German Politics Thread

[MacAnDàil]

1° Life on a liveable planet is essential to the greater good.

A common thread with pet issues is that the people who believe in them think that their issue is the most important issue, and furthermore that it is most important now.

Globally, if we don't defeat fascism we will not have a liveable planet or economic democracy one way or another, so those who think that achieving Green or socialist goals now rather than uniting to defeat fascism are misguided, because if the fascists win those goals won't be achieved anyways.

Life is inherently first thing, it's a prerequisite for anything else. Defeating fascism is of course important, as well as any other awful ideology such as might pop up later in history. Several goals may converge or be implemented at once.

Still, when it comes to priorities, would it not have made sense for the first priority be to phase out coal, and as coal goes brown coal first, as coal and especially brown coal causes the most harm? And after phasing out coal, phasing out burning fuels derived from oil and natural gas next, as those still contribute to global warming. It only makes sense to phase out nuclear once burning fossil fuels has been phased out as far as possible.

Sure, but it certainly didn't happen the way many claim it did i.e. there was no supposed increase in coal.

[Ares Land]

Several things come to mind. First of all, the European Greens are very different from the American Green Party. I don't think the European Green are happy with Jill Stein right now.
There are a number of issues with the Greens here; though I can't say there are any really convincing left-wing parties in Europe right now, and by that (low) standard, they're doing better than most.
One are where the European Green parties have a spotless record is in fighting the far right.

The other thing is that Germans, generally, are not terribly convinced by nuclear power. It's fashionable to blame them for their irrationality.
A reminder, though. Germany is well within the fallout radius of Ukrainian power plants; Chernobyl blew out. Zaporizhzhia is controlled by Russian troops holding it as a not very subtle threat.

I personally believe there's a good case to be made for nuclear power; but the other side has rational arguments too. The current fad for things nuclear, and the idea that there's no alternative but nuclear, strikes me as dangerous.
I'm not comfortable with the complete rejection of renewables. I am more than a little scared by the ideas of nuclear-powered datacenters, or that new idea of nuclear batteries I've been hearing about.

[Raphael]

Several things come to mind. First of all, the European Greens are very different from the American Green Party. I don't think the European Green are happy with Jill Stein right now.

I'm not even sure it makes all that much sense to speak of "the European Greens". Some of the other local Green Parties seem rather more left-wing than the German Greens.

One problem with the German Greens is that they are explicitly, or at least almost explicitly, targeting their message at people who in some ways have very different lifestyles than most people, with the result that most people aren't the slightest bit interested in voting for them. That's a perennial problem of many left-wing movements, though. (For instance, I myself sometimes joke that I vote for the Social Democrats because, with my general political outlook being what it is, the only real options for me are the Social Democrats and the Greens, and I enjoy unhealthy food too much to vote for the Greens.)

[WeepingElf]

I have been a regular voter of the Greens for about 30 years now, and a member for about 4 years. Not because I agree 100% with what they do, but because they are the party who IMHO have the best ideas how to govern the country, and am in accord with about 80 to 90% of their platform, with the Social Democrats and The Left a bit behind (I used to have trouble with The Left because of old communist functionaries and populists like Wagenknecht in the party, but the former are dying away and the latter have left the party recently).

I don't know much about the US Greens, but they seem to me to be like what was called "Fundis" (short for Fundamentalisten) in Germany, i.e. radicals who believe that in order to save the planet, you need a combination of socialism and deindustrialization, and refuse to cooperate with mainstream center-leftists. In Germany, most Fundis left the Greens in the late 1980s, and the remaining ones in the late 1990s; some joined the PDS (now The Left) in the 1990s, and now have ended up in Wagenknecht's troupe.

[Travis B.]

Several things come to mind. First of all, the European Greens are very different from the American Green Party. I don't think the European Green are happy with Jill Stein right now.
There are a number of issues with the Greens here; though I can't say there are any really convincing left-wing parties in Europe right now, and by that (low) standard, they're doing better than most.
One are where the European Green parties have a spotless record is in fighting the far right.

My objections to European Green parties are very different from those to the American Green Party. My opposition to the proposed policies of European Green parties is primarily based on their positions w.r.t. nuclear power rather than anything about fascism (which I agree they have been steadfastly against). My opposition to the American Green Party is primarily based on American Greens being an awful bunch of Fundamentalisten willing to do things like throw elections and like; also, the whole general American Green worldview is not attractive to me one bit, but that is another story (I too probably eat too much unhealthy non-organic food to make those types happy).

The other thing is that Germans, generally, are not terribly convinced by nuclear power. It's fashionable to blame them for their irrationality.
A reminder, though. Germany is well within the fallout radius of Ukrainian power plants; Chernobyl blew out. Zaporizhzhia is controlled by Russian troops holding it as a not very subtle threat.

From what I was reading German opposition to nuclear power significantly predated Chernobyl, though. And all in all, far more people die from pollution and mining accidents from coal and especially brown coal than from nuclear even when one takes Chernobyl and Fukushima into account.

I personally believe there's a good case to be made for nuclear power; but the other side has rational arguments too. The current fad for things nuclear, and the idea that there's no alternative but nuclear, strikes me as dangerous.
I'm not comfortable with the complete rejection of renewables. I am more than a little scared by the ideas of nuclear-powered datacenters, or that new idea of nuclear batteries I've been hearing about.

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or. Rather, nuclear power is a replacement for the likes of coal, while things such as solar and wind power are nice-to-haves for places with sufficient sun (but remember that even in the desert the sun doesn't shine at night) or wind (but even in windy places the wind does not always blow consistently) but are not complete solutions unto themselves. And then there is hydroelectric power... even assuming dams that never, ever collapse hydroelectric power simply causes too much damage to the ecosystem (and often displaces many people!) to be considered as an option.

[WeepingElf]

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or.

No, it is an either/or. Nuclear power plants cannot step in flexibly when the Sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing; they have power-up times in the order of days. What they can is to flood the grid with large, constant amounts of power, which means that renewables have to be taken from the grid when the nuclear plants fulfill the demand, which makes them uneconomical.

Also, there are the following points to consider:

1. Nuclear fuels are a non-renewable resource; they will run out within this century.
2. Nuclear wastes are extremely toxic, not usable for anything and hard to dispose of safely.
3. Nuclear power plants can go wrong very badly, as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown; they are the single most hazardous non-military technology in existence. This includes vulnerability to military or terrorist attacks.
4. Any country that has the infrastructure necessary to operate nuclear power plants automatically has the means to build nuclear warheads. This is why you won't want to have nuclear power plants in countries like Iran, North Korea or Zimbabwe.

[Travis B.]

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or.

No, it is an either/or. Nuclear power plants cannot step in flexibly when the Sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing; they have power-up times in the order of days.

Tis true -- usually the flexible power source to handle cases where the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing is gas power.

What they can is to flood the grid with large, constant amounts of power, which means that renewables have to be taken from the grid when the nuclear plants fulfill the demand, which makes them uneconomical.

You could say the same about coal.

Also, there are the following points to consider:

1. Nuclear fuels are a non-renewable resource; they will run out within this century.

This is in part due to the focus on uranium 235-based fuel cycles.

2. Nuclear wastes are extremely toxic, not usable for anything and hard to dispose of safely.

They are also small and self-contained unlike coal ash or CO2, and are not blasted into the atmosphere in massive quantities unlike CO2.

3. Nuclear power plants can go wrong very badly, as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown; they are the single most hazardous non-military technology in existence. This includes vulnerability to military or terrorist attacks.

According to Human Rights Watch from a report in 1995, the death toll from the Banqiao dam failure was about 230,000. This well exceeds the total death tolls from Chernobyl and Fukushima.

4. Any country that has the infrastructure necessary to operate nuclear power plants automatically has the means to build nuclear warheads. This is why you won't want to have nuclear power plants in countries like Iran, North Korea or Zimbabwe.

Is this true of a thorium-based fuel cycle?

[Ares Land]

I'm not even sure it makes all that much sense to speak of "the European Greens". Some of the other local Green Parties seem rather more left-wing than the German Greens.

Oh, do they? The French and German Greens seem rather close to each other; I guess I don't notice the Greens in other countries much

One problem with the German Greens is that they are explicitly, or at least almost explicitly, targeting their message at people who in some ways have very different lifestyles than most people, with the result that most people aren't the slightest bit interested in voting for them. That's a perennial problem of many left-wing movements, though.

Getting people to vote for any left-wing party is difficult this day, especially in places where the Greens struggle. Here, the Green get good results in urban area -- they don't do as well in rural areas (not all rural areas, but most) but these are places were people vote for the far-right anyway; and getting folks interested in anything else is difficult.

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or.

If we were talking pure physics and engineering, I'd agree. But there's no such thing, this is a political issue.
And the idea I definitely get is that renewables are taken as a dead end... even though renewable energy has never been cheaper, and much progress was made in terms of energy storage.

Other quibbles I'd add: I don't think the Greens are happy about huge dams either.
Thorium is interesting; I don't know if claims that the thorium cycle is less dangerous are valid or not. I'm not sure switching to thorium reactors is realistic. Rebuilding the entire nuclear industry seems unrealistic.
Then again, there's all that talk about nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, so who knows?

The Green view, and I think it's a valid concern, is that the only clean energy is the energy you don't consume; and that not using as much energy in the first place is the way to go. (That goes for developped countries, of course.)

I think the dream of 'energy too cheap to meter' is a dangerous one. There's the Jevons paradox for one thing. Cheap energy is a dangerous thing, because it drives up demand.
You can't produce petawatts without huge risks and/or environmental damage; but that's unfortunately where we're headed.

Personally, I can accept nuclear power as a means to ease the energy transition; a lesser evil while we improve renewables and overall find ways to live with somewhat more reasonable energy requirements.
However, that's not what's on the table. What's on the table is enormous datacenters powered by small modular reactors, or nuclear batteries, and that will be ultimately disastrous.

[WeepingElf]

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or.

No, it is an either/or. Nuclear power plants cannot step in flexibly when the Sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing; they have power-up times in the order of days.

Tis true -- usually the flexible power source to handle cases where the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing is gas power.

Yes, and it needs to be replaced - but the point is that nuclear power can't play that role. Centralized, inflexible power plants of any kind don't combine well with decentralized renewable power. A gas power plant can be run on biogas (methane from fermentation of organic matter, ideally organic wastes) - it is chemically the same thing; and it can be converted to burning hydrogen (which is of course not a primary energy source but a way to store excess power). Then, there are other kinds of power storage currently in development.

What they can is to flood the grid with large, constant amounts of power, which means that renewables have to be taken from the grid when the nuclear plants fulfill the demand, which makes them uneconomical.

You could say the same about coal.

Sure. It is true about coal, but then you are battering an open door here - nobody in the German Greens wants to replace nuclear power with coal! That may be true of the American Greens (though I don't know whether it is actually the case), but not at all of the German Greens.

Also, there are the following points to consider:

1. Nuclear fuels are a non-renewable resource; they will run out within this century.

This is in part due to the focus on uranium 235-based fuel cycles.

Thorium would last longer, sure, but it would also be non-renewable. And please don't say "fuel cycle" - there is no cycle, only a chain that begins with an expletable resource and ends with highly problematic wastes.

2. Nuclear wastes are extremely toxic, not usable for anything and hard to dispose of safely.

They are also small and self-contained unlike coal ash or CO2, and are not blasted into the atmosphere in massive quantities unlike CO2.

As long as everybody heeds the safety measures and no accidents happen. Which is not true in the real world. A cask damaged by an accident will spill its nasty content. Those things are quite tough, sure, but nothing is indestructible. And guess what terrorists may do with it.

3. Nuclear power plants can go wrong very badly, as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown; they are the single most hazardous non-military technology in existence. This includes vulnerability to military or terrorist attacks.

According to Human Rights Watch from a report in 1995, the death toll from the Banqiao dam failure was about 230,000. This well exceeds the total death tolls from Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Again, you are battering an open door - the Greens don't want huge dams precisely because they may fail catastrophically. And a dam failure may spill a lot of mud and water and kill many people, but it won't spill radioactive wastes. It surely makes a difference whether you can clear up and rebuild after the incident or you get a forbidden area for many decades, if not centuries.

4. Any country that has the infrastructure necessary to operate nuclear power plants automatically has the means to build nuclear warheads. This is why you won't want to have nuclear power plants in countries like Iran, North Korea or Zimbabwe.

Is this true of a thorium-based fuel cycle?

I have to admit that I don't know, but in principle, any fissile matter could be used to build a nuclear bomb, I think. And whatever fissile matter you are using, the radioactive wastes can always be used to build a "dirty bomb", i.e. a conventional bomb with a radioactive mantle that is spilled about when the bomb detonates, which may be what terrorists may seek after.

[Travis B.]

One problem with the German Greens is that they are explicitly, or at least almost explicitly, targeting their message at people who in some ways have very different lifestyles than most people, with the result that most people aren't the slightest bit interested in voting for them. That's a perennial problem of many left-wing movements, though.

Getting people to vote for any left-wing party is difficult this day, especially in places where the Greens struggle. Here, the Green get good results in urban area -- they don't do as well in rural areas (not all rural areas, but most) but these are places were people vote for the far-right anyway; and getting folks interested in anything else is difficult.

I would say that targeting people with a 'Green' lifestyle is inherently self-limiting. Any political movement that seeks to be successful needs to target a broad base, so one that specifically tries to target a specific subset of the population based on their lifestyle is dooming themselves to at most being a more minor member of coalition governments, and then only in places where coalition governments are a thing.

To me nuclear power versus renewables are not an either/or.

If we were talking pure physics and engineering, I'd agree. But there's no such thing, this is a political issue.
And the idea I definitely get is that renewables are taken as a dead end... even though renewable energy has never been cheaper, and much progress was made in terms of energy storage.

I do not personally agree with the assessment of that renewables are a dead end myself. I just recognize that like other sources of power they have their limitations, such that an 'all renewable' scheme is likely not entirely realistic outside of either very sunny or very windy places (ignoring schemes such as relying on burning biomass which have their own problems) just like how an 'all nuclear' scheme is also not realistic (because as mentioned nuclear power cannot react quickly to changes in load).

Other quibbles I'd add: I don't think the Greens are happy about huge dams either.
Thorium is interesting; I don't know if claims that the thorium cycle is less dangerous are valid or not. I'm not sure switching to thorium reactors is realistic. Rebuilding the entire nuclear industry seems unrealistic.

The main advantages of the thorium fuel cycle is that thorium is three times as common as uranium, its most common isotope, ²³²Th, is fertile (whereas ²³⁵U is only a small proportion of natural uranium), and the thorium fuel cycle is inherently resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation. Therefore, while non-renewable per se, thorium allows far more feasible long-term use of nuclear power while also not raising the risk of the spread of nuclear weapons.

Then again, there's all that talk about nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, so who knows?

The Green view, and I think it's a valid concern, is that the only clean energy is the energy you don't consume; and that not using as much energy in the first place is the way to go. (That goes for developped countries, of course.)

The problems with this point of view, though, are akin to all the problems with those who favor 'degrowth'.

I think the dream of 'energy too cheap to meter' is a dangerous one. There's the Jevons paradox for one thing. Cheap energy is a dangerous thing, because it drives up demand.
You can't produce petawatts without huge risks and/or environmental damage; but that's unfortunately where we're headed.

'Energy to cheap to meter' runs into problems other than just how to produce it, because if the infrastructure does not exist to transfer the power, even if you somehow came across a way to safely produce infinite power one would still have bottlenecks.

About 'huge risks', though, reactor designs such as pebble-bed reactors provide means of effectively producing nuclear power more safely than traditional designs. (E.g. pebble-bed reactors can cool passively without melting down even in the case of reactor failures.)

Personally, I can accept nuclear power as a means to ease the energy transition; a lesser evil while we improve renewables and overall find ways to live with somewhat more reasonable energy requirements.
However, that's not what's on the table. What's on the table is enormous datacenters powered by small modular reactors, or nuclear batteries, and that will be ultimately disastrous.

Wouldn't it be fair to say that that is more an argument against enormous datacenters, which in many cases today are powered by other sources of cheap energy such as hydroelectric power, than an argument against nuclear power per se?

[Travis B.]

What they can is to flood the grid with large, constant amounts of power, which means that renewables have to be taken from the grid when the nuclear plants fulfill the demand, which makes them uneconomical.

You could say the same about coal.

Sure. It is true about coal, but then you are battering an open door here - nobody in the German Greens wants to replace nuclear power with coal! That may be true of the American Greens (though I don't know whether it is actually the case), but not at all of the German Greens.

It is not a matter of what they want -- it is a matter of the practical consequences of the policies that they push. Pushing phasing out nuclear before pushing phasing out fossil fuels will naturally result in it taking longer for fossil fuels to be phased out, because they will be needed in the place of nuclear.

Also, there are the following points to consider:

1. Nuclear fuels are a non-renewable resource; they will run out within this century.

This is in part due to the focus on uranium 235-based fuel cycles.

Thorium would last longer, sure, but it would also be non-renewable. And please don't say "fuel cycle" - there is no cycle, only a chain that begins with an expletable resource and ends with highly problematic wastes.

Fossil fuels are also non-renewable, and any fossil fuels that are burnt are fossil fuels that cannot be used for other productive purposes, such as making plastics.

As for the term fuel cycle, that is the standard term, not my term, regardless of what you may think of it.

2. Nuclear wastes are extremely toxic, not usable for anything and hard to dispose of safely.

They are also small and self-contained unlike coal ash or CO2, and are not blasted into the atmosphere in massive quantities unlike CO2.

As long as everybody heeds the safety measures and no accidents happen. Which is not true in the real world. A cask damaged by an accident will spill its nasty content. Those things are quite tough, sure, but nothing is indestructible. And guess what terrorists may do with it.

By this count we shouldn't have biomedical research involving pathogens, because who knows what may happen if terrorists get their hands on pathogens from labs?

3. Nuclear power plants can go wrong very badly, as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown; they are the single most hazardous non-military technology in existence. This includes vulnerability to military or terrorist attacks.

According to Human Rights Watch from a report in 1995, the death toll from the Banqiao dam failure was about 230,000. This well exceeds the total death tolls from Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Again, you are battering an open door - the Greens don't want huge dams precisely because they may fail catastrophically. And a dam failure may spill a lot of mud and water and kill many people, but it won't spill radioactive wastes. It surely makes a difference whether you can clear up and rebuild after the incident or you get a forbidden area for many decades, if not centuries.

I just bring up hydroelectric power to emphasize that renewable does not automatically mean good.

4. Any country that has the infrastructure necessary to operate nuclear power plants automatically has the means to build nuclear warheads. This is why you won't want to have nuclear power plants in countries like Iran, North Korea or Zimbabwe.

Is this true of a thorium-based fuel cycle?

I have to admit that I don't know, but in principle, any fissile matter could be used to build a nuclear bomb, I think. And whatever fissile matter you are using, the radioactive wastes can always be used to build a "dirty bomb", i.e. a conventional bomb with a radioactive mantle that is spilled about when the bomb detonates, which may be what terrorists may seek after.

I did some reading, and yes, thorium-based fuel cycles cannot be practically used to construct nuclear weapons.

About "dirty bombs", as I mentioned above, by that logic we shouldn't have biomedical research involving pathogens either.

[WeepingElf]

OK, we are dealing with a chain troll of the nuclear power mafia here. I won't feed them any further. But let me state that it is misleading to count tons of waste products of different energy sources. You just can't compare fission products and CO₂. A gram of the former is much worse than a tonne of the latter - and while we know how to get rid of the latter and even how to put it to good uses (though neither is economically very attractive right now), we don't know either for the former.

That said, let's get back to German politics.

[Travis B.]

troll of the nuclear power mafia

I am a "troll of the nuclear power mafia" because I believe that our highest priority now should be phasing out burning fossil fuels, and as for phasing out fossil fuels our highest priority should be phasing out burning coal?

[WeepingElf]

troll of the nuclear power mafia

I am a "troll of the nuclear power mafia" because I believe that our highest priority now should be phasing out burning fossil fuels, and as for phasing out fossil fuels our highest priority should be phasing out burning coal?

Sure, our highest priority should be phasing out burning fossil fuels, especially coal. But why choose a technology that throws up different problems of similar magnitude when there are ample technologies that avoid such problems - and are even cheaper? And as I said, it is an either/or question, because the two options are not compatible with each other - and only one of them is really sustainable. But I fear I won't convince you, so we should probably better stop here and agree to disagree. The latter move did me a good service with Octaviano; it will probably do me a good service with you.

[Travis B.]

troll of the nuclear power mafia

I am a "troll of the nuclear power mafia" because I believe that our highest priority now should be phasing out burning fossil fuels, and as for phasing out fossil fuels our highest priority should be phasing out burning coal?

Sure, our highest priority should be phasing out burning fossil fuels, especially coal. But why choose a technology that throws up different problems of similar magnitude when there are ample technologies that avoid such problems - and are even cheaper? And as I said, it is an either/or question, because the two options are not compatible with each other - and only one of them is really sustainable. But I fear I won't convince you, so we should probably better stop here and agree to disagree. The latter move did me a good service with Octaviano; it will probably do me a good service with you.

I think where we disagree is really the 'either/or' question -- I personally am all for ramping up solar and wind power -- I just don't think that nuclear is incompatible with that, or that we must necessarily get rid of nuclear power first (even though I am not against getting rid of nuclear power either, once we have dispensed with coal and once solar and wind, with a contribution from burning methane from biomass to replace burning natural gas for handling dynamic changes in power load, can take over for it).

[Raphael]

Come on, WeepingElf - I'm probably somewhat closer to your position than to that of Travis, but, well, we've both known Travis for a while. You know that he's been on the ZBB for a long time, and you know that the vast majority of his posts here have nothing to do with nuclear power. And yet, here you are, talking about him as if he's just joined the ZBB now, and is mainly arguing for nuclear power. You're smarter than that.

[WeepingElf]

Come on, WeepingElf - I'm probably somewhat closer to your position than to that of Travis, but, well, we've both known Travis for a while. You know that he's been on the ZBB for a long time, and you know that the vast majority of his posts here have nothing to do with nuclear power. And yet, here you are, talking about him as if he's just joined the ZBB now, and is mainly arguing for nuclear power. You're smarter than that.

Sure. I was upset, sorry. He is overall a rather reasonable fellow otherwise. I hereby apologize for calling him a "chain troll", and drawing a parallel to Talskubilos.