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Russian gas flows to Europe
101–110 of 279 posts
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.
It seems irrational because that's not what's happening. Those power plants can't be run next winter. Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023. But that would still leave them…
A government is a law unto themselves. They have power to do what they need in times of war. Germany shouldn't be pulling a Chamberlain moment while Russia is hot to commit genocide in Europe and roll over whoever they want.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. As already noted by other posters, the decision to decommission these plants was made years ago. 2. As a consequence, the plants are in no shape to be run much longer without major refurbishment, rehinring and training personal. Also, the fuel rods are basically spent, new ones would have to be ordered and manufactured which takes quite some time. Want to guess where most fuel rods came from? (spoiler: Russia) 3.…
> Want to guess where most fuel rods came from? (spoiler: Russia) Can you back that up? To me it looks like only 5% of uranium is in Russia ( https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/uranium-p... ) > They wouldn't have saved much, if any, gas burning Compare to coal (that seems to be the tradeoff in Germany) nuclear energy kills 820x more people per produced energy unit. 820x the number of human lives lost.…
You are linking to uranium production, not the production of fuel rods.
And yes, the nuclear power plants produce less CO2 than coal. No doubt about that. But that is the consequence of a decision over 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the same government who decided that, didn't built up renewables at the required speed, actually slowed down the buildup of renewables.
This is going to change now rapidly.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it deeply concerning we are still very much in bed with Putin. We should have taken drastic steps early and maybe be half way in tapping alternative sources. The fact Germany is happily closing nuclear power plants shows Europe is in for a rude awakening when Putin tightens the vice.
And who do we buy oil/gas from? Venezuela? Iran? Saudi Arabia? United States? I don't see a reason why those countries are better than Russia.
Unfortunately it doesn’t even matter. The infrastructure simply doesn’t exist and takes many months to build. Germany could choose to buy from anywhere but it doesn’t matter, there’s no way to get the gas to where it’s needed in time for winter.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#105"Tomorrow Russia will take Nord Stream 1 offline" https://twitter.com/PascalLTH/status/1546174453331230721 and might keep it offline until Germany bends the knee.
"bends the knee" might be buying gas at 1/10th the price and considering it a huge win for the terrorist state called russia
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> shutting down secure That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.
There is no dispute about the safety of nuclear. We have statistics going back decades. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=... .
Right. There is no dispute that the Bavarian forests are still strongly contaminated from the Chernobyl disaster and will be for many decades. You still have somewhat to be careful to eat mushrooms from there and especially wild boar.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#107Two days ago the German government voted to to shut off the three remaining nuclear power plants. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/klima-nachhaltigkeit/...
Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article? The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short…
Maybe when winter comes, 1% will make all the difference. We will see
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#108Two days ago the German government voted to to shut off the three remaining nuclear power plants. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/klima-nachhaltigkeit/...
And? What is the relevance of that? Not shutting them off wouldn't in any way influence the industrial and heating heating usages of natural gas in Germany which are the main problem.
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#109It's far too late to change this. You cannot restructure the energy sources of a whole continent in a few months or even years. This could've been fixed if the West had understood and reacted appropriately to the magnitude of the Russian threat about 10 years ago, as foreseen by academics like Stephen Cohen and businessmen like Bill Browder, instead of blindly falling for its own hubristic self-delusion (which contin…
What I find most sad is, how differently we treat eg. USA when they decide to destroy a sovereign country due to their interests, compared to eg. now russia... I'm from slovenia, and we even sent soldiers to help them in afghanistan, and we still have them in syria... somehow noone mentions words like "war", "occupation", "civilian deaths" etc., when our soldiers are there...
Re: Russian gas flows to Europe
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with nuclear is simply that it is irrelevant to the current situation. Won’t add enough energy to the grid, won’t solve the problem of gas demand at all, so it really doesn’t matter if Germany was right or wrong about it.
It very much matters over the timespan of several decades. That is enough time in which many more nuclear power plants could have been brought online. Just because Germany made the gross error of not building out enough nuclear power to provide for their needs doesn’t mean it is impossible.
No, it doesn't. The nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters and the chemical industry consuming copious amounts of natural gas. Any shortfall from the nuclear shutdown can be covered by the underutilized coal plants. It's temporarily inconvenient but doesn't necessitate gas imports in any way.