kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

One more fossil gas power plant in Bavaria 🇩🇪 to compensate for lack of power supplies caused by "nuclear exit"

CO2 emissions of nuclear: 12 gCO2eq/kWh
CO2 emissions of fossil gas: 490 gCO2eq/kWh

🤷

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/bavaria-gets-new-gas-fired-power-plant-ensure-supply-security

#nuclear #renewableenergy

@cjd

It's not "questionable" at all. They are inspected and their licenses extended for another 20 years. A boiling water reactor can safely operate for 80+ years. That's hell of a return on investment, especially if you count CO2 emissions avoided.

@epic @lain @mithrandir

@cjd

How do we exactly insure today against the actual deaths of hundreds of thousands of people of air pollution caused by burning coal and biomass? How do we insure about catastrophic effects of climate change causes by burning fossil gas?

@epic @lain @mithrandir

@epic

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

Also, nuclear industry - or more precisely the whole process of mining, processing, including all past leaks etc - add <1% of our global radiation exposure.

@epic

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

Sorry for your brother, but there's nothing in this story that indicates any relation between his health and his work in nuclear power plants.

By making this type of irrational fears drive your energy policy you're actually exposing yourself to sources of energy that *actually* cause way more deaths.

@cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir

So you probably understand why I'm a bit surprised when you say "dead" about a single source that provides *half* of all low-carbon and non-intermittent energy in EU, so the same amount as all solar, wind, hydro.

And this should be even more surprising when you compare CO2 emissions of "renewable" Germany with France or Sweden (both largely nuclear):

@cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir

Finland 2005, France 2007, UK 2018, Russia 2010, Belarus 2014 - and these are only those under construction (actually Belarus went into production this year)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors

Also worth mentioning ITER that goes first plasma in 2025

https://www.iter.org/

@cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir

Dead?! Are you living on the Moon? Because in Europe there's a whole lot of operational reactors and new in constructions. As of today nuclear power provides 25% of all EU electricity and 50% of low-carbon.

@mlg @cjd @lain @mithrandir

It's probably just not visible at the scale. That's was *mining* inputs of raw materials, here's more general material inputs. Surface power density *really* matters.

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

> crazy toxic like nuclear waste

Nuclear waste is not "crazy toxic". There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world. Here's a good scientific explainer on that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOvHxX5wMa8

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

> the big problem with solar power is its disposal too

Yes, some types of PV panels on abandoned solar farms have contaminated ground with cadmium.

https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/solar/the-mounting-solar-panel-waste-problem/

But it's not a disaster or reason to cancel all PV projects, stupid people contaminate environment with stuff all the time and we just need to deal with it.

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

> stored at the reactor sites themselves

I explained above. After 60 years of nuclear power plants operations there's not enough actual nuclear waste to economically justify long-term geologic repository. This is the only reason why it's now being stored in plants. Storages are being built in France, Finland etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository

> check the comma key on your keyboard

This is the 1000's separator in Europe :)

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

> mean small amounts like for medical purposes

This is the funny part: nuclear industry is so regulated, that anything anything used anywhere in a nuclear plant or X-ray machine is "nuclear waste". Most of these drums shown in scary German movies about leaky storages are filled with old gloves, clothes, tools, parts of machinery and all that crap that is "radioactive" only by legal definition. In terms of volume it's a lot, but in terms of emissions, it's nothing.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

What I'm trying to say eventually, as I need to go to sleep, is that all engineering is to some extent dirty. Some is more, some is less, but all produces some kind of harmful waste. PV may contaminate ground with cobalt, wind turbines with gearbox oil etc etc.

At the end of the day we must always deal with that waste. We know how to do it in environmentally safe way, which is why we know both arsenic and radioactive waste is safe there.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

> Nobody wants it in their territory.

Yes, and this is why we are mining rare earth metals for PV in China or some other "foreign" places, rather than in Germany where we only show nice and shiny end product.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

Salt or granite chambers in geologically stable structures have survived millions of years already and will survive the same in future.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

This is literally what I wrote in the first comment:

> Anti-nuclear Germany has *two* of them, and they store arsenic, mercury and cyanide waste

And by the way, these are chemical waste.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

You are absolutely right.

And Mountain Pass rare earth metals mine in USA leaked over a million of liters of radioactive waste between 1980-90's. If we want to continue producing PV, we need to deal with radioactive waste.

Not to mention massive prisms of coal ash are leaking radioactive elements to the ground all the time but, more importantly, they release 100x more radioactive elements than any nuclear power plant with fly ash.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

We are talking about arsenic and mercury, these two do not break into *anything* remotely benign in any finite time. Mercury can be rendered into passive amalgams but for that you need silver so Germany is just keeping it in deep geologic repository while freaking out about the same repository for old X-ray plates.

@cjd @mithrandir @lain

So because Italian mafia dumped some radioactive* and toxic waste back in 80's are you going to shut down all chemical industry globally now? 🤔

I'm just trying to apply uniform standards here, because both are equally toxic.