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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

#141

Post by idiotsecant »

polote wrote: post #119
king_phil wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One important thing to notice is that uranium is a finite non-renewable resource. One important thing to notice is that place on earth to put wind turbines and solar panels is limited. Now imagine that electricity needs greatly increased ... At the end of the day, everything is finite

We could provide for all the needs of our current power consumption by use of a single very large solar array in central africa or the middle east. The problem is no the availability of wind and solar- those can provide a monumental amount of energy. The problem is that energy and power are not the same thing. We need to be able to store energy widely throughout the grid and make massive transmission system improvements to facilitate the movement of energy from place to place.

Both of these are not fundamental problems, only financial / political ones. If we decided tomorrow that we really wanted these things we could have them.

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

#142

Post by barney54 »

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.

No. Currently (20:56 UTC) there is no sun shining in Europe.

As for wind, in the UK (it's the country where I know where to find the real-time data easily), wind is only producing about 1/3 of its capacity--about 7GW of 24GW capacity. https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live Overall renewables are generating about 1/4 of total generation.

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

#143

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

polote wrote: post #124
octodog wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reach that conclusion?

You can't decide when the wind blow and when the sun shines. And you can't either decide when people turn on their washing machine. So it is obvious there is a problem

So the thing about the earth is that it's big. If you have a big enough grid, it will be sunny and windy over a fairly consistent portion of that area.

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

#144

Post by arnaudsm »

cmarschner wrote: post #30

The sentiment on HN on this topic has traditionally been negative, and comments that support the move get downvoted. The fear of nuclear energy is deeply rooted in Germany and cannot be simply ignored. The "Anti AKW" (anti nuclear power) movement was huge since the 80s, it predates the fear of global warming, and it was at the core of what became the Green party. And Merkel, who has a doctorate quantum chemistry, cam…

The public debate was polluted by misinformation. I remember a poll showed most Europeans think Fukushima killed thousands and nuclear emits massive CO2.

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

#145

Post by jhgb »

polote wrote: post #108
cmarschner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Germany has the same electricity mix as Germany and it has extremely good SAIDI index compared to all other countries (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electric...). I guess those Germans are just insanely competent, then.

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

#146

Post by ben_w »

luckylion wrote: post #96
this_user wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And parents replacing the sand in their children's sandpits. There are parts of southern Germany where you are not supposed to collect mushrooms or hunt and eat game, because there is still enough residual nuclear contamination to be harmful to humans. Proponents of nuclear energy like to pretend that it is almost completely safe. But if we look beyond the, admittedly relatively low, confirmed number of immediate cas…

Germans love to be panicked though, I think that's a much larger part of it than actual fallout. The recommendations for self-harvested mushrooms and game are to not eat them excessively in the areas that were affected more strongly. Contrast that with the damage that was done by decades of coal power plants polluting the air you breathe. Coal is more damaging each year than chernobyl was, it just gets much less atte…

People in general are bad at risk assessment.

In many countries, roughly 30% don’t want vaccines, citing the 1:10,000 side effects, ignoring the roughly 1:1,000 fatality rate (as a fraction of global population, 1:55 of infected[0]).

Same deal with playing lotteries in the expectation of getting rich, or fearing terrorists more than dangerous drivers.

[0] https://covid19.who.int/

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

#147

Post by animal_spirits »

elcapitan wrote: post #117
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...

Primary energy consumption looks quite a bit different though: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Also worth noting that "biomass" often gets hidden in the "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something other than oil/coal/gas.

In my opinion I think biomass can be considered cleaner since the burning of it releases only recently stored carbon as opposed to taking huge carbon reserves from fossil fuels that might not have ever seen the atmosphere again. In my mind biomass is "carbon neutral" where fossil fuels are "carbon positive"

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

#148

Post by Krasnol »

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…

> 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 since 1990, so it would have required building more reactors.

Coal exit is not related to nuclear exit in Germany. Germany would have the exact same amount of coal plants if they'd kept nuclear.

Coal is about jobs (and votes) in regions which are already troubled by unemployment. This is why the name of the commission which decided how the phase out will work was: "Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Growth,_Structur...

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

#149

Post by heavenlyblue »

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…

The author above didn’t read the articles they themselves are quoting.

TL;DR: we have 120years of uranium ore that one can mine at $120/kg. You can mine more ore but more expensively.

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

#150

Post by phicoh »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #113
phicoh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Further…

Belgium has a nuclear phase out plan and while it is not realistic, it still threatens supplies to Zeeland, Rotterdam and the industrial west. Just look where powerlines go from Doel.

https://webkaart.hoogspanningsnet.com/index2.php#10/51.3795/...

It seems that Zeeland has a connection within The Netherlands as well.

I thought that on average The Netherlands is exporting power to Belgium.

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