<story><title>Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open</title><url>https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-germany-wont-keep-its-nuclear</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hedora</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re repeating some of the excuses the article addresses.&lt;p&gt;- The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert.&lt;p&gt;- They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations.  It&amp;#x27;s negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations.&lt;p&gt;- Their proposal would increase Germany&amp;#x27;s stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within engineering tolerances, ignoring the fact that the disposal facilities were planned before they decided to prematurely close the plants.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see how it matters which political party made which political decisions in the past.  Conditions have changed.</text></item><item><author>ivan_gammel</author><text>What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party.&lt;p&gt;If this was written by an expert, that could make some  sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working cookie banner for few months, because nobody really checks compliance. You have to conduct safety tests, there should be enough staff and replacement parts, fuel supply must be secured, waste disposal must be planned in advance. Calling to accept risks of not doing this properly is not exactly what German public supports. The polls are tricky thing to do. If you ask certain questions you will get whatever results you want. I’m sure it was not explained to the public in the poll that they will have to accept higher risks of nuclear disaster if reactors will be allowed to operate. Everyone thinks that it is as safe as it was in the past - no wonder majority would support it to help Ukraine.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, this majority also includes supporters of Greens and the party itself is not the same as it was in 80s. Greens are no longer unconditional pacifists and anti-nuclear hippies. They are the biggest supporters of sending heavy weapons to Ukraine now. They would extend nuclear if possible, because it advances the more important agenda of reducing emissions and helps Ukraine. They were ready to wait 20 years to phase out nuclear in 2000s, and it wasn’t Greens who accelerated shutdown after Fukushima. It was pro-business CDU with Merkel as a head of the government. This is why I would rather trust Habeck with his report than some random guy from the Internet with a political message.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yk</author><text>The way the author dismisses engineering concerns lets me strongly doubt that he is an expert. There is a discussion on fuel, spare parts and personal, where he basically says that he doesn&amp;#x27;t care.&lt;p&gt;The burning of nuclear fuel is actually very closely managed, fuel elements are regularly shuffled around because the ones in the center burn up faster than the ones at the edge of the core and the shuffling around is planned a long time in advance. So, when the end of life is planned for 2022 then the plan is actually to have the fuel spent at that date and you couldn&amp;#x27;t get much additional power out of it.&lt;p&gt;The same is of course true for spare parts. First of all, the industrial environment that supplies spare parts knows since 20 years about the plans to phase out nuclear and plan accordingly. They are actively trying to run out of spare parts right now, while of course all the maintenance task that get a rating of &amp;quot;should be ok for some time&amp;quot; get skipped in the power plants. That means, that they would need major maintenance right now, while the spare parts are planned to be not there and the industrial capacity to build spare parts has been re purposed or dismantled.&lt;p&gt;The same of course also for personal, they knew for a long time this was coming and planned their careers accordingly, though this is probably the least problem of the tree, but still that lets me doubt wether the author ever did plan a moderately complex project, let alone being an expert about nuclear power.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open</title><url>https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-germany-wont-keep-its-nuclear</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hedora</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re repeating some of the excuses the article addresses.&lt;p&gt;- The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert.&lt;p&gt;- They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations.  It&amp;#x27;s negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations.&lt;p&gt;- Their proposal would increase Germany&amp;#x27;s stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within engineering tolerances, ignoring the fact that the disposal facilities were planned before they decided to prematurely close the plants.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see how it matters which political party made which political decisions in the past.  Conditions have changed.</text></item><item><author>ivan_gammel</author><text>What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party.&lt;p&gt;If this was written by an expert, that could make some  sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working cookie banner for few months, because nobody really checks compliance. You have to conduct safety tests, there should be enough staff and replacement parts, fuel supply must be secured, waste disposal must be planned in advance. Calling to accept risks of not doing this properly is not exactly what German public supports. The polls are tricky thing to do. If you ask certain questions you will get whatever results you want. I’m sure it was not explained to the public in the poll that they will have to accept higher risks of nuclear disaster if reactors will be allowed to operate. Everyone thinks that it is as safe as it was in the past - no wonder majority would support it to help Ukraine.&lt;p&gt;The thing is, this majority also includes supporters of Greens and the party itself is not the same as it was in 80s. Greens are no longer unconditional pacifists and anti-nuclear hippies. They are the biggest supporters of sending heavy weapons to Ukraine now. They would extend nuclear if possible, because it advances the more important agenda of reducing emissions and helps Ukraine. They were ready to wait 20 years to phase out nuclear in 2000s, and it wasn’t Greens who accelerated shutdown after Fukushima. It was pro-business CDU with Merkel as a head of the government. This is why I would rather trust Habeck with his report than some random guy from the Internet with a political message.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ivan_gammel</author><text>&amp;gt; They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It&amp;#x27;s negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations.&lt;p&gt;First of all, that estimate was not made by an expert, as other commenters pointed out. Second, the additional risk is created not because of new safety standards, but also from all other factors where deviation from standard procedures could accelerate the process. This risk is hard to quantify, it can materialize in unexpected ways (just like nobody expected Chernobyl or  Fukushima) and it will cost such rich and densely populated country as Germany trillions. The choice between „you may loose everything but Russia will suffer next year“ and „let’s try something else to actually stop the war“ has pretty obvious outcome.</text></comment>