A firm step backwards: Germany shuts down nuclear power

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Anyone who opposes nuclear energy and de-industrialisation is, by very definition, a primitivist.

Interesting statement; just to let you know, I´m an Austrian, and Austria is one of the most cultured, democratic, technically leading and wealthiest countries in the world (rank 9 on the list, I guess), and the Austrian people decided almost thirty years ago in a democratic process (we had a citizens voting) not to use nuclear power plants. In other words, the majority of Austrian citizens (about 80 % at the moment) oppose nuclear energy, which would make us a nation of about seven million primitivists, following your "definition"...
So, in the name of the people of my nation (the one in RL) I´ve to state, that you´re an ignorant, stupid, uncaring idiot !

And now you may "call in the mods", or try next time to think about, before you insult the population of a whole country !

Why would you oppose nuclear power? When done right (almost every western facility), it's safer than any other form of energy and much more powerful than various alternatives. Nuclear fission is a stepping stone to nuclear fusion which is even more advanced, safe and clean.

[Nazis in Space]

Why would you oppose nuclear power? When done right (almost every western facility), it's safer than any other form of energy and much more powerful than various alternatives. Nuclear fission is a stepping stone to nuclear fusion which is even more advanced, safe and clean.

Not really a stepping stone.

A necessary piece of infrastructure, mind.

[Arkinesia]

A very very very long time.

So will the radioactive waist - how about a 25 000 years...nice garbage can I´d say...

Oh, the old "plutonium's half-life is like 25,000 years so it must be the biggest threat to human health EVER!!"

Here's a little secret.



That wouldn't even cause radiation sickness. And there's a picture of a Geiger counter right next to the reactor showing 0310, which could make you pretty nauseous, and isn't really liveable, but it won't murder everything on contact.

And remember—immediately after formation is the peak level of toxicity. After that, it just goes down.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Germany made the right choice here.

Also thanks all you posters who are "trolling" those of us who agree with this.

As usual the mods will accept such trolling against minority viewpoints. If I used the same words you used to describe something that YOU agree with I'd surly get a nice big warning for trolling.

Carry on!

Nuclear power should be abolished (so should coal)

Destroy the industrial machine that enslaves Humanity.

Damn you, technology!

Am I understanding your viewpoint correctly? No other power sources come close to the kw costs of nuclear power, honestly. Solar, tidal, and wind power are hopelessly inefficient and will only result in more pollution as they're developed over nuclear power.

Because the nuclear industries never talks about the costs for storing the waists, decontamination and safe storing the "outdated" power plants or gives you correct data of the "real costs" of nuclear energy; in fact, nuclear energy is the most expensive energy of all, they just don´t tell you...

[Samozaryadnyastan]

You're now talking out of your arse with conspiracy theories.
"It's the most expensive of all, they just don't tell you."
First off, fusion is, as of present, much more expensive. Second, kindly show what portion of your rectum you pulled this conclusion from, and then back it up please.

Why would you oppose nuclear power? When done right (almost every western facility), it's safer than any other form of energy and much more powerful than various alternatives. Nuclear fission is a stepping stone to nuclear fusion which is even more advanced, safe and clean.

Not really a stepping stone.

A necessary piece of infrastructure, mind.

As I said earlier in the thread, we can use fission to see how atoms will act in reactions on atomic scale, and then be able to work backwards and model them for fusion.
Plus, it's a perfectly suitable interim between fossil fuels and fusion power.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Nuclear power, with safe modern reactors like the ones at Fukushima, is just as clean as solar energy without any of the negatives.

Did you miss the news, the last few months ? Radiation is "clean", because you don´t see it - you only die from it...
...and if "Fukushima" was so "safe", them why this debate ? Why all the problems over there in Japan ? Why then is the area a "no-go-area" still ? Why are Tchernobyl and Prypjat "ghosttowns" ?

[Nazis in Space]

As I said earlier in the thread, we can use fission to see how atoms will act in reactions on atomic scale, and then be able to work backwards and model them for fusion.

If you said this, you basically spouted nonsense, though. First of all, fusion and fisson are two very different things. Like, exactly the opposite.

Secondly, we know perfectly well how to cause fusion. We're doing it all the time. Have been since the 1950s. There've been highschool kids doing it (With some help of the local physics institute). Causing fusion is not the problem, that's covered.

The problem is containing the plasma (Keeping it from touching, well, anything), so as to prevent a heat transfer that'll cool that same plasma and cause the fusion reaction to fizzle out.

The problem you think is being, or should be researched by way of fission reaction 1. was never researched with fission reactions and 2. has been solved for over half a century.

[United human countries]

Nuclear power, with safe modern reactors like the ones at Fukushima, is just as clean as solar energy without any of the negatives.

Did you miss the news, the last few months ? Radiation is "clean", because you don´t see it - you only die from it...
...and if "Fukushima" was so "safe", them why this debate ? Why all the problems over there in Japan ? Why then is the area a "no-go-area" still ? Why are Tchernobyl and Prypjat "ghosttowns" ?

As noted before, the Fukushima reactors would have been perfectly safe...if the diesel generators hadn't been on ground level in an area that could flood if a Tsunami hit. Lax standards. And going on with the lax standards thing, Chernobyl, the epitomy of Soviet Engineering. As many corners cuts as possible to build it as quickly as possible, not to mention the staff were poorly trained and ordered to preform an experiment that violates all common sense - removing the control rods.

But let's put this in another way. The San Onofre NPP in southern California, sits nearby the San Andreas fault. That area is tectonically active, and yet, the NPP has had no problem, ever.

So, in short, it's not the reactors that are the problem, it's human error.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Well, if you're going to brand me as trolling for defending my future career path, kindly explain your viewpoints.

Nuclear power does not contribute to greenhouse gas emission except water vapour.
Nuclear power plants release no radioactivity whatsoever over the course of their operating lives when correctly maintained.
Nuclear waste can be dumped safely, so long as it's not near a population centre and is dumped in a purpose-built lead-lined concrete bunker.
Chernobyl and Fukushima both feature radically extenuating circumstances around their failures, and do not make for suitable anti-nuclear arguments, before you try.
Per unit mass of fuel, nuclear provides the greatest amount of energy in the shortest amount of time, bar none until we get fusion to operate.
Without nuclear fission and massive investment into it, we can't get nuclear fusion to work in a reasonable timeframe. Since fusion has no radioactive components or waste, I'm sure that any anti-nuclear would want fusion - well, invest in fission now and get fusion worked on faster.

My opinion pretty much stands the exact same way. The fact that (I am totally using the term from now on) primitivists are so successful in moving these things backwards only shows just easily public opinion is cowed to that of "OMG GUISE, CHERNOBYLL AND FOOKOOSHEEMA ASPLODED, NUCLEAR POWER IS LE BAD!"

It's disappointing to be frank, and the idea of running nations on nothing but Solar and Wind is impossible, with Luxembourg being an exception. (and even then, I doubt they have enough square milage to pull it off.)

You should explain this "facts" to the people which lived at Prypjat, near Fukushima or maybe to the "few" hundredthousand radiation victims of only these two "little accidents" and the other thousands which have died from the emanating radiation since...
Oh, and you might have forgotten about "three miles island" and other "little incidents", so let me remind you...

[Samozaryadnyastan]

As I said earlier in the thread, we can use fission to see how atoms will act in reactions on atomic scale, and then be able to work backwards and model them for fusion.

If you said this, you basically spouted nonsense, though. First of all, fusion and fisson are two very different things. Like, exactly the opposite.

Secondly, we know perfectly well how to cause fusion. We're doing it all the time. Have been since the 1950s. There've been highschool kids doing it (With some help of the local physics institute). Causing fusion is not the problem, that's covered.

The problem is containing the plasma (Keeping it from touching, well, anything), so as to prevent a heat transfer that'll cool that same plasma and cause the fusion reaction to fizzle out.

The problem you think is being, or should be researched by way of fission reaction 1. was never researched with fission reactions and 2. has been solved for over half a century.

I'm not saying HURR DURR PRESS REWIND 2 MAEK FISSION 2 FUSION, I'm saying that things like atomic breakdown, neutron release and chain reaction can be modelled via fission reaction, and then used to create models for atoms and atom interaction. This data can then be used to predict how to model fusion reactors to maximise their capacity.
Granted, much of that can be modelled in a particle accelerator, but you can only model one or two atoms at a time in that.

The only issues we currently have with fusion are that the reaction can't sustain itself for more than a couple of seconds, and that it costs way too much in energy input compared to what we get out. The system is massively in deficit.

[Coffin-Breathe]

3. Chernobyl and Fukushima don't count because you don't want to discuss the most well documented cases of the failure of nuclear energy to live up to it's safety hype?

This is the only point I have an issue with. We are talking about firstly, the Soviets who were notorious for cutting corners to get ahead of us 'capitalist pigs'. (Unless you all want a reminder of Vladimir Komarov.)

The second was after a 9.0 Richter Earthquake, I don't feel I need to say more.

It has happened, and it might (and will almost sure sometimes) happen again; that´s all that counts !
No argueing here of "rare circumstances" or anything, it has happened !
Got it finally ?

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Nuclear power, with safe modern reactors like the ones at Fukushima, is just as clean as solar energy without any of the negatives.

Did you miss the news, the last few months ? Radiation is "clean", because you don´t see it - you only die from it...
...and if "Fukushima" was so "safe", them why this debate ? Why all the problems over there in Japan ? Why then is the area a "no-go-area" still ? Why are Tchernobyl and Prypjat "ghosttowns" ?

You either don't know what you're talking about or are trolling.
The Chernobyl reactor physically exploded, spewing radioactive particles for miles around. Standing near the open core for 5 minutes on 26th April 1986 would have exposed you to 50 sieverts. The average annual dose for a person is 1 milisievert. In a whole year. Yes, that is obviously a horrific accident.

But, because of the better training (which was always better in western facilities anyway) and newer technology, an event like Chernobyl will never happen again. Why? Because at Chernobyl, the emergency shut-off switch actually increases power. And then epic cost-cutting and bribery yadda-yadda.

As for Japan, not much radiation was released, in the grand scheme of things. But even so, those reactors failed because the diesel generators stalled.

[Coffin-Breathe]

And I am against Coal Power as well.

If you want to power a nation, you've only got two choices: nuclear and coal. Every other source of energy is entirely insufficient to power an industrialized society.

Interesting claim; care to explain how it comes, that I´m living in one of the most industrialized countries of the world, though we don´t use nuclear power and have very few "thermal" power plants ? Amazing, isn´t it ? Plus, we´re exporting electric energy...
Oh, I forgot...maybe that´s possible, because we´re "retarded primitivsts" and "treehugging leftists"...

[Conserative Morality]

A victory for the primitivists. Good fucking job, fellas.

[Unhealthy2]

Radiation is "clean", because you don´t see it - you only die from it...

"Radiation" is a general term for the emission of energy over a distance. It's not a catch-all snarl word like you're using it. It's a precise term with a precise meaning in physics.

[Coffin-Breathe]

It only has the capacity to cause cancer only when someone doesn't do their job properly.
Table of radiation values

The hate and scare on nuclear power is far overblown. Chernobyl only happened because the control crew didn't know how to operate an RBMK reactor - and for some bizarre reason, RBMKs behave the exact opposite to almost every other type of reactor in service. Fukushima only happened
because of the seventh largest ever earthquake 250 miles offshore set off a tsunami that flooded some diesel generators. The plant's reactors themselves took very little actual damage in either the quake or the tsunami, the only problems began when they lost their diesel backups.

The funny part is that Chernobyl's reactors were ridiculously badly designed and were basically prototypes pushed to production, and it was actually the fault of the reactor, not the crew, that caused the disaster.

TMI was a fault of a poor crew and a good reactor.

Modern reactors have an operating life of roughly 1 million years:accident.

I suspect most of you are too young to remember the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979. The excuses used on that occasion were the same ones later used on the occasion of Chernobyl. Yet, seven years later, an even worse event happens at Chernobyl, and the same claims that it wasn't built correctly and/or someone pushed the wrong button at the wrong time were put forward.

I would not be surprised if the nuclear industry were putting out claims about Fukushima that involved the "not properly built" story. In fact, let's blame the seawall, shall we? It should have been higher, right? Yeah, we can trot out the old excuse "It wasn't built properly" with a new spin: the plant was built fine, but the seawall was built too short. If the seawall had been built taller, it would never have happened.

Eventually, people are going to start asking "Why the hell can't you clowns build something this dangerous and build it correctly so as to minimize the dangers -- and if you're so incompetent that you can't do that, then why should we allow you to build it in the first place?"

Thanks to you, I really almost were thinking that I were the only person in this thread to remember (and to be able to think clear and logic)...

[Samozaryadnyastan]

If you want to power a nation, you've only got two choices: nuclear and coal. Every other source of energy is entirely insufficient to power an industrialized society.

Interesting claim; care to explain how it comes, that I´m living in one of the most industrialized countries of the world, though we don´t use nuclear power and have very few "thermal" power plants ? Amazing, isn´t it ? Plus, we´re exporting electric energy...
Oh, I forgot...maybe that´s possible, because we´re "retarded primitivsts" and "treehugging leftists"...

Because you live in a nation of 8 million. There're cities that are larger than your nation. Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army was almost larger than your nation at its peak.

Large nations need radically larger power grids than yours. You can't say "well, see how one of the smallest countries in the world fares, everyone can do it!" because it just doesn't work.

[Mike the Progressive]

I´m from Germany and I f*ckin HATE that these damn hippies here are crying so much just because a nuclear PP was going down in Japan. Our government is, as always, quite populist and got out some tears too, but it wasn´t enough, they still protested and we had to shut down a lot of nuclear PPs. Pretty annoying, since we get even more and more dependant on France and Russia for energy. That sucks quite hard.

See how far you have fallen? The country that now follows the will of hippies, once use to....er, never mind.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Fukushima=earthquake
earthquake+nuclear reactor=meltdown
meltdown=not good

Germany=no earthquake
no earthquake+nuclear reactor=no meltdown
no meltdown=good

Germany makes nuclear energy look goood

...except the more than thousand "small" and "medium" incidents in Germany´s "so safe and good-looking" nuclear power plants the last few years, which never were "published for the masses" and hidden in "secret reports"; nuclear industry declared, that no or almost no radiation had leaked - well, and I declare to be the emperor of China...

[Keronians]

I´m from Germany and I f*ckin HATE that these damn hippies here are crying so much just because a nuclear PP was going down in Japan. Our government is, as always, quite populist and got out some tears too, but it wasn´t enough, they still protested and we had to shut down a lot of nuclear PPs. Pretty annoying, since we get even more and more dependant on France and Russia for energy. That sucks quite hard.

See how far you have fallen? The country that now follows the will of hippies, once use to....er, never mind.

*cough* Peace Movement *cough*

[Keronians]

Fukushima=earthquake
earthquake+nuclear reactor=meltdown
meltdown=not good

Germany=no earthquake
no earthquake+nuclear reactor=no meltdown
no meltdown=good

Germany makes nuclear energy look goood

...except the more than thousand "small" and "medium" incidents in Germany´s "so safe and good-looking" nuclear power plants the last few years, which never were "published for the masses" and hidden in "secret reports"; nuclear industry declared, that no or almost no radiation had leaked - well, and I declare to be the emperor of China...

Yeah, the Germans were idiots for trying to extend the life of their plants, and I wholely understand them shutting down those plants, but this is just downright fearmongering and idiocy.

[The Theban Legion]

We could create a basic graph of what is going to happen when these power plants shut down. On one side we would have dependency on foreign oil. The other nuclear power. As nuclear power goes down...

[Aquilinia]

Conservatism really needs to be returned to Germany. The Far-Left has just been suffocating Germany. (In my opinion)

The Far-Left is a bunch of old communist nostalgics who don't get more than 10 per cent in elections. What's really dangerous is the populist Green Party which isn't left or right, but simply against everything.

Well, the Greens technically are left, but yeah, they're just the "whatever it is, we're against it until we are in the government when it's suddenly the best idea ever" party.

[Coffin-Breathe]

Here's a fast fact: not every nuclear power plant is another Chernobyl waiting to happen; some might become Fukushimas or three-miles-islands too

... had to correct this...

[Coffin-Breathe]

Wow they can't stand a plane impact in Germany? The ones in the US can handle a fighter jet going near full speed with barely a scratch.

I do believe that a 747 going down does have a bit more of an impact than a, say, F-14 (mass, more fuel....), but still, that argument is ridiculous. I've even seen people carrying banners saying "Fukushima is everywhere" - well, I haven't heard of a 9.0 Earthquake in Germany, let alone a Tsunami, but probably the government is just keeping it all secret

Because we don´t call such a thing "Tsunami", but "Springflut" (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutkatastrophe_von_1953 http://www.planet-schule.de/warum/gezei ... t6/s1.html), not so much difference I´d say; äääh, how´s named the nuclear powerplant near Hamburg ? Brunsbüttel ? Brokdorf ? Krümmel ? Maybe all three ?