Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022

Someone mentioned this had been posted in here - this concept was 'invented' by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein in the 40s, and has been studied off and on by the US since then. If I recall correctly, there is an outfit based in California that has constructed a proof-of-concept ground station and is waiting for their transmitter satellite to be orbited. The Japanese are about to orbit one as well.

One big problem with it, so far, has been the immense price of getting something into orbit - which renders the concept uneconomical. Another major problem with this concept, and the huge one for Europe, is that Europe does not exactly have a surplus of the enormous unoccupied landmass needed to support receiving stations plus a comfortable margin of safety around them to allow for beam drift in reasonable proximity to population centers. To be safe, you would want each receptor station reservation to be several times the size of the city of Monaco - far larger than a nuclear reactor reservation, on the order of scores of square kilometers. The maser beam would be rather, uh, dangerous to be around. And, of course, you need to ensure nobody like a clever Eastern European hacker gets ahold of the beam aiming computer. Or he'll be writing his name across the continent in letters the size of countries punctuated with dead bodies. :p

If you think nukes are dangerous, think about this: Nuclear accidents tend to be localized. A hacked power satellite would basically be a remote control orbital death ray with a minimum beam width about a kilometer in diameter - and therefore not localized.

Yeah as I said, these technologies are in their infancy... Right now it could be a massive clumsy hackable expensive hazard, but so were the first steam boilers which would explode with little warning... Research research research and gathering experience... what else can we do
 
Yeah as I said, these technologies are in their infancy... Right now it could be a massive clumsy hackable expensive hazard, but so were the first steam boilers which would explode with little warning... Research research research and gathering experience... what else can we do

I have my doubts that even after research this approach will be cheaper and easier than just putting solar thermal and PV up down here. No need to shoot it into orbit, no need to convert into microwaves, no need to build receiving stations, no worries about hijackings, lower maintenance costs, easy to build a distributed network, no monopolies, ...
 
I am a part of one of the first major battery storage projects in North America. I don't work for the battery manufacturer so I cannot comment on all of that stuff about the chemistry, but there is one thing I would like to make clear. Other than super-capacitors, which at this point in time do not hold enough energy to be considered for grid storage, all energy storage is done by converting the energy into some other form of energy. Meaning that for this application there is no way to store electrical energy. Battery storage is chemical, molten salt is thermal, flywheels is kinetic, hydro is potential. All of these require something to convert the energy from electrical to something, then back again. Steam turbines, inverter, etc. Each type has it's pros and cons. Hydro is huge, batteries are a small.

I bring all of this up because I think that some people are not quite getting the details correct all of the time.

Cellos86GT - Creating energy storage will not only work with solar, but any source of intermittent power.
WillDAQ - Any time you store energy, move energy, etc you are not 100% efficient. Thermal, just like any others, has an efficiency less than 100%.
 
Cellos86GT - Creating energy storage will not only work with solar, but any source of intermittent power.

Of course, I can't recall where I said that energy storage doesn't work for any power source...

Either way we're all doomed:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf

I'm going to place my blame on the anti-nuclear people because we've could have probably made great strides in curbing global warming sooner if we adopted widespread nuclear energy and kept up with implementing the technological advancements made in the sector.
 
This is from about a month ago, but I don't remember seeing it in here.

Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

BERLIN | Sat May 26, 2012 2:02pm EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.

They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.

Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

SUNSHINE

Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.

The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.

The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.

"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."

Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.

The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.

Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.

German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.

Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.

Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.
 
This is from about a month ago, but I don't remember seeing it in here.

Very cool. I would like to know how they are dealing with a saturation of renewable, intermittent, sources. It can create some interesting problems with creative solutions.
 
That's great news. Hopefully CA will be able to get on that level in the near future.
 
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.

a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour

gigawatts per hour

:blowup:
 
Prosecutors Start Criminal Probe Into Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Fukushima prosecutors began a criminal investigation into last year?s nuclear-plant accident after more than 1,300 residents filed a complaint against executives of Tokyo Electric Power Co. including former Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata.

The Fukushima City prosecutor yesterday accepted the complaint and will start a probe to determine whether there was professional negligence in Japan?s worst civil nuclear-plant accident, an official at the office said, who declined to be named in line with policy.

?Our complaint includes professional negligence resulting in bodily injury by radiation exposure and the death of hospital inpatients during transfer from Futaba Hospital? near the Fukushima plant, said Ikuo Yasuda, who runs his own law office and represents the residents. Yasuda confirmed the complaint was accepted yesterday by the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office.

Tokyo Electric said it hadn?t been informed by prosecutors that a complaint against former executives was accepted. ?We can?t comment on this because we don?t know the complaint?s content,? Jun Oshima, a Tokyo-based spokesman for the utility, said by phone.

Prosecutors are taking up the case after completion of independent investigation reports. One published in July led by University of Tokyo Professor Kiyoshi Kurokawa, said ?man- made? failures led to the nuclear disaster last year. The direct causes of the accident were all foreseeable, the report said, but Tokyo Electric, regulators and the ministry of economy trade and industry overseeing the industry failed to develop basic safety requirements.

Not Foreseeable?

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant and its six reactors run by the utility known as Tepco was hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011 that knocked out mains power for cooling reactors. The 15-meter tsunami that followed destroyed electrical equipment and flooded basements with seawater that disabled back-up generators.

Hydrogen explosions then blew out reactor buildings and three reactors had meltdowns, releasing radiation and forcing the mass evacuation of 160,000 people from areas of land that will be uninhabitable for decades.

Tepco?s own research showed the plant might be subject to a tsunami of more than 10 meters and its executives knew of that data, the utility said last August, contradicting earlier claims by former President Masataka Shimizu and other officials that such a disaster was unforeseeable.

Lacks Enthusiasm

Another independent investigation of the disaster was led by University of Tokyo engineering professor Yotaro Hatamura and echoed the findings of the Kurokawa report. Besides a failure of disaster management and risk analysis, the utility lacks ?sufficient enthusiasm to fully investigate the Fukushima disaster and learn lessons to prevent recurrence even more than one year after the accident,? according to the report released on July 23.

?After accepting the complaint, prosecutors are now required to begin an investigation,? said Yasuda, the lawyer representing the Fukushima residents. ?They have to decide whether to seek an indictment and if they decide to drop the case, we will appeal.?

The residential group named Fukushima Nuclear-Plant Plaintiffs filed the complaint on June 11, naming at least 33 individuals, including former Tepco president Shimizu, the head of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission Shunsuke Kondo and Haruki Madarame, the head of the Nuclear Safety Commission, Machiko Furukawa, an official at the group, said by telephone today.

Utility executives neglected to take proper protective measures against a tsunami at the Dai-Ichi plant, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Bloomberg News.
 
German coal power revival poses new emissions threat
Is Germany's Green Revolution about to turn black with coal dust?

As the country moves away from nuclear, the builders of coal-fired power stations are moving into action.

When Chancellor Merkel announced the closure of all the country's 17 nuclear reactors by 2022, there were loud cheers from environmentalists.

But less well heard were the cheers from the coal industry.

The organisation which represents it in Europe said the change of policy meant "the prospects for coal in general, and especially for coal-fired power plants under construction or in the planning stage, have become somewhat brighter".

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk, just a river's width away from Germany, was also jubilant.

"From Poland's point of view, this is a good thing not a bad one," he said.

"It means coal-based power will be back on the agenda."

Cleaner coal
And so it is.

In a worsening economic situation, Germany's new environment minister, Peter Altmaier, who is as politically close to Chancellor Angela Merkel as it is possible to get, is emphasising the importance of not weakening the economy by increasing the cost of energy.


Chancellor Angela Merkel and environment minister Peter Altmaier are close political allies
He is also concerned that Germany should not become dependent on imports of electricity.

To that end, he is allowing the building of more coal-fired power stations.

Mr Altmaier told Die Zeit that the government was committed to fulfilling its policy of generating 35% of the country's electricity from renewable sources in the next eight years - but that still left 65%, which would have to be generated in a different way.

He said, however, that he wanted new power stations to be cleaner than the old.

They should move away from so-called "brown coal", which is a high polluter, to lower-emission types of coal, he said.

"I think it makes sense to replace old polluting lignite coal-fired power plants with modern efficient coal and gas power plants," he said.

Inefficient market
Gas is also a carbon fuel but it does produce lower emissions than coal.

Professor Claudia Kemfert
The German Institute for Economic Research
It is also easier to turn a gas-fired power station on and off - and the role of coal and gas in the economy is to take up the slack when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow to keep solar and wind power stations going.

But energy experts in Germany think that gas will not fill the gap left as nuclear winds down.

Accordingly, Professor Claudia Kemfert of the German Institute for Economic Research told the BBC that the use of coal in power generation could actually rise from the current 42% to about 50%.

The problem, as she sees it, is that the emissions trading market in Europe - whereby companies that put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere have to pay a price - is arranged so that the cost of emitting is too low.

"Gas-fired power plants would be a better alternative than coal as they produce less emissions," she said.

"And they can be more easily combined with renewable energy as they are more flexible."

But they are less economically efficient as carbon dioxide (CO2) prices are too low, Professor Kemfert insisted.

"Europe would need to increase the CO2 cap and reduce the amount of emissions. Then coal would be less attractive. As long this is not happening coal's share will increase even further".

More emissions?

The number of coal miners in Germany is dwindling, so coal must be imported to fuel new plants
There is a debate among environmentalists now about whether the move away from nuclear power will actually lead to a rise in emissions of global warming gases.

The argument is that nuclear, whatever its other drawbacks, is a low-emitter - so any carbon alternative, such as coal, must be higher.

There will without doubt be improvements in the efficiency of the economy - more output from less electricity through better machines or ways of doing things or better materials.

But that, so runs the argument, would have happened anyway - and if some coal replaces some nuclear, then emissions will have been increased compared with what would have happened without the change.

Imported coal
If the demise of nuclear does mean the return of King Coal to power, it is unlikely to be German coal.

They will be shining their shovels in Poland, South Africa and China, but not in the Ruhr.

In the 1950s, there were 607,000 miners in almost 150 mines, producing 150 million tonnes of coal.

Fifty years later, that had shrunk to just eight mines employing 33,000 miners who cut 18 million tonnes.

By now, it is down to about 20,000 miners - and falling as subsidies fade to nothing in the next five years.

A bridge too far?
The economics of energy are changing.

Not only are subsidies to coal going, but also to solar power.

And the political pressures change as economies slow down and people start to worry more about money.

Chancellor Merkel was a physicist before becoming a politician, so she knows both the scientific and the economic arguments.

And the indications are that she remains convinced that nuclear as a "bridge to the sustainable future" is now a bridge too far, so clearly the move away will happen.

But who will be the next "bridge to the sustainable future"?

Ordinary German people and businesses by using less electricity? Or perhaps Chinese coal miners? Or Polish, Czech and French nuclear power stations?

The road to the sunny, clean future is not as smooth as it seemed.

lol
 
'Severe abnormalities' found in Fukushima butterflies

By Nick Crumpton BBC News

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests.

Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.

The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.

The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Two months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, a team of Japanese researchers collected 144 adult pale grass blue (Zizeeria maha) butterflies from 10 locations in Japan, including the Fukushima area.

When the accident occurred, the adult butterflies would have been overwintering as larvae.

Unexpected results

By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.

"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.

"In that sense, our results were unexpected," he told BBC News.
Pale grass blue butterfly The Japanese researchers have been studying the species for more than a decade

Prof Otaki's team then bred these butterflies within labs 1,750km (1,090 miles) away from the accident, where artificial radiation could hardly be detected.

It was by breeding these butterflies that they began noticing a suite of abnormalities that hadn't been seen in the previous generation - that collected from Fukushima - such as malformed antennae, which the insects use to explore their environment and seek out mates.

Six months later, they again collected adults from the 10 sites and found that butterflies from the Fukushima area showed a mutation rate more than double that of those found sooner after the accident.

The team concluded that this higher rate of mutation came from eating contaminated food, but also from mutations of the parents' genetic material that was passed on to the next generation, even though these mutations were not evident in the previous generations' adult butterflies.

The team of researchers have been studying that particular species butterfly for more than 10 years.

They were considering using the species as an "environmental indicator" before the Fukushima accident, as previous work had shown it is very sensitive to environmental changes.

"We had reported the real-time field evolution of colour patterns of this butterfly in response to global warming before, and [because] this butterfly is found in artificial environments - such as gardens and public parks - this butterfly can monitor human environments," Prof Otaki said.

But the findings from their new research show that the radionuclides released from the accident were still affecting the development of the animals, even after the residual radiation in the environment had decayed.

"This study is important and overwhelming in its implications for both the human and biological communities living in Fukushima," explained University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau, who studies the impacts of radiation on animals and plants in Chernobyl and Fukushima, but was not involved in this research.

"These observations of mutations and morphological abnormalities can only be explained as having resulted from exposure to radioactive contaminants," Dr Mousseau told BBC News.

The findings from the Japanese team are consistent with previous studies that have indicated birds and butterflies are important tools to investigate the long-term impacts of radioactive contaminants in the environment.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19245818

Now waiting for comments like "That doesn't worry me. I am no butterfly..."

;)
 
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I wonder what they have found in the sea.
 
Now waiting for comments like "That doesn't worry me. I am no butterfly..."

I don't think anyone in this thread has disputed the effects of x-rays on biological material. You know what also causes genetic mutations in biological life? UV rays from the sun.
 
Oh yes... I must have overlooked the mutations from sunshine lately :rolleyes:
 
One could argue that the mutations caused by UV light are due to the increase in ozone depletion, one could then make the point that this ozone depletion is due to the increase in NOx emissions from fossil fuel power plants, one could then argue that the global emission of this gas could be reduced through the installation and widespread use of Nuclear power since it doesn't produce any NOx gasses.
 
We should ban cars because the Ford Pinto was so unsafe.
 
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