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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

#241

Post by cycomanic »

panick21_ wrote: post #221
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…

France unforunatly stopped investing in nuclear in the 1990s, from 1970-2000 their total nuclear power production went up, but then if flatlined. That is why they have problmes now. They had next generation plants ready to be rolled out, but because of the politics at the time never produced them in large numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

Blaming it on politics is quite inventive. The EPR at Falammanville is 4 times over budget and 9 years overdue and still not online. The EPRs were Frances next generation reactors. The cost of electricity with that reactor is projected to be twice higher than older reactors. Let's not even talk about the fact that at the moment >50% of French reactors are down, because they encountered issues in maintance (interestingly it's sold to the French public as we are preparing them for the winter when gas will be tight).

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#242

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

isn't that better than not having power at all with your energy infrastructure dependent on the whims of a madman?

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#243

Post by cypress66 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #93

As a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")

That would only be fair if you required coal plants to pay for all the lives shortened or affected by its pollution.

And that would be many orders of magnitude higher than the insurance that you are proposing.

And no, CO2 taxes aren't the same (air pollution and global warming are separate things), and even then they are absolutely tiny.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#244

Post by cypress66 »

cinntaile wrote: post #49
WalterBright wrote: post #10

> The results are astounding all around Faced with burning wood to keep warm in winter, the results are entirely predictable.

Most households burn gas at home for heating. Sure if there is no gas, you can use an electrical heater but that won't be cheap.

Heat pumps aren't necessarily more expensive than gas, and they are cleaner than gas heaters if the electricity is clean (such as nuclear)

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#245

Post by cycomanic »

T-A wrote: post #235
cycomanic wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that is unrelated to the argument that is being made; that Germany's dependence on Russian gas is because they are quitting nuclear. France who went largely "all-in" on nuclear is using the same percentage of gas, they just get it from somewhere else. You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this, this is the politics of where to get the gas from (and I agree getting it from Russia was a mistake…

> You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competit…

> Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.

Nuclear was never an option to substitude for gas. Apart from the fact that Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry, the applications for both in electricity generation are very different, gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload. That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#246

Post by kurthr »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #187
kurthr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How is jailing people after trial (but not extraditing the Catalonian European delegates), equivalent to the utter destruction of civilian occupied Grozny?

Or are you suggesting that in 2008 Germany should have supported Georgia in South Ossetia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Russo-Georgian...

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#247

Post by BenoitP »

orbifold wrote: post #115
KingOfCoders wrote: post #93

As a German I don't care. I just want two things: 1. The energy company pays market rate insurance for their nuclear plants. Not "we take the profit, taxpayers pay for the disaster" 2. The energy company sets up a trust to pay for the safe storage of nuclear waste and cleaning up the plant should they go bust (again "we take ...")

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.

And also deal with the harm done by coal mining; rehabilitate the Hambach mine landscape for example

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#248

Post by BenoitP »

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…

You're mixing electricity production vs energy.

We don't use oil for electricity production at all in France for example, we do for individual heating though.

Most of the gas you see for France is for industrial heating: making cement, fusing glass, etc. Which was not accounted for in your graph for Germany.

If you look at Germany's gas use, you'll see that it is sky-high, about x4 France's; because of industrial heat, and also mainly because of their humongous organic chemistry gas plant complexes.

Here is Ludwigshafen's BASF site, 2 train yards, 6 sq km of pipes, Factorio-style spaghetti architecture:

https://goo.gl/maps/itgDo7A727rq1DLG8

In goes gas and oil, out goes plastics, precursors, pharmaceuticals, rubber, fertilizers, etc. The streets are named EthylStraße, AmmoniakStraße, SulfatStraße, .. you get the idea

Btw in Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, they announced 'warm halls' for the next winter. Halls where the poor can go so as not to freeze.

All this to say: with France's nuclear maintenance done this summer, we'll just have to pop some ohm heaters for those of us using gas heating.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#249

Post by _ph_ »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #216
_ph_ wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think, Germany doesn't have enough electricity? Actually quite the contrary, we produced an additonal 20 TWh to fill in for the gaps left by the French nuclear plants not delivering. (And a lot of other plants in Europe are not running on full power due to lack of cooling water)

>What makes you think, Germany doesn't have enough electricity? @RemindMe_OfThis in January 2023

Gladly.

But as I said, possible shortages are gas for heating, industrial production, not electricity.

Re: Germany sees shift in sentiment toward atomic energy

#250

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ed_balls wrote: post #57
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a stretch to say Germany wants Russia to invade Ukraine...

I haven't said that. They want to go back to status quo ante, hence "French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked a new wave of criticism and incomprehension over his calls to avoid humiliating Russia in Ukraine" Also, that's the reason why Germany was relying on gas from Russia. They are not idiots. It was not a stupid single point of failure, but geopolitics.

> that's the reason why Germany was relying on gas from Russia. They are not idiots.

Geopolitics pits Germany and Moscow as geopolitical rivals, as they’ve been for centuries.

If the goal was building an alliance, letting one side unilaterally cripple your industrial base without similar unilateral counterstrike options is a strategic blunder. Berlin can’t do much, unilaterally, to Moscow. Even if we assume the Lisbon-to-Vladivostok theory, the gas reliance doesn’t make sense.

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