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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

#41

Post by adrianN »

pizza234 wrote: post #27
adrianN wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breeder reactors reduce the waste by more than 95% and leave only isotopes that decay much faster.

In 2010 the International Panel on Fissile Materials said "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries"

You should also cite the reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Discussion

They apparently don't make economic sense since Uranium is cheap, and there is a risk of proliferation. It's not the case that the technology doesn't work.

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

#42

Post by geff82 »

akrauss wrote: post #37
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...

Read this one and it is a compact, very well written book: Energiewende verstehen: Die Zukunft von Autoverkehr, Heizen und Strompreisen https://www.amazon.de/dp/3662577860

I gave it to many friends so they can educate themselves about the topic.

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

#43

Post by netsharc »

realusername wrote: post #19
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…

> 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…

I'm pretty sure if the survival of human race is at stake, money is no object. If someone in a foreign country invented a machine that everyone can buy to make themselves carbon-positive, the logical move for any government would be subsidize the purchase, even if that means great debt: but as the planet continues surviving, the country will go on collecting tax revenue from productive citizens/businesses and will be able to pay its debt back.

Being afraid of government debt if you're a stable country is illogical: it's also why Germany can borrow money at negative interest rates, meaning people would actually rather lend money to Germany and get less back in a few years, rather than park it at a bank. Unlike a business or an individual, the lender has very little risk that the stable country will go bust/get hit by a car and can't earn money to repay the bank.

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

#44

Post by hef19898 »

sisu2019 wrote: post #32
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.

The initial pre-Fukushima plan to exit nuclear was solid. What ruined it was the blind actionism post-Fukushima.

Also, despite all the fear mongering that renewables will collapse the grid it proofed to be pretty stable and robust. Even high energy industries like the chemical and processing industry adapted pretty well. Some even actively participate in the energy market now. And in case processes can be slowed down or stopped they buffer energy generation peaks practically serving as some kind of storage.

So, Germany has the opportunity to learn a lot about smart grids in highly industrialized environments. It's just that Germany's track record in these kind of things is, well, bad.

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

#45

Post by hef19898 »

atupis wrote: post #40
hef19898 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe I remember from my masters that there are plans (underway? to be? already in place?) to actually connect the countries. Would be great if that worked out.

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

#46

Post by 99_00 »

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 goal is reducing CO2. Renewables are technology that may help achieve that. Adopting renewables isn't the goal.

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

#47

Post by hef19898 »

C14L wrote: post #31
Luc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are doing that at Sellafield in the UK. Which is in itself pretty ugly business.

EDIT: The business is ugly, not the fact that it is in the UK.

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

#48

Post by sampo »

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…

> It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of.

The French can be proud today, consuming electricity with 1/6 of the carbon footprint per kWh, compared to electricity in Germany. And paying half the price, too, compared to what electricity costs in Germany.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136192091...

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

#49

Post by yourMadness »

For those of you that want to see the data behind this story: https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&p...

I think the history is one of a failed economic subsidy program that accidentally accelerated the PV-industry by a few years.

There were several growing PV manufacturers in germany up to around 2011/2012. In that timeframe the manufacturers were all busy building new factories, but the government noticed that the subsidy program became large enough to be expensive and suddenly severely cut the subsidies. None of the manufacturers survived that, the remains were sold to the chinese.

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

#50

Post by hackeraccount »

netsharc wrote: post #43
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…

I'm pretty sure if the survival of human race is at stake, money is no object. If someone in a foreign country invented a machine that everyone can buy to make themselves carbon-positive, the logical move for any government would be subsidize the purchase, even if that means great debt: but as the planet continues surviving, the country will go on collecting tax revenue from productive citizens/businesses and will be…

The point is that while you can spend a lot of money you can't spend infinite money. There's a finite pile of euros. Every euro you spend on something stupid is one less euro you can spend on something smart.
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