[HN Gopher] Germany is closing half of its reactors before the e...
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Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year
Author : 99_00
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-12-22 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
| Animats wrote:
| Leaving Germany burning lignite (halfway between peat moss and
| coal) and buying natural gas from Russia. The worst of both
| worlds.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| And nuclear from France if I'm not mistaken.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| "We no longer produce electricity with coal or nuclear! We
| just buy it from other countries and then browbeat them about
| environmental responsibility!" doesn't seem like a
| sustainable energy policy.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Germany is a net exporter of electricity. But Europe has a
| joint spot market for electricity, which is a good thing
| for all involved. No longer every country has to supply
| expensive peak power when surplus of neighbours can be
| used. And Switzerland and Austria are kind of European
| storage providers. A 1GW line to Norway went operational
| recently, which uses Norwegian water power for storage.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Net export does not matter when it's at times when nobody
| wants tp buy it because they have their own renewables...
|
| What matters is amount of electricity bought from
| Germany, not amount of generation ran.
| BenoitP wrote:
| > Germany is a net exporter of electricity
|
| Oh, it is. Right now it exports all its coal and gas and
| wood burning production to neighbors; while only using
| 7.5% (= 8.94/(63.2+56)) of its installed wind and solar:
|
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
|
| The great question is: how can Germany manage anything
| with no baseload from nuclear or coal? With current gas
| prices, it is going to get _very_ expensive.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Will Germany remain a net exporter without their nukes,
| and by getting rid of their nuclear capacity will they be
| forced to delay shutting down their coal plants?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| I don't understand this move with Putin shutting off gas to
| flex. It's going to be a very cold, very expensive winter for
| the Germans.
| loeg wrote:
| They already pay north of 30 eurocent per kWh, among the
| highest in Europe, for electricity generation that's like
| 40-50% coal and gas.
| speeder wrote:
| If Putin was shutting off gas to flex it would been great,
| but he isn't, what is happening is Russia is not having
| enough gas even for themselves, if this was just diplomatic
| strategy, diplomacy would convince him to supply more gas,
| the real fact is, there is not enough gas in first place, you
| can do whatever you want, there won't be more gas.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| He already did it a few years back.
| tagoregrtst wrote:
| Citation needed.
|
| Merkel herself said that Russia has fulfilled all her
| contractual obligations. The ones who shut the gas down
| are the in between countries (hence why Germany was in
| favor Nord Stream 2)
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Nothing is important here except the price. Markets are based on
| supply demand. If the demand is not going to diminish the supply
| must increase. If this does not happen there will almost
| certainly be harm to the economy.
| nkmnz wrote:
| price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2020: 45EUR
|
| price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2021: 316EUR
|
| https://www.wiwo.de/my/unternehmen/energie/knappheitspreise-...
| stefan_ wrote:
| price of 1MWh on Dec 23 2021 in France: >400EUR
|
| https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/f...
|
| Spot markets be spotting, we can play this game all day long.
| LunaSea wrote:
| It's that high in France because Germany is knee deep in gas
| plants.
|
| So much for a European partner ...
| dekervin wrote:
| The nuclear issue is fascinating to watch unfold, over the years.
| I didn't expect the rational pro-nuclear to be almost as
| religious as their opponents. Which makes them also refuse to
| engage in debate.
|
| So, here is one of the thoughts that crossed my mind (and I am
| well aware there are counter arguments to it ). With its high
| density of energy and perceived higher potential to harm its
| surrounding environment, nuclear power requires a level of State
| Capacity and stability that is not found over half of the planet.
| It is not obvious that it can be a widespread, long term
| alternative for most of the world economies.
|
| With that in mind, isn't it better if some of the wealthier
| countries basically front the cost and explore completely
| alternative (nuclear-free) systems for all the others ? Even if
| we globally end up with an energy mix ?
|
| Curious to hear opinions with that point of view in mind.
| RaitoBezarius wrote:
| > It is not obvious that nuclear energy can be a widespread,
| long term alternative for most of the world economies.
|
| This problem is also known as nuclear proliferation and, as far
| as I know, is known to people building nuclear reactors. Small
| nuclear reactors takes them in account: <https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Small_modular_reactor#Nuclear_...> ; nuclear smuggling
| is also monitored:
| <https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-
| database-...>
|
| _Unpopular opinion_ : I do not think it is possible to get rid
| of the inherent risk of nuclear proliferation, even without
| building nuclear reactors in non-wealthy countries. Multiple
| reasons :
|
| * Non-wealthy countries wants to be first-class countries, at
| some point, they will desire to move on to "energy upgrades",
| beyond international community (read: wealthy countries), who
| has the right to refuse them to build such infrastructure?
|
| * Villains will move on to harder targets, but will move on,
| even if it requires using countries already using nuclear and
| are actually "non-wealthy" (for some reasonable definition)
|
| It might not be feasible to guarantee the right levels of
| security for these scenarios, but we can take them in account
| and work out nuclear reactor models which limits as much as
| possible the inherent risks.
|
| Consider this bad metaphor: as we are writing more and more
| software, some of them are increasingly critical to users,
| therefore, we invest in different levels of guaranteeing
| software is working as intended (e.g. formal methods, etc.).
|
| I see no absolute reason to not pursue the same avenue here,
| indeed, I even learned about nuclear reactor startups which are
| applying modern technology to a safer nuclear ecosystem.
| dekervin wrote:
| Thanks for the answer ! I'll continue the debate because I
| think it's worth exploring.
|
| The problem is effectively nuclear proliferation. And in my
| opinion the two links you provided are embryos of solution.
|
| In the future, it will be legitimate for any medium size city
| in a developping country to have its own nuclear reactor. At
| that point the whole procurement process becomes a matter of
| national security for every neighboring country. Like who is
| deciding which design is better ? Who gets to pick the
| winning offer ?
|
| For exemple let's say Germany propose a safer design to a
| small country with the one time refuel feature, but Turkey
| propose another design and the buying country has better
| relationship with Turkey. What standing do you have to make
| them pick what you deem the better design ? The only recourse
| is to extend the legal framework and coercition power we use
| for arm sales. Same regarding nuclear material smuggling.
|
| Except those framework work at the moment because, few
| country have any use for nuclear material and even fewer want
| to make a go at it. Once it becomes business as usual to
| trade nuclear material, it will simply exhaust the monitoring
| capacity of any international framework. ( At least that's my
| opinion )
|
| As for the second part of the argument: >> _Consider this bad
| metaphor: as we are writing more and more software, some of
| them are increasingly critical to users, therefore, we invest
| in different levels of guaranteeing software is working as
| intended (e.g. formal methods, etc.)._
|
| The question is who the _we_ is ? Energy plant maintenance is
| closer to server farm maintenance than software building. To
| twist your metaphor, if many countries were to handle the
| data infrastructure their economy depend on, they would
| collapse. That 's the crux of the issue, and one of the
| subliminal teaching the public got from Fukushima. If Japan,
| the country of the famed six sigma, made a serie of decisions
| that led to an accident, chances are it's bound to happen to
| most other (developping ) countries, given long enough time.
| And I am intentionally not delving into the specifics of
| those decisions.
|
| With these two sides of the issue in mind, it feels
| unreasonnable that so many commenters on the web at large are
| rooting for Germany to fail in the nuclear free direction.
|
| Edit: >> _Unpopular opinion: I do not think it is possible to
| get rid of the inherent risk of nuclear proliferation, even
| without building nuclear reactors in non-wealthy countries._
|
| I just wanted to add that I command you for that (blunt)
| sentence and it really should be part of the standard issues
| discussed when talking about nuclear.
| makerofspoons wrote:
| Will the reactors be mothballed, converted, or torn down? Ideally
| if political winds change and the reactors are mothballed, could
| they be restarted?
|
| I live near the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, a nuclear
| plant converted to gas in the 90s, and I often think about what
| could have been if it had been made commercially viable earlier
| in its life.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| All German reactors have run long past their design life span.
| The ones shut down first are already being decommissioned.
|
| Proposing new reactors would be political suicide,
| unfortunately.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| What I don't understand is that Merkel is allegedly smart, yet
| she made this decision.
| this_user wrote:
| She didn't, her predecessor did.
| cmarschner wrote:
| She changed course when she took over and supported nuclear
| first, then changed her assessment after Fukushima.
| Krasnol wrote:
| She did not support nuclear...she did not stop the exit
| before Fukushima. She just moved it a few years back.
| Something she took back after Fukushima.
| beders wrote:
| Here's a good article to give context about this decision and why
| Germans - who were affected by Chernobyl, btw - support this.
|
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...
| outworlder wrote:
| > The nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl (in today's Ukraine) in
| April 1986 caused widespread fear of nuclear power and
| strengthened the anti-nuclear sentiment
|
| That was a really unfortunate point in the history of our
| species. Not only because of the lives that were lost or the
| land that got irradiated, but that event will be indirectly
| responsible for countless deaths over decades. Not because of
| anything related to the radiation, but for putting the brakes
| on deployment of nuclear reactors. We could have safe and
| plentiful energy by now, with very little downside.
|
| If that sounds ludicrous, consider this: imagine someone saw
| the wright flyer and said "we'll be using those things to
| transport millions of passengers at hundreds of miles per
| hour". That would sound insane as those things were dangerous.
| Not so much now (although we have paid a price).
|
| Similarly, nuclear tech has advanced significantly. We have
| designs that cannot meltdown. We have designs that don't cause
| weapon proliferation. We can reprocess the 'waste'. We can use
| different types of fuels, some more plentiful than uranium.
| Instead, we are stuck operating old clunkers. There are still
| RBMK reactors in operation today (although they have been
| retrofitted, but still).
|
| Chernobyl was a criminally flawed design one step above what
| the radioactive boy scout managed to build. That abomination
| should have never seen the light of the day - and if it did, it
| should have had a contention building.
|
| If we were really worried about safety and health we should
| have a planetary-wide ban on coal plants. Not just for global
| warming, but for all the health issues they cause. Including
| radiation.
|
| I am a huge fan of renewables (specially solar) and very
| hopeful on battery storage technologies. But we do have
| extremely power intensive processes (think aluminum plants) for
| which we need reliable power that's difficult to satisfy with
| renewables. Fusion is always 10 years away. Hydro is not
| available everywhere and can be disrupted as the climate
| changes.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| This is an important point.
|
| People don't easily forget when they had to avoid fresh fruit,
| vegetables and meat for a year because it was radioactive.
| this_user wrote:
| And parents replacing the sand in their children's sandpits.
| There are parts of southern Germany where you are not
| supposed to collect mushrooms or hunt and eat game, because
| there is still enough residual nuclear contamination to be
| harmful to humans.
|
| Proponents of nuclear energy like to pretend that it is
| almost completely safe. But if we look beyond the, admittedly
| relatively low, confirmed number of immediate casualties of
| nuclear accidents, there are serious long-term consequences
| that remain an issue for decades and more. And Chernobyl was
| still far from the worst case scenario as most of the fallout
| hit sparsely populated areas.
| luckylion wrote:
| Germans love to be panicked though, I think that's a much
| larger part of it than actual fallout. The recommendations
| for self-harvested mushrooms and game are to _not eat them
| excessively_ in the areas that were affected more strongly.
|
| Contrast that with the damage that was done by decades of
| coal power plants polluting the air you breathe. Coal is
| more damaging each year than chernobyl was, it just gets
| much less attention.
| ben_w wrote:
| People in general are bad at risk assessment.
|
| In many countries, roughly 30% don't want vaccines,
| citing the 1:10,000 side effects, ignoring the roughly
| 1:1,000 fatality rate (as a fraction of global
| population, 1:55 of infected[0]).
|
| Same deal with playing lotteries in the expectation of
| getting rich, or fearing terrorists more than dangerous
| drivers.
|
| [0] https://covid19.who.int/
| luckylion wrote:
| Certainly, but imminent doom is essentially a hobby in
| Germany. We have the term Angstlust which I always found
| quite fitting: deriving pleasure from fear.
|
| It's an interesting realization when you've grown up in
| Germany and then live outside of it for a while and
| realize that not everyone is constantly worried about the
| world ending tomorrow.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| This is the effect of stupid scare, not any real danger.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| It makes the decision to shut down nuclear power plants
| understandable, but not right.
| yosito wrote:
| The obvious reasons this is bad are that it increases German
| dependence on Russian oil and burning fossil fuels for energy.
| What are the arguments in favor of it, from the point of view of
| the German politicians and/or activists that are pushing for it?
| It has to be more thought out than "Nuclear bad". I'm just trying
| to understand.
| ojagodzinski wrote:
| > What are the arguments in favor of it, from the point of view
| of the German politicians and/or activists that are pushing for
| it?
|
| There isnt any, there is only strong coal lobby, russian
| propaganda against nuclear and lots of stupid people that use
| Charnobyl as an argument.
| YinLuck- wrote:
| outside1234 wrote:
| Totally insane - what are they thinking? This is the best chance
| for climate
|
| And what is plan B - more gas from Putin? Insane
| nradov wrote:
| US gas producers would also like to sell them more delivered by
| LNG tankers.
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| they are replacing it mostly with gas from Russia. Great idea! /s
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/netherlands-goes...
|
| Holland is building two new reactors, and
|
| 'Energy and electricity prices are at record levels due to
| Europe's over-reliance on renewables, inadequate supplies of
| nuclear energy, and shortages of oil and gas due to under-
| investment in oil and gas exploration and production. Carbon
| emissions in Germany rose 25% in the first half of 2020 due in
| large part to a 25% decline in wind, underscoring the unreliable
| nature of weather-dependent renewables. In response, both France
| and Britain have promised a major expansion of nuclear energy.'
|
| Very turbulent times in EU energy markets.
| phicoh wrote:
| It is extermely unlikely that The Netherlands will build two
| new reactors. My interpretation is that two political parties
| keep bringing up nuclear power to basically derail the
| discussion on how the Dutch government is not doing enough with
| respect to green energy.
|
| Given the costs at Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3,
| it very unlikely that any political party will actually sign
| off on building one.
|
| Furthermore, starting to build a nuclear power plant doesn't
| help the 2030 goals one bit. And those are already hard to
| reach.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The nuclear reactor that we have has been operating at a
| massive loss and can not compete in the marketplace,
| decomissioning costs are the only reason it is still switched
| on.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Belgium has a nuclear phase out plan and while it is not
| realistic, it still threatens supplies to Zeeland, Rotterdam
| and the industrial west.
|
| Just look where powerlines go from Doel.
| phicoh wrote:
| https://webkaart.hoogspanningsnet.com/index2.php#10/51.3795
| /...
|
| It seems that Zeeland has a connection within The
| Netherlands as well.
|
| I thought that on average The Netherlands is exporting
| power to Belgium.
| elric wrote:
| Not sure whether I agree with the "over-reliance on
| renewables"-bit. Renewables are a relatively small part of EU
| energy production. The vast majority is fossil fuel (which is
| mostly imported from the Middle East or Russia).
|
| I can't speak for the rest of the EU, but energy policy in
| Belgium has been an absolute shitshow for decades now. No one
| wants to invest in anything. There's NIMBYism everywhere. No
| one wants any kind of energy production in sight, which is an
| impossibility in a country the size of paper towel. No one
| wants to reduce demand. And no one wants to rely on imports;
| which is ironic, given that we import uranium, oil, and gas ...
| ?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Second that. As much as I disagree with N-VA, I am tempted to
| vote for it because it has consistent environment policy and
| people like Zuhal Demir to enforce it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a bit premature. We are not 'building two new reactors',
| there is a coalition agreement that two new reactors will be
| built but that's a far cry from it actually happening, and it
| may well never happen because there is a ton of opposition to
| this which will at a minimum delay construction. The proposed
| dates for starting operations is after 2030, which means that
| from a climate accord perspective this is a meaningless
| gesture.
| plank wrote:
| "Holland is building". No. In the coalition accord, a study is
| ordained (https://www.deingenieur.nl/artikel/twee-nieuwe-
| kerncentrales... : "de nieuwe coalitie wil laten onderzoeken of
| het haalbaar is om twee nieuwe kerncentrales te bouwen in
| Nederland", for non-dutch speakers: https://www-deingenieur-
| nl.translate.goog/artikel/twee-nieuw...), but many think that
| the study will conclude it is not feasable.
| authed wrote:
| If the BBB plan passed and was purely focused on home solar
| systems, a large majority of homes in the US would be covered
| with solar panels.
| drdmi wrote:
| Why are so many here pro-nuclear? How do you solve the problems
| that come with increasing use of nuclear reactors? 1. handling
| nuclear waste 2. knowledge transfer of breeding technology which
| is also used for creating plutonium for atom bombs
| domenkozar wrote:
| You probably never heard about Bhopal disaster, one of the
| world's worst industrial disasters, killing 3787 people.
| avsteele wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that
| nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either. Most nuclear
| plants use fission for the base load but gas or other fossil fuel
| generators for the variable part. Since in Germany green power in
| the form of solar/wind are even more variable, this makes Nuclear
| + Solar/Wind a bad combo.
|
| Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their
| climate/geography.
|
| Germany should ditch the green and use its amazing engineering to
| build better nuclear reactors, IMO.
| cure wrote:
| > Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that
| nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either.
|
| Correct. Nuclear reactors can't be turned on/off quickly. They
| are suitable to handle the base load, in other words, but can't
| be used as peakers.
|
| > Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their
| climate/geography.
|
| Uhm, respectfully, that is a load of nonsense. Cf.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
|
| > Germany should ditch the green and use its amazing
| engineering to build better nuclear reactors, IMO.
|
| Well, if they start that plan today, it _may_ be done in 30
| years. Which is way, way, way too late.
|
| Imo, the more sensible path here is to keep the existing
| nuclear plants running, decommission the that awful lignite
| power generation asap, while building out energy storage
| capacity (grid scale batteries - there are many kinds of
| approaches, e.g. electrical batteries, reservoir storage and
| some seriously weird ones involving lots of blocks of
| concrete). That could be done in the space of a decade.
|
| Any new nuclear plants would not even be out of the design
| stage in 10 years.
| rory wrote:
| I never understood the argument that nuclear takes too long,
| so instead we implement new technologies that have never been
| done at scale.
|
| What if we run into unexpected problems with energy storage
| that push their timeline out even longer than 30 years? Seems
| better to do both, and accept the risk that we paid for too
| much clean energy in the end.
| avsteele wrote:
| I know they generate a moderate fraction now, that's the
| point of my post. I think they are backing themselves into a
| corner.
|
| The problems to date include very high energy prices. Even
| larger challenges await; these will grow as renewables they
| become a larger fraction of total output. Renewable
| variability isn't a problem when they are a small fraction,
| but a very large one when they are a large percentage. These
| are unsolved problems. Land use is also an issue.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| This is wrong. Nuclear reaction output can be modulated on
| the order of milliseconds, practically visible as the
| temperature of the core, which varies on seconds to minutes.
| They can be used as peaker plants if so designed. In the US
| at least, the issue is that energy output must be telegraphed
| 4+ hours in advance.
|
| If I had to guess this is a constructed incentive to make
| nuclear less desirable than coal or gas under the guise of
| safety.
| champtar wrote:
| French nuclear plant can ramp up/down 80% in 30min, but it's
| true that many nuclear plant can't
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Nuclear reaction output can be modulated on the order of
| milliseconds, practically visible as the temperature of the
| core, which varies on seconds to minutes. They can be used as
| peaker plants if so designed. In the US at least, the issue is
| that energy output must be telegraphed 4+ hours in advance.
|
| If I had to guess this is a constructed incentive to make
| nuclear less desirable than coal or gas under the guise of
| safety.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Nuclear reactors actually produce a family of decay products as
| they run, some with longer decay times and neutron absorbing
| cross sections than others... things get less stable as you
| rapidly ramp levels up and down, so it is avoided at all costs.
| Uranium based fuel generates about 1/10 of its operating heat
| for a very long time, which is why it has to be kept in cooling
| ponds after removal from the reactor.
|
| Coal plants take time to get to temperature and pressure,
| furthermore the generators themselves have a limited number of
| stop/start cycles, as cracks radiate outward from the center of
| the rotor shaft over time. (They are cast in a centrifugal
| fashion, in a vacuum, to reduce voids to). Periodically the
| center of the shaft is bored to remove the cracks, but there is
| a finite amount of material that can be removed.
|
| Gas turbine spool up/down quickly, but cost 2 or more times the
| cost of other fossil fuel sourced generation.
|
| Hydro is awesome, if you have it, but global climate change is
| causing precipitation patterns to shift.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Large scale hydro also has non-negligible methane production
| due to all the plant matter decaying in placid water...
|
| And the fish are done for too.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| 52% of Germany's energy production in 2021 was from renewables
| [1], which are productive now, don't need decades of planning
| and construction, have zero costs for waste and a perfectly
| clear risk profile for the next centuries.
|
| I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense.
|
| [1]
| https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2021/09/PE21_429_43312.html
| cure wrote:
| > I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense.
|
| Wind and solar make _total_ sense. All we need to do is
| overbuild wind /solar generation + invest in energy storage
| capacity. This can be done relatively quickly, certainly much
| more quickly than building new nuclear plants.
| nradov wrote:
| What kind of grid scale storage can be built quickly?
| sitkack wrote:
| In Nissan Leafs alone (450k) there is over 10GWhr of
| battery capacity. Grid scale batteries are just a capital
| problem. No breakthroughs necessary.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no excess battery manufacturing capacity
| available. It is constrained by both facilities and raw
| materials. Capacity will increase but at a slow rate.
| More capital can't solve that problem, it's like pushing
| on a string.
| sitkack wrote:
| This is exactly how capital works. We can make more
| battery factories.
| nradov wrote:
| Eventually yes, but that will take many years. It won't
| do anything to prevent power shortages in Germany over
| the next 5 years or so. I don't think you understand how
| long it takes to ramp up production across the entire
| supply chain, and that allocating more capital won't
| significantly accelerate timelines.
| merb wrote:
| hydro, but thats also something we do not built because
| it's not environment friendly (takes a lot of space and
| kills species living there and might need to move
| people). keep in mind we are not china they basically do
| everything lately to grow their energy, hydro, nuclear,
| wind, solar the full mix, something which would not be
| possible in germany, because people would go full
| madness, heck even wind already is something that some
| people do not like.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Compared to building reactors, anything is quick.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Not really, a reactor is operational in 10-20 years,
| while expanding lithium mining and battery production
| will easily take much longer. Not to mention the energy
| and CO2e cost of manufacturing the batteries.
| fh973 wrote:
| Interestingly the energy consumption from renewables is at
| 43%, ie. considerably lower than production. I guess the
| difference is accounted for by the exports at peak wind/sun
| at the expense of other sources. Probably french nuclear
| plants as some other poster here noted, ie. Germany takes the
| cream of the top and lets others provider the expensive base
| load or just burns dirty lignite and coal.
|
| [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewables-
| cover-43-ger...
| Dunedan wrote:
| > 52% of Germany's energy production in 2021 was from
| renewables
|
| 44% in 2021 according to the graph you linked and 52% in
| 2020.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| You're right, thanks!
| LunaSea wrote:
| > don't need decades of planning and construction
|
| Well they aren't produced in Germany so if CoVid continues,
| good luck getting those solar panels.
|
| > have zero costs for waste
|
| Used up windmill blades are buried into the ground and we
| still have to find a good way to recycle batteries.
|
| > perfectly clear risk profile
|
| Like fucking over the neighbouring countries by using them as
| batteries or using Russian gas?
| Armisael16 wrote:
| Nuclear plants can adjust reasonably quickly in theory, but
| most plants don't have the equipment to do in practice.
|
| This is because nuclear has a very low marginal cost of power -
| a kJ is very cheap if you've already built the plant - so the
| plants are intended to run full-tilt to make the most of your
| very expensive asset.
| randomopining wrote:
| Great timing, right as Russia is cranking to tear us apart from
| the europeans through energy and any other means available.
| gpvos wrote:
| It is fascinating to see how Germany is shutting down nuclear and
| encouraging natural gas (while still using _lignite,_ of all
| things, phasing it out only slowly), while the Netherlands is
| starting to reduce its use of gas and investigating building new
| nuclear plants.
| eschulz wrote:
| One German bets on nuclear while another German bets against
| nuclear. Time will tell which one was wise (maybe both?).
| wayneotau wrote:
| Seriously, Germany is shooting itself in the foot and face. SMH
| cmarschner wrote:
| The sentiment on HN on this topic has traditionally been
| negative, and comments that support the move get downvoted.
|
| The fear of nuclear energy is deeply rooted in Germany and cannot
| be simply ignored. The "Anti AKW" (anti nuclear power) movement
| was huge since the 80s, it predates the fear of global warming,
| and it was at the core of what became the Green party. And
| Merkel, who has a doctorate quantum chemistry, came to the
| conclusion that nuclear power is too risky. And this sentiment
| had the backing of the parliament. And the parliament had the
| backing of the population. These are the facts. It is likely that
| her party, traditionally pro nuclear, will change its opinion now
| that she's stepped down. But they're not in power for at least
| the next 4 years, and the new governing coalition has agreed on
| nuclear being a non-option for energy policy.
| adolph wrote:
| Does "Green" have the same set of meanings in Germany as in the
| US?
|
| _Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schroder . . . served as the chancellor of
| Germany from 1998 to 2005, during which his most important
| political initiative was Agenda 2010. As Chancellor, he led a
| coalition government of his Social Democratic Party of Germany
| and the Alliance 90 /The Greens. . . . Schroder has been
| chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft since 2017._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der
|
| _PJSC Rosneft Oil Company (Russian: Rosneft', tr. Rosneft ',
| IPA: [,ros'njeftj] stylized as ROSNEFT) is a Russian integrated
| energy company headquartered in Moscow. Rosneft specializes in
| the exploration, extraction, production, refining, transport,
| and sale of petroleum, natural gas, and petroleum products. The
| company is controlled by the Russian government through the
| Rosneftegaz holding company. Its name is a portmanteau of the
| Russian words Rossiyskaya neft (Russian: Rossiiskaia neft',
| lit. 'Russian oil')._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosneft
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Schroder is a social democrat, not a green. His schmoozing
| with Russia is not characteristic of the German green party.
| polotics wrote:
| Merkel... Did not come to the conclusion that nuclear power is
| too risky. She wanted to do more nuclear, well aware of CO2,
| but Fukushima happened (killing zero victims, but hey) and she
| saw her policy would get her voted out office, and no potential
| replacement was going to do better, so she folded, in the hope
| that large investment in renewables would help. It didn't,
| because a renewable world is a 18th century world, and now
| we're going there
| Krasnol wrote:
| > She wanted to do more nuclear
|
| This is a lie.
|
| Before Fukushima she only moved the nuclear exit a few years
| back.
| cmarschner wrote:
| This seems to be your opinion when one can read it also
| differently. After Fukushima she and her government (backed
| by the coalition partner FDP) started a risk re-assessment
| process that involved two commissions (the reactor security
| commission and an ethics commission) that resulted in the
| government declaration below. Hence, the assessment was not
| done on a whim, it was backed by several months of work by
| experts. Could it still be a mere power play? Possible, but
| unlikely - she ran the risk of alienating her own party and
| to be seen as a flip-flopper.
|
| https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-
| de/service/bulletin/regi...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > The fear of nuclear energy is deeply rooted in Germany and
| cannot be simply ignored.
|
| It's not being ignored. We're all here complaining about how
| short sighted it is. What's their plan for renewables again?
| Aren't we in the middle of a low sunlight, low wind winter
| where nat. gas demand is through the roof? So Germany's plan is
| Nord Stream 2, buying from Russia trying to invade Ukraine?
| yosito wrote:
| And here I thought the "rational German" stereotype had some
| justification.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| The public debate was polluted by misinformation. I remember a
| poll showed most Europeans think Fukushima killed thousands and
| nuclear emits massive CO2.
| jboydyhacker wrote:
| Merkel wanted a pipeline that just happened to terminate in her
| district you forget to mention. She may have a physics degree
| but she is a politician and I have a feeling she used her
| political education more than her physics on this one.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| > The sentiment on HN on this topic has traditionally been
| negative, and comments that support the move get downvoted.
|
| Just because this is a popular move within Germany doesn't mean
| we need to support it. Research has shown nuclear to be clean
| and safe when managed properly, _those_ are the facts. I'm glad
| the government is listening to its citizens, but I also support
| using nuclear power and personally think this is bad move with
| the information I have at hand.
| PhilTri wrote:
| mullingitover wrote:
| Depending on how things go with what is widely believed to be an
| impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, with hostilities
| potentially spilling beyond that sphere, I have to wonder if this
| will go into the history books as another historic strategic
| blunder for Germany. Surrendering a large amount of your domestic
| energy production, placing your fate in the hands of a hostile
| power is a real head scratcher.
| petre wrote:
| Unfortunately Germany's medium term decarbonization plan relies
| on Russian gas. The Greens could throw a wrench into this plan
| and sabotage it like they did with nuclear energy. But then the
| question is what do they put in its place? And the answer is
| almost always: coal.
| fsh wrote:
| I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held
| opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt
| to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity
| production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity
| import/export statistics [2].
|
| [1]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Energymi...
|
| [2]
| https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Infografiken/Energie/stroma...
| _Microft wrote:
| Interactive live charts can be found at https://energy-
| charts.info/?l=en
|
| Direct link to charts: https://energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&...
| arnaudsm wrote:
| These graphs are misleading. Intermittent and non-pilotable
| sources are a nightmare during shortages. Which is the biggest
| threat Germany faces right now.
| downrightmike wrote:
| [1] more than half of their power comes from burning something
| and releasing carbon. It would be better to keep nuclear and
| remove carbon sources, especially any gas from russia.
| cbmuser wrote:
| modriano wrote:
| > excessive export means more wasted electricity.
|
| I'm not an expert so please forgive me if this is a stupid
| question, but how is exported electricity wasted electricity?
| My intuition is that (assuming the exported energy is used)
| it would both prevent the generation of electricity by other
| (less environmentally friendly) means, and it would generate
| income. What is wasted here?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You should understand the source of that exported
| electricity.
|
| Electricity is exported from the capacity that is
| inflexible, as you cannot scale it up/down. Common low
| flexibility electricity sources - coal, nuclear, hydro.
| king_phil wrote:
| One important thing to notice is that uranium is a finite non-
| renewable resource. The Red Book says there are about 3.3
| million tons that are extractable for a price of 130 USD/ton.
| In 2017 the total uranium production was 60.000 tons. Thats
| about 55 years of uranium left at the current production rate.
| The Red Book assumes there are another 2.1 million tons likely
| to exist from geological data, but not found yet and another
| 4.8 million tons assumed to exist but yet to be discovered.
|
| Now imagine that nuclear power production would be greatly
| increased. How many years of uranium supply would we have left?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_market
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There is, however, no reason that fission power need be
| restricted to uranium as a fuel source. Use of breeder
| reactors would allow power consumption at our current levels
| longer than the sun is likely to exist.
|
| Even if fission power is not the long-term solution, it is
| the _desperately_ needed current solution. Running out of
| power would definitely kill us slowly. Current rates of CO2
| production will kill us quite quickly.
| 8note wrote:
| Those links suggest that peak uranium is driven by lack of
| demand, and not lack of supply, or renewability (including
| suggestions that we could create more uranium for as long as
| the sun lives)
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| This is where fast reactors can help. Fast reactors can be
| fueled with reprocessed waste from thermal-neutron reactors.
| This produces many times the energy for the same amount of
| fuel. We can meet the US's energy needs for well over 100
| years with the nuclear waste _that we 've already
| stockpiled_, and the ultimate waste products have a half life
| measured in decades and not millennia.
| RaitoBezarius wrote:
| FWIW, according to your own links.
|
| > _Uranium-235_ is a finite non-renewable resource.[1][3]
|
| > As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at
| US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million
| tons in 2015). At the rate of consumption in 2017, these
| reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of
| supply. The identified reserves as of 2017 recoverable at
| US$260/kg are 7.99 million tons (compared to 7.64 million
| tons in 2015).[9]
|
| They mention multiple (more or less optimistic) scenarios in
| respect to finiteness of U235, plus, they talk about the
| experiences using fast breeders and their current state with
| respect to market needs.
| fsh wrote:
| They calculate 130 years of supply _at current consumption
| rates_. Nuclear power supplies something like 5% of the
| global primary energy, so scaling this to 100% would
| deplete the estimated reserves in a few years.
|
| Breeders would help, but have so far not been very
| successful. For example, the German Thorium breeder
| THTR-300 is considered one of the greatest technological
| failures in postwar history.
| RaitoBezarius wrote:
| Scaling nuclear power supplies to 100% of global primary
| energy would change the economics of extraction, do you
| claim you can predict these things? BTW, scaling it to
| 100 % is not necessary.
|
| AFAIK, THTR-300 is only one of the different breeder
| models, CEFR from China <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch
| ina_Experimental_Fast_Reacto...> seems to be working, as
| a new model <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600> is
| being built since 2020, sure, recycling uranium is not
| needed at the moment, so you could argue this is not
| demonstrating the interest of breeding though it seems to
| be working to a certain extent.
| midjji wrote:
| I think you are missing the important part. Lowballing it,
| a typical 50 year old reactor produces about 10^7
| megawatthours or 10^6$ in power per kilo of uranium. And
| that actually leaves most of the fissile unused. So... How
| much uranium can be extracted at a reasonable fuel price
| like 10% of the end user price? i.e. about 10^5$ per kilo?
|
| Its silly to consider availability at 0.03% of the end
| product price.
| morning_gelato wrote:
| From what I've read[1] it looks like we should be able to use
| nuclear fission for a significant amount of time (>1000
| years). This would involve using uranium and thorium as well
| as breeder reactors.
|
| [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-
| is-...
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| The author above didn't read the articles they themselves are
| quoting.
|
| TL;DR: we have 120years of uranium ore that one can mine at
| $120/kg. You can mine more ore but more expensively.
| midjji wrote:
| Aw, be kind, no one against nuclear knows math.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| We have basically unlimited uranium. There's no risk of
| shortage. The average cubic meter of crust has more breedable
| fuel energy in it than a cubic meter of coal.
|
| Fission is effectively as unlimited as renewable energy is,
| about a billion years' worth of crust. Even if we stick with
| typical U235 reactors, sufficient uranium ore exists for
| hundreds of years, although no one will bother to formally
| "prove" the reserves for a constraint 100 years in the
| future.
|
| What's limited is the atmosphere's capacity for CO2. Not much
| else matters in the mid/near-term, except perhaps for
| ensuring we have enough energy for civilization to function.
| polote wrote:
| > One important thing to notice is that uranium is a finite
| non-renewable resource.
|
| One important thing to notice is that place on earth to put
| wind turbines and solar panels is limited. Now imagine that
| electricity needs greatly increased ...
|
| At the end of the day, everything is finite
| jhgb wrote:
| That place is much larger than you'll ever need at the very
| least in this century (maybe in a thousand years we'll be
| in trouble, but I imagine that in that era, we'll have
| completely different issues anyway).
| idiotsecant wrote:
| We could provide for all the needs of our current power
| consumption by use of a single very large solar array in
| central africa or the middle east. The problem is no the
| availability of wind and solar- those can provide a
| monumental amount of energy. The problem is that energy and
| power are not the same thing. We need to be able to store
| energy widely throughout the grid and make massive
| transmission system improvements to facilitate the movement
| of energy from place to place.
|
| Both of these are not fundamental problems, only financial
| / political ones. If we decided tomorrow that we really
| wanted these things we could have them.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Breeder reactors make that concern go away:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
| Luc wrote:
| One wonders how much better those charts would have looked with
| a rational investment into a climate-neutral, self-reliant form
| of electricity production, i.e. dozens of new nuclear reactors.
|
| I think the merit of this idea will become clear among the
| public when the price of electricity becomes an election issue.
| BenoitP wrote:
| More data, for right now: https://app.electricitymap.org/map
|
| Germany is not doing that well.
| progbits wrote:
| While we are adding charts: [1] shows carbon intensity (g CO2e
| / kWH) per country for EU.
|
| [1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-
| maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...
| marvinblum wrote:
| It's worth noting that we pay for both, import and export of
| electricity in Germany. This is due to the failed* energy
| transition ("Energiewende") into renewable production. We pay
| for our overproduction on sunny and windy days, because the
| electricity _has_ to be bought by network providers.
|
| * inefficient and too expensive
| cmarschner wrote:
| So, to summarize,
|
| 1. Germany is a net exporter
|
| 2. Germany has reduced the production from fossil fuels from
| about 70% to about 37% within 30 years.
|
| 3. At the same time it cut nuclear power from around 28% to
| about 10.
|
| 4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could have
| replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels (achieving less
| than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However, energy consumption has
| also gone up since 1990, so it would have required building
| more reactors.
|
| 5. Renewables have replaced about 25% of energy production in
| the last 10 years.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > 4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could
| have replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels
| (achieving less than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However,
| energy consumption has also gone up since 1990, so it would
| have required building more reactors.
|
| Coal exit is not related to nuclear exit in Germany. Germany
| would have the exact same amount of coal plants if they'd
| kept nuclear.
|
| Coal is about jobs (and votes) in regions which are already
| troubled by unemployment. This is why the name of the
| commission which decided how the phase out will work was:
| "Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Growth,_Structur.
| ..
| polote wrote:
| 6. If everyone had the same electricity mix than Germany we
| would have total blackouts everyday
| jhgb wrote:
| Germany has the same electricity mix as Germany and it has
| extremely good SAIDI index compared to all other countries
| (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-
| electric...). I guess those Germans are just insanely
| competent, then.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Check precision energy import charts, especially at night
| in winter. Germany uses other countries as a battery.
| Haemm0r wrote:
| Can confirm this as an Austrian ;-)
| neuronic wrote:
| Why is this always spread? Right now is a winter night
| (-6 celsius), this is the live electricity map for
| Europe: https://app.electricitymap.org/map
|
| Right this second, Germany is EXPORTING to most of their
| neighbors. Are they charging the other batteries now or
| how am I supposed to follow your logic?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Why is this always spread?"
|
| Because this debate is more about ideology, than anything
| else.
| jhgb wrote:
| Winter nights in Germany are the domain of coastal wind
| turbines. Off to build more wind farms, then!
| midjji wrote:
| Germany would have problems if not for French nuclear,
| and a great many, rather expensive, gas power plants. For
| exactly how much, just look at what has happened to the
| UK as they left the EU wide powersharing agreements.
|
| Its also worth nothing that the rising power prices have
| largely prevented germany from moving away from using gas
| to for stoves and heating, which is a huge part of their
| total CO2, and pollution output.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Germany would have problems if not for French nuclear
|
| You could say that pretty much about any country in the
| European synchronous grid. Everyone needs everyone else.
|
| > and a great many, rather expensive, gas power plants
|
| The gas plants are actually quite cheap. It's the gas
| that's expensive.
|
| > Its also worth nothing that the rising power prices
| have largely prevented germany from moving away from
| using gas to for stoves and heating
|
| That statement makes no sense to me. Rising power prices
| are definitely connected to rising gas prices, which
| don't _prevent_ people from moving away from using gas
| for stoves and heating but rather _motivate_ them to do
| just that.
| midjji wrote:
| No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always
| be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to
| power, followed by ideal conversion to heat, in practice
| its closer to three times. Therefore power prices need to
| fall substantially gas prices before the switch is worth
| it. That will never happen while producing power from gas
| or more expensive alternatives. In particular since the
| gas distribution infrastructure is in place and
| effectively subsidized/on a different budget.
|
| But if they produced nuclear at the price they used to be
| able to in Germany, before regulations and investment
| insecurity drove up the price, buying gas just could not
| compete.
|
| Sweden, notably getting half its power from nuclear, does
| not need anyone else. Same thing for france.
| jhgb wrote:
| > No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always
| be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to
| power
|
| Except NOT having to heat is even more effective than
| burning fuel for heating locally. So the move away from
| gas heating to low-energy buildings is definitely
| stimulated by higher gas prices.
|
| > Same thing for france.
|
| I doubt that, since France seem to be actually using
| their interconnects. Can't comment on Sweden, though.
| wumpus wrote:
| Does your number include electric heat pumps? Germany is
| warm enough for very modern heat pumps to do well.
| octodog wrote:
| How do you reach that conclusion?
| polote wrote:
| You can't decide when the wind blow and when the sun
| shines. And you can't either decide when people turn on
| their washing machine. So it is obvious there is a
| problem
| com2kid wrote:
| > And you can't either decide when people turn on their
| washing machine.
|
| Not completely, but you can make electricity almost free
| at certain times of day to encourage shifting usage.
|
| Although there is a natural limit to this, since people
| have to be home to do laundry!
|
| (Also electric driers are the real culprit, they use an
| obscene amount of electricity! I am not sure if Germany
| is big on electric dryers or not though, that is
| something which is very culture dependent)
| midjji wrote:
| Power is far to abstract and far to cheap for people to
| make even the slightest adjustment to their habits. After
| all, lets say you knew that making your morning coffe
| between 07-08 cost 10 cents more than doing so an hour
| earlier or later, would you get up earlier, or go to work
| latter? And in 1 cent is more realistic.
| wumpus wrote:
| One good example is electric car charging... all the EV
| owner has to do is opt in, and an algorithm can do the
| rest.
| com2kid wrote:
| Sure, but again the example was washing clothes, and
| clothes dryers use a _LOT_ of energy.
|
| Holy crap, doing the math a US style dryer would cost
| ~1.50 in electricity in Germany to dry one load of
| clothing.
|
| Sources: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Germany/elect
| ricity_price... https://www.thespruce.com/how-much-does-
| it-cost-to-run-an-el...
|
| So, like, you know, yeah. My dryer has a delay start
| function on it, if late night prices are 1/2 peak, then
| I'd save 75 cents a load. Let's say 3 days a week of
| laundry, $9 a month in savings.
|
| Again, my dryer already does this, it isn't new tech, it
| is just nudging me to make use of the existing button
| that is already there!
|
| US electricity prices are so low, eh, not really worth it
| for the state I live in.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| So the thing about the earth is that it's big. If you
| have a big enough grid, it will be sunny and windy over a
| fairly consistent portion of that area.
| pzo wrote:
| transmitting energy from other half of the earth (where
| is daylight when you are sleeping) is probably not best
| idea (not sure if even economically or technically
| possible). Also would be wise to turn off nuclear energy
| once you have this 'big enough grid'.
| midjji wrote:
| It does not work that way. Long distance extreme high
| voltage transfer loses about 5% per 1000km, with the
| transformers adding another 10%, under ideal
| circumstances. In practice its higher, and thats on land.
| Sea cables lose 100x per km around 50% per 100km, again
| under ideal circumstances. In practice double the losses
| per distance, and if using existing grids, double it
| again, because most places dont build top end voltage
| grids.
|
| Looking at maps for power prices with large hydropower
| dams you can easily see how most countries grids dont
| transfer more than around 1000km, and often quite a bit
| shorter. In practice this is the point where it becomes
| more cost effective to build new powerplants, than bigger
| infrastructure for transfer.
|
| We could build grids designed for this, but never across
| oceans, and we are talking about an absolutely gargantuan
| investment, and its generally not considered as a
| solution for the unreliability of solar and wind. Its
| also why no one ever suggests to use the big empty oceans
| for truly large scale wind or solar etc, its always
| places very close to land.
|
| Its also worth pointing out that superconductors cannot
| solve this, even if price and the gargantuan cooling
| energy requirements are ignored. This is because while
| superconductors transfer power without loss, they can
| only do so up to a limited effect, as the power
| interferes with the superconducting ability after that,
| essentially breaking it.
| HPsquared wrote:
| We don't have a planetary grid (yet, at least). If
| there's a high pressure system across Europe, the whole
| continent can have low wind. This usually comes with
| either very high temperatures (in summer) or very low
| temperatures (in winter) which further stresses the
| system.
| BenoitP wrote:
| With the current technology, you can't transport
| electricity more than ~1000 km with acceptable losses.
|
| Atmospheric depressions are bigger than than, and the
| distance for solar are much bigger as well (other than
| cloudy, there's day and night).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| What do you consider acceptable?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| voltage_direct_current#Ad... puts the loss for HVDC at
| 3.5% per 1000km. That would imply 4000km with 15% loss,
| which is pretty good considering that wind and solar are
| significantly more than 15% cheaper than nuclear.
|
| Specifically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_elect
| ricity_by_source#... puts the cost of wind/solar at
| roughly 1/3rd the cost of nuclear, so it's more (cost)
| efficient to spend as much on transmission as you do on
| generation and build a really well connected massive grid
| than to use nuclear.
| jacquesm wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
| midjji wrote:
| We can transport it a fair bit further than that, but
| only under ideal circumstances that are rarely met, and
| its very rare the grid is built for it, its never been
| needed after all. For instance, regulatory issues usually
| mean that every country border crossed tends to have a
| transformer station, which makes minor changes at a 10%
| or so efficiency loss.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Well, it is obvious, that the renewable production needs
| to be paired with some on-demand sources. Short term, gas
| is great for that, as gas power plants can be switched on
| and off quickly, long-term the necessary storage options
| are needed (some of that can be power2gas, which can be
| burnt in the gas power plants).
| BenoitP wrote:
| > Short term, gas is great for that
|
| Still an unacceptable CO2 emission in my book. Natural
| gas is at 55,82 [kg CO2 / GJ], when coal is at 94,6 [kg
| CO2 / GJ]. [1]
|
| So that's only 40% less pollution, and there are still
| huge quantities of coal that has yet to be replaced in
| Germany.
|
| What's missing from your view is how you provide for
| baseload. Right now, what is baseload in Germany? It is
| coal: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
|
| [1] https://www.volker-
| quaschning.de/datserv/CO2-spez/index_e.ph...
| ggm wrote:
| This is a syllogism and masks a complete mismatch of both
| demand and risks of windless days. There is no
| insurmountable problem if you accept a market in
| electricity in Europe, demand management (which already
| exists in the market in air-conditioning, freezing and
| thermal mass industries) and overbuild of supply. Not to
| mention storage.
|
| It's not just a syllogism, it's a really weak one. You
| actually can decide when people "turn on their washing
| machine". It's called controlled supply, it's existed
| since the 1950s. Mainly for water heating but in
| principle any function.
| BenoitP wrote:
| 1. There is very little energy storage
|
| 2. Sun and wind only produce a fraction of the time (40%
| [1] and 25% [2] respectively, and 7.5% (= 8.94/(63.2+56))
| of installed capacity this very second [3])
|
| 3. Production capacity without sun and wind < peak demand
|
| Germany's mix only work because of neighbouring
| countries. And their humongous amounts of still existing
| coal and gas.
|
| [1] https://assets.greentechmedia.com/assets/content/cach
| e/made/...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/555654/wind-
| electricity-...
|
| [3] https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Sure but carbon is carbon. If they are able to get that
| much more of their overall power output from renewable,
| that's carbon not going into the air.
|
| The problem with the current generation of nuclear is
| that it's expensive to build, and a lot of the older
| reactors are, well, old. If it's possible to get the same
| emissions reduction by building out lots and lots of
| renewable, instead of spending that money on nuclear,
| that's understandable for a country that can't just print
| money.
|
| There will eventually be some limit to that strategy
| (i.e. how do you meet supply at night) and we'll have to
| see how the next-gen energy storage and nuclear pan out.
| quassy wrote:
| 2. Yes but ~1990 is not a good baseline as back then lots of
| highly inefficient industry and power plants of former GDR
| were still running and on the brink of being demolished due
| to economic collapse. It makes Germanys efforts look much
| better than they were.
| barney54 wrote:
| 6. Wholesale electricity rates have increased from 50
| Euros/mwh to 250 Euros/mwh over the course of the last year.
|
| This isn't about averages. It's about meeting demand, which
| is especially important during the winter heating season.
| jhgb wrote:
| That's a very good argument for the need to build much more
| renewable capacity in Germany, since that would substitute
| the burning of natural gas that caused this price increase.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Sure, we'll see it when it happens. Renewables are like a
| trickle at best, all the low hanging fruit there is
| taken, and the required battery capacity is huge....
| wumpus wrote:
| > Renewables are like a trickle at best
|
| Doesn't Germany have a lot of wind power? Denmark sure
| does.
|
| Let's see, 27.2% wind in 2020:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany
|
| And apparently there's a fair bit of North Sea area that
| can be used for new offshore wind.
| jhgb wrote:
| There is no battery capacity required for the simple
| effect of substituting gas power plant operation. Any MWh
| generated by another source will simply remove the need
| to generate that MWh from gas, where the price of gas is
| the dominating component.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Electric heating is extremely uncommon in Germany (like 1-2
| % of households use it).
| creato wrote:
| If gas is used for both heating and electricity
| production, or share any other fuel source, the prices of
| electricity and heating will still be related.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Paying 41c/kWh for okostrom / 100% renewable energy here,
| and doing some mining with two 150W Radeon 6000 GPUs to
| keep this computer room warm goes a long way to making it
| cost effective.
| leobg wrote:
| Exactly. All electric heating should be replaced by GPUs.
| If you need to heat up a room with electricity, at least
| do some proof of work along the way.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| GPUs are just resistive heating with extra steps, COP 1.
| Heat pumps can do way better most of the time.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Hardware for mining cryptocurrency is self-financing in a
| relatively short period of time when the electricity is
| "free" since you're using it for heat anyway.
|
| Heat pumps require a significant capital investment which
| would have to be recovered on only their efficiency
| improvement, since they don't otherwise generate revenue.
|
| The math is different for new construction. There heat
| pumps make a lot more sense because the capital cost is
| relative to some other heating system you don't already
| have. Then the higher efficiency will generally cover the
| _relative_ capital cost even if it wouldn 't cover the
| total capital cost. This might still be less profitable
| than mining cryptocurrency (depending on a variety of
| factors) but better than any other traditional heating
| system.
| Gare wrote:
| Using heat pumps also makes it almost on par with the
| cost of natural gas.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| But this is an issue of Russia putting the squeeze on gas
| prices, not an inherent issue of the German energy system.
| ihsw wrote:
| cwp wrote:
| Being dependent on imported gas seems like an inherent
| issue of the German energy system.
| garmaine wrote:
| Heating is largely natural gas based, so it's not
| substitutive. I don't think Germany should be shutting
| down its nuclear reactors, but that has nothing to do
| with Russian gas. (Unless perhaps they started making
| synthetic methane using the heat of a nuclear reactor,
| which is not a terrible idea but not something they are
| currently doing AFAIK.)
| chris_va wrote:
| To be fair, residential/commercial heating could be
| entirely electric, and heat pumps have additional
| benefits over natural gas heating (like being reversible
| in the summer).
|
| Presumably people would switch if the cost of electricity
| was low enough for it to be more economical. Decisions
| that result in the price of electricity staying high
| provide political leverage to gas producers.
|
| Though, eyeballing the numbers, it really should be very
| attractive to install heat pumps in the EU despite the
| high electricity cost. The cost of natural gas is quite
| high.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| In Sweden natural gas is hardly used yet electricity
| prices have gone up astronomically compared to last year
| - daily rates are now around 10 to 20 times what they
| were last year around the same time. Heating in Sweden is
| a combination of electric (resistive elements and heat
| pumps), wood in some form (firewood, pellets, wood
| chips), some oil and process heat from industry where
| available. The Swedish equivalent of the German Greens is
| proudly proclaiming they're the ones who have closed
| nuclear power plants long before their calculated
| lifetime was out, leading to an increased need for
| electricity imports from e.g. Poland (mostly coal-fired
| plants). Their "green" policy has led to oil-fired power
| plants which normally only come online in the deep of
| winter to be fired up in summer to prevent brown-outs.
| vrepsys wrote:
| It has to do with gas, because 12% of electricity in
| Germany is produced by burning natural gas. That's up by
| 4pp from 2018. That's according to wikipedia: https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany
| scotty79 wrote:
| What happened to their hydro after 2002?
| narrator wrote:
| When shaping public policy, narratives are more important than
| data.[1] From my observation, it seems that the procedure is to
| set the narrative up, make it simple, broadcast it from as many
| channels as possible and censor, threaten and insult people who
| present data that contradicts the narrative. Works really well.
|
| "A good narrative soundly beats even the best data."
|
| [1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/01/how-narratives-
| influe...
| bsza wrote:
| So it's fair to say that Germany's reliance on lignite could be
| nonexistent by now if they didn't keep decommissioning their
| reactors?
| BenoitP wrote:
| Germany's wind and solar is only possible because neighbouring
| countries compensate for when there's no wind and sun; which
| happen a lot of the time. On top of that wind and solar
| production must be bought first on the EU market, effectively
| ruining CO2-free capital that was there beforehand (read:
| nuclear).
|
| So these charts that you show only demonstrate that Germany was
| first to jump on wind and solar production. Great for them, but
| now wind and solar in neighbouring countries are much less
| profitable when they'd be less correlated to Germany's huge
| wind and solar capacity.
|
| Perfect play in a game-theoretic setting, but damaging to the
| neighbours and the actual goal of CO2 reduction.
|
| Now, let's review some live data:
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
| Dunedan wrote:
| Do you have sources to back these claims? I'd imagine that
| somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe.
| barney54 wrote:
| No. Currently (20:56 UTC) there is no sun shining in
| Europe.
|
| As for wind, in the UK (it's the country where I know where
| to find the real-time data easily), wind is only producing
| about 1/3 of its capacity--about 7GW of 24GW capacity.
| https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live Overall renewables
| are generating about 1/4 of total generation.
| tomp wrote:
| How much of that wind power is actually produced _within_
| the UK vs. on in the surrounding sea?
|
| Point being, most EU countries don't have as much sea to
| use for wind, so have much lower wind power generation
| potential.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| In simplified terms, most EU countries have either ample
| sun (Mediterranean area), wind and ocean (north, west )
| or wind and space (Poland & neighbors). Most also have a
| coast, mountains or both so some hydro potential. Even
| Luxembourg managed to find thermal power for heating.
|
| With wind turbines improving steadily and available in
| different sizes there is also no big barrier to having
| them interspersed. Germany or the Netherlands are in
| large parts densely populated but still manage to put up
| wind turbines everywhere.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| _I 'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind
| and sun in Europe._
|
| The problem with this approach is that you need to
| overbuild the total installed capacity massively, so that
| every "somewhere" could, in need, play the role of an
| energy producing and exporting center for all the other
| regions.
|
| If 70 % of Europe is calm and dark at one point, the
| remaining 30 % would need to produce enough energy for the
| entire continent. (This also means having very high
| capacity cross-continent links to move that energy around
| from anywhere to anywhere else. Not easy to build or
| maintain.)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It would be great to have that infrastructure of course,
| but if we're going to say "OK we need to do mammoth
| projects which require lots of up front capex and ongoing
| administrative competence", that same argument applies to
| old-school nuclear reactors too.
|
| The most grating thing about the renewable fad is that
| "herp durp churn out more wind and solar at the margins
| decentralized" and "massive coordinated grids and/or huge
| batteries" are utterly different modes of infrastructure
| production. There is no sense in which getting really
| good at the former makes one any better at the latter.
| BenoitP wrote:
| > I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind
| and sun in Europe.
|
| * wind: wind power production scales with the cube of the
| wind speed [1], so actual production only occurs about 25%
| of the time [2]. Also huge areas produce at the same time:
| the size of the average depression [3] can often be as
| large as the continent.
|
| * sun: solar panels don't produce at night. I don't think I
| need to source that claim. Cloudy weather is not good
| either.
|
| If you want more data, I suggest heading over to
| https://app.electricitymap.org/map
|
| [1] http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-
| content/wind/miller/windpower...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/555654/wind-
| electricity-...
|
| [3] https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/100
| 0hPa/...
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Cloud is not really such a problematic factor:
|
| https://scijinks.gov/solar-energy-and-clouds/
|
| And the nice thing about nights is that they are quite
| predictable. So not a very difficult problem to solve.
|
| Tesla power wall (I'd argue overpriced...): $10k [1]
|
| Cost of an average nuclear plant today: $20bn [2]
| (+operating costs)
|
| So you could buy and install 2Mio powerwalls for thr
| price of one nuclear plant. How many powerwalls (or more
| cost-effective solutions) would you need to balance the
| demand vs availability of electricity at night?
|
| 1. https://solarmetric.com/learn/tesla-powerwall-review-
| costs-s...
|
| 2. https://thebulletin.org/2019/06/why-nuclear-power-
| plants-cos...
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Ummm, Europe is close enough together that night falls over
| the whole continent before it rises again. So no there's
| not always sun somewhere in Europe.
| thisiswater wrote:
| Did they mean to say empire? :P
| Invictus0 wrote:
| In my opinion, these charts are quite out of context. See this
| comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29654571
| elcapitan wrote:
| Primary energy _consumption_ looks quite a bit different
| though:
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
|
| Also worth noting that "biomass" often gets hidden in the
| "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something
| other than oil/coal/gas.
| jhgb wrote:
| There's a reason why electrification of transportation and
| low-energy buildings are major topics in Europe. You see them
| on the top and on the left of your chart, respectively.
| ucha wrote:
| I understand that energy consumption includes things that
| aren't electricity so the proportion of oil is higher but
| everything else is different too. For example, in the parent
| comment, more wind than biomass is produced but in this
| comment the consumption is the other way around. Is it
| because biomass is used for cars as well (ethanol)? Maybe
| wood for heating too?
| elcapitan wrote:
| Yes, I think it's a mix of Biodiesel and wood stoves. Not
| sure why the rape seed production wouldn't count into the
| biomass production then. It makes sense that you see
| private-only things like wood stoves only on the
| consumption side.
|
| I think another factor is that private sector (heavy
| industry) production of energy (with private coal plants
| etc) probably doesn't count into the production side
| either.
| fsh wrote:
| Yes, heating and transportation are huge and almost entirely
| fossil fueled. Low-tech solutions such as heat pumps and
| better insulation alone could probably make a large impact.
| jhgb wrote:
| Not "could". They're legally mandated in pretty much all
| new buildings.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| In my opinion I think biomass can be considered cleaner since
| the burning of it releases only recently stored carbon as
| opposed to taking huge carbon reserves from fossil fuels that
| might not have ever seen the atmosphere again. In my mind
| biomass is "carbon neutral" where fossil fuels are "carbon
| positive"
| AstralStorm wrote:
| It is not neutral, it takes tens of years for standard
| sources of biomass to accumulate to useful amounts. Fast
| biomass would use something like hemp or other grass but
| it's still problematic.
|
| And it does increase CO2 and NOx levels when burned, not to
| mention soot - it's dirtier than quality coal. The growth
| itself does not capture nearly enough to cover for it.
| fsh wrote:
| Biomass is mostly wood. If the forest is in steady-state
| (as is the case in Germany), this is carbon neutral. The
| main issue is that plants are much less efficient at
| light harvesting than solar cells. This means that there
| is probably not much scaling potential left.
| rvnx wrote:
| What if we ban all cryptocurrencies mining in order to save
| energy ?
| donkarma wrote:
| let's ban computer gaming too as that isn't a useful activity
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| There is no "we" that can do this, no world government.
|
| Also by implication there is a lost of bad energy uses we must
| prohibit. What else is on the list?
| scotty79 wrote:
| What if we raise price of energy to the level where mining
| cryptocurrency is barely profitable and even that only in times
| of peak production from renewables and subsidize consumers
| directly so they can purchase reasonable amount of energy
| priced that way for their own use?
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Who is a reasonable consumer? Industries like steel
| refinement are basically just energy cost arbitrage just like
| Bitcoin but you get steel instead of Bitcoin.
|
| Plus crypto dynamically changes the mining difficulty.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Not sure if you can rampup/rampdown steel refining quickly
| enough to provide on demand buffer load for renewables.
| rob_c wrote:
| Slow clap... Popularism strikes again
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Much of Europe is following in Germanys steps I am afraid.
|
| I can only speak for Sweden. We had for the longest time the most
| solid energy base with hydro power in the north and nuclear in
| the south.
|
| Policy has since decades been anti-nuclear though but it really
| accelerated 2016. Basically nuclear power gets heavy tax and fee
| penalties while wind gets the reverse treatment.
|
| If you check https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
| you can see the result.
|
| Nuclear and hydro still supply all power - but we now have an
| erratic additional source of winf power that has such volatility
| that it can spike its production and reverse in just a day. It's
| completely uncontrollable and so can't provide a stable base for
| industry nor homes or offices.
|
| Meanwhile, with nuclear plants now being taken offline, southern
| Sweden is paying a multiple of higher prices than Northern
| Sweden.
|
| This is exacerbated by other countries in Europe making similar
| faulty decisions - notably Germany - meaning that even if Sweden
| produces energy to export on a good day, prices are high.
| Northern Sweden is for now safe because there is no bandwidth to
| transfer the energy produced in an efficient way.
|
| I only hope that the election this year will see policy change to
| normal again, with a renewed focus on nuclear. Nuclear needs no
| subsidies, it just needs to not be penalized by inane policies,
| taxes and bureaucratic nonsense.
|
| During the summer, when less energy is needed, Sweden even had to
| start its old oil based power plant. The solution is similar in
| Europe where reliance on natural gas from Russia is becoming
| normal, in particular for Germany.
|
| In Sweden we have at least come far enough to recognize this as a
| crisis and the so called environmental party will probably be
| booted out of the Riksdag come September.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Please remember that nuclear energy makes up 12% of Germany's
| overall power production [1]. Yes we do import nuclear power from
| France.
|
| But this is not going to be a game-changer and might be even
| possible to offset with clean sources.
|
| [1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2021/09/PE21_429_43312.html
| barney54 wrote:
| Averages do not matter when you need to keep the heat and
| lights on. Wholesale electricity rates are already 5 times as
| high as last winter. What matters is what generation can
| produce electricity when you need it and starting here in 10
| days you will need more production.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| You're completely right on this problem, of course.
|
| Just as a cynical observation, we'll see how price-sensitive
| consumer energy demand really is.
| globalise83 wrote:
| It seems to me that that the harms from power generation
| increases only in logarithmic proportion to the amount of energy
| generated for nuclear (adding a few more hundred tonnes of waste
| to an existing storage facility doesn't really increase harm all
| that much), in linear proportions for renewables (more hills must
| be covered with wind turbines to generate more energy), and for
| fossil fuels the harm is to some degree in an exponential
| relationship due to the feedback effects of increasing carbon
| dioxide. Unfortunately I don't think the world is in a position
| to give up nuclear just yet, and Germany certainly isn't.
| sitkack wrote:
| Convert EVs to have 10kw+ of grid intertied inverters. Build GWhr
| capacity batteries at the old nuclear facilities. Those
| facilities should at least be kept in warm standby. Machines
| switched off will rot and the whole steam and electricity aspect
| of a nuke plant is the same regardless of where the steam comes
| from.
|
| Sad, but we should work with what we have.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| And how will you drive the discharged car in the morning?
|
| It's a non-starter proposition.
| sitkack wrote:
| The car needs to be at 100% to get to work?
| shariat wrote:
| California is doing the same insane thing, unbelievable, this is
| worse than denying climate change
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| German energy policies are insane. Shutting down nuclear energy
| without replacing source. Already planning shut down of coal
| plants, also without any plans for replacement. And with Green
| Party in power it can only become worse.
|
| But we shouldn't worry as long as we can import expensive dirty
| energy from other countries and complain it's them and not us not
| doing enough to stop global warning.
| lb1lf wrote:
| -Well, in fairness you do import clean hydro from Norway, with
| foreseeable consequences for our utility bills.
| outworlder wrote:
| > "From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a
| questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants
| have reached the end of their lifetime,"
|
| That's very questionable. Unless they have audited and found
| uncorrectable design flaws, it really doesn't make sense. A lot
| of the push seems to have come after Fukushima - an entirely
| different design, in a different country, with different
| regulation constraints(some of which were actually violated)
| and in a region subject to severe natural disasters.
|
| It's not like the risk to German plants suddenly increased
| after that event.
| riedel wrote:
| The insane part is only that not enough is done to boost energy
| distribution from renewables. So many subventions have been
| dumped into nuclear and the cost for disposal, it makes sense
| to move out beyond safety concerns. About the time: to there
| could have been better times but there was a political momentum
| and I think a majority of German are in support of the
| transition.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Or import ridiculous amounts of nuclear power from France.
| DavidKarlas wrote:
| People keep saying that but looking at
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR it seems reverse...
| That is probably happening in summer at nights...
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Oh, interesting. I wonder if Germany is more reliant on
| France for providing a baseload when renewables dip while
| France relies on Germany for peaking and supplementing
| daytime loads.
|
| Thanks for the website. It'll definitely come in handy.
|
| Edit: With Germany shutting down their nukes, I'm curious
| if them being a net exporter remains true.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Nuclear is only 12% of the whole mix in Germany.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| In 2020 Germany exported 18TWh of energy and produced
| about 61TWh of nuclear. How much renewable capacity has
| been added in the past year and how much capacity is
| being taken off line?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Germany is a net exporter. But the collaboration with France
| is very useful for both sides. Whenever there is free
| capacity of French reactors, they are exporting to whole
| Europe. In other times, France becomes an importer. Just a
| few days ago, 3 reactors had to be taken offline for repairs
| as some faults were discovered in one of them.
| zibzab wrote:
| This was decided longe before the current mess.
|
| But it sometimes feels like we should move a bit slower in these
| matters and be a tiny bit more flexible to not have a huge
| backlash.
| dvt wrote:
| This is insane to me. Nuclear is the best long-term option for
| ecologically-friendly energy generation. This is absolutely a bad
| move, and the coal industry has done a great job of demonizing
| nuclear power.
| beders wrote:
| if this accelerates transitioning to renewables, it is not
| insane.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Well it's definitely accelerating transitioning to Russian
| gas.
|
| Edit: gas not oil
| fsh wrote:
| Germany has never really used oil for producing
| electricity.
| loeg wrote:
| GP probably meant Russian gas. They are also going to
| become net buyers of coal electricity from neighboring
| countries as a result of this. It's not a good move for
| the environment.
| merb wrote:
| > become net buyers of coal electricity
|
| even if, it's not because of that we have no coal. it's
| just not a good idea to use lignite (besides the co2 it
| also destroys tons of ecosystems which is probably beyond
| co2) and deep mining is basically dead in germany
| bryan0 wrote:
| Yup sorry! I realized after I submitted I meant gas. I'll
| see if I can edit
| prionassembly wrote:
| Things can't be conditionally sane or insane. A winning
| gamble remains a gamble and people are right to balk and say
| "you bet the house on _this_? ".
| akyoan wrote:
| You can't start up the equivalent of "half a country's
| nuclear reactors" in 2 weeks. For this to happen you must
| already have an excess of renewables, which they obviously
| don't have.
|
| What _will_ happen is that more coal will be burned because
| coal always works and is instantly available; Sun and wind
| isn't.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Actually is not that difficult: three reactors out of six
| remaining are closing.
|
| Not saying that the closing is right, but the heading is a
| little click-baity. Reactors are only about 2-3% of
| installed capacity, about 6% of production. It's not good,
| but it's not a catastrophe either.
| plandis wrote:
| I seems more like they are transitioning to Russian gas
| instead.
| Bud wrote:
| It won't accelerate anything. And in the meantime it takes a
| huge amount of reliable, non-carbon-producing, 24/7
| generation capacity offline. Which is a very bad thing.
| lb0 wrote:
| And that thinking is insane to me, long-term best is to have
| renewables and not pollute - nuclear is no alternative but just
| another bad with too many problems, bad economics, and waste
| produced.
| midjji wrote:
| Nuclear is fantastic economics, its just regulated to death.
| The real effect of suppressing nuclear has been a slower
| transition to a sustainable carbon economy, and increased
| power prices limiting innovation and productivity. Solar and
| wind have benefitted, but its still a minor player, and
| without a revolutionary new battery tech, and gargantuan
| infrastructure investment, it simply cant replace a majority
| of current power production, much less satisfy the massive
| suppressed demand.
| lb0 wrote:
| We must be looking at very different numbers - or what do
| you mean with regulation, requiring some safety standards?
|
| Nowhere nuclear got economic, required massive subsidies -
| and in the end has been driven by the need for the precious
| byproducts?
| midjji wrote:
| You can tell because for profit(if staterun) companies
| are building them across the world. France is drawing
| significant profits from existing nuclear, and
| constructing new. Nuclear has been ridiculously
| profitable for most countries which built them, with the
| sole exception of countries which started building them,
| then forbid nuclear. Many countries in Asia are building
| them because its cheaper than coal power. Most countries
| impose nuclear specific taxes, in addition to long term
| disposal fees, which exceed the price of production by
| several times. Sheer state profit. Despite this, the main
| reason nuclear does not get built in Europe is
| regulation, the the risk of losing the investment due to
| changing laws on nuclear. Which has happened several
| times.
|
| Byproducts, aside from nuclear weapons, which most
| countries do not have, are a negligible part. Sweden for
| instance built ample nuclear early, but never built the
| kind of reactor which is used in nuclear weapon
| production. Sweden also didnt subsidize it, but rather
| has been taxing it at an additional 300-500% in addition
| to long term disposal fees(so little of which actually
| went to long term disposal they introduced a second free
| named exactly the same 40 years latter). Despite also
| discarding the cooling water heat into the ocean
| completely needlessly, all it took for these plants to be
| profitable was not forcing them to shut down when public
| opinion turned. It took a while sure, but plants have
| been profitable for 30 years now, and could have
| continued to be so if they hadn't by law been prohibited
| from upgrading and researching.
|
| Nuclear regulation in most places goes as follows: is
| nuclear profitable? if yes, increase safety until it
| stops being so. If technology improves so that the same
| safety can be achieved using less cost, further improve
| safety. If this happens while building a new plant, force
| them to start over. For what that looks like, look to the
| 3 complete restarts due to previously approved safety
| measures suddenly being retracted and increased during
| the construction of the Finnish plant.
|
| Its this idiotic idea that they must guarantee zero
| percent risk which is the main culprit. Flying kills more
| people, and more people need power than flight, yet we
| require far more of nuclear. Many countries built dozens
| of perfectly safe plants during the 60ties for pennies on
| the dollar. If we could build those again, you know the
| ones where less than 0.25% had an serious accident over a
| 60 year history, and removed the massive taxes, we could
| have power prices at a fifth of what they are today.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Well, Germany's wind was done without a thought about how to
| implement storage; it did not have to; it was a perfect
| egotistic game-theoretic play:
|
| The EU energy market mandates that wind and solar production
| must be bought before everything else. What happens at the
| moment is France's nuclear reduces production when Germany's
| wind is over-producing; there is no energy storage at all.
|
| So right now, on top of wind uselessly adding to max production
| capacity, it thrashes zero-CO2 nuclear-allocated capital's
| effectiveness. That's a form of capital theft.
|
| And on top of that, Germany's huge coal baseline continues
| producing just as before:
|
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
|
| Really, the EU rules should be changed so as to account for
| driveability in energy production.
| hilios wrote:
| While yes, Germany profits from the European grid to offset
| some of its over or under production, it doesn't really
| affect Germany's or France's nuclear energy production.
|
| As you can see even at time when wind provides more than half
| of Germany's total energy production, the red nuclear bar
| remains nearly unchanged.
|
| https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
|
| If you check France's energy production at the same time
| nuclear energy production isn't affected.
|
| https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-
| energ...
|
| It does affect oil, gas and coal, but hardly affects nuclear.
| IsThisYou wrote:
| The EU is our battery.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| It isn't. You cannot rely on everyone else staying carbon
| positive, as you will feel the heat too.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Well, good on you I guess.
|
| What's so sad is wind and solar being so concentrated in
| Germany. If it were more spread out over Europe, it would
| have lower correlation; and help with production peaks.
|
| There's egotistic, and there's egotistic + harmful.
| nradov wrote:
| Some of France's nuclear plants are currently offline for
| maintenance which is contributing to the spike in natural gas
| prices.
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/news/3780688-france-shuts-down-
| nucl...
| pkdpic wrote:
| > Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by
| 2038
|
| Good if they actually mean it maybe?
|
| > leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the
| long term... Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge
| the supply gap.
|
| This just seems asinine. But what do I know...
|
| Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about
| nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away
| from it? It seems like a solvable engineering scenario from an
| outside perspective. I just dont get it.
| arrrg wrote:
| From a political point of view re-introducing nuclear in
| Germany would be suicide for anyone attempting it.
|
| It's just not a politically viable option. That's the reality
| of it, irregardless of anything else.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| For me it's not an engineering problem but a human one. Since
| the waste from a single power plant during one year of
| operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people we
| have to ensure no madmen get their hands on the waste for
| thousands of years after we have spent all the watt-hours the
| waste has produced.
|
| We're leaving that problem to hundreds of generations to
| come, who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have
| cheap energy today. That seems unfair. It's equivalent to
| Julius Caesar building the aqueducts using some technology
| that France would still have to pay for today.
|
| I think investing in energy storage - hydrogen, ammonia,
| pumped storage to mention a few - would be vastly better.
| Solar and wind already generate more electricity in Germany
| than nuclear ever did, if it could be stored during the
| proverbial cloudy days, the problem is solved permanently and
| in a much better way than with nuclear power plants.
| isatty wrote:
| > Since the waste from a single power plant during one year
| of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of
| people
|
| Chances of that happening is minuscule and if left uncheck,
| global warming will kill more than that.
|
| > who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have
| cheap energy today
|
| Or they figure out better ways to use it that don't involve
| killing people.
|
| > proverbial cloudy days
|
| According to this website[0], Germany had about half a
| years worth of sunny days in 2020. 50% is a long shot from
| proverbial and according to tfa it's being bridged by other
| EU nations and coal.
|
| [0] https://ru-geld.de/en/country/weather-and-
| climate/sunshine.h...
| dsl wrote:
| > Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about
| nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away
| from it?
|
| Oil funding of anti-nuclear FUD. Thats it. https://www.forbes
| .com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
| _ph_ wrote:
| First of all, the new German government adjusted the phase-
| out of coal power to be as close as possible to 2030. 2038
| was more a bad compromise by the previous government.
|
| And yes, nuclear power can be dangerous as Chernobyl and
| Fukushima have shown. Those dangers could probably be
| addressed by new reactors, but those are very expensive. The
| big problem are the existing old reactors. They are not as
| safe and require a lot of maintenance. A few years ago,
| Germany only had 4 nuclear power plants running through the
| whole winter as 4 others were down for longer maintenance.
| Then there is the problem where to plut all the nuclear
| waste, Germany doesn't have a long-term storage facility
| (though search started in the 80ies).
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The old reactors were intentionally unfunded for years to
| make them so expensive that it looked better to
| decommission them.
| Delk wrote:
| I don't really understand why the Chernobyl or Fukushima
| disasters should be considered evidence of nuclear power
| being dangerous.
|
| The Chernobyl plant had severe design deficiencies, and the
| operators were apparently not properly informed about the
| dangers of operating the plant the way they did at the
| moment. The Soviet Union was not exactly the epitome of
| environmental responsibility. Lots of things went wrong.
|
| The Fukushima disaster was precipitated by a magnitude 9
| earthquake and a tsunami that pretty much leveled the
| entire area and stopped the emergency generators. The
| backup generators also failed. Pretty much everything that
| could go wrong went wrong.
|
| People were displaced, and the radiation leakage should be
| considered significant environmental damage.
|
| The number of people displaced was tens of thousands.
| Although few deaths have been confirmed, if you're
| pessimistic, you might be able to come up with a larger
| figure.
|
| However, the Fukushima disaster was a once-per-several-
| decades event. Coal causes hundreds of thousands to
| millions of deaths _every year_ through direct air
| pollution, not to mention the indirect effects from climate
| change. That 's not a rare accident. That's business as
| usual.
|
| Yes, nuclear power has risks, and sometimes something goes
| wrong. Lots of work has been done to minimize the risks, as
| should be. But it's entirely emotion-driven and
| intellectually untenable to consider nuclear to be a major
| risk, comparatively. The damage caused by accidents that
| apparently should happen at most once per several decades
| in well-managed (or even less well managed) plants is still
| a fraction of the damage that coal-fired or other fossil-
| fueled plants cause every year as part of their normal
| operation.
|
| If anything, the lesson to be learned from the Fukushima
| disaster should be: "consider carefully whether to build
| nuclear plants in an area where major earthquakes and
| tsunamis are statistically to be expected; design and
| manage plants responsibly; other than that, it's probably
| fine".
|
| Nuclear waste is still be a problem but it's hard to
| imagine it being anywhere near the magnitude of the
| problems that burning fossil fuels causes.
| sgt wrote:
| Is the real reason perhaps that those coal-fired generators
| are running 32-bit Unix?
| midjji wrote:
| Its less the coal industry and just a random quirk of culture.
| _Microft wrote:
| We experienced fallout from Chernobyl (radiation levels of wild
| boar meat and some mushrooms are still under surveillance
| today) and we were designated nuclear ground zero in case that
| the Soviets tried to invade Europe. What attitude towards all
| things nuclear do you expect to arise from that?
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Depends on how rational you are. Unfortunately, people are
| not very rational on average.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, one small accident 35 years ago and far away, that
| could have been much worse - is still the cause that large
| areas are contaminated here.
|
| It is rational, to be sceptic of such a technology.
|
| Most discussions about it are not, sure. Anti-nuclear is a
| strong dogma in green circles and not to be discussed about
| - but there are still real reasons, why it became a dogma
| in the first place.
|
| Because nuclear energy is not as save and easy as it was
| promised. It is heavily subsidized, but socialised the risk
| - and the current storage solutions to the waste are sub-
| optimal. So expensive and dangerous.
|
| I am open to have them run a bit longer, and rather close
| the coal plants, but they are not a magic bullet solution.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power
| in the slightest.
|
| The fallout sucked, but even that was a minor hiccup compared
| to the destruction pollution is bringing with it...
| ben_w wrote:
| Fear doesn't work that way.
|
| I was forbidden from including a smoke detector in a school
| show-and-tell (UK, circa 1993) because of the radiation
| symbol, even though there was a detector just like it on
| the ceiling of the same classroom.
| danjac wrote:
| Perhaps one that is relevant to the future of your children
| rather than the fears of your parents?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Oh, come one! I spent most of my childhood in Minsk, 380km
| north-west to Chernobyl. Now in Europe my only worry is the
| blackout plan in case of power shortages, not the nuclear
| plant 60km on the east.
|
| I am always amazed how Germans are irrational about nuclear
| while nearby countries have a mostly pragmatic attitude. Even
| in Belgium the nuclear phase out is fake and every politician
| knows it can not be enforced until Netherlands build two new
| nuclear powerplants 20 years from now.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Nearly all the people I know in Poland who were children at
| the time of Chernobyl have thyroid issues, including my
| partner. It's not accurate to say that it had zero health
| impact. Of course, coal has plenty of health impact, just
| not a good look to be so flippant about a major nuclear
| disaster.
| rollcat wrote:
| Chernobyl was also a political/PR issue, and in typical
| USSR fashion, the general public wasn't even informed
| until over a week after the incident. Consider the half-
| life of iodine-135, by the time people were being
| recommended and provided with the necessary medication
| most of the damage was already done.
| zibzab wrote:
| Germans have always been anti-nuclear.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Longer insanity is not less insanity!
| themitigating wrote:
| "We've always hated X therefore X must be bad"
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Unless there is a higher risk of war. Can you imagine if WWII
| had been a bit more technologically advanced, with bombing
| raids on nuclear reactors? Here's a report on their
| vulnerability in a modern war.
|
| https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
| mullingitover wrote:
| If WWII had nuclear technology in play, bombing raids on
| nuclear reactors would've been one of the smaller problems.
| Then again, if MAD had been around pre-WWII it may have never
| happened.
| baby wrote:
| From what I understand they are still the biggest carbon emitter
| in the EU...
| foepys wrote:
| It's also the country with the largest population and
| manufacturing industry.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Frustrating.
|
| Also ironic, the idea that climate activists are a significant
| cause of climate change.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| This is not just about Germany, it affects energy and gas prices
| across Europe and it makes Europe more dependant on Russia.
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