Coal power has been slow to phase out not because the power is needed, but because the coal industry is important, especially in some regions already suffering from the shifting economic fortune of heavy manufacturing. It being the initial core of german industrialisation, it also has an outsized social relevancy as a marker of identity among the labor class.
But for these reasons, Germany would have replaced all coal with renewable energy, French nuclear power, or natural gas generation one or two decades ago. That's still an emission source, but far less so than coal.
What we should have done is to really push renewable energy much sooner and in a more systematic way, then we could mostly be off nuclear and coal energy sources by now. The "Energiewende" politics of the Green party / SPD e.g. involving - among other things - large-scale subsidies on private photovoltaics plants wasn't really a viable strategy (IMHO) and more a way to hand good investment opportunities to upper middle-class / upper-class households (in the early days of solar subsidies people could earn more than 10 % interest rate, guaranteed over 10 years or longer).
The end of nuclear was decided and agreed long before that. Fukushima just made it clear to the remaining sceptic conservative party that that decision was right.
I like to think of it like car crashes vs. plane crashes. Plane crashes are much more publicized, and definitely cause more death/damage per occurrence than a car crash. But because there's so few of them, planes are still much safer overall than cars.
Not saying that it's a bad decision to turn off nuclear power plants, just saying the decision should be based on science not emotion.
If they knew how to be more logical, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. They don't. And just saying you "should" is not enough. It doesn't enable them to be more logical.
Communication that produces better outcomes requires to put the focus on why the threat isn't a threat and STOP. There is no need to tell people, beyond that they are illogical in the way they are handling fear. Good communicators, with the skill to reduce threat perception of everyone in the room do it all the time. And they produce better outcomes.
For example, the ducts that vented hydrogen overpressure vented into the interior of the reactor building rather than outside. This lead to the explosions.
That once-in-200-years magnitude 6.5 earthquake is 400x less intense than the 2011 Japan earthquake. And yes, without a sea there is no tsunami risk.
France, Germany, and probably even the USA have much better cards to play. Heck, even China doesn’t trust itself that much in its nuclear power ambitions because of the huge cost corruption would bring.
Japan is just as technologically advanced as Germany, yet one of the nuclear plants, as predicted by Kraftwerk (the band), blew and fucked up the whole northern Pacific. Germany has had its technological disaster, for example Eschede, so don't think its powers plants to be 100% safe.
We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants, and don't forget about waste from decomissioning the actual buildings, that's not the stuff you want to recycle for a road. If a wind turbine is decomissioned, you simply strip it, melt it and make a better one.
Building a new nuclear power plant now is betting against a huge leap in battery technology. If that leap happens it's bye-bye for fossil fuels.
What now? The death toll from the Fukushima Daiichi failure is: up to 1.
> We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants
Yes, we do. Put it in the side of a mountain. Nuclear waste has always been a political problem, not a technical one. The US already has a site picked, Yucca Mountain, and only NIMBYism has gotten in the way.
Actually all energy production has/creates 'political problems'. One has to deal with those, too. Otherwise claimed technical solutions will fail in the real world.
> not a technical one.
I don't believe that for a second. This is the overly optimistic view of technocrats or the industry.
Every single Windmill needs a massive foundation. Its not like you could put them into the ground like a toothpick. Here are some facts from a windfarming project which i've randomly chosen:
[1] https://www.forconstructionpros.com/concrete/article/1088605...
On average, each of these below-ground support systems used 60 truckloads of concrete (750 cubic yards)
Lafarge also supplied 20,000 tons of Type I cement for soil stabilization of approximately 44 miles of roads,...
I don't think it differs that much from any other.
Do you think that has [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruin_value ?
No. If anything, that has set back nuclear tech for a century, as the designs funded were designed for weapons manufacturing first, energy second. Nuclear is very convenient (very infrequent fuel shipments) and powerful. Which is why well-funded navies use it extensively. The US Navy, for instance, has a perfect track record, under much harsher conditions.
> We still don't have a long-term storage solution for the nuclear waste produced by the power plants
We do, actually. Breeder reactors. If it is energetic enough to pose a serious threat, it's energetic enough for fuel. Once we have extracted most of the useful energy, the waste is much less dangerous and can be dealt the same way we deal with other hazardous materials.
> If a wind turbine is decomissioned, you simply strip it, melt it and make a better one.
I don't think it is as simple as that. Source for this claim? Re-purposing for other applications I can buy
> and don't forget about waste from decomissioning the actual buildings
It's basically the reactor vessel, which is not that big. The entire plant is not radioactive, after all. In fact, it is LESS radioactive than a comparable coal power plant, which can't even be built nearby, as it would trip all sorts of alarms in the nuclear power plant.
> Japan is just as technologically advanced as Germany, yet one of the nuclear plants, as predicted by Kraftwerk (the band), blew and fucked up the whole northern Pacific.
It was a decades old design that had a design flaw which was documented AND IGNORED. And yet, it survived a major Earthquake AND a Tsunami. If that's not safe I don't know what is. It would have been fine if not for more fuckups, like incompatible power so generator trucks couldn't be connected, even though they were dispatched. It's worth it to point out that Fukushima's reactor shut down as designed. As did other nuclear power plants, which experienced no issues at all.
> Building a new nuclear power plant now is betting against a huge leap in battery technology. If that leap happens it's bye-bye for fossil fuels.
Look, I'm all for renewables. But we are not there yet for baseline power, which a few (modern!) power plants could easily provide, supplemented by solar, wind, geothermal. Powering things like an aluminum power plant with renewables is going to be a tough task.
> so don't think its powers plants to be 100% safe.
Nothing is 100% safe. Solar panel installation kills more people per year than all nuclear accidents ever, combined. And most nuclear power plants running today are ancient designs, because it's difficult to get permits to build more, due to public perception. But you wouldn't use the safety record for a car built in 1960 to claim that cars nowadays are inherently unsafe, would you? Why use the same argument for nuclear power plants? We need to replace the old junk with modern power plants.
The Russian navy does have reactors, too. They are creating environmental catastrophes...
> We do, actually. Breeder reactors.
Breeder reactors are even more dangerous than our typical reactors. There have been only few built and those were extremely costly and problematic (for example those in russia).
> It was a decades old design that had a design flaw which was documented AND IGNORED.
They had many design&engineering flaws. Yet the japanese thought they were perfectly save. The large earthquake exposed several severe design flaws.
> And yet, it survived a major Earthquake AND a Tsunami
It didn't.
After the earth quake basically all japanese reactors were shutting down. After several years of downtime only a few are running. some will never be running again.
Basically it's a total loss of several dozen reactors (and other nuclear installation) and a damage going into zillions. But you claim they 'survived'.
Anyway, debating how a nuclear catastrophe fared is always a nice thing, because we know it was a catastrophe.
The fossil fuel catastrophe is still ongoing, yet people just ignore it, because... well, because who knows why.
There were people evacuated because mine fires, because refinery fires, because power plant fires. But that's not as big news as Fukushima.
We have the harrowingly beautiful Chernobyl series, but we also know that the total toll on human lives were/are still lower than the fossil powered equivalent.
Anyway. Dangerous is relative. Just as environment catastrophe. (The Russian Navy does what it does under thousands of meters of water, hardly a serious health risk.)
And any new reactors, breeders or not, are by default safer than anything else we have currently running, coal or not. Because we have improved standards and technology.
Finally, the whole problem of cost is that it neglects the cost of health harm. Factor that in and it becomes irrelevant what kind of reactor, because all are better than other forms of power generation.
Only few. Most of the politicians and industry had no complaints. Protest movements were largely not existing.
The general corruption in the nuclear&political&industrial complex is known.
> And any new reactors, breeders or not, are by default safer than anything else we have currently running, coal or not. Because we have improved standards and technology.
That's not the case. Many principal problems of breeders are not solved. For example the need for very problematic fuel processing plants.
> Finally, the whole problem of cost is that it neglects the cost of health harm. Factor that in and it becomes irrelevant what kind of reactor, because all are better than other forms of power generation.
I don't think that's the case. See the extreme costs of nuclear power plants in the UK.
Addendum: I'm not against turning off nuclear power plants (I think we should eventually), I just don't agree with the time frame we chose for this. Letting plants run for a few more years wouldn't significantly increase cumulated accident risk and would have a significant effect on our CO2 emissions.