Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal

Re:Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal by nickik on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @01:38PM (#15697865)

You don't have to build a storage room for millions of years if you know that technologically its is quite feasible to use these resources in the next 1-2 generations.

If nuclear energy development would not be stopped and opposed on every step both in development and deployment these things would have been solved long ago. The needed technology essentially exists for 40 years.

Basically the problem only exist as long as people are determined to not develop nuclear technology any further.

As for your 'dense population argument' that is essentially another 'nuclear is very dangerous and needs to be far away from people' argument. Every reasonable large country in Europe has enough space for these things, if you use real rather then fantasy risk assessment.

Also, in a global market there is no reason why any of that stuff has to be in your country.

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Re:Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal by lispm on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @02:24PM (#15698285)

> technologically its is quite feasible to use these resources in the next 1-2 generations.

These generations are far away and spent fuel piles up. Many countries have huge amounts of spent fuel near reactors. See Fukushima -> lots of spent fuel in pools in reactor buildings. This caused lots of problems in combination of the poor design (pool high in the building), failing backup electricity and failing outside electricity delivery (-> failing cooling of the pools).

> If nuclear energy development would not be stopped and opposed on every step both in development and deployment these things would have been solved long ago.

That's why nuclear thrives in China. Nuclear depends on and supports top-down authoritarian government and decision making. I'm happy that we have stopped this early.

> Every reasonable large country in Europe has enough space for these things, if you use real rather then fantasy risk assessment.

The faulty steel in the not yet running and extremely expensive French EPR is real and not a fantasy.

http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/Information/News-release...

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Re:Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal by kuschku on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @05:16PM (#15699710)

You might not know it, but by international treaties, Germany is banned from operating or having fuel reprocessing facilities.

As result, it either has to be reprocessed expensively in France, or stored directly.

> Also, in a global market there is no reason why any of that stuff has to be in your country.

You do know how prohibitively expensive transport is, and how many legal requirements there are (to avoid hijacking by some rogue nation)?

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Re:Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal by germanier on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @03:18AM (#15702246)

Are you sure this is actually true? What would the name of those treaties be?

There is a (unilateral) German law against such facilities and (regular private law) contracts to use the British and French ones.

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Re:Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal by lispm on Thursday November 16, 2017 @05:53AM (#15711701)

I don't think this is true. Germany actually was trying to build a Reprocessing Plant, against massive protest, it was given up:

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

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