<story><title>Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-14/germany-is-burning-too-much-coal</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>graeme</author><text>I have never understood why people fear nuclear &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; don’t seem to fear carbon as giscerally or more.&lt;p&gt;I can understand that nuclear has risks. But people seem to evaluate nuclear in a vacuum, rather than against the carbon sources which currently replace it.&lt;p&gt;“What do we do with the waste” is a better question when applied to coal.</text></item><item><author>pm90</author><text>The emergency move away from nuclear has been incredibly short sighted. I understand not wanting to build new reactors, but shutting down running reactors, with all the capital investment involved, just doesn&amp;#x27;t make any sense. Especially when there is little risk of natural disasters in Germany.&lt;p&gt;If people are serious about maintaining the same quality of lifestyle that we have today without burning as much coal, the current solution is Nuclear Energy. Yes it does pose many risks but so does burning coal, and the latter seems to be destroying our environment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pizzapill</author><text>The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. A life changing event for many Germans. Not beeing able to leave the house. Cutting a lot of foods from your diet because they are contaminated for decades (mushrooms, game meat, berries etc.).&lt;p&gt;East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption and it ending up in GDR school kitchens.&lt;p&gt;Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you&amp;#x27;d die first in a new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human surival.&lt;p&gt;Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years (Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don&amp;#x27;t even know how they are build). Thats why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-14/germany-is-burning-too-much-coal</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>graeme</author><text>I have never understood why people fear nuclear &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; don’t seem to fear carbon as giscerally or more.&lt;p&gt;I can understand that nuclear has risks. But people seem to evaluate nuclear in a vacuum, rather than against the carbon sources which currently replace it.&lt;p&gt;“What do we do with the waste” is a better question when applied to coal.</text></item><item><author>pm90</author><text>The emergency move away from nuclear has been incredibly short sighted. I understand not wanting to build new reactors, but shutting down running reactors, with all the capital investment involved, just doesn&amp;#x27;t make any sense. Especially when there is little risk of natural disasters in Germany.&lt;p&gt;If people are serious about maintaining the same quality of lifestyle that we have today without burning as much coal, the current solution is Nuclear Energy. Yes it does pose many risks but so does burning coal, and the latter seems to be destroying our environment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foepys</author><text>Germany is traditionally very anti-nuclear because when the Chernobyl disaster happened, a lot of people in the south were told to not let their children play outside. Even today some mushrooms and boars that eat those mushrooms are contaminated.&lt;p&gt;On the French and Belgian side of its borders Germany got some very old reactors that had some serious security related incidents within the last few years. [1] In the city of Aachen the government even distributed iodine tablets if it gets worse.&lt;p&gt;Additionally Germany doesn&amp;#x27;t have locations to store radioactive waste indefinitely. The current location for intermediate storage, called &amp;quot;Asse&amp;quot;, is known to be leaking contaminated water into all kinds of directions and nobody is really sure how to stop it. [2]&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#Incidents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>