Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by morning_gelato » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

From what I've read[1] it looks like we should be able to use nuclear fission for a significant amount of time (>1000 years). This would involve using uranium and thorium as well as breeder reactors.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

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

#212

Post by estaseuropano » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

barney54 wrote: post #123

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. Wholesale electricity rates have increased from 50 Euros/mwh to 250 Euros/mwh over the course of the last year. This isn't about averages. It's about meeting demand, which is especially important during the winter heating season.

But this is an issue of Russia putting the squeeze on gas prices, not an inherent issue of the German energy system.

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

#213

Post by Gare » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

pixelpoet wrote: post #162

formerly_proven wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric heating is extremely uncommon in Germany (like 1-2 % of households use it).

Paying 41c/kWh for ökostrom / 100% renewable energy here, and doing some mining with two 150W Radeon 6000 GPUs to keep this computer room warm goes a long way to making it cost effective.

Using heat pumps also makes it almost on par with the cost of natural gas.

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

#214

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

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…

That's a bit premature. We are not 'building two new reactors', there is a coalition agreement that two new reactors will be built but that's a far cry from it actually happening, and it may well never happen because there is a ton of opposition to this which will at a minimum delay construction. The proposed dates for starting operations is after 2030, which means that from a climate accord perspective this is a meaningless gesture.

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

#215

Post by Kon5ole » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

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…

For me it's not an engineering problem but a human one. Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people we have to ensure no madmen get their hands on the waste for thousands of years after we have spent all the watt-hours the waste has produced.

We're leaving that problem to hundreds of generations to come, who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today. That seems unfair. It's equivalent to Julius Caesar building the aqueducts using some technology that France would still have to pay for today.

I think investing in energy storage - hydrogen, ammonia, pumped storage to mention a few - would be vastly better. Solar and wind already generate more electricity in Germany than nuclear ever did, if it could be stored during the proverbial cloudy days, the problem is solved permanently and in a much better way than with nuclear power plants.

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

#216

Post by BenoitP » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #95

GravitasFailure wrote: post #50

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.

> Germany is a net exporter of electricity

Oh, it is. Right now it exports all its coal and gas and wood burning production to neighbors; while only using 7.5% (= 8.94/(63.2+56)) of its installed wind and solar:

https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

The great question is: how can Germany manage anything with no baseload from nuclear or coal? With current gas prices, it is going to get very expensive.

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

#217

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

phicoh wrote: post #101

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. Further…

The nuclear reactor that we have has been operating at a massive loss and can not compete in the marketplace, decomissioning costs are the only reason it is still switched on.

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

#218

Post by midjji » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #132

polote wrote: 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

> And you can't either decide when people turn on their washing machine. Not completely, but you can make electricity almost free at certain times of day to encourage shifting usage. Although there is a natural limit to this, since people have to be home to do laundry! (Also electric driers are the real culprit, they use an obscene amount of electricity! I am not sure if Germany is big on electric dryers or not thoug…

Power is far to abstract and far to cheap for people to make even the slightest adjustment to their habits. After all, lets say you knew that making your morning coffe between 07-08 cost 10 cents more than doing so an hour earlier or later, would you get up earlier, or go to work latter? And in 1 cent is more realistic.

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

#219

Post by midjji » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

BenoitP wrote: post #167

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the current technology, you can't transport electricity more than ~1000 km with acceptable losses. Atmospheric depressions are bigger than than, and the distance for solar are much bigger as well (other than cloudy, there's day and night).

We can transport it a fair bit further than that, but only under ideal circumstances that are rarely met, and its very rare the grid is built for it, its never been needed after all. For instance, regulatory issues usually mean that every country border crossed tends to have a transformer station, which makes minor changes at a 10% or so efficiency loss.

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

#220

Post by otherme123 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

akyoan wrote: post #20

beders wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if this accelerates transitioning to renewables, it is not insane.

You can’t start up the equivalent of “half a country’s nuclear reactors” in 2 weeks. For this to happen you must already have an excess of renewables, which they obviously don’t have. What will happen is that more coal will be burned because coal always works and is instantly available; Sun and wind isn’t.

Actually is not that difficult: three reactors out of six remaining are closing.

Not saying that the closing is right, but the heading is a little click-baity. Reactors are only about 2-3% of installed capacity, about 6% of production. It's not good, but it's not a catastrophe either.