"Many countries, including the U.S., had warned Germany over the years that the pipeline—and a second planned pipeline, Nord Stream 2—gave Russia tremendous leverage if it ever chose to weaponize its gas reserves. The Germans consistently dismissed those warnings."
Every human organization evolves to prioritize its own needs over its nominal purpose. A nuclear reactor is operated by members of a power workers' union, managed by a nuclear agency and overseen by a regulatory body. The leaders of these organizations talk regularly and come to identify as a group that prioritizes its needs over those of rank-an-file workers and safety regulations. Short of burning these organizations to the ground every few years and rebuilding them with all new hires (which would destroy necessary operational experience) there is no way to prevent regulatory capture and corruption from degrading a nuclear plant's safety.
Quit using their hijacked terminology; they aren't the Green Party, they are the neo socialist party born from the ashes of Baader-Meinhof et al (The Red Army Faction) with the exact same goals - only they've realized it's easier to work from the inside.
They use the GP as the public face to garner votes while in the background the deconstruct the economies they hate so as to replace with their utopic version.
Please announce it when the first high-level nuclear waste is permanently disposed of.
I'd love our problem to be as simple as: Build more nuke plants.
But we have yet to permanently dispose of any of the waste; and we produce something like 6000 metric tons per year of spent nuclear fuel. Some gets reprocessed; but the majority is "in storage" because we haven't disposed of any of it. Does this look sustainable to anyone?
There is something in the German national character that causes them to follow crazy ideas or people right off a cliff.
Yes, a zero co2 grid is a fantasy, a toxic hellhole and the end result of the Green nuke policy is INCREASING co2 emissions.
Now, of course there is nothing wrong with that in the real world.
But it would be great if before she dies, Jane Fonda is made aware that she helped increase co2 emissions.
And it’s hilarious that Germans said they would be willing to pay an extra 20 euro a month, that is not even a fraction of the cost when you consider the charges plus subsidies plus all the other costs.
It’s why germany is deindustrializing and all the good jobs leaving for China
The same applies to fusion energy (once it arrives). That too would drastically lower the cost of energy and is therefore anti the green agenda. To put it simply, their agenda is to decrease industrialization, transportation and the human carbon footprint in general. So even if we had a clean, simple, safe and FREE form of unlimited energy they would oppose it.
I would guess that 99% of people on the planet don’t have any idea how a nuclear power plant works to generate electricity. Chernobyl was a terrible Russian design that operated with a positive power coefficient. That means as power in the reactor went up it wanted to go up more unless the operators did something to control it. Smart designs have a negative power coefficient so that they tend to want to stop increasing power as power goes up. Not to mention, the Russians were doing some silly test where they bypassed safety features. Fukushima was a good design plant but not designed for where it was built. Don’t build a plant to withstand a 8.0 earthquake in a 9.0 earthquake zone.
Actually, they would have been fine if they had their diesel storage tanks below ground. They got wiped by the surge. The diesels would probably worked once water receded. Either way, plants need power when they’re shutdown.
I worked at US nuclear plants for 35 years. All our big diesel storage tanks (10,000+ gallons) were below ground. There is a Day Tank inside near the DG that held about 500 gallons. For some reason they put their big storage tanks above ground exposed to the environment.
Good point " The problem with some of the original "studies" is that they were not replicable."
That is because the studies were NOT empirically verifiable hypotheses but rather model projections so far into the future, they could not be verified empirically. The models were NOT science.
Mark Steyn was sued by Michael Mann over Steyn's statements hockey stick was a fraud who eventually withdrew his case because Mann did not have evidence to support his claim. We have not seen the hocked stick argument since then. It was totally discredited.
Wrong. The ipcc uses hockey stick graphs of temps all the time in their reports.
They will argue that the method is useful even though it was shown that feeding white noise into Piltdown Mann’s algorithm produced a hockey stick shape out.
They have not recanted, Mann is still a hero of the Revolution who gets endless coverage in official media
It has been debunked by Ross McKittrick, but that does not matter to the climate/insane. It’s their prop.
They have endless convoluted arguments as to how it’s still correct.
The Adjustment Bureau has spent the last two decades adjusting the temperature records going back to 1880, cooling hot readings in the past and warming some to create the straight shaft of the hockey stick in support of this.
The very definition of “decision based evidence making”.
Nuclear power has downsides. We should drastically expand nuclear anyway, while rebuilding our electrical grid to handle the extra power. Why? Because we need reliable and emissions-free electricity, and nuclear is the most efficient and cleanest way to provide it. Next-generation reactors don't melt down, generate much less waste than the Dresden models of the Seventies, and building them provides a lot of well-paying long-term jobs that can't be offshored.
Naysayers compare nuclear to Perfection. I compare nuclear to all other sources of power generation, and find nuclear the least problematic way to meet our energy requirements. Yucca Mountain is still there, and the federal government should override Nevada's NIMBYism and use the place already. Energy production is a national concern, and waste management is part of the cost. In time, we'll figure out a way to de-radiate the waste, and we can empty Yucca for good.
As for Germany, it lost its damn mind. Who puts all their critical energy eggs in one basket, let alone a Russian basket? Were the Greens so powerful that they could make and break political careers over nuclear policy? Or were they just so loud and obnoxious that German politicians fell for it?
You might want to interview former NATO general Wesley Clark. He's involved in looking for natural gas in Germany and Austria - domestic resources those countries literally refused to look for until now.
The rationale for the nuclear shutdown is obvious. Germany is on a geopolitical faultline; anyone who were to hit one of their reactors would destroy the country in a nanosecond, meaning their enemies could take them hostage. Yes, Russia could turn off the gas...but they can't turn the Germany into a radioactive dump by bombing one strategic target.
Of course the Greens have something to do with it, but there is strategy in play, too.
Greens are tools of the vicious totalitarians dominating politics in western civilization. These tools of malevolence are totally nihilistic to the welfare of society. They promote deceit, and puff the flames of fear purposefully to destroy prosperity.
Insatiable arrogance and greed mark their fate, which is defined by their refusal of all responsibility for the destructive consequences of their policies. Policy has derived from the retreat of reason in the public interest. Unearned trust has derived from false projections. Their existence is built on total lies.
This article does not discuss the challenge of storing nuclear spent fuel.
For anyone actually interested in looking at the technical tradeoffs around nuclear power generation (rather than political aguments with half baked information) good countries to look at would be France and Canada. Both countries are trying to resolve the nuclear waste issue. They have not yet come up with a viable solution.
Germany probably should have had a much more gradual plan to go off nuclear power. One reason that Germany decided to close down its reactors was that it could no longer find locations to store the nuclear waste power generation byproducts.
France recycles 96% of spent fuel and are on track to build more ways to recycle nuclear material. The reason that France continues to build is because their plan incorporates limiting nuclear waste.
Thanks for the go out and dig challenge! I found an article from 2023 Reuters that stated:
"After being cooled in a pool for about seven years, used nuclear fuel is separated into non-recyclable leftovers that are turned into glass (4% of the material), plutonium (1%) to create a new nuclear fuel called MOX, on which around 40% of France's reactors can run, and reprocessed uranium (95%)."
Then here is the part where my argument about the bonne francais crashes and perhaps some of the author's argument of nuclear not supporting Russia:
The uranium in the past was sent to Russia for re-enrichment and return for use in some EDF reactors, but EDF stopped doing that in 2013 as it was too costly.
In spite of the war in Ukraine, which has made many in the West avoid doing business with Russia, EDF is expected to resume sending uranium to Russia this year as the only country able to process it. It declined to confirm to Reuters it would do so.
JoAnne, I don't have a definitive answer about nuclear power. But it is not just politics that has held countries such as Canada and France back from a full nuclear reactor approach to generating power.
France never had a nuclear only policy. Overall their plan is well developed and anticipated energy needs front and back (although recharging in Russia is questionable). France's policy was developed by different politicians and government and cannot be paired with Canada's policy.
Great article.. I don't get it either. All the risks associated with generation by nuclear power can be mitigated through a combination of site selection and design - and the know how exists! The cleanest source of electricity known to man being "blocked" by people who claim to fear imminent climate catastrophe, actually makes you wonder if there really is such climate danger?
"Many countries, including the U.S., had warned Germany over the years that the pipeline—and a second planned pipeline, Nord Stream 2—gave Russia tremendous leverage if it ever chose to weaponize its gas reserves. The Germans consistently dismissed those warnings."
Because Germany is always wrong.
Every human organization evolves to prioritize its own needs over its nominal purpose. A nuclear reactor is operated by members of a power workers' union, managed by a nuclear agency and overseen by a regulatory body. The leaders of these organizations talk regularly and come to identify as a group that prioritizes its needs over those of rank-an-file workers and safety regulations. Short of burning these organizations to the ground every few years and rebuilding them with all new hires (which would destroy necessary operational experience) there is no way to prevent regulatory capture and corruption from degrading a nuclear plant's safety.
Quit using their hijacked terminology; they aren't the Green Party, they are the neo socialist party born from the ashes of Baader-Meinhof et al (The Red Army Faction) with the exact same goals - only they've realized it's easier to work from the inside.
They use the GP as the public face to garner votes while in the background the deconstruct the economies they hate so as to replace with their utopic version.
You know, like Marx and Lenin.
Please announce it when the first high-level nuclear waste is permanently disposed of.
I'd love our problem to be as simple as: Build more nuke plants.
But we have yet to permanently dispose of any of the waste; and we produce something like 6000 metric tons per year of spent nuclear fuel. Some gets reprocessed; but the majority is "in storage" because we haven't disposed of any of it. Does this look sustainable to anyone?
There is something in the German national character that causes them to follow crazy ideas or people right off a cliff.
Yes, a zero co2 grid is a fantasy, a toxic hellhole and the end result of the Green nuke policy is INCREASING co2 emissions.
Now, of course there is nothing wrong with that in the real world.
But it would be great if before she dies, Jane Fonda is made aware that she helped increase co2 emissions.
And it’s hilarious that Germans said they would be willing to pay an extra 20 euro a month, that is not even a fraction of the cost when you consider the charges plus subsidies plus all the other costs.
It’s why germany is deindustrializing and all the good jobs leaving for China
So much stupid
Talk about anti-science zealots. Sheesh!
The same applies to fusion energy (once it arrives). That too would drastically lower the cost of energy and is therefore anti the green agenda. To put it simply, their agenda is to decrease industrialization, transportation and the human carbon footprint in general. So even if we had a clean, simple, safe and FREE form of unlimited energy they would oppose it.
I would guess that 99% of people on the planet don’t have any idea how a nuclear power plant works to generate electricity. Chernobyl was a terrible Russian design that operated with a positive power coefficient. That means as power in the reactor went up it wanted to go up more unless the operators did something to control it. Smart designs have a negative power coefficient so that they tend to want to stop increasing power as power goes up. Not to mention, the Russians were doing some silly test where they bypassed safety features. Fukushima was a good design plant but not designed for where it was built. Don’t build a plant to withstand a 8.0 earthquake in a 9.0 earthquake zone.
Fukushima would have been fine where it was if they had put the backup diesel gensets on high ground. That’s it, all they needed to do.
Actually, they would have been fine if they had their diesel storage tanks below ground. They got wiped by the surge. The diesels would probably worked once water receded. Either way, plants need power when they’re shutdown.
A raised platform for that was all that was needed, a million $ of adjustment and the disaster never happens.
There is high ground west of the plant.
They clearly didn’t do proper HAZOP.
I worked at US nuclear plants for 35 years. All our big diesel storage tanks (10,000+ gallons) were below ground. There is a Day Tank inside near the DG that held about 500 gallons. For some reason they put their big storage tanks above ground exposed to the environment.
I never worked at a nuke so i defer.
But as discussed, if they keep the emergency power on, no disaster, Germany not driving off a cliff, the world looks different etc etc.
For want of a nail the battle was lost. Marshall Ney and the Japanese engineer both changed the world through small oversights.
Good point " The problem with some of the original "studies" is that they were not replicable."
That is because the studies were NOT empirically verifiable hypotheses but rather model projections so far into the future, they could not be verified empirically. The models were NOT science.
Mark Steyn was sued by Michael Mann over Steyn's statements hockey stick was a fraud who eventually withdrew his case because Mann did not have evidence to support his claim. We have not seen the hocked stick argument since then. It was totally discredited.
Wrong. The ipcc uses hockey stick graphs of temps all the time in their reports.
They will argue that the method is useful even though it was shown that feeding white noise into Piltdown Mann’s algorithm produced a hockey stick shape out.
They have not recanted, Mann is still a hero of the Revolution who gets endless coverage in official media
I did not know that.
The " Hockey Stick" has been debunked, has it not?
It has been debunked by Ross McKittrick, but that does not matter to the climate/insane. It’s their prop.
They have endless convoluted arguments as to how it’s still correct.
The Adjustment Bureau has spent the last two decades adjusting the temperature records going back to 1880, cooling hot readings in the past and warming some to create the straight shaft of the hockey stick in support of this.
The very definition of “decision based evidence making”.
They can’t just give up now.
Nuclear power has downsides. We should drastically expand nuclear anyway, while rebuilding our electrical grid to handle the extra power. Why? Because we need reliable and emissions-free electricity, and nuclear is the most efficient and cleanest way to provide it. Next-generation reactors don't melt down, generate much less waste than the Dresden models of the Seventies, and building them provides a lot of well-paying long-term jobs that can't be offshored.
Naysayers compare nuclear to Perfection. I compare nuclear to all other sources of power generation, and find nuclear the least problematic way to meet our energy requirements. Yucca Mountain is still there, and the federal government should override Nevada's NIMBYism and use the place already. Energy production is a national concern, and waste management is part of the cost. In time, we'll figure out a way to de-radiate the waste, and we can empty Yucca for good.
As for Germany, it lost its damn mind. Who puts all their critical energy eggs in one basket, let alone a Russian basket? Were the Greens so powerful that they could make and break political careers over nuclear policy? Or were they just so loud and obnoxious that German politicians fell for it?
Cognitive dissonance at the pinnacle of human arrogance. Fools.
You might want to interview former NATO general Wesley Clark. He's involved in looking for natural gas in Germany and Austria - domestic resources those countries literally refused to look for until now.
The rationale for the nuclear shutdown is obvious. Germany is on a geopolitical faultline; anyone who were to hit one of their reactors would destroy the country in a nanosecond, meaning their enemies could take them hostage. Yes, Russia could turn off the gas...but they can't turn the Germany into a radioactive dump by bombing one strategic target.
Of course the Greens have something to do with it, but there is strategy in play, too.
Western Europe has massive gas reserves but they lock themselves out, same as Britain is doing
There is no need for any of this.
Modern nukes for the grid
Gas for heating and cooking
They can do exactly what you say they can’t at any time by dropping a nuclear bomb.
Greens are tools of the vicious totalitarians dominating politics in western civilization. These tools of malevolence are totally nihilistic to the welfare of society. They promote deceit, and puff the flames of fear purposefully to destroy prosperity.
Insatiable arrogance and greed mark their fate, which is defined by their refusal of all responsibility for the destructive consequences of their policies. Policy has derived from the retreat of reason in the public interest. Unearned trust has derived from false projections. Their existence is built on total lies.
Thank you Joe Nocera (spelling?) If I wanted one country to safely manage nuclear power- that would be Germany. Tragic- idiots
This article does not discuss the challenge of storing nuclear spent fuel.
For anyone actually interested in looking at the technical tradeoffs around nuclear power generation (rather than political aguments with half baked information) good countries to look at would be France and Canada. Both countries are trying to resolve the nuclear waste issue. They have not yet come up with a viable solution.
Germany probably should have had a much more gradual plan to go off nuclear power. One reason that Germany decided to close down its reactors was that it could no longer find locations to store the nuclear waste power generation byproducts.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-launches-new-search-for-permanent-nuclear-waste-disposal-site/a-55077967
Canada and France are similarly finding it challenging to store nuclear spent fuel from reactors.
France recycles 96% of spent fuel and are on track to build more ways to recycle nuclear material. The reason that France continues to build is because their plan incorporates limiting nuclear waste.
https://www.power-technology.com/features/managing-nuclear-waste-france-long-short-game/
Thanks for the go out and dig challenge! I found an article from 2023 Reuters that stated:
"After being cooled in a pool for about seven years, used nuclear fuel is separated into non-recyclable leftovers that are turned into glass (4% of the material), plutonium (1%) to create a new nuclear fuel called MOX, on which around 40% of France's reactors can run, and reprocessed uranium (95%)."
Then here is the part where my argument about the bonne francais crashes and perhaps some of the author's argument of nuclear not supporting Russia:
The uranium in the past was sent to Russia for re-enrichment and return for use in some EDF reactors, but EDF stopped doing that in 2013 as it was too costly.
In spite of the war in Ukraine, which has made many in the West avoid doing business with Russia, EDF is expected to resume sending uranium to Russia this year as the only country able to process it. It declined to confirm to Reuters it would do so.
JoAnne, I don't have a definitive answer about nuclear power. But it is not just politics that has held countries such as Canada and France back from a full nuclear reactor approach to generating power.
France never had a nuclear only policy. Overall their plan is well developed and anticipated energy needs front and back (although recharging in Russia is questionable). France's policy was developed by different politicians and government and cannot be paired with Canada's policy.
Great article.. I don't get it either. All the risks associated with generation by nuclear power can be mitigated through a combination of site selection and design - and the know how exists! The cleanest source of electricity known to man being "blocked" by people who claim to fear imminent climate catastrophe, actually makes you wonder if there really is such climate danger?