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Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

reuters.com

81–90 of 170 posts

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).

It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.

Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines.

Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to replace all the gas plant capacity is unrealistic, and green hydro is almost 100 times more expensive than natural gas. Nuclear is expensive, but its not that expensive.

There is a strange thing with hydrostorage. To my knowledge there does not exist a single example of a commercial operation that buys renewables to pump water and then generate energy to sell when the price goes up. There does exist one commercial operation that I know where an energy company uses storage to balance their fleet of (mostly) fossil fuel plants when they need to spin down/up. It keeps their operations more stable, and they said something to the point of "In the future we might use this to buy renewables when the price is low and sell when the energy is needed".

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not against nuclear power but can anyone explain why a similar sized investment in solar+wind+geothermal+battery storage would not work?

Because the land needed for equivalent solar and wind would be massive. There would be no room for NIMBY. Imagine someone you love would lose their home so that a windmill could be constructed. Every city park would need to have a huge windmill, and every roof would need solar panels. That is assuming that we can even locate the material and manpower needed to build so much. This would be at least 2 orders of magnitu…

Are you sure about that? The general figures I see are that around 2% of land for wind energy should be very sufficient, which would not need displacing of existing housing and certainly no construction in city parks.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#83
post #8

I don't get it. A nuclear accident halfway across the world and Germany decides to shut down. A war halfway across the continent and it decides to keep on? Both threats (nuclear accident and Putin's madness) have always existed. What changed? Did they suddenly discover Putin is not trustworthy to depend on for half of your energy supply?

Never mind that they live right next door to the most active user of nuclear power in Europe France. So likelihood of a nuclear accident not affecting them is close to zero.

So just go with it and multiply the risk further? It's like saying, my partner smokes cigarettes, so me also doing so, will not raise my cancer risk.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#84
post #22
post #12

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to N…

After the Fukushima catastrophe, it was clear that the unknown unknows are worse than anticipated. Sad thing is, Germany should have pumped a whole lotta more money into renewables and their research.

As my sibling comment describes, this wasn't unknown. TEPCO (the company operating Fukushima) themselves commissioned a report into the suitability of their emergency systems, came to the conclusion that a generator and switchgear room in the basement of a building next to the sea was a bad idea, and then did nothing about it for several years. They were also told this repeatedly by other agencies.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#85
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Fukushima? And modern reactors have to be built first. How long does it take if we look how long the berlin airport took or Stuttgart 21 will take.

Fukushima is older than Chernobyl; it was commissioned and running before Chernobyl's construction began. Both were managed incompetently.

>Both were managed incompetently.

That won't change even with modern reactors.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how did plans to import natural gas via NS1/NS2 fit into these plans?

My understanding was that Natural gas in Europe is used for house heat, and industrial processes that have never been electrified. I was not aware of using it (at a wide scale) for electricity generation. (definitely not an expert though)

Natural gas is a major source of electricity in many European countries (and in some countries, the biggest source). Natural gas is considered preferable to burning coal because it creates significantly less air pollution and CO2 emissions for each unit of electricity.

Here's a neat map where you can view the current electricity generation mix for countries in real-time:

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have no state who wants to store the nuclear waste. We believe the future is renewables and we invest heavily into it.

The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).

The vision of the European Union is that the future is renewables + hydrogen. Initially I was skeptical, but recently I realized that it does make a lot of sense.

You can start by first converting coal power plants to natural gas. That will cut the emissions by at least a factor of 2. Then, when the hydrogen infrastructure is built up, you replace the natural gas with hydrogen. Initially it can be "brown" hydrogen, but then you can transition to "blue" hydrogen, and finally with green hydrogen [1].

[1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrog...

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#88
post #30

Here's better, more numerate coverage: https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1498005296299622408 Also the whole thread covers other nuclear topics the press is a bit lost on. Remember, the number of nuclear engineers at reuters is 0.

Keep in mind that this persons appears to be a pro nuclear industry lobbyist. So the number of objective nuclear opinions on this twitter account is 0.

When someone becomes an expert in something and goes professional, they can no longer be trusted to have any objective thoughts or statements.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#89
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima is older than Chernobyl; it was commissioned and running before Chernobyl's construction began. Both were managed incompetently.

>Both were managed incompetently. That won't change even with modern reactors.

The difference being that incompetent management of a modern reactor cannot lead to a meltdown.

Re: Germany mulls extending nuclear plants' life-span

#90
post #56

Finally! I really hope this will happen.

It will in fact most definitely not happen, as the article makes pretty clear. Not that it would be a good idea, at all.

Extending the life of low-carbon baseload power that is being prematurely shut down for purely political reasons wouldn't be a good idea in light of the climate crisis and this new wartime threat?
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