Germany's "Green Energy" folly

[Al]

Most groups/people can't seem to understand that with "benefits" comes some "risk" [risk/benefit analysis] They strive for a "perfect world" and wind up with a perfect tsunami.

BTW the Japanese have made huuuuge progress at Fukushima. Two of the reactors have their core in the mid 70's C and the other is in the 80's.
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1317958363P.pdf

 

[Shannow]

Al,
the modern world is allegedly run on "risk management", however, the expectation at all levels is that the coin will return a head every single time that it is flipped, a clear impossibility, unless the decision is made to do nothing.

Germany deciding to drop nukes is one of those decisions, and it's stupid.

A far better outcome would have been to send their experts to Japan, and find out what went wrong, HAZOP it back through their plant, and better manage their risk...and also learn from the Japanese what worked and what didn't when the coin throws a tail.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

Germany deciding to drop nukes is one of those decisions, and it's stupid.

A far better outcome would have been ....

Probably politically motivated.

 

[Shannow]

Yeah, we had a lot of "just goes to show" talk from certain quarters afterwards.

 

[PandaBear]

I think the decision to go solar and close nuclear are independent.

Once upon a time we thought that nuclear is the source of clean and cheap energy until people have fear on how to contain an accident got the worst of them. It is far easier to just pay for more expensive sources like natural gas, solar, wind, coal, heavy oil, hydro, etc than to risk the fear and overhead on nuclear. Uranium is not that expensive and it is the decommissioning, waste, and not in my backyard stance that kills the nuke.

Having build them in the east addressed the issue in the west, despite the plant in the east is not as safe or reliable as the west. Thanks to globalization and lack of regulation this will be the future of European, along with efficiency improvement, manufacturing outsourcing to Asia, and aging population reduce electricity need rather than increase.

China and India would likely be where most of the new nuke plants be build. Lives are cheap, population is big, electricity shortage is huge, manufacturing is booming, and they have no other way to do it, until they are so rich that lives become expensive to risk over the fear of accidents.