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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

#311

Post by raffraffraff »

hagbard_c wrote: post #275
garmaine wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heating is largely natural gas based, so it's not substitutive. I don't think Germany should be shutting down its nuclear reactors, but that has nothing to do with Russian gas. (Unless perhaps they started making synthetic methane using the heat of a nuclear reactor, which is not a terrible idea but not something they are currently doing AFAIK.)

In Sweden natural gas is hardly used yet electricity prices have gone up astronomically compared to last year - daily rates are now around 10 to 20 times what they were last year around the same time. Heating in Sweden is a combination of electric (resistive elements and heat pumps), wood in some form (firewood, pellets, wood chips), some oil and process heat from industry where available. The Swedish equivalent of t…

It's amazing. How many so-called zero emissions cars will be running on lignite next year?

Oh, I give up.

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

#312

Post by monopoledance »

alkonaut wrote: post #278
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.

So germans are still buying (some) Russian gas for heat, while shutting down nuclear plants? That just seems wrong. > biomass" often gets hidden in the "clean energy" part, but that just means burning something other than oil/coal/gas. That's usually CO2 neutral if it's waste/wood pellets etc. Whether it's "clean" or "sustainable" is a hot topic, but in terms of climate it's a lot better than fossil fuel.

You make an argument that only works in theory. In reality you cannot switch heating modalities like underwear for whatever seems reasonable at the moment. Most houses are build with gas and oil heating systems. In some places like Berlin the gas infrastructure is very old and established. Even streetlights run on gas in some places and houses have generators in the basement to combine heat and electricity supply.

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

#313

Post by smotah »

GravitasFailure wrote: post #99
DavidKarlas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying that but looking at https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR it seems reverse... That is probably happening in summer at nights...

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.

When looking at live data we should keep in mind that currently 14 reactors are stopped in France for various reasons (maintenance delayed to winter season due to COVID, safety measures of several reactors due to investigation in a deterioration of a comportent in one).

In normal circumstances France should be exporting to Germany right now (it would make no economical sense for German grid operators to use the very expensive gas if neighbors could deliver lower cost indigenous production). Sadly right now France can't deliver and it increases tension even more on gas demand.

Thanks to it's nuclear power, France is the first electricity exporter in the world, Germany is a close second.

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

#314

Post by midjji »

tuukkah wrote: post #292
midjji wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell because for profit(if staterun) companies are building them across the world. France is drawing significant profits from existing nuclear, and constructing new. Nuclear has been ridiculously profitable for most countries which built them, with the sole exception of countries which started building them, then forbid nuclear. Many countries in Asia are building them because its cheaper than coal power. Mos…

Do you have a source for Finland moving the goalposts during the construction?

The wiki article gives a decent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#... Though you will need to follow the references, look for STUK approving some methodology, then claiming its results are insufficient.

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

#315

Post by olivermarks »

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…

Also of interest

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/business/rolls-royce-nucl...

'Rolls-Royce, the British jet engine maker, said on Tuesday that it was forming a business to build a series of smaller, cheaper nuclear reactors as Britain looks for ways to cut carbon emissions and to reduce the costs of nuclear energy.

The kind of reactor proposed by Rolls-Royce would cover about two soccer fields, or about one-tenth the acreage of a conventional nuclear power station, the company said.

These plants would generate less power — about one-seventh the output of the giant nuclear installation being built at Hinkley Point in southwest England.

But Rolls-Royce said it hoped to reduce construction costs to around 2 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) each, compared with an estimated £22.5 billion for the Hinkley Point plant. Some of the savings would come from building a large number of plants and making modules in factories that can then be assembled at sites.

The company hopes to build 16 of the plants, known as small modular reactors, and said each could power around one million homes.'

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

#316

Post by cinntaile »

raffraffraff wrote: post #311
hagbard_c wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden natural gas is hardly used yet electricity prices have gone up astronomically compared to last year - daily rates are now around 10 to 20 times what they were last year around the same time. Heating in Sweden is a combination of electric (resistive elements and heat pumps), wood in some form (firewood, pellets, wood chips), some oil and process heat from industry where available. The Swedish equivalent of t…

It's amazing. How many so-called zero emissions cars will be running on lignite next year? Oh, I give up.

Not that many. Power from Poland or Germany is not that common in Sweden, Sweden exports most of the time. It can happen during periods of low winds, but it's not that frequent.

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

#317

Post by monopoledance »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #29
zibzab wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Longer insanity is not less insanity!

It's democracy. We were much closer to Chernobyl, than all the Americans promoting yesterday's easy future here. Some parts in Germany are suffering the fallout still, when mushrooms and wild game make the Geiger counters beep in the news.

Germany is extremely population dense and nobody wants to live next to radioactive waste. Especially in rich Bavaria were all the AKWs have been build (and where they had suitable rock to bury it).

No one here wants nuclear power. Not even the energy producers. There is no lobby, no support, no future for Atomkraftwerke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

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

#318

Post by patall »

midjji wrote: post #225
jhgb wrote: 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.

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 o…

- why then, if we go by jhgb's source, is France missing 52 min of electricity per year while Germany is missing 12 min? Are they stabelizing the german grid at their own disadvantage?

- are nuclear power plants cheap? Isn't Hinkley Point C guranteed 10 ct/kwh + inflation. Wasn't it the new Finnish nuclear plant that cost 11 billion Euros? What do gas power plants cost, 20 billion?

> 'which have largely prevented germany from moving away from using gas to for stoves ...'

I would like a source for that. According to [1], 91% of german house holds are using electric kitchen stoves and 7% gas. For heating, they have a larger market share but gas kitchen stoves are not really widespread.

[1] https://www.hea.de/fachwissen/kochfelder/marktdaten

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

#319

Post by GravitasFailure »

smotah wrote: post #313
GravitasFailure wrote: post #99

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.

When looking at live data we should keep in mind that currently 14 reactors are stopped in France for various reasons (maintenance delayed to winter season due to COVID, safety measures of several reactors due to investigation in a deterioration of a comportent in one). In normal circumstances France should be exporting to Germany right now (it would make no economical sense for German grid operators to use the very…

That puts things in a very different light, then. Thanks!

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

#320

Post by robertlagrant »

idiotsecant wrote: post #141
polote wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 improveme…

Transmission and storage are not just political and financial problems, except in the sense that you can technically frame any problem as being them.
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