Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022

prizrak said:
Actually they can also produce infra-sound which can be very detrimental to one's mental health.
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Uh huh... living in in a city does the same to you because you are surrounded by infra sound in a city, day and night, 24 hours, 7 days a week :rolleyes:

Cellos88GT said:
No one goes to the German coast to vacation except for the Finns.
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Ha ha, funny...

Just for your information, so you won't die misinformed: I live at the German North Sea Coast. There are thousands of wind mills here, they've become part of the landscape, even a landmark. Northern Germany is the region with the highest density of power wind mills in the world. Still we're basically flooded with tourists every year, at every school holidays and at every long weekend. Every. Single. One. I know it because I hate them. They congest our roads, jam our supermarkets and generally behave like apes. I'd rather live without them but the majority of the population here depends on them. In 2015 we had 7.6 million tourists here at my part of the coast, the East Frisian Coastline.

Assuming what you wrote wasn't just silly polemics, you should realize that not everyone equals holidays with the Mediteranean. Not everyone likes crowded beaches full of drunken cads in regions where gangs of pickpockets steal your money, rip women's handbags off your shoulder and every single local tries to rip you off.

Oh and by the way: Our local coast here is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
 
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And too many beggars and thieves down there, people drive like maniacs, etc.
:p
 
:dunno: I follow the sun anyway. Winter? Canaries. Summer? Continental to Northern Europe. In between? Med.
You'll find beggars and thieves and maniacs everywhere.
 
Thanks for your support
 
I'm not a fan of nuclear power, however turning off the nuclear power plants so early may not be the best idea. Good alternatives need to be available first. Neither coal nor natural gas are good alternatives. Coal pollutes in a big way, and Germany's source for natural gas happens to be Russia (good luck finding a cheaper source than Nord Stream).
 
Not turning them off this early wouldn't have given us a third of our electricity from renewable sources by now.
 
narf said:
Not turning them off this early wouldn't have given us a third of our electricity from renewable sources by now.
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How long until the rest is neither coal nor natural gas?
 
argatoga said:
How long until the rest is neither coal nor natural gas?
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Coal? At the current rate of decreasing, 2038 - though I doubt it'd drop to an actual zero by then, the initial bigger drops are "easier" because you'll first turn off more expensive/older plants and a few right near big reserves might run for longer.

Natural gas? Not in the foreseeable future, its capacity is currently even increasing due to natural gas being cheap and cleaner than coal, and gas plants are really responsive to compliment the wind and solar part of renewables. Additionally, by converting excess renewable electricity to gas you can use those gas plants and the existing network to iron out dips in again wind and solar. That's not built at large scale yet, but the first multi-megawatt-scale power-to-gas plant went online two years ago... we're getting there, and the added pressure from less "cheap" nucular power helps.
 
narf said:
Coal? At the current rate of decreasing, 2038 - though I doubt it'd drop to an actual zero by then, the initial bigger drops are "easier" because you'll first turn off more expensive/older plants and a few right near big reserves might run for longer.
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That's encouraging.

narf said:
Natural gas? Not in the foreseeable future, its capacity is currently even increasing due to natural gas being cheap and cleaner than coal, and gas plants are really responsive to compliment the wind and solar part of renewables. Additionally, by converting excess renewable electricity to gas you can use those gas plants and the existing network to iron out dips in again wind and solar. That's not built at large scale yet, but the first multi-megawatt-scale power-to-gas plant went online two years ago... we're getting there, and the added pressure from less "cheap" nucular power helps.
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This not so much when one considers the geo-political implications (at least from Germany's perspective). Is there a reserve if Putin decides to cut the flow of natural gas, or is the plan to buy from the US/Canada at a much higher price?
 
MacGuffin said:
Uh huh... living in in a city does the same to you because you are surrounded by infra sound in a city, day and night, 24 hours, 7 days a week :rolleyes:
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So now people who choose not to live in cities get to deal with it too. Not to mention that the volume as well as specific frequency make a huge difference. Kind of like the microwave radiation from your phone doesn't cook you but I wouldn't try putting my head in a microwave.

On related note, ever notice how people in cities tend to be more stressed out and do get aways to the country side?
 
argatoga said:
This not so much when one considers the geo-political implications (at least from Germany's perspective). Is there a reserve if Putin decides to cut the flow of natural gas, or is the plan to buy from the US/Canada at a much higher price?
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Only about a third of our gas comes from Russia, it's not like Putin could flick a switch and Germany would go dark and cold.
As for storage, we have about 80 days of storage. Doing naive maths and assuming no other source would deliver more, removing all of Russia's gas from supply and slightly cutting demand would give us a year from storage.
 
prizrak said:
So now people who choose not to live in cities get to deal with it too. Not to mention that the volume as well as specific frequency make a huge difference. Kind of like the microwave radiation from your phone doesn't cook you but I wouldn't try putting my head in a microwave.

On related note, ever notice how people in cities tend to be more stressed out and do get aways to the country side?
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I was only pointing out that infra sound isn't a health risk. Otherwise billions of people worldwide would suffer from infra sound sickness.

Have you ever been near a power windmill in real life? You can only hear them from about under 200 feet away, they make a low "woosh" sound. You need to erect them in a minimum distance from inhabited areas, so nobody is disturbed. And even here, in a relativety quiet region, they are being drowned out by daily noises like cars, playing children, mooing cows, bleating sheep, small airplanes and -- surprise, surprise -- wind (!).

The whole "Oooh, the infrasound is making me sick" is just an excuse of people who really are only afraid that their view outside of the window is compromised and thus the value of their property drops. It's not like they ever complain about trucks passing nearby or helicopters that bring tourists to the island off the coast.
 
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While some things are just in the heads of people - and I'm talking in a very general sense here - unfortunately some of them are not able to admit that they were wrong.

There is this story about a couple of people that complained about headaches after one of these was installed on their house:

Handymasten_bgh_urteil.jpg


1) The above picture correctly depicts the direction at which EM-waves are emitted from the antenna. Sideways. Not up-down. The antenna would be poorly designed if it wasted energy (and therefor signals strength) by transmitting its signal down into the ground and up into the sky.

2) The specific antenna that people complained about making them sick hadn't even been switched on.

Double blind tests also show that humans can't feel electromagnetic waves and that basically all the "uuuh I need to stay away from mobile phones and such because it hurts!" people are just nutcases, and in a true double blind test their "detection rate" for mobile devices being switched on or off was 50%, or in other words: the statistical average of blindly guessing often enough.


But telling people that it's all in their head usually offends them greatly, especially when the statement is coming from the wrong person (i.e. a representative for the mobile carrier or power company).
 
MacGuffin said:
Not everyone likes crowded beaches full of drunken cads in regions where gangs of pickpockets steal your money, rip women's handbags off your shoulder and every single local tries to rip you off.
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Not everyone likes to be sexually assaulted either ;)
 
MacGuffin said:
I was only pointing out that infra sound isn't a health risk. Otherwise billions of people worldwide would suffer from infra sound sickness.


The whole "Oooh, the infrasound is making me sick" is just an excuse of people who really are only afraid that their view outside of the window is compromised and thus the value of their property drops. It's not like they ever complain about trucks passing nearby or helicopters that bring tourists to the island off the coast.
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https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/chem_background/exsumpdf/infrasound_508.pdf
some actual scientists who are not a random old german dude said:
The primary effect of infrasound in humans appears to be annoyance (24-26).
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Infrasound has been observed to affect the pattern of sleep minutely. Exposures to 6 and 16 Hz at levels 10 dB
above the auditory threshold have been associated with a reduction in wakefulness (28). Workers exposed to
simulated industrial infrasound of 5 and 10 Hz and levels of 100 and 135 dB for 15 minutes reported feelings of
fatigue, apathy, and depression, pressure in the ears, loss of concentration, drowsiness, and vibration of internal
organs. In addition, effects were found in the central nervous, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems (29).
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Studies have shown that infrasound (6 to 16 Hz at levels ranging from 95 to 130 dB and up to an exposure time of
one hour) causes an increase in diastolic blood pressure and decreases in systolic blood pressure and pulse rate (31).
Long-term exposure of active Swiss airforce pilots to infrasound with a frequency of 14 or 16 Hz at 125 dB
produced the same changes. Additional findings in the pilots were decreased alertness, faster decrease in the
electrical resistance of the skin compared to unexposed individuals, and alteration of hearing threshold and time
perception (32).
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You can read the rest yourself but yes it can very much have adverse health effects as outlined.

Have you ever been near a power windmill in real life? You can only hear them from about under 200 feet away, they make a low "woosh" sound. You need to erect them in a minimum distance from inhabited areas, so nobody is disturbed. And even here, in a relativety quiet region, they are being drowned out by daily noises like cars, playing children, mooing cows, bleating sheep, small airplanes and -- surprise, surprise -- wind (!).
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Yeah you know that whole "infra" part of the word? It generally means it's below hearing threshold (fun fact it's the opposite of ultra)

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CD82 said:
While some things are just in the heads of people - and I'm talking in a very general sense here - unfortunately some of them are not able to admit that they were wrong.

There is this story about a couple of people that complained about headaches after one of these was installed on their house:

Handymasten_bgh_urteil.jpg


1) The above picture correctly depicts the direction at which EM-waves are emitted from the antenna. Sideways. Not up-down. The antenna would be poorly designed if it wasted energy (and therefor signals strength) by transmitting its signal down into the ground and up into the sky.

2) The specific antenna that people complained about making them sick hadn't even been switched on.

Double blind tests also show that humans can't feel electromagnetic waves and that basically all the "uuuh I need to stay away from mobile phones and such because it hurts!" people are just nutcases, and in a true double blind test their "detection rate" for mobile devices being switched on or off was 50%, or in other words: the statistical average of blindly guessing often enough.


But telling people that it's all in their head usually offends them greatly, especially when the statement is coming from the wrong person (i.e. a representative for the mobile carrier or power company).
Click to expand...

Infrasound is not EM radiation... BTW humans absolutely can feel EM waves, some we detect with our eyes and call it visible light, some we detect with our skin and call it heat. Additionally inability to feel something does not make one immune from it, if it were the case we could work in the middle of nuclear reactors with no protection.
 
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Regarding infrasound, I would argue that the distances we're discussing here (as already mentioned, the generators are quite far from where anyone actually lives) make the actual volume of the infrasound so little that it will not cause any effects. of course if you actively start running around underneath them for extended periods of time, that might be a whole different story (and it's not like there's anything keeping you from doing that).
 
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