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Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

spiegel.de

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Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#181

Post by _ph_ »

tpmx wrote: post #15

And still the current plan is for Germany to shut down its few remaining nuclear reactors by the end of the year, while the company/companies maintaining them are saying they can keep them running? Please stop the shutdown, ffs, are you insane? Let's try to stop Germany from harming itself further via international pressure. Blame and shame. Call them idiots to their faces. Point fingers. They need to shocked. The ge…

First of all, please don't call people names and please stay to the truth. I will take a deep breath and try to answer some of your claims calmly.

Yes, one can debate whether it was a clever idea to decide in 2001 to get rid of nuclear power while there was no end date set for coal. However the plans allowed for 25 years of further run time, enough time for buildup of renewables.

And Germany was quite successfull, renewables make up over 50% of the electricity. However, they fell behind the expectations because the Merkel government curbed the roll out of renewables. You can see how solar collapsed after 2012 and wind after 2017: https://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/EE/Redaktion/DE/Bilder/G...

On top of that, after the Fukushima disaster, it was decided to cut the run times of the nuclear power plants short. Mixing those together wasn't a great thing. Without one or even both, the path to renewables would have been smother and much further ahead.

We are talking about only 3 power plants left, whatever we decide, it won't make a huge difference. But as things are, I would also be in favour of keeping them running, if we reasonably can. However that is not a given. Maintenance intervals were of course decide with the final shut down at the end of the year in mind, as was ordering of the nuclear fuel. I really don't know, whether this can be reasonably reversed without higher costs than the possible alternatives.

And it is important to mention, that there is no scarcity of electricity in Germany, nor is any expected in the winter. Only 14% of the imported Gas go to electricity production. Ironically German electricity production is espeically high at the moment, as Germany has to keep the European grid up as France is failing to produce enough electricity. About 50% of the French nuclear power plants are down at the moment, they are old and require maintenance. On top of that, the rest has to run at reduced power due to limited cooling in the summer and due to the draught.

Germany has for this reason produced an extra 20 TWh of electricity, partially coming from the precious gas reserves. Because the nuclear power plants are not delivering at the moment.

So please cut down your flaming of Germany while it keeps the European grid running.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#182

Post by _ph_ »

tpmx wrote: post #101
rgbrenner wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cant build new plants, I dont think the solution is to run old plants forever until they fail. Shutting down old plants should have nothing to do with being pro/anti nuclear. Everything has a life span.

The plants are being shut down because of political concerns. From a technical POV they can keep running. Vattenfall was also forced to retire nuclear plants in Germany way ahead of schedule because of german politics a few years ago. That was stupid.

It was a political decision to set the shut down date to end of 22, but due to maintenance and fuel concerns, it might not be possible to just keep them running. Of course we can perform all necessary maintenance and order new fuel to have them back in a year or two, but it might be simpler just to push the alternatives. (If it is easily possible to keep them running, of course we should do, but that is not so clear to me)

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#183

Post by Jensson »

Jansemon wrote: post #156
BonoboIO wrote: post #138

Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like…

Yeah, and aren't like have the plants currently not working, either because it's to hot or they're in maintenance or it's too expensive to repair them? And EDF, the biggest company behind nuclear power generation has huge amounts of debt and needs (is?) to be nationalized? From what I can gather, nuclear power was never cheap. It seems no country calculates the real cost - everything's subsidized to be even competiti…

Germany will pay hundreds of billions in electricity this year since they don't have enough. Nuclear would have been a bargain.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#184

Post by Gwypaas »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #149
BonoboIO wrote: post #138

Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like…

Just use cooling towers... Edit: I'm getting rate-limited, so my answer to the genius observation below, that cooling towers also need water, is the following: Cooling towers evaporate water. Thus the concerns of OP do not apply about overheating the river downstream: >The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream

> Just use cooling towers...

Take the already most costly way of generating electricity and make it both less efficient (due to the cold side being warmer) and entail higher initial investment costs.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#185

Post by zemvpferreira »

Gwypaas wrote: post #146
orbifold wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great but I want the same deal for the coal and gas companies that produce electricity, make them responsible for every ton of CO2 they emitted and make them responsible for removing it from the atmosphere.

Pitting nuclear against coal is fighting a straw man. The alternative is renewables. With a tiny fraction of the negative side-effects either nuclear or of fossil energy brings.

It's most certainly not, since for every kW of installed renewables another kW of gas capacity must be installed to compensate for intermittency.

That said, no reason why the original deal can't be extended to renewables, seems perfectly fair. It's to everyone's benefit that all methods of power generation be held accountable for all their costs.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#186

Post by locallost »

cycomanic wrote: post #35

It is interesting to note how everyone talks about the dependency on gas in Germany, while nobody mentions France. If we look at the two graphs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/En... https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_en... We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear…

Germany's dependency on gas is more related to heating in the winter. It's relevant for electricity, but more as an in between solution after the phase out of nuclear and coal. But without gas, almost all of the population is screwed in the winter. France uses electricity for heating also, but considering they imported more electricity this year than they exported, they will also likely be in a world of hurt in the winter.

For me, that's the strange thing about all of the narratives being pushed with the crisis, especially noticeable with nuclear -- any decision made 15-20 years ago would be somehow problematic right now, so wishing things were done differently leads to nowhere.

What I wish this would lead to is a massive push to ditch fossil fuels, and those who think renewables are the solution should do that, the same with nuclear. I can freeze and suffer for some time, as long as there's a plan to improve things.

What's clear is that things will change forever pretty soon.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#187

Post by LudwigNagasena »

kurthr wrote: post #147
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany doesn’t allow separatism. Most other European nations don’t allow it too. Spain jailed Catalonia independence movement leaders for 9-13 years in 2017.

I'm not sure where that leads? Should the Austro-Hungarian Empire be reestablished? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary

How is fighting separatists that aren’t recognized by any UN state should lead to reestablishment of Austria-Hungary?

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#188

Post by cloverich »

Gwypaas wrote: post #146
orbifold wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great but I want the same deal for the coal and gas companies that produce electricity, make them responsible for every ton of CO2 they emitted and make them responsible for removing it from the atmosphere.

Pitting nuclear against coal is fighting a straw man. The alternative is renewables. With a tiny fraction of the negative side-effects either nuclear or of fossil energy brings.

Can renewables realistically cover (near) 100% of our day and night energy needs in the next 20 years? Gates book suggested no and if so thats why the comparison is apt.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#189

Post by hgomersall »

number6 wrote: post #131
orbifold wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great but I want the same deal for the coal and gas companies that produce electricity, make them responsible for every ton of CO2 they emitted and make them responsible for removing it from the atmosphere.

This is in place via EU-ETS: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-sy...

The price of co2 in the ETS is an order of magnitude too low to deal with it's removal, so no, this is not in place with the ETS.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#190

Post by frozencell »

BonoboIO wrote: post #138

Meanwhile in France. Because the temperatures are so high and the continuing drought, the nuclear power plants have to decrease their power output. The cooling water comes from the rivers and the plants have limits how hot the water is allowed to get downstream. Everything would slowly cook in the rivers … Even with temporal exceptions of this environmental rules France became a NET IMPORTER of power. France is like…

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