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[Great Order]

Terrified by Chernobyl I think.

[Madman198237]

Same reason why most nations aren't deriving more, if not most, of their nations' base grid loads from nuclear---statistics don't sway the average (and of thoroughly average intelligence) voter, but images of tragedy or cases of uninformed fear-mongering sure do.

So somebody goes "BUT CHERNOBYL", or "Three Mile Island was _almost a terrible disaster!", or "but look at Fukushima and its gazillion melted reactors" and then the average Joe goes "well that's way too dangerous for me, back to breathing in the wonderful coal smoke in the air" and thinks no further on the issue.

[heydude6]

Why are the German greens so ardently anti nuclear and pro coal?

I've heard a few theories stating that anti-nuclear environmentalists are secretly funded by oil companies.  Though they might also be funded by Russia. A lot of Anti-vax Covid propaganda actually came from Russia, so I wouldn't be surprised if they distributed anti-nuclear pamphlets back in the day. Russia has a history of being involved in wacky conspiracy theories.

[Ganondworf]

Why are the German greens so ardently anti nuclear and pro coal?

I've heard a few theories stating that anti-nuclear environmentalists are secretly funded by oil companies.  Though they might also be funded by Russia. A lot of Anti-vax Covid propaganda actually came from Russia, so I wouldn't be surprised if they distributed anti-nuclear pamphlets back in the day. Russia has a history of being involved in wacky conspiracy theories.

The best explanation would probably be this:

Same reason why most nations aren't deriving more, if not most, of their nations' base grid loads from nuclear---statistics don't sway the average (and of thoroughly average intelligence) voter, but images of tragedy or cases of uninformed fear-mongering sure do.

So somebody goes "BUT CHERNOBYL", or "Three Mile Island was _almost a terrible disaster!", or "but look at Fukushima and its gazillion melted reactors" and then the average Joe goes "well that's way too dangerous for me, back to breathing in the wonderful coal smoke in the air" and thinks no further on the issue.

[Edit: removed useless rant]

So when Fukushima happened, all the people went batshit crazy and demanded a stop to nuclear power. The problem was, when Merkel did that, that there was no avoiding coal power, because the Merkel administration had actively hampered the expansion of regenerative energy production, for a lot of reasons.

However, I would not say that Germans are pro coal, only that nuclear power is regarded even worse.

[Ganondworf]

Also, various sources say that Russia mined Nova Kakhovka Dam and plan to blow up it soon to cover their retreat from Kherson, flooding a huge portion of the city. They are evacuating from Kherson (meaning robbing and looting as well as saving collaborators and Russian civilian specialists who already arrived there), using those civilians as nice meat shields to let their troops to cross the river

Of course, Russia is accusing Ukraine of planning to attack the dam. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/is-kakhovka-dam-ukraine-about-be-blown-2022-10-21/

 

[Strongpoint]

Also, various sources say that Russia mined Nova Kakhovka Dam and plan to blow up it soon to cover their retreat from Kherson, flooding a huge portion of the city. They are evacuating from Kherson (meaning robbing and looting as well as saving collaborators and Russian civilian specialists who already arrived there), using those civilians as nice meat shields to let their troops to cross the river

Of course, Russia is accusing Ukraine of planning to attack the dam. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/is-kakhovka-dam-ukraine-about-be-blown-2022-10-21/

 

I was expecting this back in February, as soon as Russia captured Nova Kahovka. Knowing that if they'll retreat they'll blow it up and blame Ukrainians

[EuchreJack]

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans are prepared to pull back on US aid to Ukraine next year if they gain control of the House, reflecting a growing sentiment in the party for the country to be less involved overseas.


Oh... Excited sarcastic WONDERFULl!

I tend to believe this is the intent.  There are three basic problems with Today's Republicans:
1) They got money from Russia
2) They got money from Billionaires that don't want US dollars spent in this way.  Presumably, the Democrats already greased their supporters with Supplies to Ukraine, and thus the Republicans are out.
3) The Democrats supported and gained political credibility from this war.

But hey, look how long it took the US to leave Afghanistan.  There will be SOME money for a long, long time.

McCarthy won't have the ability to do that even if the GOP does take the House. Neoisolationism is far from a universal position among the GOP, and the very worst case scenarios project their margin as quite small. The Speaker doesn't have, and never has, nearly the amount of control over the House that the Majority Leader has over the Senate.

This brings up an interesting point. President Biden can provide at least some funding via Executive Order and Budgetary Powers.

[EuchreJack]

Why are the German greens so ardently anti nuclear and pro coal?

Because they get money from people owning coal mines, presumably. German has a TON of coal.

[Mailo]

Why are the German greens so ardently anti nuclear and pro coal?

Because they get money from people owning coal mines, presumably. German has a TON of coal.

Somewhat off-topic, but ...
Not really ... most black coal mines are closed, and not necessarily for the environmental reasons you think. In the state I come from, they were closed because the resulting earth quakes from collapsing tunnels almost killed a group of school children (a large part of a church tower fell down and missed them by not much) and caused much property damage. Also, digging for blackcoal is expensive and only possible with massive government subsidies ... to create a job paying a miner 60k, the government had to spend something like 150k in subsidies ... total insanity.
Brown coal surface digging still happens, but has been reduced by more than a factor of three since 1990, and will continue to decrease.

Most anti-nuclear arguments I know are
- There currently exists no solution to the problem of storing the waste beyond "bury it, forget about it and pray it does not leak and kill people too quickly, at least not before I am no longer responsible"
- While the chance for a catastrophic accident is very low, having one would leave significant densely inhabited parts of Germany uninhabitable
- The CO2 emission of nuclear power usually is severely underestimated, by an order of magnitude, by leaving out the costs for mining the ore, refining it, dismantling the power plant at the end of the cycle (with radioactive concrete), and the longterm storage of the spent fuel. Including all this using ore grades required to run nuclear for 90+ years, the CO2 costs are higher than for natural gas, which would make it only 15% or so cheaper than coal.
- The costs in $ per kWh for nuclear is not really competitive with other sources of energy, and will get worse in the future due to using up the higher grade ore first, requiring more refining. There are serious studies calling nuclear power "not economically viable"
- Russia is a significant source for nuclear fuel, so exchanging gas with nuclear will still not change the supplier

I don't know of any German who actually is "pro coal". Most are "pro regenerative sources". Some smaller parties are actually pro nuclear, funnily enough the same ones that are also pro russia and deny Covid.
"Funny" side note: A coal plant creates more radioactive pollution (from radioactive traces in the coal) than a nuclear power plant in normal operation.

[Lord Shonus]

- The CO2 emission of nuclear power usually is severely underestimated, by an order of magnitude, by leaving out the costs for mining the ore, refining it, dismantling the power plant at the end of the cycle (with radioactive concrete), and the longterm storage of the spent fuel. Including all this using ore grades required to run nuclear for 90+ years, the CO2 costs are higher than for natural gas, which would make it only 15% or so cheaper than coal.

Total CO2 cost accounting is really easy to rig however you want it to, because the "hidden" costs vary massively. Most of the high-end estimates assume that everything involved in the chain is using the dirtiest inputs possible - unfiltered diesel equipment to mine the ore, coal power plants to refine it, old filthy ships and rail to transport it, etc. The problem with such analysis is that a cleaner electric supply can tank all those way, way down, both with direct power and by freeing up cleaner fuel for later in the chain. The same costs also tend to conviently glossed over or given very favorable assumptions for <preferred energy source>.

The worst figure I could find (in a German publication citing an extremely anti-nuclear Dutch group) for the total-cost CO2 emissions of a nuclear plant is 180 grams of CO2/kWh. The average CO2 cost of natural gas in that same study was 442. That's more than 50% cheaper, not higher, and roughly an fifth of what coal does without factoring in anything beyond the smokestack (US government figures put that at 1011 grams). Note that most of these figures were generated before research suggesting that natural gas plants are far more polluting than previously thought - it was believed that natural seepage of methane contributed a far greater share of that pollutant than is now known to be the case. That means NG is even worse compared to nuclear than previously believed.

Meanwhile, the waste problem is significantly skewed by a rather foolish decision by Carter to hobble US plants. US reactors only use a small portion of the fuel's total capability as an anti-proliferation mechanism. This creates much more waste than is ideal. European and Chinese designs tend to consume their fuel to a much greater degree, and thus produce much less waste. Because the waste is more highly radioactie, it also decays into harmlessness much faster than the generational fear of the relatively low-level US waste. And, of course, every nuclear reactor ever built has produced far less waste, and less toxic waste, in their lifetime than coal plants will produce this year.

The sole antinuclear argument that makes real sense is the lead time. And "it will take ten, twenty years before nuclear plants started today come online, so it is a waste of time" rings pretty damn hollow from the groups that were blocking plants on the same grounds ten or twenty years ago.

EDIT because I posted too soon

- Russia is a significant source for nuclear fuel, so exchanging gas with nuclear will still not change the supplier

This is an economic thing, not a resource allocation one. North America has massive deposits of uranium and thorium (which can be readily transmuted to uranium). It is minimally mined because Russian fuel is cheaper, but that can easily change.

[EuchreJack]

I found an article on this topic.
Basically, Canada can completely replace Russia.

[Ganondworf]

I found an article on this topic.
Basically, Canada can completely replace Russia.

Thank you, very interesting! I especially liked the closing remarks:

If the net effect of shifting away from Russian uranium and enrichment were to cause as much as a 50 percent increase in the cost of uranium and SWUs to US utilities, it would increase the retail cost of nuclear power by only 2 percent—much less than June’s year-over-year general inflation rates of about 9 percent in both the United States and the European Union.

The cost of ending dependence on Russia’s nuclear services pales in comparison to the costs Putin’s war has already inflicted on the US and EU economies.

[Strongpoint]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584054018145685504

They are becoming more and more open that their goal is a plain and simple genocide

Also, remember, that those people "adopted" many many thousands of Ukrainian children...

[Ganondworf]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584054018145685504

They are becoming more and more open that their goal is a plain and simple genocide

Also, remember, that those people "adopted" many many thousands of Ukrainian children...

That is so disgusting. I will never understand why some people lack basic empathy and decency. Can't they undertand how horrible it is what they are wishing on other human beings?

[hector13]

Therein lies the problem: you assume he thinks Ukrainians are human beings. It’s fairly typical of nationalists to think less (sometimes much less) of everybody else.