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I mean the only argument you need is comparing the emissions per capita of Germany to France or Sweden.
Why not Poland, Netherlands, or Belgium?
Obviously, if you compare countries without heavy industry to countries with heavy industry and ignore all context such as Germany also providing electricity to France when their reactors need to shut down again, claims are easy to make. Those claims don’t hold any water but people like the French can pat themselves on the back for successfully chasing away much heavy industry to China and Poland and let other countries count towards rising emissions because French reactors can’t run in hot summers.
I did compare countries with heavy industry. And with a lot of nuclear + renewables in their energy mix specifically, that’s the argument. Could have included Spain too.
Why not Poland, Netherlands, or Belgium?
Go right ahead and compare them too. What do they have in common? Still burning a lot of fossils maybe?
Germany has 49% renewable energy, France 20%. Nuclear is not renewable and even worse for the environment than CO2. Germany still needs to burn fossil fuels when it needs to fill in all the time for France’s shut-down reactors.
I specified per capita. You don’t like it, you can look at carbon intensity instead. Whatever way you want to spin it, Germany is still doing much worse at decarbonisation than its neighbours using nuclear power.
Nuclear is even worse for the environment than CO2
Wow. Demonstrably false. You’re either mad or you’ve fallen for the decades of fearmongering from the oil megacorps.
Nuclear plants emit only water vapor, waste is contained and isolated. Unlike fossil fuel waste which goes directly into the atmosphere and kills millions of people a year. While being directly responsible for bringing us to the brink of climate catastrophe, putting billions more at risk. You need to get some perspective.
Amazing. “Demonstrably”, huh? So where is it? Considering that you refused all the time to actually back up your claims with citations, unlike me, I refuse to continuing engaging with you. Edit all your posts to include evidence and you can be taken seriously. Until then: Ba-bye.
Where did I refuse? The whole argument is comparing Germany’s emissions to countries with nuclear- and renewable-based grids and you completely sidestepped it with some handwaving about industry. You provided no claim for nuclear being worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Coal literally emits more radioactive waste than nuclear, straight into the environment. Regardless, I’ll indulge you:
The whole argument is comparing Germany’s emissions to countries with nuclear- and renewable-based grids and you completely sidestepped it
OK, continue to not acknowledge the fact that Germany needed to increase fossil fuel burning because your safe darling French nuclear reactors have to be shut down all the time in hot summers. You’re so full of lies. Handpicking data points, usually without even backing them up, and then spin up a tale of how there is one singular evil in Europe now nuclear is so eco friendly.
What cherry picking? Carbon intensity takes that into account, it’s normalised data. And the environmental impact includes Fukushima and Chernobyl. It is the most generalised data possible, unlike yours.
But if you do want to cherry pick Fukushima and Chernobyl, which of course are the only things you can cherry pick, since they are very literally the only disasters in 80 years of nuclear power with environmental impact, you should compare them to disasters caused by fossil fuel. If you don’t want to be accused of being biased, that is. The Exxon Valdez alone devastated sea life and ecosystems in an area of 2000 km of coastline (20x times larger than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined!). But then there’s also the Deepwater Horizon spill, and dozens of others more. And that’s just oil spills. Oil, coal and natural gas have their fair share of disasters too. And that’s without counting climate change exacerbated wildfires, hurricanes, and other “natural” disasters. Fossil fuels are in a whole nother level of environmental destruction compared to the other energy sources.
Why not Poland, Netherlands, or Belgium?
Obviously, if you compare countries without heavy industry to countries with heavy industry and ignore all context such as Germany also providing electricity to France when their reactors need to shut down again, claims are easy to make. Those claims don’t hold any water but people like the French can pat themselves on the back for successfully chasing away much heavy industry to China and Poland and let other countries count towards rising emissions because French reactors can’t run in hot summers.
I did compare countries with heavy industry. And with a lot of nuclear + renewables in their energy mix specifically, that’s the argument. Could have included Spain too.
Go right ahead and compare them too. What do they have in common? Still burning a lot of fossils maybe?
Sure, buddy:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ranking/manufacturing-output
https://kafkadesk.org/2019/12/02/central-european-countries-among-most-industrialized-economies-in-the-eu/
Germany has 49% renewable energy, France 20%. Nuclear is not renewable and even worse for the environment than CO2. Germany still needs to burn fossil fuels when it needs to fill in all the time for France’s shut-down reactors.
Failing to keep production domestic and then relying on imports via cargo from other countries is not good for the environment: https://www.worldstopexports.com/report-card-for-trade-surpluses-and-deficits-by-country/
I specified per capita. You don’t like it, you can look at carbon intensity instead. Whatever way you want to spin it, Germany is still doing much worse at decarbonisation than its neighbours using nuclear power.
Wow. Demonstrably false. You’re either mad or you’ve fallen for the decades of fearmongering from the oil megacorps.
Nuclear plants emit only water vapor, waste is contained and isolated. Unlike fossil fuel waste which goes directly into the atmosphere and kills millions of people a year. While being directly responsible for bringing us to the brink of climate catastrophe, putting billions more at risk. You need to get some perspective.
Amazing. “Demonstrably”, huh? So where is it? Considering that you refused all the time to actually back up your claims with citations, unlike me, I refuse to continuing engaging with you. Edit all your posts to include evidence and you can be taken seriously. Until then: Ba-bye.
Where did I refuse? The whole argument is comparing Germany’s emissions to countries with nuclear- and renewable-based grids and you completely sidestepped it with some handwaving about industry. You provided no claim for nuclear being worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Coal literally emits more radioactive waste than nuclear, straight into the environment. Regardless, I’ll indulge you:
Carbon intensity of European countries:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261921012149#s0085
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?time=latest®ion=Europe
Safety of energy sources (and nuclear specifically in second source):
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://web.archive.org/web/20130404145453/http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html
https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/technology-articles/sustainability/renewable-energy/safest-forms-of-energy-05022022/
OK, continue to not acknowledge the fact that Germany needed to increase fossil fuel burning because your safe darling French nuclear reactors have to be shut down all the time in hot summers. You’re so full of lies. Handpicking data points, usually without even backing them up, and then spin up a tale of how there is one singular evil in Europe now nuclear is so eco friendly.
Nuclear waste is safe, got it. No problems at all storing it for the next 100,000,000 years. Just pour it onto a football field and be done. Perhaps volunteer your backyard for that (bet you won’t!). Soil didn’t need to get removed from sites Chernobyl because it’s so insanely dangerous. No, just fake news. Nuclear is safe. The entire ecosystem in Chernobyl and Fukushima wasn’t harmed for generations, because when we look at the data and see that Chernobyl workers wore nuclear hazard suits and therefore relatively few died proves how “demonstrably false” reports like https://theconversation.com/at-chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife-57030 and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/ are.
What cherry picking? Carbon intensity takes that into account, it’s normalised data. And the environmental impact includes Fukushima and Chernobyl. It is the most generalised data possible, unlike yours.
But if you do want to cherry pick Fukushima and Chernobyl, which of course are the only things you can cherry pick, since they are very literally the only disasters in 80 years of nuclear power with environmental impact, you should compare them to disasters caused by fossil fuel. If you don’t want to be accused of being biased, that is. The Exxon Valdez alone devastated sea life and ecosystems in an area of 2000 km of coastline (20x times larger than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined!). But then there’s also the Deepwater Horizon spill, and dozens of others more. And that’s just oil spills. Oil, coal and natural gas have their fair share of disasters too. And that’s without counting climate change exacerbated wildfires, hurricanes, and other “natural” disasters. Fossil fuels are in a whole nother level of environmental destruction compared to the other energy sources.
And I would have absolutely zero qualms about storing HLW casks in my backyard, so long as I was paid for having less space to grow my peppers and tomatoes. Kyle Hill has an easily digestible video about this, if you’re interested.