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Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

reuters.com

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Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#71

Post by lispm »

dexen wrote: post #45
blumentopf wrote: post #37

Debunking myths: "This won't have consequences, it didn't have any in Sweden either." => After the nuclear phase-out was enacted in 2000, two power plants were shut down as planned (Stade 2003, Obrigheim 2005). => After the Fukushima incident, eight additional plants were shut down and will never return to the grid again. "This just leads to increasing energy imports." => Germany exported 9 billion kWh in 1Q2010, can…

> "This just leads to increasing energy imports." => Germany exported 9 billion kWh in 1Q2010, can hands-down afford shutting down nuclear power plants. Source: http://www.klimaretter.info/energie/hintergrund/6271-deutsch... . That's theory; compare it to practice: Germany already imports electricity from France[1] -- during peak hours. The capacity your source cites is the optimistic variant. The industry simply can…

Germany exports electricity to France, already.

There are two things going on:

* there is an energy market. Energy is traded for different prices at different times. Sometimes energy from France is cheap (well, it is government subsidized anyway) - sometimes not. For example the Nuclear Power Plants of France are idling a lot on the weekend, when the demand is low.

* there are times when the nuclear power plants have not enough capacity to power France. In winter the demand is possibly very high, like last winter, when it was cold and France was heating a lot with electricity (which we do not that much in Germany). In summer the nuclear power plants have to reduce their capacity, because the rivers are dry and there is not enough cooling water for them.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#72

Post by swombat »

rubashov wrote: post #30
dexen wrote: post #16

Closing nuclear powerplants early makes for a self-fulfilling prophecy as well, unfortunately. The only solid argument against nuclear goes along the lines, ``nuclear power is too expensive because of the costs of disposal of wastes''. Thing is, in normal operation the cost is amortized year by year. Normal life of a nuclear plant is a few decades; say 30 years. Could be longer, but the technological progress is so f…

> The only solid argument against nuclear goes along the lines, The main argument against nuclear goes that it creates a dangerous set of problems that must be handled over many human lifetimes. People simply cannot do that. In fact, it's a little ridiculous to safely assume your successors perhaps 100 years hence will have the means to shut down a plant and safely store all the waste. What if things have gone all Ma…

If things have gone Mad Max I could care less about the decommissioning of power plants.

In all other cases, it is reasonable for other countries and NGOs to pool in to avoid a nuclear disaster - much like they've done with dangerous facilities in other poor countries, e.g. toxic waste dump cleaning, etc.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#73

Post by john61 »

jules wrote: post #60
john61 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the ongoing massive costs savings it is expected that within 2015 or so it will be cheaper for house owner's to produce their own energy with photovoltaic than buying it. (Without governmental support) This will be a massive game changer: Decentralized, DIY, prosumer energy connected in a smart grid. The private rooth area and climate in for example Austria is enough to produce 1/3 of the electric energy u…

Citation needed. Is this with photo-voltaic cells built with dangerous and scarce materials?

http://www.taz.de/1/zukunft/umwelt/artikel/1/solarstrom-wird...

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#74

Post by lispm »

ugh wrote: post #63
lispm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has increased the use of renewable energy in a decade from 6 to 16% for the generation of electrical energy. The laws and regulation have been put in place: the EEG. This law has been copied world-wide by dozens of countries. The goal is to be at 100% with renewable energy in 2050. The closing down of the nuclear power plants is only one milestone on that way. The fossil-based plants will be reduced over time…

Keeping old nuclear power plants running is not expensive, building them is expensive. Dismantling nuclear power plants is also expensive but there is no way around those costs, anyway.

See Fukushima for the cost of running nuclear power plants.

The cost of the running power plant is deferred also to a future which then needs to deal with the waste from burned fuel.

Germany has no solution how to deal with the fuel.

The cost for that adds up every day.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#75

Post by lispm »

berntb wrote: post #66
lispm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time of cheap power is over. The challenge will be to have enough power at all.

>>The time of cheap power is over. The time of cheap oil seems to be over. For the rest: You know that you don't know what will happen. So why do you make blanket statements like that? For example: Some analysts claim that solar energy will solve all energy problems in ten years. Maybe some of the small fusion projects will work? Thorium? And so on. Edit: Yeah, since Germany has panicked like a herd of cattle, the ti…

That solar energy is cheap in ten years, does not mean that it is suddenly deployed everywhere. It will take decades to roll that out.

Germany plans to roll out the whole set of renewables (wind, hydro, solar, biomass, geothermal, ...) over the next FOURTY years to get from 16% (actually currently it may already be at 20%) near to 100%.

Thorium is providing a contribution to generating electricity in an amount worth mentioning when? In fifty years? Thirty? How many Thorium reactors will be online within the next ten years? One? Two? Three? That's nothing that would be contributing to the energy needs we have in 2020.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#76

Post by lispm »

seabee wrote: post #23
latch wrote: post #15

Germany is a leader in solar power. They installed more panels last year than the rest of the world combined. They generate more electricity from solar than Fukushima did. If they can further establish themselves as leaders and experts in new-energy, it'll make them even more disproportionally well positioned to most of Europe. However, it's a shame they see no future in nuclear. Seems like they are betting against s…

> They generate more electricity from solar than Fukushima did. The problem is that a country requires many Fukushimas (in Germany's case, 17). If renewables cannot fill the gap left by shutting down nuclear, you'll have to import your electricity from other countries generating it by the very method you phased out, or by even worse methods like coal. Being the leader in renewables doesn't change this fact. > Seems l…

Fukushima I was a site with SIX reactors. German nuclear sites are usually smaller.

Off these 17 German reactors currently 13 are off the grid.

Germany has had an overcapacity and was a net exporter of electricity.

It is also no longer that electricity is bound to countries here in Germany. We have a Europe wide market and electricity is imported based on needs and price. If electricity is cheaper somewhere, we may import that. When our wind parks flood the grid, we have to lower the price and export that.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#77

Post by ugh »

lispm wrote: post #74
ugh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping old nuclear power plants running is not expensive, building them is expensive. Dismantling nuclear power plants is also expensive but there is no way around those costs, anyway.

See Fukushima for the cost of running nuclear power plants. The cost of the running power plant is deferred also to a future which then needs to deal with the waste from burned fuel. Germany has no solution how to deal with the fuel. The cost for that adds up every day.

I don’t think the cost for dealing with waste adds up. It stays (pretty much) constant: High fixed costs and very low variable costs.

Dismantling a nuclear power plant doesn’t get more expensive just because they are running longer. When it comes to waste, finding a site and building the infrastructure is expensive, the cost of dealing with additional waste from letting the plants run longer has to be negligible.

Whether or not we have a solution to deal with the fuel is pretty much irrelevant. We have to find a solution anyway, there is no way around it. We might as well keep the plants running longer.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#78

Post by Xixi »

bluedanieru wrote: post #8
henrikschroder wrote: post #6

Sweden held a referendum in 1980 about nuclear power, and the only choice was about how fast our nuclear power plants should be shut down. It took twenty years until a reactor was closed, and five more years until one whole plant was closed. During this time, Sweden's energy consumption has of course gone up, and although there's been some increase in wind and water power, the net result is that each time we close a…

What I suspect will happen is more power will be imported from nations that flagrantly pollute the environment. The Chinese might be on to something with putting the engineers in charge. Sometimes the public really doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, and should be completely ignored.

I don't think Germany is surrounded by countries that flagrantly pollute the environment.

What is more likely is that more power will be imported from France, which massively use nuclear energy (>75% of the national electricity production), and doesn't intend (so far) to move to something else.

Re: Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

#79

Post by hugh3 »

lispm wrote: post #68
hugh3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more than 11 years to complete this task. Who can predict what will happen after 11 years? Generating electricity from nuclear fusion may be possible. Or we may move our nuclear plants to the moon Or, far more likely, we'll still be burning coal. Hey, it's no skin off my nose, I'm an Australian. If the Germans wanna quit importing our uranium and start importing our coal instead then that's cool, I just think…

We currently have most of our nuclear power plants off grid. Nothing happened so far. How do you come up with the number 50 by 2011???

I derived it ex anum. But I did mean 2021.
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