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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

#221

Post by wumpus »

AstralStorm wrote: post #155
jhgb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good argument for the need to build much more renewable capacity in Germany, since that would substitute the burning of natural gas that caused this price increase.

Sure, we'll see it when it happens. Renewables are like a trickle at best, all the low hanging fruit there is taken, and the required battery capacity is huge....

> Renewables are like a trickle at best

Doesn't Germany have a lot of wind power? Denmark sure does.

Let's see, 27.2% wind in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany

And apparently there's a fair bit of North Sea area that can be used for new offshore wind.

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

#222

Post by AstralStorm »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #170
nradov wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of grid scale storage can be built quickly?

Compared to building reactors, anything is quick.

Not really, a reactor is operational in 10-20 years, while expanding lithium mining and battery production will easily take much longer. Not to mention the energy and CO2e cost of manufacturing the batteries.

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

#223

Post by jhgb »

fsh wrote: post #190
elcapitan wrote: post #117

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.

Yes, heating and transportation are huge and almost entirely fossil fueled. Low-tech solutions such as heat pumps and better insulation alone could probably make a large impact.

Not "could". They're legally mandated in pretty much all new buildings.

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

#224

Post by champtar »

cure wrote: post #55
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…

> Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either. Correct. Nuclear reactors can't be turned on/off quickly. They are suitable to handle the base load, in other words, but can't be used as peakers. > Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their climate/geography. Uhm, respectfully, that is a load of nonsense. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R…

French nuclear plant can ramp up/down 80% in 30min, but it's true that many nuclear plant can't

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

#225

Post by midjji »

jhgb wrote: post #145
polote wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Germany would have problems if not for French nuclear, and a great many, rather expensive, gas power plants. For exactly how much, just look at what has happened to the UK as they left the EU wide powersharing agreements.

Its also worth nothing that the rising power prices have largely prevented germany from moving away from using gas to for stoves and heating, which is a huge part of their total CO2, and pollution output.

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

#226

Post by AstralStorm »

mikewarot wrote: post #74
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…

Nuclear reactors actually produce a family of decay products as they run, some with longer decay times and neutron absorbing cross sections than others... things get less stable as you rapidly ramp levels up and down, so it is avoided at all costs. Uranium based fuel generates about 1/10 of its operating heat for a very long time, which is why it has to be kept in cooling ponds after removal from the reactor. Coal pl…

Large scale hydro also has non-negligible methane production due to all the plant matter decaying in placid water...

And the fish are done for too.

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

#227

Post by isatty »

Kon5ole wrote: post #215
pkdpic wrote: 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…

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…

> Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people

Chances of that happening is minuscule and if left uncheck, global warming will kill more than that.

> who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today

Or they figure out better ways to use it that don’t involve killing people.

> proverbial cloudy days

According to this website[0], Germany had about half a years worth of sunny days in 2020. 50% is a long shot from proverbial and according to tfa it’s being bridged by other EU nations and coal.

[0] https://ru-geld.de/en/country/weather-and-climate/sunshine.h...

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

#228

Post by AstralStorm »

sitkack wrote: post #110

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.

And how will you drive the discharged car in the morning?

It's a non-starter proposition.

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

#229

Post by ihsw »

estaseuropano wrote: post #212
barney54 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#230

Post by hilios »

BenoitP wrote: post #58
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.

Well, Germany's wind was done without a thought about how to implement storage; it did not have to; it was a perfect egotistic game-theoretic play: The EU energy market mandates that wind and solar production must be bought before everything else. What happens at the moment is France's nuclear reduces production when Germany's wind is over-producing; there is no energy storage at all. So right now, on top of wind use…

While yes, Germany profits from the European grid to offset some of its over or under production, it doesn't really affect Germany's or France's nuclear energy production.

As you can see even at time when wind provides more than half of Germany's total energy production, the red nuclear bar remains nearly unchanged.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

If you check France's energy production at the same time nuclear energy production isn't affected.

https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ...

It does affect oil, gas and coal, but hardly affects nuclear.

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