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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

#191
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...

Quoted post unavailable.

> excessive export means more wasted electricity.

I'm not an expert so please forgive me if this is a stupid question, but how is exported electricity wasted electricity? My intuition is that (assuming the exported energy is used) it would both prevent the generation of electricity by other (less environmentally friendly) means, and it would generate income. What is wasted here?

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

#192
post #153
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, it is obvious, that the renewable production needs to be paired with some on-demand sources. Short term, gas is great for that, as gas power plants can be switched on and off quickly, long-term the necessary storage options are needed (some of that can be power2gas, which can be burnt in the gas power plants).

> Short term, gas is great for that

Still an unacceptable CO2 emission in my book. Natural gas is at 55,82 [kg CO2 / GJ], when coal is at 94,6 [kg CO2 / GJ]. [1]

So that's only 40% less pollution, and there are still huge quantities of coal that has yet to be replaced in Germany.

What's missing from your view is how you provide for baseload. Right now, what is baseload in Germany? It is coal: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

[1] https://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/CO2-spez/index_e.ph...

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

#193
post #98
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how wind and solar don't make sense. Wind and solar make total sense. All we need to do is overbuild wind/solar generation + invest in energy storage capacity. This can be done relatively quickly, certainly much more quickly than building new nuclear plants.

What kind of grid scale storage can be built quickly?

In Nissan Leafs alone (450k) there is over 10GWhr of battery capacity. Grid scale batteries are just a capital problem. No breakthroughs necessary.

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

#194
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We no longer produce electricity with coal or nuclear! We just buy it from other countries and then browbeat them about environmental responsibility!" doesn't seem like a sustainable energy policy.

Germany is a net exporter of electricity. But Europe has a joint spot market for electricity, which is a good thing for all involved. No longer every country has to supply expensive peak power when surplus of neighbours can be used. And Switzerland and Austria are kind of European storage providers. A 1GW line to Norway went operational recently, which uses Norwegian water power for storage.

Net export does not matter when it's at times when nobody wants tp buy it because they have their own renewables...

What matters is amount of electricity bought from Germany, not amount of generation ran.

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

#195
It is fascinating to see how Germany is shutting down nuclear and encouraging natural gas (while still using lignite, of all things, phasing it out only slowly), while the Netherlands is starting to reduce its use of gas and investigating building new nuclear plants.

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

#196
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...

More data, for right now: https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Germany is not doing that well.

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

#197
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Check precision energy import charts, especially at night in winter. Germany uses other countries as a battery.

Why is this always spread? Right now is a winter night (-6 celsius), this is the live electricity map for Europe: https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Right this second, Germany is EXPORTING to most of their neighbors. Are they charging the other batteries now or how am I supposed to follow your logic?

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

#198
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand that energy consumption includes things that aren't electricity so the proportion of oil is higher but everything else is different too. For example, in the parent comment, more wind than biomass is produced but in this comment the consumption is the other way around. Is it because biomass is used for cars as well (ethanol)? Maybe wood for heating too?

Yes, I think it's a mix of Biodiesel and wood stoves. Not sure why the rape seed production wouldn't count into the biomass production then. It makes sense that you see private-only things like wood stoves only on the consumption side.

I think another factor is that private sector (heavy industry) production of energy (with private coal plants etc) probably doesn't count into the production side either.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, interesting. I wonder if Germany is more reliant on France for providing a baseload when renewables dip while France relies on Germany for peaking and supplementing daytime loads. Thanks for the website. It'll definitely come in handy. Edit: With Germany shutting down their nukes, I'm curious if them being a net exporter remains true.

Nuclear is only 12% of the whole mix in Germany.

In 2020 Germany exported 18TWh of energy and produced about 61TWh of nuclear. How much renewable capacity has been added in the past year and how much capacity is being taken off line?

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

#200
post #88
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

First of all, the new German government adjusted the phase-out of coal power to be as close as possible to 2030. 2038 was more a bad compromise by the previous government. And yes, nuclear power can be dangerous as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown. Those dangers could probably be addressed by new reactors, but those are very expensive. The big problem are the existing old reactors. They are not as safe and require…

I don't really understand why the Chernobyl or Fukushima disasters should be considered evidence of nuclear power being dangerous.

The Chernobyl plant had severe design deficiencies, and the operators were apparently not properly informed about the dangers of operating the plant the way they did at the moment. The Soviet Union was not exactly the epitome of environmental responsibility. Lots of things went wrong.

The Fukushima disaster was precipitated by a magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that pretty much leveled the entire area and stopped the emergency generators. The backup generators also failed. Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong.

People were displaced, and the radiation leakage should be considered significant environmental damage.

The number of people displaced was tens of thousands. Although few deaths have been confirmed, if you're pessimistic, you might be able to come up with a larger figure.

However, the Fukushima disaster was a once-per-several-decades event. Coal causes hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths every year through direct air pollution, not to mention the indirect effects from climate change. That's not a rare accident. That's business as usual.

Yes, nuclear power has risks, and sometimes something goes wrong. Lots of work has been done to minimize the risks, as should be. But it's entirely emotion-driven and intellectually untenable to consider nuclear to be a major risk, comparatively. The damage caused by accidents that apparently should happen at most once per several decades in well-managed (or even less well managed) plants is still a fraction of the damage that coal-fired or other fossil-fueled plants cause every year as part of their normal operation.

If anything, the lesson to be learned from the Fukushima disaster should be: "consider carefully whether to build nuclear plants in an area where major earthquakes and tsunamis are statistically to be expected; design and manage plants responsibly; other than that, it's probably fine".

Nuclear waste is still be a problem but it's hard to imagine it being anywhere near the magnitude of the problems that burning fossil fuels causes.

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