When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren’t that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent’s faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc
I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.
I don’t want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.
There are still large parts of southern Germany where you’re not allowed to eat wild mushrooms and every boar that is hunted must be tested for radiation. That is because of the fallout from Chernobyl 35 years ago and 1400 km away.
Just in case anyone is taking you serious: Please beware and adhere to the official warnings of the BFS (Federal Office for Radiation Protection). Contamination of forests with Caesium-137 is a serious health risk in many Bavarian forests. It’s half-life period is 30 years. The disaster was in 1986. That means it’s still roughly half of it there and the layered forest grounds preserve radiation well. If you’re a mushroom forager on vacation in Bavaria - just don’t do it.
For sure, but there are places in Germany and everywhere in Europe where you shouldn’t be eating or drinking anything that comes out of the ground because of coal emissions, and places you can’t do anything in because of the gigantic coal mines. And that’s still currently happening and will keep happening for the foreseeable future.
The best thing to do when you fall off a horse, is climb straight back up on it. Rejecting almost limitless power because of an accident almost 40 years ago is foolish to me. Luckily research didn’t completely stop and modern plants are a lot safer with a lot of medical applications for the waste.
But the horse still has a broken leg (End-Storage) and noone really knows how to fix that at the moment. Maybe give the horse some drugs to make the leg stronger (Transmutate the materials from long to moderately-long half-lifes), but we still need to support it in the end.
The move to coal was absolutely stupid, the CDU (which is currently gaining some traction… again), dialed back on renewables which should have replaced some of the capacities lost to nucelar… and then decided a new coal plant was a great idea too.
Probably some corruption… sorry “Lobbying”-work behind that… its not like the Experts (which were paid pretty well) told them that was a bad idea…
Maybe some more modern nucelar plants might work… but its unprofitable (probably always was, considering the hidden costs on the tax payers already), so needs to be heavily state-funded, same with storage (plus getting all the stuff out of the butchered storage Asse, putting it somewhere else)
I am open to it, but dont see it happening. And storage… no hopeful thoughts about that either, i dont think the current politic structures are well suited to oversee something like that from what we have seen from other storage-locations that are or were in use.
I’d also love some more plans for big energy storage aswell as new subsidies for the energy grid and renewables. The famous german bureaucracy is obviously also not helping any of this.
Subsidizing reactors to run off waste would be fine. Better than burying it. I’m actually against building new nuclear for general power (for economic reasons), but support reactors for this purpose. The waste is sitting right there already, and we have to do something with it.
All of the nuclear waste produced by all of the nuclear power plants ever produced could fit on the area of about the size of a football pitch. Storing nuclear waste, isn’t the massive problem. People say it is. It could be easily disposed of by digging a very deep hole and sticking it in it.
It’s not ideal, sure, but it’s not exactly a huge problem either.
And that hole would of course not deform at all or release the products into the environment over some amount of time?
We already have that problem… They tried more or less simply burying it in Asse, which spectacularly failed and now has to be brought back up… paid by the government (so us) of course
Not if it’s deep enough and properly encased. And even in the extremely rare occasion there are mistakes made with improper storage or unforeseen environmental changes that require re-storage, the environmental impacts are still negligible.
The fear mongering around this is absurdly overblown.
When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren’t that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent’s faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc
I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.
I don’t want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.
which is funny because fossil fuels are everywhere poisoning the air and environment in general, not different from the nuclear radiation bogeyman
Especially when coal rejects a lot more radioactive materials in the air than nuclear power
There are still large parts of southern Germany where you’re not allowed to eat wild mushrooms and every boar that is hunted must be tested for radiation. That is because of the fallout from Chernobyl 35 years ago and 1400 km away.
Which is mostly due to fear(mongering) and not real residue.
And see another comment about coal emissions which are happening right now.
Just in case anyone is taking you serious: Please beware and adhere to the official warnings of the BFS (Federal Office for Radiation Protection). Contamination of forests with Caesium-137 is a serious health risk in many Bavarian forests. It’s half-life period is 30 years. The disaster was in 1986. That means it’s still roughly half of it there and the layered forest grounds preserve radiation well. If you’re a mushroom forager on vacation in Bavaria - just don’t do it.
https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/notfallschutz/notfall/tschornobyl/umweltfolgen.html#doc6055566bodyText3
OK, thanks. That ends the argument on South German forests, but doesn’t end it on nuclear energy being more or less harmful than coal.
For sure, but there are places in Germany and everywhere in Europe where you shouldn’t be eating or drinking anything that comes out of the ground because of coal emissions, and places you can’t do anything in because of the gigantic coal mines. And that’s still currently happening and will keep happening for the foreseeable future.
Actually coal plants which are in use, spew thousands of times of nuclear material into the air what any nuclear plant ever has.
Including Chernobyl and Fukushima?
The best thing to do when you fall off a horse, is climb straight back up on it. Rejecting almost limitless power because of an accident almost 40 years ago is foolish to me. Luckily research didn’t completely stop and modern plants are a lot safer with a lot of medical applications for the waste.
But the horse still has a broken leg (End-Storage) and noone really knows how to fix that at the moment. Maybe give the horse some drugs to make the leg stronger (Transmutate the materials from long to moderately-long half-lifes), but we still need to support it in the end.
The move to coal was absolutely stupid, the CDU (which is currently gaining some traction… again), dialed back on renewables which should have replaced some of the capacities lost to nucelar… and then decided a new coal plant was a great idea too.
Probably some corruption… sorry “Lobbying”-work behind that… its not like the Experts (which were paid pretty well) told them that was a bad idea…
Maybe some more modern nucelar plants might work… but its unprofitable (probably always was, considering the hidden costs on the tax payers already), so needs to be heavily state-funded, same with storage (plus getting all the stuff out of the butchered storage Asse, putting it somewhere else)
I am open to it, but dont see it happening. And storage… no hopeful thoughts about that either, i dont think the current politic structures are well suited to oversee something like that from what we have seen from other storage-locations that are or were in use.
I’d also love some more plans for big energy storage aswell as new subsidies for the energy grid and renewables. The famous german bureaucracy is obviously also not helping any of this.
Subsidizing reactors to run off waste would be fine. Better than burying it. I’m actually against building new nuclear for general power (for economic reasons), but support reactors for this purpose. The waste is sitting right there already, and we have to do something with it.
All of the nuclear waste produced by all of the nuclear power plants ever produced could fit on the area of about the size of a football pitch. Storing nuclear waste, isn’t the massive problem. People say it is. It could be easily disposed of by digging a very deep hole and sticking it in it.
It’s not ideal, sure, but it’s not exactly a huge problem either.
And that hole would of course not deform at all or release the products into the environment over some amount of time?
We already have that problem… They tried more or less simply burying it in Asse, which spectacularly failed and now has to be brought back up… paid by the government (so us) of course
Not if it’s deep enough and properly encased. And even in the extremely rare occasion there are mistakes made with improper storage or unforeseen environmental changes that require re-storage, the environmental impacts are still negligible.
The fear mongering around this is absurdly overblown.