Plantagenet wrote:I don't have time to check all of these claims, but some of your data is clearly out-of-date and wrong. For instance, Spain isn't "phasing out nukes"---Spain recently voted to issue licenses to extend the life of all their operating reactors.
Afaik Spain has a law that forbids building new reactors. Maybe that's why they have been rated as phase out?
Maybe it's an error.
In Germany we change the law every few months...
Other countries you mention are EU countries whose credibility isn't the best.
???
These same EU countries also promised to cut their CO2 emissions, something that will be impossible to do if they shut down zero-emission nukes and replace them with coal-fired power plants as Germany is doing.
So far our emissions are lower than in 1990 when more nukes have been operating.
It certainly is possible a few EU countries will phase out nuclear power 2030....
It has been possible to shut down all nuclear reactors in Japan for some time. It has been possible to shut down 9 nukes in Germany from one week to the next and having record electricity export rates just one year later..
but it is also possible that as the climate changes and they flip back to wanting to cut CO2 emission
Climate change ???
You mean that thing where the EU at least tried to do something for two decades with the US and China heavily oposing any laws to do anything?
The world now agrees that we do not care about climate change anymore and this includes Europe. The oil and coal lobbyists have already won...
and as peak oil bites harder and energy becomes even more expensive they will change their minds yet again.
peak oil?
We have so much fossil fuel resources to heat up our planet to make parts of it unliveable. The peak oil problem does not exist.
Expensive energy?
Our energy already is expensive and so what, it is not significant...
You currently enjoy cheap natural gas prices and what do you gain?
The US and China will burn any fossil fuels they can get their hands on, so I see very little reason why we should leave ours in the ground.
The only way, climate change could be avoided would be international negotiations on which fossil fuels we are allowed to burn and which have to stay in the ground.
Today this sees to be completely unrealistic.
Of course there is a threat of short term shortages from oil or other resources, but I doubt that it will have a significant impact on our live.
I don't care either. But the facts don't change depending on whether or not you care about them...and its a fact that China and Russia and other countries are still building lots of new nuclear power plants.
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So far it is fact that China's nuclear power addition during the last years is almost negligible. Maybe they will expand their nuclear fleet significantly, maybe not. Time will tell.
The same is true for Russia. They "build" dozens of new reactors, but most of those reactors are in "building" status since 30 years.
I'm not anti nuclear. I prefer if China builds new nukes vs. new coal power plants.
The question of this thread was not about climate change or the Euro or whatever direction you want to direct it, the question was, if nukes are are threat during/after a disaster and of course they are.
People dreaming about some mediaeval post peak oil apocalypse with fantasies of framing their own land are fooling themselves. They will not enter that world without docends of burning nuclear facilities and the treat of significant radioactive contamination.
We already had several examples what happens if nuclear reactors or nuclear waste gets out of control...
So far we have to live with this threat. This is not a necessity, many countries so far avoided that threat and live very happily without any nuclear reactors...