Summary

A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.

While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.

About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.

Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.

  • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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    6 days ago

    FFS, people are stupid.

    There was a huge hysteria about nuclear when Fukushima happened. A clear majority was for immediate action. Merkel’s coalition government would have ended if she hadn’t done a 180 on nuclear and decided to shut down nuclear as soon as possible, which was 2023. I was against shutting it down back then but I thought you can’t go against the whole population, so I get why they did it. People didn’t change their mind until 2022. Nobody talked about reversing that decision in all these years when there was actually time to reverse the decision.

    Now, that the last reactor is shut down, the same people that were up in arms in 2011 are now up in arms that we don’t have nuclear. Building new plants will cost billions and take decades and nuclear doesn’t work well with renewables because of its inflexibility. It makes no sense at all. It was a long-term decision we can’t just back away from. What’s done is done.

    • Floopquist@lemmy.org
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      6 days ago

      I like that you mention the point, Merkel’s coalition made a full 180 turnaround. Which was an error. They could have just made a plan for phasing out the reactors until maybe 2040 or 2050. No, they had to stop them right away and now the existing plants are so gutted that they are not feasible to be rebuilt again.

      Anyway, building new power plants takes centuries in Germany. So we should just focus on renewables *and storage solutions now.

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        6 days ago

        Right away being over a decade later at pretty much the end of life of those plantd without refurbishment.

    • Realitätsverlust@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      nuclear doesn’t work well with renewables because of its inflexibility

      Uuuuh, why wouldn’t it? Nuclear can provide a steady base load for the grid while the renewables are providing the rest, filling up storages for spike times if there is an excess. Don’t really see how this is a big issue.

      • FlareShard@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        The issue is nuclear reactors become more expensive the less load they have.

        As we build more renewables, nuclear energy will decrease in cost efficiency as renewables and storages start handling base loads.

        The problem isn’t so much that it can’t work, it’s that it will not be cost efficient long term.

        • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          How can they start handling base loads if there is literally no sun or wind (as happens reasonably frequently). You either need a ton of storage which is its own environmental can of worms or nuclear

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        6 days ago

        Cost. You do not need much storage for a 95% renewable grid. For the last 5% nuclear baseload is still way too expensive.

          • 0tan0d@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Irs batteries. Today’s car batteries become tomorrow’s grid storage feed stock. Also battery tech is getting a cost decline through scaling so every year a nuclear plant isn’t built the math gets better for grid storage. Also adding more batteries to existing sites is way easier.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      Nuclear works well with renewables. It provides reliable base load while the renewables and batteries can be used on top of that. Plus the fuel can be sourced from friendly nations like Canada.

      Also worth noting that 15 years is a long time. SMRs are starting to be built and France is planning to build a bunch of nuclear capacity in the near future which might mean the possiblity to import cheap energy or leverage the human resources from those builds.

      • Asetru@feddit.org
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        6 days ago

        Nuclear works well with fucking nothing because it doesn’t work… because it’s just too fucking expensive, has to be shut down when it’s too hot and is so dangerous you can’t even find insurance. Base load can be provided by hydro, gas (which can be sourced sustainably) or batteries, all of which is cheaper, less dangerous and more easily available than nuclear.

        • turnip@lemm.ee
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          Well its going to get more expensive relative as well as oil prices fall globally due to recession. But then we will hit another energy shortage and it will become cheaper, which is why France started building nuclear in the 1970s to begin with.

          It seems to me nuclear takes you off the ebb and flow of global energy prices, I’d prefer spending on nuclear rather than carbon capture which seems to be the existing plan of many countries to combat climate change.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 days ago

      in retrospect, i understand France’s long-held stance around 2000 that it wants to rely mostly on nuclear. it wasn’t clear, back then, how long fossil fuels would be available (it was predicted they would last another 40 years) so they thought “oh well, uranium will be available for a longer time”. renewable energy wasn’t an (economic) possibility at that time. now that we have cheap solar energy, i suspect the last nuclear power plant worldwide will be shut down sometime around 2040.

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        2040 huh?

        My prediction is a record number of new plants going online in 2040.

        Especially as there are literal factories being built to specifically crank out Small Modular Reactors.

        We’re looking at a future where every small town can have their own reactor, providing enough power for that town but not large enough to ever melt down.

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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          6 days ago

          i suppose you’re also thinking that’s because we need steady output?

          which is a fallacy; we had constant generation in the past so consumption adapted and became constant; consumption would not naturally be constant, it would be higher in the daytime.

          • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Wind and solar cannot set grid frequency.

            They just can’t. You need a turbine to set frequency.

            And yes, the grid frequency matters.

            So yes, we will always need a base load. And what better way than a small modular reactor, keeping the grid local and modular.

            Or we can build out so much wind and solar that we have to have massive transmission lines running across the country, and then we would still need to curtail that power during peak supply, while also not getting enough generation when solar and wind fail.

            And then you still need a turbine to set the grid frequency.

      • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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        6 days ago

        I was against shutting down already written off power plants early while coal power plants were still running. I was in favor of shutting down coal first, yes.

        • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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          And the funny thing is that coal power plants are actually more radioactive to the environment than nuclear power. Sure, accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima change the statistics by quite a lot, but for the absolute majority of nuclear plants they are way less radioactive to the environment than any given coal plant around.

          Also there’s not that many severe nuclear disasters in the history. Coal and other organic fuel plants cause far more casualties globally than nuclear ever did. But maybe it’s easier to accept slow death of a lot of people due to cancer and whatever caused by organic fuel power plant emissions than single large spike when nuclear power (very, very rarely) goes wrong.

          • Asetru@feddit.org
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            6 days ago

            Well, if that’s so rare and can essentially be ignored, I’m sure you’ll easily find insurance for nuclear plants that will cover the cost of a potential disaster. I mean, after all, it evens out over all the nuke plants, right? The market handles it, right?

            • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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              6 days ago

              There’s a ton of stuff going on all the time which no amunt of insurance will cover. Modern nuclear generators just can’t blow up like Chernobyl. Fukushima is a bit different, but maybe we shouldn’t build reactors in places where they can be hit by a tsunami in the first place. And even there the environmental impact was somewhat limited.

              And that doesn’t change the fact that shutting down nuclear plants and replacing their energy output with coal caused more radiation in ash and other particles which are spread out of the chimney to the environment as a part of normal operation.

              • Asetru@feddit.org
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                5 days ago

                There’s a ton of stuff going on all the time which no amunt of insurance will cover.

                And what exactly would that be? Essentially everything has insurance.

                Fukushima is a bit different

                Yeah. And what’s stopping other stuff to be “a bit different”?

                And even there the environmental impact was somewhat limited.

                Japan got damn lucky the wind blew everything seawards. If the fallout had hit Tokyo, this would have been a very different story.

                replacing their energy output with coal

                And who did that? Nobody. There were no new coal plants to replace anything. That statement is straight up misleading. The old plants were kept running, yes, and they kept emitting, yes. And that’s always the thing that’s being brought up, “they could have taken the coal plants offline sooner had they just kept the nuke plants running a little longer”. But that’s an entirely different thing than “they replaced nuclear with coal”. Nobody did that. Had they not tanked the German market for renewables, the coal plants would have been taken offline earlier, too, but for some reason that’s never the sob story. Instead, people keep bringing up nuke plants time and time again, which is just weird. Yeah, coal and nuclear both destroy the planet. Let’s not see which one’s marginally worse but instead maybe just push something that’s actually good for the planet?

                • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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                  5 days ago

                  And what exactly would that be? Essentially everything has insurance.

                  Here’s a list of one type of that kind of disasters where, despite of insurance, various kinds of environmental damage has been left behind which may or may not completely heal, or at least it takes a long, long time.

                  Here’s a pretty public different kind of disaster which I guarantee was not 100% covered by insurance either. Here’s another. I’m not building a comprehensive list, there’s just too many and their impacts vary wildly.

                  Then there’s the waste management in poorer countries which also cause immeasurable damage to the environment all the time by using a nearby river as a sewage for everything. Here’s one example which made into the headlines back then. And here’s a list of similar examples.

                  “they replaced nuclear with coal”

                  Go read yourself:

                  A 2020 study found that lost nuclear electricity production has been replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately €3 to €8 billion annually, mostly from the eleven hundred additional deaths associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.

                  And remember that the pollution which kills people just because breathing smoke and ash is bad, it’s also radioactive.

                  Let’s not see which one’s marginally worse but instead maybe just push something that’s actually good for the planet?

                  That would be really nice. We just don’t have the alternatives ready to go for that just yet. Here in Finland, on a good day, renewables produce more than nuclear, but those are exceptions. Feel free to look up the data in finngrid service. There’s currently over 7000MW worth of turbines around but it’s pretty common to have even less than 200MW of wind power in the grid and that unreliability needs to be stabilized with something else.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

        some pro nuclear guy

  • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 days ago

    There’s nothing more to come. Nuclear power is slow and uneconomical.

    Joe Kaeser, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy: “There isn’t a single nuclear power plant in the world that makes economic sense,” he said on the ARD program Maischberger on November 27, 2024.

    https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/farbebekennen-weidel-faktencheck-100.html?at_medium=mastodon

    A fact check by the Fraunhofer Institute on nuclear energy states: “For example, around €2.5 billion would have to be raised to cover the nuclear waste generated. Overall, considerable short-term investments would be required.” (for the construction of a new power plant)

    https://www.ikts.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/abteilungen/umwelt_und_verfahrenstechnik/technologieoekonomik_nachhaltigkeitsanalyse/oekonomische_analyse_nachhaltigkeit/241030_Fraunhofer-Faktencheck_Kernenergie.pdf

    • Quatlicopatlix@feddit.org
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      7 days ago

      Also the time it would take to build new power plants and get them to run would be something lile 20-25 years. We dont have that much time to get a grip on climate change so it doesnt matter annyways. Either we get 100% renewables untill then or we are fucked annyways.

    • LittleBorat3@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I also have the real cost of building a new reactor in mind when thinking of Germany getting back into nuclear.

      Is the economic sense really a good argument? That implies that a privatized group needs to make profit, all external effects paid for, and still be able to give you a good price.

      If the government builds this with the aim of supplying cheap energy to people and industry with no profit margin then does this all matter?

      The government spends large sums of money on this that and the other and the return of investment on these things are obscure or manifest over longer time horizons like building infrastructure etc

      I am not against renewables, just to say that. I could not have too many windmills etc and the arguments against them are unconvincing.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        Is the economic sense really a good argument? That implies that a privatized group needs to make profit, all external effects paid for, and still be able to give you a good price.

        No, it’s not about privatized groups. Even the government has limited money (they can print more, but that leads to inflation). This means the money should be spent efficiently, so we get the most out of it. Nuclear is - by far - the most expensive form of energy we have. We can build more renewables + storage with the same money.

        Is the economic sense really a good argument? That implies that a privatized group needs to make profit, all external effects paid for, and still be able to give you a good price.

        The only way to make an expensive energy source cheap is by subsidizing it. We’ll get more out of the same amount of money if we build cheap energy sources.

  • fx242@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Southern countries (Spain and Portugal) have a lot of wind and hydro (and soon solar) power to spare. But somehow some “actors” are cutting them off from the rest of the European power grid. Looking at you France, your greedy bastards!

  • Alaknár@lemm.ee
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    Killing nuclear energy in Germany was the greatest success of FSB up to the point of planting an asset right in the middle of the Oval Office.

  • Katzimir@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    I have been working in decomissioning npps in germany for over a decade now which is why I feel so strongly about the knee-jerk conservative BS. no, there are not -a million ways- to make waste from nuclear power plants safe. even material released from regulations (concrete from decomissioned buildings for example or soil from the ground) has some residual radioactive particles and just like alcohol in pregnancies: there is no safe amount of exposure to radiation, just a lower risk of provoking potentially fatal genetic mutation that european regulators deem acceptable. but that in and of itself is not really problematic. It is just that we cannot assume ideal conditions for running these plants. while relatively safe during a well monitored and maintained period in the power producing state of a npp that changes radically if things go south. Just look at what happened to the zhaporizhia powerplant in ukraine they actively attacked a nuclear site! And all the meticulous precautions go out the window if a bunch of rogues decide to be stupid - just because. and tbf whatever mess the release of large amounts of radioactive particles does to our environment, economy and society i would rather not find out. as others have laid out here, there are safer and better suiting alternatives that are not coal.

    • relic_@lemm.ee
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      This is just straight up fear mongering. Say what you will about the economics, but the idea that there’s no safe amount of radiation is ridiculous (we don’t know, but presumably it’s okay in some amounts since you’re getting radiation doses every day even not living near anything nuclear).

      The idea that NPPs are some unsafe technology just waiting to explode is dramatic and untrue.

      • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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        it’s okay in some amounts since you’re getting radiation doses every day even not living near anything nuclear).

        And people get cancer every day. I don’t share their argument that NPPs in normal operation are a risk, but OP is somewhat right, there’s no safe radiation dose, just one we deem safe enough mainly because it doesn’t significantly raise our risk of cancer compared to the natural exposure. And NPPs in normal operation emit less radiation than for example coal fire plants.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        The idea that NPPs are some unsafe technology just waiting to explode is dramatic and untrue.

        You’re the first person to mention exploding here. GP was saying that they make for a good target in war time to turn into a dirty bomb, either intentionally or not.

        …but the idea that there’s no safe amount of radiation is ridiculous (we don’t know, but presumably it’s okay in some amounts since you’re getting radiation doses every day even not living near anything nuclear).

        “We don’t know”??? Sorry, but we do know.

        There’s no 100% safe level because any level carries some risk. Higher levels means higher risk.

        Background radiation has some risk, but it’s a risk we accept. X-rays, plane flights, etc all have increased risk (hence people exposed to lots of x-rays wearing leads) but we accept them. Material from decommissioned nuclear plants is way higher on this scale.

        Nuclear power has downsides as well as positives. Depending on your perspective (e.g. do you work cleaning up the aftermath, or just benefitting from the energy) one will outweigh the other.

        • relic_@lemm.ee
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          Okay I didn’t understand OPs point I suppose. Worth nothing that they are designed to withstand airplane hits.

          There’s no 100% safe level because any level carries some risk.

          Actually we don’t know that and there’s no valid empirical evidence to support that claim. We only have data at moderate to high levels. There’s a big gap between walked passed a container of level waste and got impacted by a nuclear destination.

        • relic_@lemm.ee
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          The model assumes a linear relationship between dose and health effects, even for very low doses where biological effects are more difficult to observe. The LNT model implies that all exposure to ionizing radiation is harmful, regardless of how low the dose is, and that the effect is cumulative over lifetime.

          Emphasis mine. Sure that’s a valid model, but not backed up by concrete empirical evidence.

          • Asetru@feddit.org
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            Emphasis is misleading. If you think that an “assumption” is called an assumption because there’s no evidence, you don’t know how words are used in science. Also, it’s supposed to be the other way round… If radiation damages cells (which I guess you don’t seriously doubt) there needs to be evidence for a threshold, not for there not being one. Also:

            Many expert scientific panels have been convened on the risks of ionizing radiation. Most explicitly support the LNT model and none have concluded that evidence exists for a threshold, with the exception of the French Academy of Sciences in a 2005 report.

            The “controversy” chapter on that page is worth a read, but the point there is still pretty clear: most scientists do not see any indication for the existence of a threshold.

            /edit

            Also notice which country the scientists are from that don’t agree on the lnt model… The one country that went all in on nuclear power. No shit, Sherlock.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      there is no safe amount of exposure to radiation,

      Here’s how I know you’re a lying piece of shit.

      There is literally a massive, unshielded nuclear reactor in the sky every single day.

      We ARE nuclear waste.

      • Katzimir@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        No need for name calling. I am an engineer specialized in radiation protection. Hell i actively work at nuclear sites on a daily basis. why would i lie? the underlying principle of the ‘acceptable risk’ i am talking about is called ‘alara’ - as low as reasonably achievable.

        on another note: i am convinced that Staying uneducated and even actively manipulating those who dont know better is ridiculously destructive to our society. Please don’t do that.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          So as an engineer myself, airplanes are vastly more dangerous than nuclear power.

          Cars even more so.

          The issue is regulation, but the US has never had a nuclear accident that caused deaths in our history, and neither has France which is basically running half of Europe off its nuclear plants.

          This is fear-mongering, plain and simple.

          Russia obviously has killed many people, but they killed millions of people from not having food, they don’t consider death a risk, it’s just part of life.

          The rest of the world? Engineers are easily capable of making the craziest things safe, again, see air-travel which has more risks by orders of magnitude.

          Early planes crashed all the time, and early reactor designs were very dangerous.

          That’s why us engineers are so absolutely awesome, we don’t stop making things better.

      • daw@feddit.org
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        Unshielded if you ignore around 149.000.000 km distance. And it’s still the largest cause of skin cancer which is one of the most widespread ones.

        You stupid fuck should think for a second before you spout bullshit in such a vile and disrespectful manner.

        I’m down for being critical on the internet but you should go back straight to Reddit as that is the cesspool that this type of behaviour deserves.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          The sun pumps more radiation to you then any nuclear reactor will for anyone except the guys who fucked with the demon core.

          And by your own argument, the sun kills thousands every year.

          How many have died from nuclear reactors? Not counting the russians/soviets of course, who shouldn’t be allowed to play with the rounded scissors we got in preschool.

          They are far, FAR safer than coal, which killed thousands a year, I was in China during the bad times, it was horrific.

          You’re like an evangelical who believes a thing based on no proof.

          • umfk@lemmy.world
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            Lol you contradicted yourself. First you implied that the sun is proof that there is a safe level of radiation and then you agree that the sun kills people. 🤡

            • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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              It also gives us vitamin-d.

              But hey, since nuclear is so bad, I guess you can never go to the beach, or outside, ever, because all radiation is evil.

    • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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      No. Take a good look at France and their nuclear strategy. Both maintaining old reactors and building new ones is extremely costly. Building times are to be measured in decades. Nuclear power is not economically viable nor is it a solution to the climate catastrophe.

      Returning to nuclear power in Germany is nothing but a pointless waste of tax money.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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        Keep looking at things from a money perspective and the solution become obvious : kill everyone and be done with it.

        Today, nuclear energy is a reasonably safe, efficient source of energy. Is it the energy of the future ? Probably not. But is it an efficient option for smoothing the grid while planting renewable all around it? It’s definitely better than the other alternatives. Does it cost money to develop? Sure. Everything costs money. But there are benefits that won’t show up in an accounting book that can’t be brushed aside.

        • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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          Power to gas, water pumps, heat storage and battery storage are viable alternatives. There are many days already where we over produce green energy. Why sink hundreds of billions into nuclear plants when we could use the energy we already produce instead?

          Nuclear power is all but efficient.

          • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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            You keep seeing these as “alternatives”, despite the shortcomings.

            I say they are complimentary, and as far as providing power to address these shortcomings, nuclear power is a good solution. How can you look at something that can single-handedly address all power requirements in some area, while providing supports to other, and say “nah”, seriously.

            • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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              4 days ago

              I can say that because we neither have the time nor the money to sink it into nuclear plants. We have green tech. It’s cheap, we’re building capacity like crazy.

              • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                And you’re just gonna ignore all the shortcomings and hope they evaporate, I suppose. Nice plan you got there.

                The whole point is that this alone is a risk for the short-medium term that could have been mitigated if not for blind and outdated policies. Look at what a single nuclear power plant could produce continuously, with little variation related to time of day or weather. Saying “we can do without that” today is just foolishness, ignorance, or wilful degradation.

      • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        One way or another you need grid-scale turbines to maintain grid frequency. Solar power can’t set frequency and wind power is too variable, so power grids use some sort of turbine to do it.

        Nuclear reactors are also necessary to generate things like medical isotopes and tritium for industrial processes, and fusion research. Someone, somewhere on Earth needs to keep their fission reactors going.

      • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 days ago

        What do you mean? The cost of an old nuclear reactors’ MWh is 40-50€, that’s really competitive.

        And unlike solar and wind, it produces anytime. As a French person, not only do I think we were right to build them in the first place, I’m annoyed we stopped in the 2000s after the Chernobyl scare campaign, it’s safer than Germany’s coal, which also produces radioactive waste and isn’t properly regulated, unlike nuclear.

        • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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          4 days ago

          Look at the desaster that is Flamanville 3, for instance.

          The cour de comptes is pretty clear about it, too: https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2025-01/20250114-La-filiere-EPR -une-dynamique-nouvelle-des-risques-persistants_0.pdf

          I agree that coal is important to phase out, even moreso than nuclear power. Germany was wrong to leave nuclear before coal.
          But building new reactors is an utter waste of time and money.

          • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            4 days ago

            I have two answers to give you.

            • Flamanville is a new generation of reactor that we are testing out after regretfully stopping the large-scale production of reactors in France. Therefore the welding sector had been lacking work for 20 years, many retiring. The same issue goes for many other highly-specialized skills in the field. Americans had to be brought in to fill in for these positions, at high cost. So the left hadn’t been corrupted by Russia into being against nuclear power in the first place, Flamanville would like gone about as well as developing a fundamentally different design can. I will grant you, however, that this isn’t the design I would have liked to see deployed: France used to be developing the Phoénix and SuperPhénix fast neutron reactors until protesters made them stop. These kinds of reactors are cleaner, more fuel-efficient (by several orders of magnitude!), some variants can even consume previous nuclear waste, although I don’t think these two French designs could. These would have been wonderful to have access to. Russia and China have already developed these designs, in large parts with our researchers when they lost their jobs, and we’ll eventually just buy them from them again. Nice plan.

            • What would you replace these with? Batteries? Once again? Coal? Renewables? How would you deal when, all over Europe, every winter, there are weeks on end with next to no wind nor sun? Should we create new mountain ranges and rivers to store more energy hydraulically? Shift demand? Nuclear is the worst system except for all the others.

      • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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        6 days ago

        Building times are to be measured in decades.

        Should probably have invested more into developing their knowledge and experience then. Just have a look at China.

        Littering vast spaces of land for wind and sun power generation is hardly a better long term solution.

        • GenosseFlosse@feddit.org
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          6 days ago

          Unlike china, Germany has a lot of environmental and safety standards it has to meet before it can operate any large plant, and it cannot just give the contract to the lowest bidder who mixes rubbish and toxic waste into the cement als filler material…

        • uniquethrowagay@feddit.org
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          6 days ago

          Even China builds more renewable than nuclear. And I’d rather not look at authoritarian dictatorships for tips on how to handle building regulations.

    • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 days ago

      Been saying this for years.

      The problem is the power grid essentially being divided by north and south, it’s a mess. They needed to fix that before taking nuclear off-grid.

  • Jumi@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    We have an almost indefinite source of energy below our feet and almost nobody talks about. Screw nuclear, go geothermal

      • chaosrider@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        I would usually accept. But looking at the cost of production and how the pricing is set (highest price sets the bar), nuclear is the worst. Its so expensive that no supplier even wants to take the grants to build it. A waste of money… building storage capacities and evolving smart grids would be better investments.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 days ago

        usually i would agree to the “increase supply to lower the cost” story, but in the case of energy it’s a bit different, because the Energy market uses the merit order principle, which means that whenever the nuclear reactors run, electricity is just as expensive as if nuclear reactors were the only source of electricity, and if they don’t run, only then prices drop.

        so, you’re only getting cheaper prices by not needing nuclear energy. but, for nuclear plants, building them is a huge part of the cost, and that still has to be paid by somebody, even if they aren’t used later on to produce electricity.

        add to that that construction is typically heavily subsidized by taxes, which means if you’re not using them, it’s just a huge burden on the taxpayers.

      • Jumi@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Maybe Thorium reactors but not that other shit that poisons everything for millenia.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      I generally agree, given that geothermal and solar keep getting cheaper, and now cost less than nuclear or are at least competitive, but nuclear plants do more than just provide energy. Where do you think medical isotopes come from?

      • Jumi@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        If that’s the only point you have for nuclear power we have more in common than you think. And I’m sure there a ways to do that another specialised way.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          Atomic transmutation is never easy, and the only thing that really scales is a nuclear reactor. And not just any nuclear reactor will do - breeder reactors are the only ones that make it in any quantity. If you want to make this using a cyclotron or with centrifuges, a lot of the diagnoses and treatments we take for granted today will be almost completely inaccessible and only available to the very wealthy.

    • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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      6 days ago

      Geothermal energy is possible anywhere but not economical everywhere. Building wind and PV and building infrastructure to save the energy is more economical in many cases.

  • Oliver@lemmy.midgardmates.com
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    7 days ago

    They asked 1000 people - not that representative and most of the German don‘t want a return to the 60s or 70s - at least no people voting for the backward-looking CDU or the Neo-Nazis AfD. And well - Southern and Eastern Germany. No miracle, unfortunately. 🤷🏼‍♂️

    • Evotech@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Statisticians have found that for many types of surveys, a sample size of around 1,000 people is the sweet spot—regardless of if the population size is 100,000 or 100M.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Wouldn’t it depend a lot on how many of those people consume the exact same information sources on topics like this where the average person has no real clue at all to make their own judgement?

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          If you want to find out what the average person thinks, polls from 1000 to 5000 people work. If you want to educate the average person or get the opinions of already-educated people, those are different tasks.

        • Evotech@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Chances that you randomly pick 1000 people that all consume the exact same media is pretty low I guess

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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            6 days ago

            Considering a lot of polls are conducted in ways that are self-limiting (e.g. voluntary over landline phones) it is not that absurd that they might all (or a significant enough percentage to screw with results) would read e.g. the same major newspaper (e.g. BILD in Germany has a lot of misinformation).

  • JATth@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I’ll just comment about one thing that keeps popping up in the discussions: grid-level storage. There is no such thing yet really that would last a full day cycle, and the 100MW or so units we are building are mostly for frequency stabilization and for buying enough time to turn on a base-load plant when the renewables drop out. I’m not arguing against storage - it is absolutely needed.

    The problem is the scale, which people don’t seem to get. Largest amount of energy we can currently repeatedly store and release is with pumped hydro, and the locations where this is possible are few and far between. Once the batteries reach this level-of-capacity, then we have a possibility to use them as grid-level storage that lasts a few days instead of hours.

  • ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    just not true.innofact can f off. if you keep asking the old people, you will get old people answers.

    when confronting the asked ppl with the numbers it costs to build a new one they all dont want a new one. not to mention the insurance for a plant. and from ukraine war we all learned nuclear ia stupid.

    or go ask any of those fuckwits if we can store the waste where they live. numbers prove that around the plants the number of kids with cancer did indeed exceed all expections.

    NOBODY wants a plant or the waste anywhere close to where they live.

    “would you like cheap clean nucular(!) energy”

    or

    “would you like a powerplant and final storage near you”?

    fuck innofacts hate campaign.

  • vorb0te@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 days ago

    55% is a small majority. But nothing to turn a train around. Things are set in motion.

  • denialisposdtected@lemmy.cafe
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    6 days ago

    Yeah they need all the energy they can get to manufacture bombs and give them to Israel.

    Anything but making people consume less

  • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Nuclear is the way of the future. Its between that and fossil fuels realistically.

      • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        waste is a much smaller problem than co2 emmissions. Waste can be put in water which completely shields it.

        • Jumi@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Then it should pose no problem to put it in your garden for a million years when it decayed enough to be less dangerous when we build you a pool? You have to make sure to maintain the pool until it’s completely safe though.

            • Jumi@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              I’m not, I’m just trying to make it understandable on a smaller scale. I wouldn’t want to poison my garden much less in a greater scale any other place.

              And before you say anything, coal sucks too.