Germany Is Closing Half of Its Reactors at Worst Possible Time (yahoo.com) 220
Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region's history. From a report: The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country's nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise. After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany vowed to ditch all of its reactors. At the time, the country was a leader in renewables, but the phaseout has left it more reliant on coal and lignite for electricity generation. The nation fell behind in the net-zero race after making major concessions to the coal lobby, to protesters against wind farms and to manufacturers, particularly carmakers.
"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," said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. "It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions." Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It's one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.
"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," said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. "It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions." Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It's one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.
This is not really a problem (Score:5, Funny)
This is not really a problem: there's plenty of Russian gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines to power Europe. You would need a major war to break-out before there were any serious power shortages. And whenever there is a power gap, you can always trust Putin to fill it in.
Re:This is not really a problem (Score:5, Funny)
You would need a major war to break-out before there were any serious power shortages.
The Biden administration is on the case!
Re:This is not really a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
> Nuclear power is neither clean nor emissions free. When you take into account mining, shipping, refining, enriching, building, insuring, operating
Solar on the other hand, is totally clean since solar panels don't require: mining, shipping, refining, enriching, building, insuring, operating /s
Solar has a much higher energy deathprint (Score:3, Informative)
Also note that solar has a much higher energy deathprint than nuclear:
Number of deaths per trillion kilowatt hours:
Solar (rooftop) -- 440
Nuclear (global average including Chernobyl and Fukushima) -- 90
Nuclear (U.S.) -- 0.1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
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playing with statistics are we... fine, i will cover that
how many nuclear stations were build? and how many solar? most accidents in solar happen during construction, so higher number of accidents is expected.
Next, how many people did each accident affected but not killed? in solar, probably a small number, people falling from rooftop are unlikely to hit other people... now nuclear, you have radiation problems, forcing thousands of people to move out and many already with high dose of radiation exposure...
Solar pannels destroy the Sun! (Score:2)
Not content to destroy the earth, we now steal energy from the Sun!
This needs to be banned.
And do not forget the Fukushima DISASTER. Killed one person directly!. Maybe a dozen others indirectly! Terrible! After the disaster, thousands of Japanese children developed thyroid cancer! (As they did before the disaster, but that is not relevant.)
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I certainly hate it when incompetence at the power station cause my solar panels spew a radioactive cloud that floats over continents.
It's facile to count Chernobyl against first world nuclear power and you know it.
But while we're here: I guess you love people dying to power your light bulbs. Nuclear is 3x safer than the safest other form of power measured by deaths per TWh. So you really like people dying for you huh?
In other words, stupid, hyperbole laden points are stupid and all stupid points like your
Re:This is not really a problem (Score:4, Informative)
According to Our World In Data, nuclear is nearly twice as bad as wind and four times as bad as solar and hydro for deaths per Wh. That includes things like dam failures, nuclear accidents etc.
As Fukushima showed, even in a highly developed country with a supposedly strong regulatory system, nuclear accidents are still possible.
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So, I ran some numbers. According to those charts, 3,271.6 people died from hydroelectric power in 2007. How did that happen? Well, if you look at the top of the chart you provided, and remember that
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It's facile to count Chernobyl against first world nuclear power and you know it.
I agree. Where this fails is using Chernobyl as an example of what to expect in safety from nuclear power plants being planned in the future. The safety failure of the RBMK-1000 reactor at Chernobyl has as much to do with the safety of a Westinghouse AP1000 as the safety failures of a 1972 Ford Pinto does with a 2023 Tesla Roadster.
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At least articles written by renewable lobbyists (what, maybe a whole 2 of them in DC?) would be hopeful and forward looking, instead of being more of the same old depressing crap from the nuclear and fossil fuel industries.
Just visiting? (Re:This is not really a problem) (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of a joke...
Vlad Putin is on his way to visit the newly elected German Chancellor Scholtz to discuss the final details of the new natural gas pipeline. Due to a mix-up at the border Putin isn't given his usual diplomatic escort through the border but instead has to tolerate the usual border interview from a newbie border guard that is going by the book than wave him through. The border guard is oblivious and yet nobody else dares interfere as they are unsure if Putin is annoyed or taking this lightly.
Border Guard: Name please?
Vlad Putin: Vladimir Putin.
BP: Visiting or immigrating?
VP: Just visit for day, maybe two.
BP: Reason for visit:
VP: I wish to tour your capital, I understand is best to come after summer heat but before snow.
BP: Occupation?
VP: No, no occupation, I say just visiting. Maybe two days.
and war can lead to an quick restart of the nukes! (Score:2)
and war can lead to an quick restart of the nukes!
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decommissioning takes years and is most likely irreversible beyond a certain point in the process.
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and war can lead to an quick restart of the nukes!
A restart of shuttered power plants is an option. Also an option is building new nuclear power plants. To get an idea on how quickly this can happen consider that in the 1950s we saw the first nuclear powered submarine built in 18 months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If we include the time from when the contract for a new submarine was awarded to when the submarine entered service then it's more like 36 months. That's not quite a nuclear power plant as we think of them now, this was a 10 MW shaft po
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For heating houses and industrial heat that is a problem yes:
But for simply generating electricity - if you would knew the data -
it's really not:
- Gas is used to produce 10% of the electrical energy in Germany (13% was comming from nuclear)
- reserve coal plants are in stand-by
- and in case nuclear power plants will be restarted for the time needed
They have plenty of coal (Score:2)
Re:They have plenty of coal (Score:5, Informative)
The whole clusterf*ck of this winter was predicted. You can take the Generation Gap white paper prepared in 2003 for Blair's government [ippr.org] and read the scenarios outlined there. There was similar work done at the time in most other major Eu economies including Germany, but as that one is English, it will be easier for most of Slashdot audience. It is 73 pages with some fairly detailed models and calculations, if you cannot add 2+2 and can only sing "Holy Greta" while orienting yourself towards Oslo - it is not for you.
The current crunch is described there in one of the worst case scenarios, the one where we take out coal TOO EARLY and do not replace it with nuclear or other stable sources of power. The only difference is that the collapse was predicted to happen last year. And we did exactly that - we followed the worst case scenario in that paper. Everywhere - UK, Germany, etc. Except Poland - they are the only one who still keep their coal plants going. So it is rather not surprising that they have the lowest price of electricity in Europe (by a factor of 3).
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The many coal plants still exist - except some ancient ones - the newer plants that are getting shut-down are kept as a reserve.
Failure to build appropriate power transmission. (Score:5, Interesting)
They have plenty of coal / They can just increase that.
Well, under the same argument there is plenty of wind in Scotland, however during the most recent German energy crisis it was actually sitting idle, shut down due to lack of demand. Why? Because there isn't enough energy interconnect between Scotland and the rest of Europe. Some is in planning, connecting Scotland to England better (the main current bottleneck) and connecting Scotland to Norway, however it's not running yet so that wind power can't help Germany.
There's plenty of potential for Germany to invest in better interconnection via Denmark to the UK. The current lack shows lack of planning whatever you think about German nuclear.
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Even worse than you think (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing not mentioned in the summary is that traditionally, when Germany has been short power they were getting it from France.
Well France had to temporarily halt a few nuclear reactors for some repairs and has shut down some coal plants, and such they are now importing power themselves [reuters.com] for years to come. Oops! That means a big cushion for Germany is now gone.
In general all of Europe seems very screwed [cnn.com] when it comes to power for the winter, and not just this winter - futures for gas prices in 2023 are already extremely high as well.
What Germany needs to do, at the very least, is suck it up and admit it is madness to close down good productive CO2 free nuclear power plants right now, or maybe ever. Germans are stubborn, but even stubborn people come around when the lights and heat go off in winter. Beer can only warm you so much.
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Nah, they'll just build more coal and gas power plants and then blame the increase in CO2 emissions on old cars and bitcoin.
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Unlikely they will build any new coal plants, as they have set a date of 2030 for coal phase-out.
Re:Even worse than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice, but the Green party (who are now in government in Germany) have built their entire existence on anti-nuclear bogeymen. They came out of general environmentalism and especially anti-nuclear (energy and weapons) activism in the 1960s. For them to give up their anti-nuclear stance would be like the US Republicans embracing universal health care including all reproductive health services and guaranteed parental leave for all new parents: Not Going To Happen.
"Anything Nuclear Is Bad" is an article of Green Party faith. An article of faith more important, it turns out, than not heating the planet up faster.
So until the Greens leave government, Nuclear energy will have no place in Germany (and even then, plenty of people who don't actually vote Green are also not in favour of nuclear energy). The Greens are most unlikely to leave government before end of year, and that means these plants will shut down, and once shut down they are very unlikely to restart.
Ironically, for the Greens, (Score:2, Funny)
Ironically, for the Greens, more CO2 in the air makes the planet greener. See https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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For what you claim that the article says, we did not need a 2019 nature paper. Fertilization by elevated CO2 levels is a standard technique used in Greenhouses.
What the abstract of the article you cited actually says is they determined that the limit on the increased grows is not CO2, but other elements.
Re:Even worse than you think (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing is: The current shutdown of the reactors was *not* ordered by the greens, in fact they were not in government when that happened.
What actually happened is that ~20 years ago the government (including the greens) made a long-term plan to gradually shut down the reactors by age. There would have been enough time to prepare.
Then the power plant operators extended the legal lifetimes of the the reactors in question to avoid shutdown by legal tricks until the new government came into place. The new government (without the greens)+parliament extended the lifetimes of the nuclear reactors. The Fukushima happened and the government (without the greens) changed their mind and ordered a hasty leave, with their parliament majority.
So the waste of ~10 years and decision to still shut down all nuclear reactors much quicker is *not* on the greens.
This was not the only fuck-up of the last government. Operators who (in the beginning of the 2000s after the decision to gradually exit from nuclear power) built modern gas power plants (needed to quickly ramp up and down production to compensate for e.g. renewable energy fluctuation) actually had to shut them down, since the government failed to implement a capacity based market - this meant that it was more economic to have the (completely written off and in the past highly subsidized) coal power plants running 24/7 and dumping the electricity at some times cheap into the market. So now only did the last government (No greens involved) waste time by revering their stance on nuclear power twice, but they also killed off competition to coal (not surprisingly some of the CDU party representatives has side jobs for companies operating coal power plants), and additionally they prevented (on the city/regional level) the construction of power lines.
So given that power plants have long lifetimes and construction times and the greens were not in power on the federal level in nearly 20 years, it's a little ironic to blame them for Germanies perceived problems.
On top of that, the Netherlands will ADD nuclear (Score:3)
The new gov't for the Netherlands meanwhile has planned for the addition of nuclear plants. They're direct neighbors of Germany. How much more silly can you get. I am convinced, especially given the political situation, the Netherlands is doing the right thing here. Plus, the country is too small to rely on only other renewables anyway for the forseeable future.
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The Netherlands probably won't build any more nuclear power. They have one plant at the moment, and while various governments have been saying they "support" nuclear power for a decade, nothing is happening and nothing is planned.
The Netherlands does have access to some pretty great wind resources in the North Sea though. That's basically the story here, renewables got cheap much faster than expected and now nuclear looks extremely unattractive. It appears that grids will work just fine with a large proport
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1.) you should not forget to mention that Germany - incontrast to many other electricity importing countries (Italy for example) - has a well enough designed reserve capacity.
Because many of the coal plants that go out of production will be made part of a cold/stand-by reserve
2.) "screwed up when it comes to power for the winter " yeah please phrase that with a texan accent
3.) And why do you care so much about Germany?
When the nuclear exit fails you have a better stand point, as if it is just mulled in clou
Re:Even worse than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
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German Greens are in government now, and they are the party that dragged CDU to the "close the plants" side to take votes from them. Their roots are in the anti-war movement from Cold War era, where the youngsters of yesteryear currently in charge of the party were offended to their very cores that world peace wasn't reached by mutual bonds of friendship and understanding but by the nuclear bomb and MAD.
And they're going to be mad about it for the rest of their days, and they project their burning hatred fo
A failure mode that can't happen in Germany (Score:2)
The German movement to shut down reactors wasn't having much influence until Fukushima happened.
If the Green party thought about the issue a little less superficially, they would realize that none of Germany's reactors are vulnerable to tsunamis.
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The German movement to shut down reactors wasn't having much influence until Fukushima happened.
No.
During the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroeder, the social democratic-green government had decreed Germany's final retreat from using nuclear power by 2022
Shroeder left office in 2005. The die was already cast 6 years before Fukushima.
Rock and a hard place (Score:3)
Three choices (Re:Rock and a hard place) (Score:5, Insightful)
There's three choices:
- Nuclear fission power
- Higher CO2 emissions
- Higher energy prices
They'll choose nuclear fission eventually. They just need reality to slap them around a bit first.
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Doubtful they will choose nuclear.
Coal plants due to close by 2030, so long term rises in CO2 also unlikely.
They are going all in on renewable energy. Given that it's already way cheaper than nuclear, very high energy prices are unlikely too.
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Nuclear power is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear power is good (Score:5, Interesting)
I want green power, and the ability to store that power, and I'll pay tax money to fund the research. However, until we get there, let's make sure we have enough power that we don't need to rely on an enemy at all. Let's make Vlad / Russia irrelevant to the EU by making sure there is enough for total power self-sufficiency.
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Germany is planning to end sales of fossil fuel powered vehicles by 2035, and close all remaining coal plants by 2030.
Air quality will improve long before then, as most people will buy an EV before then and most coal plants will close ahead of time.
Re:Nuclear power is good (Score:4, Insightful)
If solar and wind are cheaper than "traditional" power sources, why does my power company offer me the opportunity to pay extra to enroll in a program to attribute my power use to those sources?
Shouldn't I get a discount for using the cheaper sources, or perhaps get charged extra for using CO2-emitting sources?
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Yes, the sentence had "in the short term" also. I agree that nuclear is likely cheaper in the long term. Whether that will remain the case as solar and wind costs continue to decline is an issue. I agree that the regulatory problem is a big issue with nuclear and there's a problem here of a vicious cycle where not building a lot makes the cost continue to go up. France did it in a cost effective way by building most of it in a small period of time and using essentially the same designs for everything. Wor
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New solar and wind is cheaper than new nuclear.
Nuclear power is in the long term cheaper than offshore wind [world-nuclear.org], and not that much more than onshore solar/wind.
At least you can admit nuclear is more expensive than onshore wind and solar.
You're doing better than most.
The key is that nuclear plants are traditionally expensive to build but cheap to run, and you can drive down production costs pretty easily (SMRs help already) if you start building a lot more reactors and drive down regulatory costs.
Except nuclear plants have only been getting more and more expensive to build.
And now you want to design some completely new ones? New kinds of nuclear almost never run into problems or have massive cost blowouts do they...
(You'll also need some new regulations to go along with them. But I'm sure that'll be just as cheap... )
Germany learnt notthing from Fukushima (Score:2)
They have no protections against another tsunami. None whatsoever!
One six meter tsunami running across Germany would destroy all of their nuclear power plants.
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At least you can admit nuclear is more expensive than onshore wind and solar.
Where is Germany going to put all these onshore windmills? And solar panels? Have you done the math on how much area they need and how much area Germany has?
Someone did the math: http://www.inference.org.uk/su... [inference.org.uk]
I'm sure someone will claim Germany can just ask Russia nicely to put windmills and solar panels inside their borders, and sell the energy to Germany forevermore at a fair price. I'm sure that will work out just great for the economy and political independence of Germany. In case nobody noticed
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Yep, and they will keep getting more expensive until they don't.
I didn't realize we were allowed to use magic.
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So you want to promote more nuclear, and you want to lower the safety features to save some money...
Is that what I wrote? No, this is what I wrote...
Adding more safety devices doesn't mean adding safety, there's a point in which it is only adding devices.
If making nuclear power four times as deadly as it is now would lower the cost to one quarter its current price would you do that? Why or why not? Is wind power "safe"? Well, nothing is "safe" because accidents happen and people die. I ask these questions because if we measure safety as deaths per watt-hour then nuclear power is nearly four times safer than wind.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
Why would anyone choose the more dangerous energy source if
To make money (Score:2)
If solar and wind are cheaper than "traditional" power sources, why does my power company offer me the opportunity to pay extra to enroll in a program to attribute my power use to those sources?
Because it's a great way to make extra money. Company's creating more expensive "premium" services whose price tag does not at all match the cost of product is quite common. Welcome to capitalism.
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Because you have a greedy middleman in between you and your power source. Wind is so cheap that for a time, during overnight periods, wind producers were actually paying for people to utilize their output. The efficacy of large-scale renewables-driven energy storage and distribution has been proven. Large-scale wind projects are being built in a fraction of the time it takes to build a nuclear plant and bring it online. the Dogger-Point wind farm off the coast of NE England will produce enough power for 6 m
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Wind is so cheap that for a time, during overnight periods, wind producers were actually paying for people to utilize their output.
Nothing gets so cheap it goes negative.
Someone is paying for people to waste excess wind capacity. Who? The answer to that is the taxpayer. Windmills get a production tax credit, they get paid to produce electricity whether people want it or not. So, if there is not enough demand for power when the wind is blowing then they create it by splitting the production tax credit with people. The windmill operators get paid, the people wasting that energy get paid, and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.
The
Re:Nuclear power is good (Score:5, Informative)
This trend was NOT kickstarted by the disaster. It was started years prior due to the Social Democrats and Green government at the time and their acceleration of the "Energiewende", where the nuclear phaseout was decided upon in 2002 if I remember correctly. That is what the Schröder government (he's now chairman of Nord Stream 2 and of the Russian mineral oil company Rosneft) decided upon during their first term in office already.
The Green party has notoriously been anti nuclear power since forever, but they rarely got a chance to govern the country (now they're again part of the government). What the disaster at the Fukushima plant however did was to push a lot of other politicians among the more conservative parties over that threshold where they saw nuclear power as being too dangerous to build a future on.
While I can blame a lot of things on Merkel, this is certainly not one of them. It's the legacy of crooked former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The shoddy safety standards in Japanese nuclear plants at that time played right into his hands, because after that they could play the "think of the children" card even harder.
Re:Nuclear power is good (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a really weird white washing of the second worst mistake of Merkel's. Her primary problem has always been immediate emotional response coupled with her political instincts being "move to the position of opposition parties to siphon their voters". When she met a Palestinian teenage girl who demonstratively cried at her for a while, she opened borders likely expecting to take support from opposition parties who were in support of mass immigration. That was by far the worst of her political mistakes, and one that effectively destroyed her political legacy, causing a crisis that continues unabated across Europe, North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia to this day with mass immigration and all the problems on its path, from bringing back black slavery in North Africa to mass rapes of European women.
And decision to close nuclear reactors came at the wake of Fukushima accident, before any actual analysis on why what happened there happened. It was the same problem with Merkel of sudden emotional response to something that hit her closely followed by a calculated political attempt to siphon voters from an opposition party in favour of closures, in this case Greens. It's just that disaster that this decision caused is much more distant than the immediate catastrophe that her "welcome culture" disaster. After all, the plant closures take much longer than it took for the first illegal immigration wave of the migration crisis to slam Europe.
It nevertheless is the exact same kind of a mistake. A very uniquely Mutti kind of a mistake. That of emotional response leading to a cynical and calculating political action.
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The first "Atomgesetz" was signed into law in 1959, where back then the goal was science, safety, and peaceful use. Ever since then there's been a lot of changes (18 times if my information is correct), with another noteworthy one within the context from the Schröder era, which sought to shut down all commercial nuclear reactors by 2021.
Here's a document from 2000 in which the things were disc
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It should be noted that "12 years on average" means that some reactors would have been running for a long time and others (based on economic reasons) been shut down quicker.
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Solar is a crime against environment in Germany. Just look as solar intensity maps. You're going to struggle to just recoup the CO2 emissions from building the panels if you deploy them in Germany.
Wind makes some sense in the Baltic and North Sea when built offshore, but there's a very much capacity limit AND intermittency to worry about.
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They'll just import more of their power (Score:2, Redundant)
They're going to keep pushing this agenda, regardless of how they screw up their ability to deliver power.
The most vocal are usually the dumbest (Score:5, Insightful)
Our media give these idiots voices and our democracies don't allow for our governments to lead. We don't pass environmental regulations in my country, Canada, we pass useless measures to pacify the dimwits. Most Canadians think we have a good environmental record while in fact we compete with the Australians for the worst per capita green house gas emission title of non-OPEC country.
I'm sure every German politician not in the Green party knew it was dumb to phase out nuclear. It was bad for the environment, bad for the economy and even terrible for the defense of the EU as they are now dependent on gas from Russia. But the greens, coal producers and the Russians got the media to support them and every politician rightly figured out that it was a fight they couldn't win.
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Hence you could say that about 5% of Germany's power output is dependent on Russian gas.
It's a stretch to call it 'dependency' right now. But since the trend for natural gas usage has seen a slight increase over time, it is reasonable to assume that a dependency can develop from this.
I compiled some numbers from ht [energy-charts.info]
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1.) The link you provided to "pro nuclear activists" those are not "The greens" they have no affiliation with the green party and to be frank are a false flag operation.
2.) Yes nuclear energy can be declared a green energy by a majority vote and that is likely.
the caveat:
But we'll see what happens when france realizes how quick their current vintage reactors are aging and that it takes about 7-10 yrs. to build a new nuclear plant - and no you cannot give an old reactor vessel a "make over" from rust bucket
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Also the next paragraph
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By the looks of it, those are not the Greens from Germany, but rather from the UK. Even that I'm not sure on, but have to speculate going by the footnote of "Since 14th August 2020 Greens For Nuclear Energy have received grants from Quadrature Climate Foundation in the sum of £275,000. #FullTransparency" and one of their cited sources "Professor Gerry Thomas – Imperial College London".
If they were from Germany their website would have to contain an "Impressum", which i
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This demonstrates well the short term self-congratulatory thinking of the modern greens. For them, 35 years is a really long time for a power plant to function, and the wonderful renewable intermittent energy combined with people being forced by its intermittency into accepting a third world lifestyle with much lower energy consumption to save the planet.
It's no wonder that this is the country that literally forced its poor to give up electricity for a few years, and congratulated themselves for it. Until t
Progression (Score:3)
The plan:
Step 1: Shut down dangerous nuclear power plants that provide huge amounts of power
Step 2: Build a *whole* bunch of renewable energy sources to replace the nuclear power plants
Step 3: Green energy!
Except I think steps 1 and 2 are reversed somehow.
Re:Progression (Score:5, Interesting)
2. The idea of Wind is great ON AVERAGE and TERMINALLY DUMB (in the literal sense of that word, the Darwin award one) for Europe. Europe goes COLD every 10 years or so and when it does there is no wind. Last time this happened was in the winter of 2011-2012 - you can look up the weather in the archives, wind in the range of 0 to 5 knots across the whole continent. That is EXPECTED - extreme cold is brought to Europe by Siberian anti-cyclone masses which block out the normal air circulation from the Atlantic. The WIND STOPS and the temperatures drop to -35 (that is actual number from 2012, I actually saw that myself, I was in Czech republic that winter).
If you have put your faith into wind without a viable 100% backup you just won your Darwin award. By freezing to death.
On average... (Score:3)
Heard about the guy with his head in the oven, and his feet in a block of ice?
On average, he was comfortable.
Expected outcome (Score:5, Informative)
That's the expected outcome when the "green-people" screams and politicians listen to them instead of listening to scientists.
Nuclear energy is the best power/contamination ratio energy source BY FAR (like EONS-far) than any other (supposedly) "clean" energy (should we count the contamination of creating/not-recycling/out-of-commission "solar" cells, wind turbines, etc.?)
What is happening right now is like screaming "Airplanes crash and everyone dies" and avoid listening to "Airplanes is the safest transportation".
Nuclear powerplants are the best power/contamination ratio energy whether you like it or not.
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Sure... when you look at power as a global commodity. But Germany looked at the Fukishima devastation and asked itself, what there is a mistake and we turn Germany into an uninhabitable hellscape like Fukishima? Fukishima was 240km from Tokyo. Germany had reactors 50km from Frankfurt, 40km from Cologne, 30km from Hamburg, 30km from Bremen. It won't be much consolation to talk about the global power/contamination ratio when everbody in Frankfurt has to move out and find a new home.
Re:Expected outcome (Score:5, Informative)
when everbody in Frankfurt has to move out and find a new home
It looks like the lessons learned from Fukushima is that the no-go area around the plant is about 3 kilometers. Beyond that, some restrictions may apply (agricultural) but people could have stayed. S Frankfurt at 50 km will probably be perfectly safe.
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So how are all those cities expecting to survive that massive tsunami that utterly wiped out the region, bringing massive devastation and killing tens of thousands?
And also causing the meltdown at a reactor that now has a 3km exclusion zone and killed exactly zero people except for two who fell from high places during immediate repairs?
The ironic part is that Fukushima reactor site was literally the safest place to be in the region at the time of the tsunami. No one died there, unlike the rest of the region
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It won't be much consolation to talk about the global power/contamination ratio when everbody in Frankfurt has to move out and find a new home.
There are far better examples of even larger radiation releases rendering areas uninhabitable [pinimg.com] for extended periods of ... Oh.
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Sure, power is a global commodity.
Let's ask the people at La Palma (Islas Canarias, Spain) what they think about the UNCONTROLLED geothermic energy of the volcan so they had to move away from their homes. It won't be much consolation... ETC.
What your comment FAILS (miserably) to achieve is a non-destructive view of the energy as a destructor.
Same can be said of the solar oven centrals (the most efficient solar generator so far), where you heat a material like in a oven. I can asure you that if it becomes U
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But Germany looked at the Fukishima devastation and
and set it's hair on fire and ran around screaming.
what there is a mistake and we turn Germany into an uninhabitable hellscape like Fukishima?
How the fuck would you do that? The exclusion zone around Fukushima is nothing like that big.
Okay, but ... (Score:2)
After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany vowed to ditch all of its reactors.
Japan is an island and Germany isn't and tsunamis and ocean flooding don't happen inland, so how about just closing the ones near the coast? [He said, not knowing where all their reactors are.]
NIMBY, that's why (Re:Okay, but ...) (Score:3, Informative)
I recall issues of French and German nuclear reactors inland from the coasts would use rivers as their heat sink, as opposed to the ocean or a separate cooling pond/tower/whatever. This meant that when summer temperatures were high enough these reactors were ordered to shut down so as to not harm fish in the rivers. There was no technical reason to shutdown the reactors, the water would have still maintained sufficient cooling for safe operation. This was a legal demand over possible harm to fish.
The fix
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And why are they putting heat into the water anyway? Sounds like wasted energy to me.
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Are you serious? That's how a heat engine works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Germany will not build new nuclear power plants. Not now, not ever. The country is very densely populated and has no permanent storage facilities for the waste.
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it kills fish by boiling them in rivers
Yeah. We all know just how bad power plant cooling outflow [oceanwideimages.com] is for sea life.
I'm feeling a little pedantic ... (Score:2)
When it's not blowing, it's just air not wind and the Sun is always shining, so maybe "when there's no wind or available sunlight."
Now I need either more or less coffee...
Germans love coal (Score:2)
Aurora Energy Research... (Score:2)
No need to go so far (Score:2)
We have the same issue here in California. We are shutting down our last reactor, and importing 33% of our power from other states. And some of that would be coal:
https://gvwire.com/2021/09/22/... [gvwire.com]
(If you specify "no coal energy California imports", they would just shift coal to local use, and export the "clean" one to CA. Everything has an easy solution that also happens to be wrong for the environment).
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they would just shift coal to local use, and export the "clean" one to CA
I suspect that states with coal generation in their mix will prioritize "clean" sources to meet their own environmental commitments. So when CA comes calling for power, they've got to take whatever is left (coal). Or nothing.
Until then all's well (Score:2)
I'm actually getting tired ... (Score:3)
... of being right about almost everything. No, seriously.
-Gushing government money out will cause big inflation. Ding!
-Paying people more to not work will cause labor shortages. Ding!
-Fighting nuclear will cause power problems. Ding!
Oh well. Guess I'll go back to my other "anti-science" pursuits, like being able to tell men from women.
Bad timing (Score:2)
The timing of this could not be worse. Germany should admit now that they made a mistake and suspend the shutdown until better replacements are implemented.
More gas from Russia sets them up for further dependence and manipulation, preventing them from more forcefully calling Russia to stop illegal annexation in Ukraine and Crimea or more vocally lobbying for permanent UN security council membership.
An energy independent Germany makes Europe stronger and the world safer.
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The timing of this could not be worse. Germany should admit now that they made a mistake and suspend the shutdown until better replacements are implemented.
The last nuclear power plant will go offline next year. There is no way to stop that now, nuclear is slow with everything, so the preparations for shutdown are mostly done. You can't just simply restart it.
I am German, so I will see first hand what happens, when 10% of baseload capacity go offline. But I have the feeling, that the fans of nuclear energy are most afraid of the event, because if nothing big happens then nuclear energy looses another argument.
Fallout (Score:2)
Energy price is publicly traded in the EU, if Germany makes it more expensive, it means higher prices in poorer eastern countries as well. This is just insane.
In the USA we'd suspect bribery was a factor (Score:2)
You just look to see which lobby donates more.
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Many of the trolls that fight against nuclear power, esp. in Germany, California, and other American states, are actually backers of coal. They KNOW that only fossil fuels can replace nuclear power. Sure the fossil fuel might be supplemented with wind/solar, but these trash ppl STILL know and continue to support the use of fossil fuel, even when they lie on places here and claim that they do not.
Even here, Germany has added coal and will need to add more coal plants, OR will use more from France and Poland for their base-load power, both of which are Nuclear and Coal.
The natural gas industry just loves wind and solar power. There's been a lot of advertising from the natural gas industry on how natural gas works so well with wind and solar power, and is so "clean" that it might be considered "green".
What else are people going to use to keep refrigerators running during the windless nights? If nuclear power is out then that doesn't leave many options. Hydro and geothermal are reliable sources of power, but they rely on favorable climate and geography. Coal is an optio