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Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

spiegel.de

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Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#31

Post by C14L »

Luc wrote: post #26
Bombthecat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for an answer what to do with the waste. Beside A) dumping in the ground and hope for the best B) some magic tech will pop which will solve the issue.

It's pretty benign as waste goes. It just sits there and gets less dangerous as time goes on. You could just keep it in a bunker and pay a crew to dust it off and repackage it when needed for the next 1000 years. But no, for some reason it needs to be taken out of the environment, like in the famous Australian sketch...

And, if technology keeps improving, at some point there will be tech to easily recycle all that "waste". Because it still contains energy.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#32

Post by sisu2019 »

est31 wrote: post #9

It'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 turbine…

billions and billions down the drain for symbolism. Mostly private individuals like me payed that via crass energy taxes. It's nice that you get enjoyment out of seeing solar and wind farms but in the end they'll do nothing but serve as testament of the hubris and stupididty of politians.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#33

Post by sisu2019 »

hef19898 wrote: post #22
realusername wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Does it really matter to see all those solar panel farms if the end result is they were not much helpful? The money which went into this is absolutely massive and coul…

At least you can say that Germany kickstarted mass manufacturing of PV modules. So even if Germany itself didn't benefit, everybody else did. Including Chinese manufacturers. So I'd argue that the money was well invested.

and how are these PV users going to cover their baseload?

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#34

Post by [deleted] »

est31 wrote: post #9

It'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 turbine…

[deleted]

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#36

Post by hef19898 »

anoncake wrote: post #24
jseliger wrote: post #2

Germany 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.

Nuclear fission is a safe source of power that sane people support. Ukraine is LARPing the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for political reasons. We should just build a lot of nuclear reactors somewhere in Germany that's hundreds of kilometers from anything we'd care to lose.

Besides the fact that there is no such place anywhere in Germany or Western Europe there actually is point in that argument. Which is the question who should have nuclear power plants as it is impossible to get rid of them. A country like Germany where tight controls can be reinforced or someone else like say Ukraine or Czechy.

The other point is that fact that you need the distance in case the plant blows up. Which implies it can blow up. Which is true as well (unsinkable Titanic, tsunami safe Fukushima, you name it) as technology can and will fail.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#37

Post by akrauss »

geff82 wrote: post #23

The Energiewende is actually one of the reasons I still live in Germany: I want to see how it happens. It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of. And by the way, private energy consumption is heavily taxed (for a good reason), yet energy hungry industries are exempt from it. And they feel the effect: because of the growing effect of the renewable energies, they now pay one of the lowest electricity prices i…

Which books are you referring to? I’m interested...

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#38

Post by BiasRegularizer »

I believe nuclear power is inevitable. Human power consumption has been growing exponentially, at some point renewable energy will not be able to catch up without causing extensive damage to our ecological system. There are finite amount of renewable energy per sqkm on earth, at some point the area required will begin to erode local ecology. Right now nuclear power appears to be the densest form of energy generation. I agree in the short term renewable energy is a great alternative to coal/natural gas.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#39

Post by hef19898 »

sisu2019 wrote: post #33
hef19898 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you can say that Germany kickstarted mass manufacturing of PV modules. So even if Germany itself didn't benefit, everybody else did. Including Chinese manufacturers. So I'd argue that the money was well invested.

and how are these PV users going to cover their baseload?

Long term? Some kind of storage solution in combination with hydro power and, my preference, natural gas as it burns much cleaner than coal.

Short to mid term? Same as above, only that storage will have to be replaced with something else. Since coal is clearly favoured by the system in Germany coal has to replaced by itself. Coal is just the worst alternative. Unfortunately nuclear is no option in Germany, until storage tech is sufficient it could nicely close the gap.

Re: Progress has been limited on Germany's shift from nuclear to renewables

#40

Post by atupis »

hef19898 wrote: post #17
est31 wrote: post #9

It'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 turbine…

The biggest issue, unintended I assume, is that CO2 certificates are not rare enough (or expensive enough). The result is that coal is actually cheaper than the most modern gas plants. That is based on variable costs, so. In that regard the renewables are basically "free". Which means that renewables are fed in first followed by coal. Which leaves not enough demand for the cleaner and more flexible gas plants. Obviou…

Also I don't get why German does have very limited transfer capacity between Norway,Denmark and Sweden. Those countries have lot cheap renewable energy.
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