A big drama in the UK as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace discover that solar farms occupy plenty of space and cannot decide what is more evil: 7 hectares of nuclear power plant or 298 km2 of solar power plant.
@kravietz that reads more like propaganda than coherent argument, as if land use were the only topic here. Very one-sided.
But not surprising as he is part of this "generation atomic" thing, that is basically a lobby group posing as a "grassroots" organisation, no? ... whilst also working in the nuclear industry.
This kind of communication gives me the feel of PR greenwashing like when oil companies try to rebrand themselves as environmental. Not the whole story.
And yes, land use *is* a huge concern here, especially if you have to cover ~300 ha of land with glass.
> Demonstration sites can be visited in the Ukraine and in Japan
Please, do not use such cheap propaganda.
If you want the latter, demonstration site for renewable energy can be visited at Mountain Pass mine or hundreds of unregulated mines in Africa or China. Hydro power demo site can be visited in Banqiao where 230'000 people died. Thousands of hectares occupied by coal ash. Hundreds of km2 occupied by wind farms. Etc etc.
@kravietz @nicksellen
These sites I mentioned are no propaganda. They just show how much space can be liberated for nature by this technology. It was not me who shared this meme about the space requirements of these technologies. Sorry that this fits not into your preferred energy solution.
Taking two nuclear accidents over 70 years history of nuclear power *and* ignoring areas polluted and people killed by any other sources, including renewables, is a textbook example of propaganda.
@kravietz @nicksellen Well, than the shared meme would also be propaganda, since it ignores so many things. By the way, do you ignore that these two examples prohibit human settlement over a very long time period? And do you ignore that the caused long-term death rate of only the first incident is estimeated to be in the million? (and yeah, I know, the WHO has a different estimation)
And you know perfectly well that the Greenpeace estimates are bullshit and just as biased as DuPont estimates of deaths from PFOA. Also there's no such thing as "long term death-rate", you can only estimate possible years of life lost as result of early thyroid cancer because this is what the iodine isotope released in Chernobyl can impact. The best estimate was ~200 cases of thyroid cancer over 20 years. This is how many people died in UK on wind tower accidents.
@kravietz @nicksellen Greenpeace is no scientific body and there are hundreds of studies in that topic. And I already acknowledged that there are other estimates on the death rate. Of course, only the studies that you selected can be right. Isn't that so? If yes, then you already know THE truth. Concratulaions!
Well, Greenpeace is not scientific body yet it somehow "commissioned" a study but not even them claimed "a million":
"Another study critical of the Chernobyl Forum report was commissioned by Greenpeace, which asserted that the most recently published figures indicate that in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine the accident could have resulted in 10,000–200,000 additional deaths in the period between 1990 and 2004"
@kravietz @nicksellen Well there was one study from a university in the States, which made estimations for the global population. They came up with one million. Of course this is the upper end of several studies, while the WHO is kind of at the lower end. Always depends on what factors and estimations you put into the calculations.
Do you have source for this million study?
Also the very fact that nobody can tell exactly how many people might potentially get cancer, and the estimates range from 200 to 1'000'000 tells you a lot about the quality of these estimates.
Just to be clear, at the time of Chernobyl disaster I was living 700 km away in Kraków and we obviously were not notified until like 3 days later.
There was no visible increase in cases of thyroid cancer in Poland, and you can collect mushrooms in forests because any levels of cesium are so nominal that they have no biological effects.
But you know what is very widespread in Kraków? Lung cancer and other lung diseases caused by coal.
@kravietz @nicksellen Yeah, we both lived behind the iron curtain :)
Do you trust the reports on related cases from those days? I mean, this would not have looked well...
And coal, yeah, I am not a fan either
I wouldn't worry about that, radiological labs in Poland detected the leak the next day, they just were suppressed from making it public. Then communism collapsed only 3 years later and there was no reason to falsify thyroid cases. Same for milk, grass, mushrooms etc.
@kravietz @nicksellen Good point. I know only of parts of the Bavarian forests were it is still not adviced to eat mushrooms because of still high radiation in that system.
I know because I argued with a friend from Bavaria about this, and he pulled the actual radiologic data for me, and the cesium doses are so low that they can be only detected because the modern equipment is very sensitive, and they definitely have no biological effect.
Same story with recent news by EU Greens about "forest fires in Chernobyl released radioactivity". The detected increase was 1 nSv which is 1/1000 of the background radiation anywhere on Earth 🤦♂️
But hey, now imagine German radiologic service withdraws this monitoring and says "you can now eat mushroom" - Greenpeace would spin such a crazy FUD in the news about "WILLINGLY KILLING PEOPLE WITH RADIATION IN MUSHROOM" that people wouldn't care about silly things like dose.
Then, to get cured, they would go to have a radon bath in one of the popular German radon spas 😂
@kravietz @nicksellen Well, it was always only a certain area there. It's a big country with lots of mushrooms :)
I would like to close this discussion by referring to something that Nick said, about that this discussion will hardly change anything. I think he is right, even though it was an interesting exchange. Real world costs for investing in nuclear energy rise and rise, while wind and solar getting cheaper and cheaper. No energy is free, but it might help if you need no fuel for the operation.
Good night.
"The only way to learn is by changing your mind."
Orson Scott Card
P.S. you still havent' replied anything about the K+S undeground storage https://www.kpluss.com/en-us/our-business-products/waste-management/underground-disposal/ so I assume you are not concerned about the health of Germans living in the densely populated country :)
> Solar power can be integrated
Yes, with even lower efficiency than the usual 15%. So you need even more panels.
> And it has the potential
Nuclear fusion also has many potentials but it's not yet there. We can speak of it when potential becomes an actually engineered product.
@kravietz @nicksellen No, integrated solar panels do not automatically have less efficiency. And you speak about an efficiency that is based on free environmental energy.
> free environmental energy
It's never free if you first need to invest energy to make it, then maintain it and then recycle.
For example, most people speaking of PV rarely remember to mention that single industrial 500 MW solar farm uses 3'000'000 m3 of water per year just to clean the panels.
This is precisely why we look at indicators such as EROI or compare material inputs for manufacturing and operations.
@kravietz @nicksellen I wrote that in respect to the used energy, in that case sun light, as compared to a nugget of uranium or thorium.
You are right that it is important to compare the whole life cycle costs of the provided energy. There we can apply different methods and regard different aspects. This can be a worthwhile scientific and societal discussion. Just do not expect to prove with any study that this technology or the other is THE solution.
> can be a worthwhile scientific and societal discussion
Excuse me, but this discussion has been happening for the last few decades already.
The data is absolutely clear: wind and solar have their place, but are resource-intensive and require storage and base load. As of today nuclear is the only zero-emission base load.
If you *choose* to ignore the whole scientific discussion only because "you don't like atom", please don't be surprised I'm not respecting your position.
@kravietz @nicksellen Oh great, solar panels and wind turbines have to be build. Nuclear power plants and their infrastructure on the other hand are totally CO2-free :)
Again, we've been there - compare EROEI (energy return on energy invested) - a modern PWR reactor returns the energy invested in 2 months, solar panels - in a couple of years.
@kravietz @nicksellen Again, there is not only one study that calculates the EROEI. It depends on the modelling and the data you put into the calculation. I mean, you certainly do not accept specific studies, like the ones paid by Greenpeace. That may be justified. However, I am allowed not to take everything at face value what is printed in any table, where I do not even know the source.
Here you go, here's probably like 20 estimates here, I took the one from UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
> I personally would rather reduce my energy consumption
No, you won't. While personal energy conservation is necessary and important, you still want your hospital and trains to operate 24/7 and will freak out when they don't because they went solar and don't operate at night.
@kravietz @nicksellen Sure, you can ignore every option to stabilise the net, e.g., combination of different renewables, different storage technologies and balancing transmissions. But you can also ignore that we have the option to secure important infrastructure, while not every energy user may have the right to use max power at all the time (current system).
> If people decide to live with and from nuclear power, I respect that
I don't respect that and find just as irrational and uneducated as "preference not to live next to black people" or whatever other personal biases people come up in the developed world.
@kravietz @nicksellen Thanks for putting me into a racist corner, while I consider democratic decisions on energy solutions!
> get a chance to live in nuclear free zones
And if you preference is to live in a "nuclear free zone" then you probably chose a wrong place in the universe to live, because the whole Earth - and probably any other planet - is literally bathed in radiation, coming both from the space and from the radioactive elements in the ground. And you should get rid of any solar panels and wind farms in the first place, as their mining releases radioactive elements.
@kravietz @nicksellen You know very well what I meant, free of nuclear power plants and I might add free of nuclear weapons (and of course these two industries are entirely unrelated).
> You know very well what I meant,
No, 100% honestly I had no idea what you meant by "nuclear free zones" as it made just as little sense in any possible meaning I could think of.
> these two industries are entirely unrelated
Correct, you can't make plutonium in a civilian Pressurized Water Reactor regardless of how much you try.
@kravietz @nicksellen Well, now you know.
And thank goodness you can neither use depleted uranium in any military context.
And what you're trying to say here is that depleted uranium projectiles are made in nuclear power plants, yes? 🤔
@kravietz @nicksellen No, just that both industries are not entirely independent from each other...
> free of nuclear power plants
This is precisely why I compared it to racism: a fear originating from a misplaced and generalized blame, rationalized using manipulated, biased and cherry-picked data.
Unlike racism, radiophobia leads to choices that are potentially catastrophic for the whole humanity and result in thousands estimated cases of increased mortality as result of increased air pollution.
As of today "green" Germany emits 5.5x more CO2 than "evil nuclear" France.
@kravietz @nicksellen Hi there! Since I read your debate, I would like to add some thoughts.
1. Rewilding by nuclear power can really be effective. Demonstration sites can be visited in the Ukraine and in Japan.
2. Solar power can be integrated very well into the built environment. There is still a huge potential of space, even if it is more costly than solar farms. And it has the potential of democraticing the energy production and use (please don't start with mini nuclear plants, it is a difference if I get my energy from the sun, or from fission, including handling the waste).
3. If people decide to live with and from nuclear power, I respect that. As long as people who do not trust in this technology get a chance to live in nuclear free zones. And I personally would rather reduce my energy consumption than to live near a nuclear power plant. Besides, the question should not be nuclear vs. regenerative, but how do we want to live on this planet.