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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

#51

Post by geff82 »

sampo wrote: post #48
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...

CO2 is not the only thing that counts. One of those "clean" nuclear plants blows up and we can essentially close our countries or all die of cancer.

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

#52

Post by anoncake »

hef19898 wrote: post #36
anoncake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Counter-intuitively, one of the less bad places for an NPP might actually be Pripyat. Making the CEZ even more irradiated is better than creating another.

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

#53

Post by jwr »

geff82 wrote: post #51
sampo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

CO2 is not the only thing that counts. One of those "clean" nuclear plants blows up and we can essentially close our countries or all die of cancer.

Nuclear plants do not "blow up", at least not the ones that are built after Chernobyl. Please stop spreading FUD.

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

#54

Post by jwr »

hef19898 wrote: post #36
anoncake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear plants do not "blow up". This is FUD, pure and simple. People are unreasonably scared of nuclear energy, and we might lose a planet because of this.

For real data on how dangerous nuclear energy is, please look at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

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

#55

Post by b3orn »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #29
anoncake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Somewhere in Germany, but hundreds of kilometers from anything worthy - that can happen only in alternative reality where Hitler won and Siberia is now in Germany.

I think he's talking about Berlin.

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

#56

Post by est31 »

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…

> Does it really matter to see all those solar panel farms if the end result is they were not much helpful?

Sure, putting them further into the dry south would certainly have improved yields, e.g. putting them into Spain or even further south like DESERTEC envisioned. And still, they produce a non-trivial chunk of German electricity now. Not sure what you are suggesting, compared to stuff like fusion, we actually know that solar works. Also, there is a political component of having them on own soil: energy independence. A lesson learned in the oil crisis.

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

#57

Post by jwr »

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…

I also get a warm fuzzy feeling from solar panels and wind farms. But we are losing our planet to climate change, and warm fuzzy feelings do not help. Lowering CO2 emissions does.

Germany could have had zero CO2 emissions by now, if money were invested into nuclear instead of the current efforts. The declaration to move away from nuclear power was misguided and will be regarded as a huge error in the future.

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

#58

Post by hef19898 »

anoncake wrote: post #52
hef19898 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Counter-intuitively, one of the less bad places for an NPP might actually be Pripyat. Making the CEZ even more irradiated is better than creating another.

Pretty nice place for that, yes. Also to store all the nuclear waste. And I mean that in all seriousness.

As a side note, I once saw an emergency plan for the nuclear power nearby where I life (it is still live). Quite a shock to see that in case of a bad enough emergency nobody would have bothered to evacuate me to begin with. I get the logic, but still kind of shocking.

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

#59

Post by eukgoekoko »

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…

> 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 in the world.

Not sure about the whole world, but Germany definitely has one of highest prices for elctricity in Europe:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

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

#60

Post by jplayer01 »

yourMadness wrote: post #49

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 governm…

Yeah, the Energiewende is an absolute farce. The government exited nuclear while utterly gutting the German PV industry. It's mind-boggling.
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