This is so wrong. If you look at the death rate from those incidents and compare them to the death rates of literally any other source of energy (including other renewables), they are much much lower.

Nuclear is proven to be our most safe, clean and renewable source of energy.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

Maybe convince somebody then to have final storage for nuclear waste anywhere close to where they live. Once this crap is in your backyard, the armchair philosophers find excuses really fast.

Similar with wind turbines, but at least those are so small scale that you can convince closeby towns fast by just letting them participate in the profits. Different story for leaking barrels stored underground.

(And yes, that's how this crap ends up. Just google Asse II and then let's discuss German cleanliness again.)

Who likes the poisoning of areas around coal mines?

Or plants. Need to remember how many cities used to look... Not pretty with all the particulates...

It isn't about averages, it is about perceived tail risk.

Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse (just from production and ignoring all the pollutants in the air and even ignoring that coal plants regularly emit more radiation into the air than have ever died from nuclear power generation). In fact, mortality from nuclear power generation is closer to solar and wind.

Yes the incidents are scary and news grabbing but that’s it. The actual data is that it’s safe (look at mortality as a function of megawatt hours produced). Not to mention that in the 60-80 years since those plants were designed (Fukushima and Chernobyl are basically the same design if I recall correctly), we’ve gotten much better at designing plants that withstand natural disasters. This is also ignoring the fact that we can do a better job of locating power plants further away from disaster-prone areas due to advances in power distributions systems (eg HVDC).

The problem with nuclear is that there’s a lot of fear still lingering around it from Cold War era propaganda. Any issues just play into and reinforce those fears. The real problem is that education is the only effective tool we know of to fight fear but it’s slow and not up to the challenge that nuclear fission faces. That’s because on top of the fears are actual opponents who will fight any real evidence-based education efforts by playing up the FUD (very old tactic). Fossil fuel companies don’t want it because nuclear presents an existential threat to their existence. US national security interests are worried about proliferation if we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. It also presents a serious threat to US hegemony if countries are able to establish their own energy independence.

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse

That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead.

EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and explain to me how they're building more fossil fuel power plants over the years while building zero nuclear power plants.

> Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead.

Uhh… Yes it does. The data shows that. An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

> The data shows that.

Many people are saying this.

> An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

What matters is whether increased reliance on renewables slows down the decarbonisation effort. If you have data which shows that, I'd be interested to see it.

In return, let me offer a study from last year which found: "in countries with a high GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production does associate with a small drop in CO2 emissions. But in comparative terms, this drop is smaller than that associated with investments in renewable energy. And in countries with a low GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production clearly associates with CO2 emissions that tend to be higher."

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/53376

Solar and wind mean you need batteries (can’t do off-peak without it). This means you still need peaker plants. Even if you accelerated battery technology drastically (which I’d say is already at max R&D speed mostly), you’re looking at some fundamental challenges getting the precious materials (total volume/cost and also energy required to do the mining). Finally, my understanding is that solar and wind can’t actually be used in some energy-intensive industrial processes because they can’t generate enough heat. This means those power needs are still powered by traditional fossil fuel power plants (and too expensive to use just for the industrial purpose so it’s actually part of the energy mix for good).

Solar and wind are important parts of the energy mix and.OF COURSE we need them. Nuclear is where the bulk of the focus needs to go though to actually decarbonize because it can handle literally every use case that fossil fuels do but cheaper, safer and less polluting.

> Solar and wind mean you need batteries (can’t do off-peak without it)

We do not have enough batteries in the world, and producing enough of them would take decades, and cost us trillions of dollars. Nuclear power plants are better and cheaper solution.

> The data shows that.

I just added a source that shows that data tells something completely different. In the past ten years, German renewable generation more than doubled (from annual ~100 TWh to ~250 TWh) while their natural gas consumption for electricity generation today is basically the same as back then (somewhere around 90 TWh annually from gas back then as well as today). Not sure how natural gas stagnation can be described as "large increased reliance".

Because your sources show energy production in Germany.

The Germans import a significant amount (~64%) of their energy from other countries, including France (nuclear) and Poland (coal), but also countries further afield like Norway and Russia.

Germans don't import 64% of electricity (in fact they're a net exporter almost every year). This article is about electricity generation in Germany and I'm commenting on electricity generation in Germany. The comment I was responding to was also about electricity generation in Germany. Not quite sure where you're trying to steer the discussion. To the fact that Germany, like many other countries, has yet to fully electrify transportation and heating, where most of these energy imports (gas and oil) are going? Sure, but almost everyone has to. Many, if not most, other developed countries don't fare much better so far.

> Almost 60 percent of the EU’s energy needs (excluding the UK) were met by net imports in 2018. Germany’s energy import dependency was still higher at 63.6 percent – a slight decrease compared to the previous year’s 64 percent.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependen...

You're confusing energy with electricity again. Please don't do that. Furthermore, it's also a number that is completely irrelevant for the climate perspective, since it doesn't matter if your imports are low if that means you're drilling massive amounts of gas yourself like the US or the UK -- the planet doesn't care if the fuel crossed the borders or not. And, as your own article notes, German decarbonization plans include the elimination of these imports anyway.

Unfortunately if we look at Germany, it means exactly that, as the electricity deficit from closing down these plants is largely offset by coal plants.

Completely wrong, as German statistics for power generation by source show. As nuclear power plants generate less and less electricity, so does German coal (with some inter-annual noise, of course, but the German trend is clear).

So what is the currently available and reasonable in cost grid scale solution? That is to provide needed power 24/7/365 for decades to come?

So far, probably what Zerrahn et al. suggested in 2018 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211...), namely overbuild renewable generation to achieve a Pareto-optimal mix of generation of storage. This doesn't prevent opportunistic uses such as demand-controlled charging of electric vehicles or demand-controlled hydrogen generation from the overgeneration which further increases the appeal of this option.

It sure does.

Actually... it probably does. Look at the respective increase in NatGas consumption as California closes things down. Renewables can only do so much.

I don't care about California. I was talking about Germany. This whole thread is about an article on Germany. There is no such trend in Germany, as data shows.

One incident caused by a natural disaster that would never happen in a European country like Germany, the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany.

Edit: in response to the large number of people bringing up BER and other infrastructure failures in Germany: yes, BER and others may have been bad, but a completely different kind (and magnitude) of incompetence than that which led to the Chernobyl meltdown. They really aren’t comparable.

This summer a large part of germany was completely flooded. This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays. The alarming systems in place competely failed and around 200 people drowned in Germany. There are so many things which could happen and countries like Germany are not prepared for.

Which is exactly why geologists do surveying before they build a nuclear power plant...

This is ridiculous! The house owners were convinced that there couldn't take place a flooding in that area! Most of them had no insuranced for flooding either. No specialist of any kind has predicted such a scenario...

Those houses aren't nuclear reactors. The safety measures were exponentially less stringent.

> This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays.

You don't build nuclear power plants in narrow valleys with known flood events though. I mean, you also don't build wind turbines in swamps and hope they don't fall over, or put solar panels on your roof and don't fasten them.

Building a castle in a swamp can work, though.

Certainly by the time you get to the fourth one, the strongest castle in these islands

> mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany.

Are we talking about the same Germany?

Edit: I should probably give some examples: Suttgart 21 train station, BER airport

Jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence is unfortunately quite common once economic pressure makes the correct way of running things untenable.

Everybody starts cutting small corners everywhere, assuming it doesn't matter much as all the other people are still doing their job. One day, a corner too many gets cut, and the slack in the system is too small to catch what should be a minor problem.

Don't trust the public facade and official reports, they have been filtered by PR departments and by people not wishing to report bad news to their managers and peers

>the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany.

Are you sure? One example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48527308

>BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".

Accidents will always happen, even in Germany [1]. And don’t forget their WW2 bomb detection isn’t perfect [2]. Nor are they free from corruptive practices [3].

1. https://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-09/a-history-of-german-trai...

2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59487910

3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772

> jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany.

Hahaha! Haha! Ha. #sad

Yes, although never say never...

Well nothing is risk-free. But in my opinion in any case the risk of allowing climate change to rampantly continue vastly outweighs the infinitesimal risks of nuclear.

"infinitesimal risk" would be something that is unlikely to happen once in a million years or even the lifetime of the planet which is clearly not the case. It's "acceptable risk" or "justifiable risk" at best.

Floodings are going to be much more frequent than they were in the past. If you want to take a look at where those nuclear reactors are located and explain how they were to be operated safely and cost effectively in the next decade or two I think the Germans would be all ear.

Germany has this right: do it now, and deal with it, rather than to continue to kick the can down the road for later generations to solve the problems, a kind of temporeal externalization.

We have never had a significant disaster of any gen >=3 reactor. TMI, Fukushima, Chernobyl were all gen 2, and gen 1 is all prototypes.

Anything built after 1972 has not had anywhere near this level of incidents.

Also Chernobyl had severe safety flaws due to its origin as an early model breeder reactor (and my head canon is that the test that caused the disaster was in some way related to surreptitious fuel changing to run breeding experiments. The RBMK reactors were designed for rapid fuel shuffling.... In other words, safety was compromised to keep the door open to the possibility of sneaky weapons grade material production).

Also also, Chernobyl had some other bone-headed flaws, such as a positive void coefficient and positive scram coefficient (read: trying to rapid shutdown during an emergency made the reaction increase). Humanity has learned a ton since then.

80%+ of nuclear power comes from gen 2 reactors. There are still 8 RBMK reactors in operation, all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed, with the same widespread contamination.

IF new generation reactors can prove to be safe and not create waste and decommissioning problems, and if they can be built economically, then they are worthy of consideration.

But power is fungible. If the cheapest next watt-hour is solar or wind, then why spend on anything else?

>all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed

Not exactly, changes were made to RBMK design after the accident: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

What they cannot change is the lack of a containment structure.

Fortunately, we didn't abandon airline travel after a few terrible accidents.