next 20-40 years.
[In Germany] The demolition of the nuclear ruins will take decades. Today, around 120,000 cubic meters of low and medium-level radioactive waste are waiting for their final resting place in interim storage facilities. By 2050, another 180,000 cubic meters are expected to be added. The biggest waste problem is the highly radioactive legacy. When the last German nuclear power plant is shut down at the end of this year[2022], there will probably be around 27,000 cubic meters - around 1,900 containers of waste that will remain dangerous for many hundreds of thousands of years.
Also in another Article:
construction began on Sweden’s first final repository for spent nuclear fuel at the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Östhammar municipality. The facility, which will be one of the first of its kind globally, will store nuclear fuel waste for up to 100,000 years.
Sweden currently has six active nuclear reactors that together produce between 90 and 150 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually. This waste is currently stored in Oskarshamn, but will eventually be moved to the final repository in Forsmark. When the repository is sealed in 2090, it is estimated to hold about 12,000 tons (180,000 cubic metres) of nuclear fuel waste, encapsulated in copper and surrounded by bentonite clay, placed 500 meters below the ground surface.
The decomission Waste from the german plants alone could fill the swedish storage twice. And France has 50+ atom plants that have to me dismantled at some point.
No idea. Other countries need the material for their warheads. I get that. But Germany doesn’t even have nukes! Even the power companies don’t want them, but still they’re brought up time and again… It’s insane.
Fwiw, prospective new chancellor Merz and his party secretary Linnemann have been compared to these two:
They mean turning Wendelstein-X into a real prototype fusion reactor, right? RIGHT?
Sadly no, because this is bullshit like the entire platform that the conservatives ran on.
Nuclear is not happening in Europe and it never will, no matter how often conservative parties keep bringing it up. We have only two new build plants in Europe, Flamanville and Hinkley Point C. They are WAY more expensive than expected, no end in sight, way past the deadline. You can build like 80 gas power plants for the price of one of these monsters. And we’re not even talking about permanent storage of the eternal waste.
The only country working with new nuclear energy recently is China because they need to get off of coal fast. So they are subsidizing hard. And that’s only fraction of what they spend on new renewable, clean energy.Olkiluoto3 and Mochovce3 went operational in 2023.
God, I hope not.
Nuclear is not bad, it’s just not cost effective (at least in the US, no idea what infrastructure is like elsewhere tbh)
Being ineffective kind of makes it bad though.
/edit
I mean, seriously… “Nuclear isn’t bad if you just disregard the enormous cost, which usually don’t even include the socialised cost of accidents that could spoil half a country or the handling of lethal waste that’ll kill you for longer than our species existed” is such a wild take… Yeah, if it’s too expensive to be used efficiently then it’s probably a bad tech.
The cost is less than the value of the energy it produces. If it wasn’t, nobody would be building reactors.
Seriously, what is even your argument here? It’s total nonsense.
What kind of dumb argument is that? “Nobody would do that if it was bad, so because people do it it must be good”. Pff. “Drugs must be good, otherwise people wouldn’t do them”. “Shit must be good, otherwise flies wouldn’t eat it”.
Energy markets are merit order markets. As long as there’s a single jerk that’s more expensive than you, that’s a good thing. Even better, if you own 10 power plants that are cheap as fuck, you’ll do your best to keep the expensive plant running and selling its power, just because that’s the price you’ll then get for your 10 cheaper ones as well.
One kWh from wind turbines sells for about 8 cents where I live. From a nuclear plant, that’s about 42 cents. That’s more than I pay for it at my plug. Nuclear plants live on subsidies from the state. And afterwards they dump their waste at the feet of the people who paid extra for their stupid generation method.
Drugs must be good, otherwise people wouldn’t do them
Yes, that is why people unironically do drugs.
As for nuclear energy, it is cost competitive with renewables, and cheaper than fossil fuels. I’m not going to bother giving you links to supporting studies though, because let’s be honest, you’re not interested in changing your mind, and I don’t argue with science deniers who are religiously hellbent on preconceived notions.
Yes, that is why people unironically do drugs.
The point is that societies or governments should have more foresight than just to the next high.
As for nuclear energy, it is cost competitive with renewables
I call bullshit. Here are my sources, where are yours?
https://www.bund-sh.de/energie/atomkraft/hintergrund/die-wahren-kosten-von-atomkraft/
https://www.mittelstandsbund.de/themen/energiewende/atomkraft-in-deutschland
What makes you think it’s not cost effective? Nuclear fuel is 98% recyclable, something which the US was (before Trump) considering building infrastructure for.
How recyclable are low and medium radioactive concrete walls from decommissioned power plants? Answer: not at all.
Why is there is not a single private company interested in building a nuclear reactor in Germany without subsidies? No company on this planet would ever construct a nuclear reactor if they had to finance everything - including all waste management - from selling energy.
German law demands that highly radioactive material must be safely stored and monitored for 1 million years. Sure, the quantity is lower but it’s still in the hundreds to thousands of tons.
Please find a company willing to pay for all of this prior to constructing a nuclear power plant and I will admit you’re right.
Concrete is 100% recyclable. Radioactive concrete could be reused in new power plants indefinitely. Stop voting for people who let corporations throw away things they don’t want to deal with.
Why is there is not a single private company interested in building a nuclear reactor in Germany without subsidies?
You’re asking me why capitalism capitalizes? I don’t think I need to explain to you why a corporation would hold out their hand if they know the government will pay for everything and they can reap even more profits, and if you’re of an intellectual capacity that I do have to explain that, then you probably wouldn’t understand anyway. I’m not even sure what your argument is here. It probably sounded good to you when you typed it, but the answer is so painfully obvious that I must be missing something, because who would would unironically ask that?
I haven’t found any study about reusing radioactive concrete waste in new reactors. There are a couple for removing the radioactive contaminants but the process is fairly expensive. I’m not sure it’s even possible to safely reuse (instead of decontaminate) radioactive concrete without harming workers.
As to your point about capitalism:
There are multiple private, non government subsidized gas power plants planned/in construction in Germany.
Private solar farms and wind plants are very common as well, although they are partially subsidized.
No company dares to touch nuclear power plants with a ten foot pole in Germany. Even reactivating partially deconstructed plants - which is both cheaper and quicker than rebuilding new one’s - is considered “practically impossible” by Preussen Elektra and EnBW. Not even qualified workers exist anymore. Training and certifiying them would further require several years and tens, if not hundreds of millions of euros.
The one - and only one - group in Germany who wishes for a return of nuclear power are conservative populists who despise renewable energy (and wind turbines in particular).
Instead of wasting tens of billions euros, how about we use that money to massively expand battery storage and renewables as well as inter-European power lines?
Today, nuclear energy is only economical if you want to build and maintain nuclear bombs. That’s pretty much it.
I am a big advocate for nuclear. Those salt reactors look very promising.
We just need to fill in the gaps between solar and wind. Get off coal.
