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Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

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Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#31

Post by loeg »

fsh wrote: post #24
bryan0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it’s definitely accelerating transitioning to Russian gas. Edit: gas not oil

Germany has never really used oil for producing electricity.

GP probably meant Russian gas. They are also going to become net buyers of coal electricity from neighboring countries as a result of this. It's not a good move for the environment.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#33

Post by mullingitover »

Depending on how things go with what is widely believed to be an impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, with hostilities potentially spilling beyond that sphere, I have to wonder if this will go into the history books as another historic strategic blunder for Germany. Surrendering a large amount of your domestic energy production, placing your fate in the hands of a hostile power is a real head scratcher.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#34

Post by uniqueuid »

avsteele wrote: post #26

Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either. Most nuclear plants use fission for the base load but gas or other fossil fuel generators for the variable part. Since in Germany green power in the form of solar/wind are even more variable, this makes Nuclear + Solar/Wind a bad combo. Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their climate/geograp…

52% of Germany's energy production in 2021 was from renewables [1], which are productive now, don't need decades of planning and construction, have zero costs for waste and a perfectly clear risk profile for the next centuries.

I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2021/09/PE21_429_43312.html

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#35

Post by dsl »

pkdpic wrote: post #28
dvt wrote: post #4

This is insane to me. Nuclear is the best long-term option for ecologically-friendly energy generation. This is absolutely a bad move, and the coal industry has done a great job of demonizing nuclear power.

> Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038 Good if they actually mean it maybe? > leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term... Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. This just seems asinine. But what do I know... Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away from i…

> Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away from it?

Oil funding of anti-nuclear FUD. Thats it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#36

Post by fsh »

I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity import/export statistics [2].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Energymi...

[2] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Infografiken/Energie/stroma...

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#38

Post by sascha_sl »

makerofspoons wrote: post #10

Will the reactors be mothballed, converted, or torn down? Ideally if political winds change and the reactors are mothballed, could they be restarted? I live near the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station, a nuclear plant converted to gas in the 90s, and I often think about what could have been if it had been made commercially viable earlier in its life.

All German reactors have run long past their design life span. The ones shut down first are already being decommissioned.

Proposing new reactors would be political suicide, unfortunately.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#40

Post by uniqueuid »

Please remember that nuclear energy makes up 12% of Germany's overall power production [1]. Yes we do import nuclear power from France.

But this is not going to be a game-changer and might be even possible to offset with clean sources.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2021/09/PE21_429_43312.html

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