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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

#71

Post by geff82 »

eukgoekoko wrote: post #65
geff82 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not contradicting what I said. Consumers pay a lot (and always have). I said that energy hungry enterprises are exempt from it.

> I said that energy hungry enterprises are exempt from it. That's not what I was arguing with. Your statement about "they now pay one of the lowest electricity prices in the world" is just terribly untrue.

I just looked up the 2015 numbers for you (I do not have newer data at my desk right now, but the number for Germany is supposed to shrink). In USA and France, energy hungry industries pay 4 cents/KwH, Germany pays 5 cents, China 6, UK 8 and Japan 12. As said, consumers pay more than in most or all other countries. But due to more energy efficient technologies, the actual percentage of income that is paid for electricity stayed about the same.

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

#72

Post by semi-extrinsic »

pizza234 wrote: post #30
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...

I'll be convinced when I'll start to see people campaigning for building storage facilities in their neighbourhoods, rather than generic claims that storage facilities are as safe as it can be.

That's a pretty strange statement. Lots of industrial facilities meet very high standards of safety, say for instance battery and electric vehicle factories, yet we still place them out in the desert? Nobody is campaigning to build those in their neighbourhoods?

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

#73

Post by wil421 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #15
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.

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.

Hold it underground until we can do a Futurama and blast it into the sun.

/end sarcasm. Didn’t work out well for Futurama.

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

#74

Post by geff82 »

jwr wrote: post #53
geff82 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tell me about it and tell me why they seem to be no alternative.

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

#75

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jwr wrote: post #57
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.

I like to say that the environmental NGOs, politicians etc. have been given the choice between pneumonia (nuclear power) and cancer (CO2 emissions), and they answer "oh no, my grandma died of pneumonia when she was young, so I'll have the cancer".

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

#76

Post by ehaliewicz2 »

cygx wrote: post #64
hackeraccount wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Money is a tool of social organization that lacks instrinsic value. Any time we as a society refuse to do something worthwhile for the sole reason that it would cost too much, that's a capitulation to human stupidity and/or greed.

It's not so much about money, the implication is that making solar panels costs some amount of resources that according to the parent, could possibly be spent in better ways. The money just represents, indirectly, the amount of resources.

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

#77

Post by anoncake »

jwr wrote: post #54
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…

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...

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

The reactor of Chernobyl did blow up. Just not like a nuclear bomb, if that's what you meant. Which may be a bad thing, Hiroshima is actually inhabitable.

>People are unreasonably scared of nuclear energy, and we might lose a planet because of this.

People are quite reasonably scared of nuclear energy. What's unreasonable is that they are less scared of global warming.

Your data is not convincing -- in fact, I think it does not address the danger of nuclear and fossil energy at all. Using fossils kill a fairly predictable number of people each year. For a country, let alone humanity as a whole, that is not a danger but a cost.

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

#78

Post by scarmig »

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.

> CO2 is not the only thing that counts.

In terms of existential threats to human life as we know it, it is.

The choices aren't "renewables and nuclear" or "renewables and ponies and magical unicorns." The choice is what proportion of energy do we want from nuclear vs renewables vs fossil fuels.

The best option is reducing energy requirements. After that, though, a large proportion of every unit of nuclear energy you ban goes straight to fossil fuels. Which is death.

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

#79

Post by sgift »

hef19898 wrote: post #44
sisu2019 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

I have a feeling even with the pre-Fukushima plan we would have the same situation now. The thing was that the CDU never committed themselves to the plan. And the energy industry always hoped that one day there will be a CDU-led government that just kills the plan.

So, since the government didn't force them to, they never prepared for the case of the nuclear shutdown actually happening. And when the CDU-led government killed the exit plan it seemed for a short time that their calculations were right. And then Fukushima happened and for the most part we were back to where we were before.

Yes, there was some blind action, but despite stories about all the changes the post-Fukushima plan didn't diverge markedly from the pre-Fukushima plan. Only difference was that the energy companies couldn't hope that a new government will save them since all parties agreed that the exit should happen.

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

#80

Post by atemerev »

99_00 wrote: post #46
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.

Germany famously counts biodiesel among renewables (technically correct), which certainly doesn't help in reducing CO2.
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