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Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

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Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#191

Post by jacquesm »

jules wrote: post #179
jacquesm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continent sized landmasses can survive on wind and solar assuming HVDC interconnects. Some storage would be nice to have, preferably more than a weeks' worth.

Let's approximate the cost of that. The energy consumption of my country (the Netherlands) was 3157 PJ in 2017. This was 980 kwh per person per week. Solar batteries cost a bit more than $1000 per kwh. So at these prices this plan costs approximately $1 million per person. Solar batteries last 5-15 years. If we say that they last 20 years, then the energy storage costs are $130 per person per day per week's worth of…

How does it compare to the cost of a nuclear power plant?

Storing a weeks worth of consumption on a 'per person' basis can be done for a fraction of $1m. But energy scarcity will lead to an increase in prices, which in turn will lead to a reduction in consumption. One big problem with energy is that it is still way too cheap.

Another problem is that there are a lot of subsidies involved for large consumers as well as extra taxation on small consumers.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#192

Post by jhgb »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #117
jhgb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energ…

> Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. Uhh… Yes it does. The data shows that. An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

> The data shows that.

I just added a source that shows that data tells something completely different. In the past ten years, German renewable generation more than doubled (from annual ~100 TWh to ~250 TWh) while their natural gas consumption for electricity generation today is basically the same as back then (somewhere around 90 TWh annually from gas back then as well as today). Not sure how natural gas stagnation can be described as "large increased reliance".

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#193

Post by jhgb »

neoromantique wrote: post #104
jhgb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energ…

Unfortunately if we look at Germany, it means exactly that, as the electricity deficit from closing down these plants is largely offset by coal plants.

Completely wrong, as German statistics for power generation by source show. As nuclear power plants generate less and less electricity, so does German coal (with some inter-annual noise, of course, but the German trend is clear).

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#194

Post by dijit »

jacquesm wrote: post #188
dijit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely naive assumption. Do you have any citations for such a theory? Everything I’ve read on the subject (admittedly not much) tells me that wind power is not only a disaster ecologically (kills too many birds, though not as many as domestic cats) but also unable to produce enough power to govern everything even with interconnects. Distribution of power is also difficult, but there was notably a “still…

I don't really understand the strong position you take while at the same time admitting to not having read much on the subject, and then to regurgitate a bunch of debunked nonsense. This is not a good basis for a discussion.

“Citation please”

“Everything I have read contradicts what you just stated.”

Not sure how I could be clearer. Maybe I made a mistake by admitting my ignorance, but i would rather admit my ignorance than assume I know everything because I read 5 articles and watched a few YouTube videos.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#195

Post by cinntaile »

kortex wrote: post #141
pydry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not politics preventing nuclear power it's the eye watering cost. Unless you count getting taxpayers to shoulder the cost as politics.

> The actual cost of generating electricity by nuclear power is not published by EDF or the French government but is estimated to be between €59/MWh and €83/MWh (~$67-95). Way cheaper than nuclear in USA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#:~:t... . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

I find it quite worrying that this cost is not disclosed, this makes me think it's higher than we assume.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#196

Post by jhgb »

sharklazer wrote: post #101
jhgb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energ…

Actually... it probably does. Look at the respective increase in NatGas consumption as California closes things down. Renewables can only do so much.

I don't care about California. I was talking about Germany. This whole thread is about an article on Germany. There is no such trend in Germany, as data shows.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#197

Post by inter_netuser »

pydry wrote: post #187
inter_netuser wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

solar panels killed more people in their short history, than nuclear power plants in their much longer history. if you count roof installers dying/getting injured on the job. do they count or we can just discount them?

I have seen some dubious statistics that downplay the number of deaths from nuclear accidents caused by cancer and play up the number of deaths caused by installing solar panels (e.g. by counting the number of people dying on roofs and assuming that most of them were up there installing panels).

Why not provide non-dubious statistics then?

Looking forward to you providing us with hard numbers.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#198

Post by kortex »

watermelon0 wrote: post #70
nvalis wrote: post #26

For context a nice realtime overview of the current energy production in Germany is given by the Energy Charts[0] of the Frauenhofer ISE. [0] https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&...

This one is even better, since it shows how much energy is imported/exported to various countries: https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Wow, that really makes the France/Germany/Poland disparity stark.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#199

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

SimonSword91 wrote: post #7

I live in Germany and I wonder, what the consequences will be of shutting down both coal and nuclear in very short time. My guess is, we will pay for nuclear energy from France and coal energy from Poland when wind slows down. The new government tries to accelerate the construction of renewable energy but I think their plans will fail because of worker shortage and supply chain problems.

Everyone is talking about not doing enough. Everyday, even here. There is this strange fascination like in the 70s with fossil fuels that we can just worry later about it. It's the same with nuclear energy now, maybe even worse. Using one finite polluting resource is not gonna be the answer as much as everyone on hackernews wants it to be. Sometimes when you want progress you have to burn the boats. This is Germany burning the boats so they have to force alternatives and progress.

Re: Germany shuts down half of its remaining nuclear plants

#200

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #184
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are delusional. Coal plants kill millions of people worldwide every year. How many people died from Chernobyl? About 50, despite over 100,000 people working at the site on cleanup. The adjacent reactors continued to run and provide power for about a decade after the incident. How many people died of radiation poisoning at Fukushima? Zero. Zero!

Your logic: no one died today, ergo it must be safe.

You should consider changing your position. It’s not too late for that.

Happy New Year.

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