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Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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The article is badly researched.
The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.
I'd like to add, my view. I'm from Lower Saxony and in an area nearby they tried for years to establish a temporary storage for the high nuclear waste. I never trusted the notion that the temporary storage will be save, properly maintained and kept from leaking into the local water supply.
Add to that, that we have had very old reactors who were constantly extended rather than properly renewed. Further emphasising that they won't care proper for the waste products.
Then Fukushima happened, the movement for anti nuclear gained massive momentum. I assumed of course that the lack in energy will be compensated by building renewables and subsidising homeowners to build their own solar on their roofs. Why wouldn't we, we were already talking about increasing renewables to safe the climate.
The announcement came that atom is being phased out. Big hooray for everyone who had to live next to the old plants or in areas where end-storage 'solutions' were.
Aaaaaaaand they increased the god damn coal which is way worse and really no one wanted but the lobby for coal and fossile fuels.
Now lots of ppl. on the internet always advocate for nuclear, but never address the fears of the ppl. properly.
The thing is, having a high nuclear toxic waste storage in your local area is shite just as shite it is to have the damn ash piles from coal.
If nuclear really wants to make a proper comeback, in my opinion the first thing they need to solve is the waste. We have too much of it already and have solar, wind and water (tidal preferably over damns because those fuckers can break if not maintained proper) who do not create any nasty waste and by products.
I'm not especially anti-nuclear power overall, but temporary storage sounds like a terrible idea. Transporting nuclear waste twice means twice the possibility of something catastrophic happening.
You wildly overestimate the danger nuclear waste represents.
First, transportation is done in small amounts at a time, completely encased in concrete and steel, and is of no risk of exploding: the only danger would be spillovers, which would call for expensive cleaning operations.
Next, storage. The whole waste produced by 60 years of nuclear waste in France amounts to only a few swimming pools of dangerous material. If this material was actually fully useless, we could ditch it in geological layers underground where it would become soon unreachable and dispersed, posing no discernable danger for the upcoming few billion years.
Furthermore, the only reason we don't ditch this nuclear waste right now is that this material can still be useful for plenty of uses that are not yet economically viable, but could be in the long term, such as energy generation with low-yield reactors.
I don't know, it sounds like it's dangerous to me if it can explode sometimes...
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-mexico-nuclear-dump-20160819-snap-story.html
Note that they present the issue only as a financial problem rather than an actual threat to the environment or people.
Since your articles behind a paywall, I cannot read it. However, I can guarantee you as what you're describing was in a barrel. It was low level waste. So likely a mixture of propellants or other chemicals that had been exposed to a reactor environment and then disposed of in a sealed barrel. High-Level nuclear waste is solid metallic-like substances that are encased in glass, steel and concrete. There's nothing to explode.
Not paywalled for me, but here you go-
The information you provided was not sufficient so I googled
The suspect drums contain nitrates and cellulose, which are thought to have reacted to cause the explosion in February
It was low level waste mostly americanum dissolved into the mixture of nitrates and cellulose. The barrel did not explode as much as the lid popped off.
Waste from nuclear weapons is not the same as waste from commercial nuclear power plants.
WIPP is for low level transuranic waste from DOE projects, just FYI. Not super toxic stuff. They ship it in these super tough containers that they test by dropping on a spike and putting in a furnace. Wild to watch.