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.
There’s no good reason to be against nuclear power. It’s green, it’s safe, it’s incredibly efficient, the fuel is virtually infinite, and the waste can be processed in a million different ways to make it not dangerous.
It’s more expensive than the alternatives, and comes with additional downsides. There is no good reason to be pro nuclear, unless you need a lot of power for a long time in a tight space. So a ship or a space station for example.
NGL, I dig the idea of Sodium plants:
Not sure how practical they are outside the general idea, but it looks promising.
lel mongo
This, it’s also pretty much the ONLY technology we have that can be near carbon neutral over time (mainly releasing carbon in the cement to make the plant, then to a lesser extent, mining to dig up and refine material, and transport of workers and goods).
The cost associated with nuclear is due to regulation and legal issues and not relating to the cost to build the actual plant itself so much. There are small scale reactors and many options. Yes it should be used wisely but we can’t keep burning fossil fuels.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “Green” until we have a better way of disposing the waste that doesn’t involve creating new warning signs that can still be read and understood 10,000 years from now. :)
If it’s still a danger in 5,000 years, that’s not “green”. :)
Great story on the signage though!
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time
There’s nothing green, cheap, or safe about nuclear power. We’ve had three meltdowns already and two of them have ruined their surrounding environments:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Mining for fuel ruins the water table:
A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas (contaminating the water table) https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/
Waste disposal, storage, and reprocessing are prohibitively expensive:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/
Germany shot itself in the foot when it turned away from nuclear…
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!
We have an almost indefinite source of energy below our feet and almost nobody talks about. Screw nuclear, go geothermal
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.
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Which outlines why you don’t do majority-vote politics. There is zero interest by private entities to restart nuclear in Germany. Why? Because it makes zero sense.
No one wants to front the money, no one wants to buy overpriced nuclear power, no one wants the waste, no one wants a responsibility for decades and I bet you, if you asked the people on the poll whether they want to live near a plant or waste facility, almost everyone is going to say no.
The sole reason for (modern) nuclear power is high reliability at very low emissions and much energy per space. You know what can also do this? A battery.
If you want to install state-of-the-art molten salt SMRs as high-reliability baseline supply for network infrastructure and hospitals, go for it. But don’t try to sell me a super expensive water boiler as miracle technology.
Nuclear is the way of the future. Its between that and fossil fuels realistically.
I say we bury the waste in your garden then
waste is a much smaller problem than co2 emmissions. Waste can be put in water which completely shields it.
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.
Good, nuclear is one of the only ways we will be able to address carbon emissions
