Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
1–10 of 166 posts
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#2Germany and California could already have near-zero greenhouse gas emissions from power production: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11.... The technology already exists. The problems are chiefly political.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#3Unacceptable to criticize Germany on HN. Please delete this.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#4It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#5Unacceptable to criticize Germany on HN. Please delete this.
We just asked you yesterday to please stop stoking nationalistic flamewar. If you won't follow the guidelines and post thoughtfully and informatively we'll ban the account.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#6It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice
There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#7It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice
There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.
Except that that radioactive cloud was much less harmful than reported. And much less harmful than the emissions from our other power sources.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#8It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice
There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.
There's a cloud of particulants from burning coal and oil over most of Europe--- and it has killed orders of magnitude more people than contamination from Chernobyl.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#9It's very popular to criticize the Energiewende as a failure because it apparently failed to reduce CO2 emmissions of the whole country. And of course, it's true that Germany could have had greater reductions if nuclear was kept alive instead of coal. But the Energiewende actually changed Germany. Suddenly everywhere you go you have solar panel farms and many houses have them on their roofs and there are wind turbines. It was a cool time to live in germany to see these projects realized everywhere. They were done in an era where the price of renewables was very high compared to other technologies. The big contribution that Germany has done to the world with the Energiewende is:
* demonstrating that an industrialized nation actually can start a gradual transition towards renewables and most importantly
* by buying renewables at high prices, helping the manufacturers to get the price of renewables down. I think it's partially thanks to Germany that renewables have become the cheapest form of elecricity generation this fast, with impact observable around the globe!
From that second point alone I think the Energiewende should be considered a success. Could it have been better? Sure. Is it perfect? No. Do I like the high energy prices now? No. But I'm definitely glad we had it.
Also consider that we here Germany in fact do have a nuclear catastrophy right below our feet in the form of Asse 2.
Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.
There's a cloud of particulants from burning coal and oil over most of Europe--- and it has killed orders of magnitude more people than contamination from Chernobyl.
Even if radiation is your only concern, coal emissions disperse a lot of radiation into the environment! (Still not very much radiation in absolute terms - but more radiation than the nuclear industry emits.)