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Germany's Energy Catastrophe

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Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#151

Post by ben_w »

dispat0r wrote: post #135
mvgcf wrote: post #10

This op-ed is getting things so utterly wrong, I don‘t even know where to start. The Energiewende (so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility) here in Germany is working just fine. It is a reasonable investment in our future. The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy. The lack of gas is problematic because it is a preliminary product used in chemical proc…

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. On paper maybe, most people are actually using electricity generated from conventional power plants most of the time, and we are paying the highest energy prices in the world for that. > On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated, especial…

> Building thousands of windmills in forests and installing solar on farmland also has a high ecological footprint.

False dichotomies. See for example Flugplatz Brandenburg-Briest: https://goo.gl/maps/WATEJANE9wiHk7UAA

And pastureland can continue to be used as pastureland simultaneously with both PV and wind.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#152

Post by ben_w »

Zanfa wrote: post #27
mvgcf wrote: post #10

This op-ed is getting things so utterly wrong, I don‘t even know where to start. The Energiewende (so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility) here in Germany is working just fine. It is a reasonable investment in our future. The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy. The lack of gas is problematic because it is a preliminary product used in chemical proc…

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. Grid-scale storage (apart from hydro, but that's basically maxed out or unsuitable for most geographies) is still an unsolved problem for renewables, even the largest lithium-battery ones are basically a rounding error. You'd need multiple weeks worth of batt…

> There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.

Absolutely! But:

Nuclear was approximately as cheap as the equivalent LiIon storage a few years ago, but the batteries are getting cheaper and the reactors are not.

There are also other chemistries, and other storage options, which I'd include under the banner of "no perfect solution, so let's do everything".

> You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables.

I have no idea why this meme propagates. How many people live where there is no sunlight for multiple weeks at a time? And it's not like we don't already have some long distance power lines.

PV is so absurdly cheap that overproduction is seriously not a bad solution if you're just concerned about cloudy weeks.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#153

Post by majewsky »

ajuc wrote: post #82
DocTomoe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany is so poor it can't afford to pay 50% more for gas Germany isn't. Many Germans are. If missing gas leads to industry breaking down, more Germans will be. Germans being made poor, especially for no good reasons other than the decisions of politicians abroad, tends to lead to unintended, but severe consequences. Already, wannabe autocrats are winding up their propaganda. Guess which countries they will have a…

> Germany isn't. Many Germans are. Then pay them with state money if needed. > If missing gas leads to industry breaking down, more Germans will be. And if we have to choose between EU falling apart and millions of people abroad dying or some Germans temporarily getting a little less wealthy - we will choose supporting our industry every time cause it's the only thing that matters. That's the main problem with German…

> Then pay them with state money if needed.

We can't. The radical pro-small-state finance minister fights tooth and nail against any additional debt in order to obey the holy debt ceiling that a bunch of idiots wrote into the constitution about a decade ago because they didn't understand the difference between a national budget and a company budget.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#154

Post by locallost »

TheChaplain wrote: post #150
locallost wrote: post #6

Germany proceeded with their "nuclear exit" in 2011. Had they gone the other way and all in on nuclear, they would be in the same situation as they are today as planning and building nuclear plants takes a lot longer than 10 years. Actually they would be way worse because instead of having 50% of electricity coming from renewables, they would still have 45% of it coming from coal, instead of 25% in 2020 (did not chec…

Sweden built one in 6 years (Barseback) and another in 5 years (Oskarshamn), both ran fine without causing nuclear disasters. And now almost 50 years later we have way waaay more knowledge, experience and technology to build safe powerplants within a short time. The hindrance is bureaucracy. Ask anyone who is or have been working for the government how incredibly inefficient it is.

In the US, there was one nuclear plant that went online in this century: it is the second unit of the plant in Tennessee whose construction started in 1973. It was finished in 2016, after 43 years. There is also a construction in progress in Georgia, currently approaching 20 years of development.

The problem with government inefficiency and nuclear is that the governments are the only ones that dare spend money on it. An example of a private investment was the plant in South Carolina that was halted after 9 billion spent. The reason was that they realized they would not make it in time to cash in on a subsidy, and without that the project would never ever be profitable. And normally you could say it happens, it's the company's money, but the debt is being paid by the utility's customers. They're paying for electricity from a power plant that does not exist.

I don't understand the people that think this is a rational solution.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#155

Post by throwoutway »

locallost wrote: post #6

Germany proceeded with their "nuclear exit" in 2011. Had they gone the other way and all in on nuclear, they would be in the same situation as they are today as planning and building nuclear plants takes a lot longer than 10 years. Actually they would be way worse because instead of having 50% of electricity coming from renewables, they would still have 45% of it coming from coal, instead of 25% in 2020 (did not chec…

Where do you justify your numbers? 45%? They make no sense to me.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#156

Post by Tozen »

spockz wrote: post #66
jillesvangurp wrote: post #35

Of course the flip side is that Germany is going cold turkey on coal and gas in the next few years. Once that process is completed, it will have a huge head start on other countries looking to slowly transition to being carbon neutral. That's actually a good thing. Short term it's disruptive for sure but it is already leading to huge public spending. Which of course also is the classic recipe to mitigate the risks of…

I’m not so sure Russia will depend on Europe for it’s gas price/revenue. Oil is already being diverted east and to India that are willing to buy. So ultimately Russia has the same income, the environmental pollution will be the same, and yes Europe may have green energy.

However, it will still take Russia many years to do the transition of supplying India and China (and whoever else), to the same level they were to Europe. In the near future, Russia will be somewhat hurting itself, as it's hurting Europe.

China has claimed it wants to reduce its reliance on oil, particularly starting from the 2030s, but that all gets tricky if Russia will be supplying very cheap oil and gas or if China will be wary of relying so much on Russia as a matter of policy.

It's possible that Europe will spearhead ways to reduce the reliance on gas and oil, not replace, but figure out various new strategies and technologies around renewables and alternatives. Conventional nuclear doesn't seem to be on the table, because of the very long construction times, unless we are talking something like SMR nuclear.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#157

Post by illiac786 »

dispat0r wrote: post #101
locallost wrote: post #6

Germany proceeded with their "nuclear exit" in 2011. Had they gone the other way and all in on nuclear, they would be in the same situation as they are today as planning and building nuclear plants takes a lot longer than 10 years. Actually they would be way worse because instead of having 50% of electricity coming from renewables, they would still have 45% of it coming from coal, instead of 25% in 2020 (did not chec…

You are right, Germany should have build new nuclear plants in 2000. The renewables make the German energy grid unstable and expensive, we have the highest power cost in the world currently with no end in sight, also no storage for the renewables. You can build nuclear power plants in about 10 Years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant Uranium is not only exported by Russia.

You can store electricity pretty well, a 20 millions kWh storage went live in Switzerland recently:

https://interestingengineering.com/switzerlands-water-batter...

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#158

Post by illiac786 »

seszett wrote: post #78
daccle wrote: post #2

Yikes! Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power. Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). Finally explaining that there were only 28 deaths after the Chernobyl accident, ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer and deformed unborn children. Sorry, this article is totally wrong in so many ways.

> Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). That's actually not been true for the last 40 years or so. In France, nuclear power plants have been doing load following without problem. They are apparently able to adjust their production by 80% over 30 minutes. One such episode is explained here: https://lenergeek.com/2019/03/07/mix-ele…

I read the article and I do not see the 80% mentioned. I really would have loved to read this, but they mentioned only 10GW of variation, that's roughly 20% I believe.

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#159

Post by illiac786 »

BenoitP wrote: post #123
daccle wrote: post #2

Yikes! Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power. Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). Finally explaining that there were only 28 deaths after the Chernobyl accident, ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer and deformed unborn children. Sorry, this article is totally wrong in so many ways.

> it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time Well, France has been doing it just fine for the last 33 years: > [...] flexible operation of nuclear reactors is possible and has been applied in France by EDF’s 58 reactors for more than 30 years without any noticeable or unmanageable impacts: no effects on safety or on the environment, and no noticeable additional maintenance costs, with an additional un…

Would love to believe this, but that's EDF writing this. Any other source? Any real life example?

Re: Germany's Energy Catastrophe

#160

Post by ajuc »

cute_boi wrote: post #121
gambiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer Which are, at absolute most and at the most pessimistic estimate, at few thousands excess deaths[0]. The same estimates for coal at are thousands.....per year, not for the last 40 years. [0] https://ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2021/chernobyl-at-35-year...

Well, your comparison might also be invalid because we haven't used nuclear power to the scale coal is used. Maybe if there were many nuclear plants we might have seen many disaster?

Both nuclear and coal were used more than solar. And solar caused more deaths per MWh produced than nuclear (cause people fall off roofs while installing/maintaining it).

If you think scale matters - then you should also think that solar is more risky than nuclear by your own logic (because we're not using it on as big scale).

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