It's still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it's pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
The toxic and deadly trash it makes. Deadly for centuries.
In Germany we still search for an area to dig for ages. We search since 30 years.
In Finland we have Onkalo
Kiitos. That took me down an interesting rabbit hole. There’s even a song inspired by it.
Onkalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
Song https://invidious.private.coffee/watch?v=amn3kn0XPLQ
Lyrics https://www.songlyrics.com/emperor-x/10000-year-earworm-to-discourage-settlement-near-nuclear-waste-repositories-don-t-change-color-kitty-lyrics/
Yepp, that is the luck of geology.
Many active reactors rely on old designs, we have new ones now that are far cleaner. Some even use existing waste as fuel, so we would be able to get rid of those old stock piles.
Ofc the oil industry is fighting that tooth and nail since it doesn't jive with their FUD campaign
Yeah and because those new designs are so great we see them installed all over the world. Except the projects take decades, skyrocket in costs and get delayed for decades on top.
Advocating for nuclear power now is in the best interest of the oil lobby. And it is simply impossible to solve the urgent energy transition with it, even if all the miracles promised about it were true.
France is doing just fine with none of those issues.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/frances-edf-faces-uphill-battle-as-europes-demand-for-nuclear-reactors-grows/
You're literally spreading oil lobby propaganda, the only reason it's like that is because of excessive regulation and red tape lobbied for by the oil execs and citizen pushback due to their fear mongering campaign
Not only doesn't it follow their FUD, but their existing business cannot easily transition to it since the entire process is completely different. Oil, coal, and natural gas are all fairly similar from their perspective.
The only thing I'm curious about in terms of using waste as energy source is how much it costs. If we can build reactors that have a good efficiency and don't cost too much its great. However if it costs way to much it isn't really useful even if the Idea of reducing our waste is good, since ain't anyone is paying for it if you can much cheaper renewable energy.
In the mean time, you seem to be a big fan of burning coal instead, which only pollutes the atmosphere instead of easily storable material to be buried when we feel we have found a sufficient deep hole that no one is going to look in.
Your entire argument is a fallacy of saying it is either nuclear or coal, when in reality it is either renewables or coal+nuclear.
It is the same companies that want to continue both coal and nuclear, because it requires similar components in the power plants and similar equipment for mining.
Also the same government in Germany that expanded the nuclear power slashed the build up of renewables, resulting in the long time for coal in the first place.
Stop being a fossil shill. If you shill for nuclear you shill for coal too.
Congrats you've fallen for oil company FUD from the 70s.
In what world is nuclear + renewables not a possibility. Nobody here is wanting nuclear + coal. You sit here and bitch and whine about fallacies while your entire argument relies entirely on a strawman.
Most nuclear waste issues are vastly over-exaggerated. Most of the nuclear waste is not long term waste. It's not things like spent fuel rods, it's things like safety equipment and gear. Those aren't highly contaminated, and much of it can almost be thrown away in regular landfills. The middle range of materials are almost always kept on site through the entire life of the nuclear plant. Through the lifetime of the plant that material will naturally decay away and by the time the plant is decommissioned only a fraction will be left to handle storage for a while longer from the most recent years.
Nuclear waste can be divided into four different types:
Despite safety concerns, high-level radioactive waste constitutes less than 0.25% of total radioactive waste reported to the IAEA.
These numbers are worldwide for the last 4 years:
If you look at the actual stats it isn’t really closed nuclear plants being replaced by coal, they got replaced by other renewables, while coal still kept going at about the same rate as while the nuclear plants were active.
I. Germany we haven’t found this sufficient deep hole since 30 years.
And yet, Germany prefers to pollute the atmosphere with the smoke of coal and other fossil rules, than to simply maintain the storage of nuclear waste until a hole can be found or created.
The nuclear energy made up about 1.5% of our entire energy production in 2023 the final shutdown didnt really made any difference, since we were able to replace this fairly easy with renewable energy. This year we had the lowest use of fossile energy since about 60 years(if I recall correct). Yes, we still use coal and this is bad, but the nuclear energy didnt had any noticeable difference for our energy production. Also: the shutdown of nuclear energy was planned after Fukushima happened, so its nothing that was anywhere in the power of our current government.
At least we‘re on a track to carbon zero as you can see here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
It‘s not perfect and could be faster. However, we‘re way better than other countries that don’t move.
Edit: I forgot to mention, that half the year Germanies power is over 50% from renewables. Share is increasing every year.
Still your corrupt politicians are rather taking people's homes in a town i forgot the name of (with police going there daily so people sell their homes) and clearing forests to mine coal... fucking stupid corrupt politicians.
Yes, that was close to where I live in Western Germany. Last outburst of old thinking (I hope). Meanwhile, the power company said in the news, it doesn’t need that entire area and forest anymore, because renewables have gone too competitive. Coal is too costly now.
If you like to see a moon-alike area in a densly populated area in Western Germany - the open field coal area Hambaxh: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H47EKatEDyKut3XZ6?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
As big as city of Cologne. I‘m happy that this is going to stop by 2030. Or even faster
Fukushima, Tchernobyl.
It's been a while since I read about it, but iirc Chernobyl is suspected to have been sabotage because they turned all the safeties off and then basically walked away until it started melting down.
Fukushima was doomed from the start. Iirc they were told not to build the plant there due to extreme earthquake and tsunami risk, but they did it anyway.
Those two disasters were caused by stupidity and negligence. You can argue that humans can't be trusted with radioactive materials, but the process itself is pretty safe. Meanwhile coal plants release significantly more radiation over their lifetimes than nuclear reactors do.
Sure. They did a test in Chernobyl, with an unexperienced operator. And the plant at Fukushima was there after all, warning ir no warning, so why in hell should that be safe? Ok, next one: Zaporizhzhia. Atomic plant as hostage in a conventional war. Safe? Maybe not, with that whacko as Russian president. They even blew the dam that basically provided the cooling water supply for the plant. Now downvote me again.
btw: Interesting read: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c984l87l2w6o
You can’t separate humans from any process. The risks with nuclear are the risks of the most reliable person to eventually work at the plant. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it’s a possibility.
It's entirely possible for a natural nuclear reactor to occur. So yes, you can separate humans from the process. Make a reactor that a human can't reasonably open and has zero chance of melting down, and you have safe nuclear.
Also yes, you can make a reactor that can't melt down (without human interference). It's called an RTG and they're commonly used on spacecraft.
Then a war starts between a nuclear nation... Oh wait.
If you could entirely separate humans from the process, then there would be nobody to design and build it.