It’s worth noting that he also fired many of the staff who know how to ensure that they’re actually safe, as well as the staff who would approve financing.
It’s worth noting that he also fired many of the staff who know how to ensure that they’re actually safe, as well as the staff who would approve financing.
Your comment is pure propaganda.
No, the German nuclear plants were 13 years overdue for their costly post-Fukushima checkups (as laws were tightened after Fukushima) and they were past design life. Germany does not have a final storage solution for its legacy of nuclear waste, so the question of where to store the hazardous waste for multiple 100k years remains completely unsolved, and that in a fairly small but populous country that has no equivalent to the Nevada desert.
The energy that the final few plants generated was more than replaced by renewable build-out within the same year. In fact, at the height of German nuclear in the mid-90s, nuclear produced 30% of electricity, whereas renewables now produce 60% of German electricity. The reactors also evaporated used tons of river water, which is bad, given climate change. The reactors also tied Germany to a Russian-dominated supply chain, also bad, given geopolitical circumstances.
German coal usage is now the lowest since the 60s; while granted, Germany is behind a number of countries there that have phased out coal entirely. And while yes, a wind park was demolished to enlarge a coal mine, and that is a terrible symbol, it is not much more than that.
https://euobserver.com/green-economy/arf0893c11
This was not even two years ago. Germany killed old plants yes but stopped construction for new ones. Which resulted in an energy deficit compounded by a desire to move away from Russian gas, hence turbines being ripped out to expand coal.
I have no idea where you’re getting “100k years of waste” from, that’s completely nonsense. Everything else about your comment even more so.
Cool, you have an agenda to push.👍
I acknowledged that a wind park was dismantled, please read my comment. And it’s interesting to know that you just wipe away everything else as “nonsense”, without any argument.
The only agenda I have to push is making sure our grandchildren have a future that isn’t a collapse to pre-industrial living if not total extinction. Nuclear is very much a leg of that future as much as renewables like wind and solar, but hydro needs to go for the massive damage it caused ecological systems. If that’s something you’re against then I don’t understand what horse you have in the energy race.
The rate of expansion and energy production, we need nuclear for base loads just as much as we need wind for flex loads. Every other solution is a delusional, a disservice or outright submission to corporate greed that got us in this mess to begin with.
In that case, please stop flogging fission. It’s a dead horse, albeit one that continues shitting radiation for multiple 100k years.
There you go again with that 100k years number which is a made up number. Fissile products from reactors decay in under 100 years. The only stays radioactive that long is plutonium. Which is not a fissile product or spent fuel.
It’s not made up. What the fuck? Why do you think geological storage is a thing? Are you really this uninformed?
German informational platform (translaw via DeepL):
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities
The amount of waste produced by the nuclear power industry is small relative to other industrial activities. 97% of the waste produced is classified as low- or intermediate-level waste (LLW or ILW). Such waste has been widely disposed of in near-surface repositories for many years. In France, where fuel is reprocessed, just 0.2% of all radioactive waste by volume is classified as high-level waste (HLW).a
Many industries produce hazardous and toxic waste. All toxic waste needs to be dealt with safely, not just radioactive waste.
The radioactivity of nuclear waste naturally decays, and has a finite radiotoxic lifetime. Within a period of 1,000-10,000 years, the radioactivity of HLW decays to that of the originally mined ore. Its hazard then depends on how concentrated it is. By comparison, other industrial wastes (e.g. heavy metals, such as cadmium and mercury) remain hazardous indefinitely.
Most nuclear waste produced is hazardous, due to its radioactivity, for only a few tens of years and is routinely disposed of in near-surface disposal facilities (see above). Only a small volume of nuclear waste (~3% of the total) is long-lived and highly radioactive and requires isolation from the environment for many thousands of years.
International conventions define what is hazardous in terms of radiation dose, and national regulations limit allowable doses accordingly. Well-developed industry technology ensures that these regulations are met so that any hazardous waste is handled in a way it poses no risk to human health or the environment. Waste is converted into a stable form that is suitable for disposal. In the case of HLW, a multi-barrier approach, combining containment and geological disposal, ensures isolation of the waste from people and the environment for thousands of years.
High Level Waste makes up .2% of all waste generated by nuclear facilities, Plutonium being a minority of that. Geostorage was implimented because of military applications of plutonium that expired and had to be stored. Over a third of all nuclear waste in the US is military waste. But because Plutonium is part of high level waste all HLW is treated as if it’s plutonium because of the overzealous safety standards. You can not produce plutonium from uranium in a fissile reaction. That’s not how fission works. The actual fissile products from spent fuel decay below background radiation in under 100 years.
About 400,000 tonnes of used fuel has been discharged from reactors worldwide, with about one-third having been reprocessed.
The only misinformation I’m seeing in this conversation is you not understanding what nuclear waste actually is, how much is actually produced, and how long it persists. A process we are getting better and better at reducing the amount of waste every decade inspite of people like you trying to kill nuclear for no other reason than you buy into all of big oil’s lies and misinformation about it.