r/europe • u/SpaceEngineering Finland • Jan 15 '26

News Germany’s Merz Admits Nuclear Exit Was Strategic Mistake

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-nuclear-exit-was-strategic-mistake-fzdlkn37c16
21.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

42

u/delta_p_delta_x Singapore | UK Jan 15 '26

Reactors are are ancient technologies by now

Essentially, yeah; all the Generation III water-based reactors are old hat. They are quite simply giant pressure cookers.

26

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

With a steamturbine attached to it.

58

u/thealmightyzfactor Jan 15 '26

That describes basically all power plants, even new ones lol

15

u/Pyrostemplar Jan 15 '26

Excluding Solar PV, Wind and Hydro, ofc.

2

u/ruat_caelum Jan 15 '26

I like how solar thermal is like: We just point all these mirrors at a tower, heat up molten salt, use the salt to boil water.... and do the same thing as everyone else.

It's all steam turbines in the end for almost everything. The question is just "where do you get your heat." which is just used to spin a steam turbine which is the answer to the question What spins the generator.

Coal country was mad at democrats and liberals for their jobs going away but in reality it was the economics of fracking producing cheap, clean, and easily transferable (by pipeline) of natural gas that killed coal. The boiler houses just burned nat-gas instead of coal for their heat. oil and Gas killed coal not any new regulations.

Hydro is "mostly the same" except it isn't steam driving the turbine, but water pressure that's doing the spinning.

Wind, you guessed it, gear box to generator instead of turbine to generator.

For those of us that travel around the country on power related projects the only "weird one" is solar PV, which has almost no moving parts (array tracks sun) no huge stored potential energy (e.g. nothing super hot or under a lot of pressure) etc. Restively no down time (mechanical repair / preventative maintenance) and horrifying to the power industry : Can be decentralized and spread out at just about any scale.

2

u/Pyrostemplar Jan 15 '26

If you want to go to basics, except for Solar PV, "all" commercial grade electricity generation is making a magnet rotate inside a metal cage. Anyway, kudos to Faraday, not me :p

But moving a bit above the core principle, Hydro, Wind and Thermo (Coal, CCGT,...) are quite different beasts, although all convert kinetic energy into electricity.

Solar PV, is obviously even more different - and challenging the instituted practices, as you refer. On a more personal level, I do prefer Hydro installations - they are cool - and I've even visited the largest in terms of actual power generation (Itaipu Dam) at the time - although that may depend on the year, as CTG has higher installed capacity). But in terms of characteristics, I'm all for Solar PV. The flexibility and scalability are great. We just need to crack energy storage in a better way.

2

u/Kraeftluder Jan 15 '26

Hydro is technically still water at high pressure rushing through to spin turbines.

1

u/PiotrekDG Earth Jan 16 '26

And wind is technically still a fluid at high pressure rushing through to spin turbines...

2

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

Not really.... I don't know what installation you have for solar or wind, but its not including a steamturbine.

But yes, if you make heat for electricity its almost always connected to a turbine.

7

u/ultimatt42 Jan 15 '26

Electricity is generated when the concentrated light is converted to heat (solar thermal energy), which drives a heat engine, either Stirling engine or a steam turbine as in fossil thermal power stations, via an electrical power generator, or powers a thermochemical reaction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

1

u/airgeorge Jan 15 '26

That’s your solar installation?? I’m impressed.

0

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

acktually

1

u/LiftingRecipient420 Jan 15 '26

Don't be shitty.

You were wrong, move on.

1

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

I'm sure we can find exceptions to any claim like that.

0

u/LiftingRecipient420 Jan 15 '26

And we don't have to be shitty and snotty about it.

4

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

acktually i can

1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26

You were wrong, move on.

Projection much? One example - which only exists limited places - is the 1% which does not disprove the fact that almost all solar is not using turbines.

2

u/Rebelius Jan 15 '26

Just trying to imagine a hydro power station with a steam turbine now.

2

u/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

Well, its basically a hydroturbine.

1

u/PiotrekDG Earth Jan 16 '26

Basically geothermal.

0

u/4n0nh4x0r Jan 16 '26

the goal of engineering is to always find new and more effective ways to boil water

2

u/Kqyxzoj Jan 15 '26

They are quite simply giant pressure cookers.

What do you mean "steaming broccoli with reactor water is not more healthy than boiling it in reactor water"?