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> Perhaps they're more common in the richer parts of the country where a profit can be more readily turned, but not up here.

These cost about 300-400 euros in local Aldi or Lidl (yes they sell them occasionally) with inverter, ready to plug-in (800W limit). At these prices they're accessible to everyone


> At these prices they're accessible to everyone

It's inaccurate to assume that "300-400" is readily within anyone's reach. 300-400 is virtually a king's ransom for some of us.


It sounds like German citizens are poorer than Pakistani and sub-saharan citizens. Sorry to hear the fall, Germany used to have first world per capita income.

How much is your rent?

I love how these articles pop up only after we exited couple of months long depressing, cloudy, rainy and snowy season into full blast sunshine for last two weeks or so.

Seasons do change, yes.

Correct, and the author of that piece should be aware of that fact

Every spring the numbers go up compared to the year before. That's interesting, no?

It's not interesting, it's expected.

> Well, sure is good the environmentalists shut down the German nuclear plants!

Shutting down the nukes is inversely proportional to homeopathy popularity in Germany. That says it all


Absolutely correct. Now let's drop anothet few billions to make AI better and avoid such mistakes in the future. And we might lay off some more folks to make room in a budget for more AI

Why not Fahrenheits while at it?

At some point the webpage says something like "You are deeper than the Mariana Trench" and also make a few jokes with other comparisons. I expect USA people to prefer to avoid SI units.

If the site where showing temperatures °C and °F option would be even more important. I can translate from feet and miles ($feets/3 and miles*1.5) and get a good estimation, but I can't translate from °F to °C in my head and know if I must use a hoodie or not.


Coal probably kills more people in a single day than all nuclear accidents ever combined

It's worse than that, it's every 3 to 7 hours of fossil fuel pollution roughly equaling the total death toll of all nuclear power accidents in history (around 4000 indirectly, most from cancer resulting from Chernobyl - but there's only around 100 total in a direct way).

Probably but damage from nuclear accidents isn't only measured in deaths. No coal plant accident has caused an exclusion zone for 40 years.

I think that depends on where you draw the line around the term "coal plant." There have been plenty of coal ash disasters that result in years of exclusion (for purposes of habitation, drinking water, fishing, etc.)[1][2][3][4]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_flood

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_coal_slurry_spil...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_water_crisis


Exclusion zones are great for nature:

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-ha...

So The "worst case scenario" for nuclear power is creating a new wildlife park free from human interference.


Nature would enjoy that. The economy not so much, depending on location. Around San Onofre (decommissioned now), a 30 mile Chernobyl-size exclusion zone would cover big chunks of Orange County and San Diego County. The US government recommended a 50 mile exclusion zone around Fukushima. 50 miles would cover southern Los Angeles and millions of people.

So The "worst case scenario" for nuclear power is creating a new wildlife park free from human interference [and emptying out half of Los Angeles]


I wonder what is nuclear equivalent of pollution in Los Angeles.

And not all nuclear plants are the same. I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to compare Chernobyl to modern reactor designs, just because they both use the word “nuclear”.

Apso not sure if you are including coal mining, and all of the deaths and negative health outcomes as a result of the industry


If you look at net damage to the planet, fossil fuel burning energy sources kill literally 8 million+ people a year. Coal plants are vastly more radioactive than nuclear plants, and the effects of burning coal will have a vastly outsized share of damage to the planet in the long than nuclear. Its effects are just less concentrated to a single area.

Only because the damage is more diffuse.

Have you ever seen the common medical advice that pregnant women should avoid eating more than a few servings of seafood every week, and avoid certain kinds entirely, because they’re all contaminated with mercury? A huge portion of that mercury comes from burning coal. How’s that for an exclusion zone?



Most of the exclusion zone is political nonsense. And overall coal has made much more areas much worse to live in. I rather live in the exclusion zone then next many coal plants.

Also there is a single case that happened from a non-western design. When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.


Chernobyl's political nonsense was mostly down to the USSR wanting to deny that anything had, or possibly could, go wrong; if anything, the exclusion zone is the opposite of the western nonsense about nuclear power.

It's our unique freedom-themed nonsense, not the Soviet dictatorial-nonsense, which means we have radiation standards strict enough that it's not possible to convert a coal plant into a nuclear plant without first performing a nuclear decontamination process due to all the radioisotopes in the coal.

That said, perhaps that's actually a problem with the coal plants rather than nuclear standards: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69285-4

> When looking at western countries like France, it shows how incredibly safe the whole industry is end to end.

Relative to coal, absolutely. But don't assume western countries are immune to propaganda on these things, nuclear reactors are there for the spicy atoms, not the price tag or public safety.


Germany on the other hands..

I'm not sure it's fair to give Germany too much grief on this front. They are actively destroying their industrial base in a desire to hit net-zero.


...has been massively reducing its usage of coal (down almost 40% since 2011) and committed to phase it out entirely by 2038.

Interesting. I wonder if someone will be guest speaker at one of the podcasts in 30 years time and talk about this kind of stuff

"Trump being president" and "unexpected loss of jobs" does not fit together.

I can edit it

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