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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

#101

Post by phicoh »

olivermarks wrote: post #17

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/netherlands-goes... Holland is building two new reactors, and 'Energy and electricity prices are at record levels due to Europe’s over-reliance on renewables, inadequate supplies of nuclear energy, and shortages of oil and gas due to under-investment in oil and gas exploration and production. Carbon emissions in Germany rose 25% in the first half of 2020 due in large part t…

It is extermely unlikely that The Netherlands will build two new reactors. My interpretation is that two political parties keep bringing up nuclear power to basically derail the discussion on how the Dutch government is not doing enough with respect to green energy.

Given the costs at Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, it very unlikely that any political party will actually sign off on building one.

Furthermore, starting to build a nuclear power plant doesn't help the 2030 goals one bit. And those are already hard to reach.

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

#102

Post by _ph_ »

GravitasFailure wrote: post #7
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #2

German energy policies are insane. Shutting down nuclear energy without replacing source. Already planning shut down of coal plants, also without any plans for replacement. And with Green Party in power it can only become worse. But we shouldn’t worry as long as we can import expensive dirty energy from other countries and complain it’s them and not us not doing enough to stop global warning.

Or import ridiculous amounts of nuclear power from France.

Germany is a net exporter. But the collaboration with France is very useful for both sides. Whenever there is free capacity of French reactors, they are exporting to whole Europe. In other times, France becomes an importer. Just a few days ago, 3 reactors had to be taken offline for repairs as some faults were discovered in one of them.

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

#103

Post by ben_w »

arghwhat wrote: post #66
_Microft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We experienced fallout from Chernobyl (radiation levels of wild boar meat and some mushrooms are still under surveillance today) and we were designated nuclear ground zero in case that the Soviets tried to invade Europe. What attitude towards all things nuclear do you expect to arise from that?

Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest. The fallout sucked, but even that was a minor hiccup compared to the destruction pollution is bringing with it...

Fear doesn’t work that way.

I was forbidden from including a smoke detector in a school show-and-tell (UK, circa 1993) because of the radiation symbol, even though there was a detector just like it on the ceiling of the same classroom.

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

#104

Post by hutzlibu »

RivieraKid wrote: post #62
_Microft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We experienced fallout from Chernobyl (radiation levels of wild boar meat and some mushrooms are still under surveillance today) and we were designated nuclear ground zero in case that the Soviets tried to invade Europe. What attitude towards all things nuclear do you expect to arise from that?

Depends on how rational you are. Unfortunately, people are not very rational on average.

Well, one small accident 35 years ago and far away, that could have been much worse - is still the cause that large areas are contaminated here.

It is rational, to be sceptic of such a technology.

Most discussions about it are not, sure. Anti-nuclear is a strong dogma in green circles and not to be discussed about - but there are still real reasons, why it became a dogma in the first place.

Because nuclear energy is not as save and easy as it was promised. It is heavily subsidized, but socialised the risk - and the current storage solutions to the waste are sub-optimal. So expensive and dangerous.

I am open to have them run a bit longer, and rather close the coal plants, but they are not a magic bullet solution.

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

#105

Post by inglor_cz »

Dunedan wrote: post #89
BenoitP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's wind and solar is only possible because neighbouring countries compensate for when there's no wind and sun; which happen a lot of the time. On top of that wind and solar production must be bought first on the EU market, effectively ruining CO2-free capital that was there beforehand (read: nuclear). So these charts that you show only demonstrate that Germany was first to jump on wind and solar production. Gr…

Do you have sources to back these claims? I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe.

I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe.

The problem with this approach is that you need to overbuild the total installed capacity massively, so that every "somewhere" could, in need, play the role of an energy producing and exporting center for all the other regions.

If 70 % of Europe is calm and dark at one point, the remaining 30 % would need to produce enough energy for the entire continent. (This also means having very high capacity cross-continent links to move that energy around from anywhere to anywhere else. Not easy to build or maintain.)

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

#106

Post by BenoitP »

Dunedan wrote: post #89
BenoitP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's wind and solar is only possible because neighbouring countries compensate for when there's no wind and sun; which happen a lot of the time. On top of that wind and solar production must be bought first on the EU market, effectively ruining CO2-free capital that was there beforehand (read: nuclear). So these charts that you show only demonstrate that Germany was first to jump on wind and solar production. Gr…

Do you have sources to back these claims? I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe.

> I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe.

* wind: wind power production scales with the cube of the wind speed [1], so actual production only occurs about 25% of the time [2]. Also huge areas produce at the same time: the size of the average depression [3] can often be as large as the continent.

* sun: solar panels don't produce at night. I don't think I need to source that claim. Cloudy weather is not good either.

If you want more data, I suggest heading over to https://app.electricitymap.org/map

[1] http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/555654/wind-electricity-...

[3] https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/...

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

#107

Post by themitigating »

zibzab wrote: post #6
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.

Germans have always been anti-nuclear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...

"We've always hated X therefore X must be bad"

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

#108

Post by polote »

cmarschner wrote: post #78
fsh wrote: post #36

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...

So, to summarize, 1. Germany is a net exporter 2. Germany has reduced the production from fossil fuels from about 70% to about 37% within 30 years. 3. At the same time it cut nuclear power from around 28% to about 10. 4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could have replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels (achieving less than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However, energy consumption has also gone up…

6. If everyone had the same electricity mix than Germany we would have total blackouts everyday

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

#109

Post by Robotbeat »

king_phil wrote: post #100
fsh wrote: post #36

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...

One important thing to notice is that uranium is a finite non-renewable resource. The Red Book says there are about 3.3 million tons that are extractable for a price of 130 USD/ton. In 2017 the total uranium production was 60.000 tons. Thats about 55 years of uranium left at the current production rate. The Red Book assumes there are another 2.1 million tons likely to exist from geological data, but not found yet and…

We have basically unlimited uranium. There’s no risk of shortage. The average cubic meter of crust has more breedable fuel energy in it than a cubic meter of coal.

Fission is effectively as unlimited as renewable energy is, about a billion years’ worth of crust. Even if we stick with typical U235 reactors, sufficient uranium ore exists for hundreds of years, although no one will bother to formally “prove” the reserves for a constraint 100 years in the future.

What’s limited is the atmosphere’s capacity for CO2. Not much else matters in the mid/near-term, except perhaps for ensuring we have enough energy for civilization to function.

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

#110

Post by sitkack »

Convert EVs to have 10kw+ of grid intertied inverters. Build GWhr capacity batteries at the old nuclear facilities. Those facilities should at least be kept in warm standby. Machines switched off will rot and the whole steam and electricity aspect of a nuke plant is the same regardless of where the steam comes from.

Sad, but we should work with what we have.

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