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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

#351

Post by Kim_Bruning »

londons_explore wrote: post #342
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those 2019 numbers or 2021 numbers?

Numbers from 1 hour ago... From the UK, and assuming UK climate for COP figures. ~True with both retail capped prices, and wholesale market prices. There are still people in the UK installing heat pumps. Either they have a very rose tinted view of the future direction of electricity prices Vs gas, a rose tinted view of future government taxes/incentives, a rose tinted view of the environmental benefits (eg. By lookin…

Thank you! And I can venture a few more hypotheses (from least to most likely):

1. Altruism

2. Already committed

3. They have a pessimistic view of future gas prices.

4. They have solar.

5. They're in a long tail/corner case/different use case from the one you computed.

I'd put my money on 5, depending on how big a % difference. Eg. I've noticed more and more people switching to solar as prices come down and hit an inflection point for them in their use case. Wouldn't be surprised if heat pumps are the same.

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

#352

Post by pjscott »

patall wrote: post #318
midjji wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ger…

> Wasn't it the new Finnish nuclear plant that cost 11 billion Euros?

Olkiluoto unit 3 is a pretty extreme outlier in construction costs. The same amount of power generation capacity from CPR1000 plants (widely used in China today) would cost closer to 2.5 billion Euros, and construction times are about 5 years.

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

#353

Post by kspacewalk2 »

jhgb wrote: post #176
AstralStorm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

There is no battery capacity required for the simple effect of substituting gas power plant operation. Any MWh generated by another source will simply remove the need to generate that MWh from gas, where the price of gas is the dominating component.

Not really. This is overly simplistic since it's not accounting for reliability/predictability of supply. Natural gas can be turned into MWh on demand, at night, when there's no wind, during consumption anomalies, etc. It's clearly not interchangeable with renewables MWh for MWh like you're suggesting.

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

#354

Post by charlieyu1 »

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.

Nuclear fusion is.

Nuclear fission is definitely not environmentally friendly, and will probably be obsolete in 30-40 years. Then the future generations have to deal with the problem that comes with nuclear fission power plants.

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

#355

Post by smotah »

cesarb wrote: post #306
arghwhat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest. The fallout sucked, but even that was a minor hiccup compared to the destruction pollution is bringing with it...

> Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest. There's a reason nuclear power plant technology is strictly controlled as "dual use": the same technology used for power production can also be used to produce the material for a nuclear bomb. So you can't say they're completely unrelated.

It's a bit more nuanced than that as there's just a subset of all possible nuclear power plant designs that needs the same enrichment facility than for military (bomb making) usage.

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

#356

Post by vostok »

londons_explore wrote: post #342
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those 2019 numbers or 2021 numbers?

Numbers from 1 hour ago... From the UK, and assuming UK climate for COP figures. ~True with both retail capped prices, and wholesale market prices. There are still people in the UK installing heat pumps. Either they have a very rose tinted view of the future direction of electricity prices Vs gas, a rose tinted view of future government taxes/incentives, a rose tinted view of the environmental benefits (eg. By lookin…

I'm installing heat pumps in the US.

* I'm tired of tenants installing window air conditioners.

* I pay for steam heat myself whereas tenants will pay for electricity used by their heat pump.

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

#357

Post by hcurtiss »

cesarb wrote: post #306
arghwhat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest. The fallout sucked, but even that was a minor hiccup compared to the destruction pollution is bringing with it...

> Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest. There's a reason nuclear power plant technology is strictly controlled as "dual use": the same technology used for power production can also be used to produce the material for a nuclear bomb. So you can't say they're completely unrelated.

Nuclear waste from commercial reactors in the US is not fissile. Reprocessing would change that (producing plutonium), but that's why we don't have fast breeders in the US (personally, I favor changing that). I'm aware of no enrichment facilities co-located with nuclear power plants, certainly not in the US.

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

#358

Post by gerdesj »

hagbard_c wrote: post #344
gerdesj wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"daily rates are now around 10 to 20 times what they were last year around the same time" Really? 10 to 20x? That's 1,000 to 2,000% Here in the UK we've had suppliers collapse due to some "issues" involving not buying with fixed prices and end users like you and me get bills that are about 150% last year but not 1,000%. We have (had) quite a lot of innovative suppliers that offered "green" tariffs that were backed by…

Yes, really. The price of electricity is set through a controlled market mechanism at "Nord Pool", the electricity producers exchange for the Nordic countries. Nearly all producers and sellers have pages showing these prices, here's an example: https://www.vattenfall.se/elavtal/elpriser/timpris-pa-elbors... and another: https://elen.nu/dagens-spotpris/se3-stockholm/ Timpris på elbörsen (on the first site, "vattenfall…

I'm still trying to work out the numbers.

I'm quite surprised that Scandinavia is having even more problems than say the UK because you have rather a lot of useful topological features (really big hills and mountains and lakes at elevation - ie potential energy). You are also closer to the Ukraine than us for gas so that should be cheaper too.

Our consumer energy market is a bit strange. We have a national grid for eleccy and then have multiple "suppliers" who supposedly compete. The ones who went balls out have gone bust. They generally offered fixed and flexible rates based on the wholesale cost plus their margin. Then the wholesale cost went up rather a lot and they lost their margin and without money in the bank, they went bust. The govt agency for energy then enforced other suppliers to take us on. So I was a customer of "Green" and now I'm a customer of "Shell Energy". You can be sure that Shell are not losing out in any way 8)

I've just noticed that you use the term Nordic countries - is that a better/preferred term to use than Scandinavia?

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

#359

Post by [deleted] »

monopoledance wrote: post #300
midjji wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulation is exactly as beneficial to gas and power heated homes. It does jack shit or worse for cooking though. France is self sufficient, but imports when prices are low in order to keep levels high in reservoirs, which further decreases prices over the year.

Or when their nuclear power plants boil their rivers...

[deleted]

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

#360

Post by Panzer04 »

BenoitP wrote: post #192
_ph_ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.electricitym…

Gas is better than coal in a strict sense, and a combo of gas and renewables will vastly reduce emissions, and in a way most people can deal with. Over time battery prices will fall and renewable install base will rise so that gas peaked eventually become unnecessary.
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