Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

schweizerbart.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 124 posts

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#111

Post by leonidasrup »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #51
sajithdilshan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we just have to build the first expensive 20 to get the experience and then we reap the rewards after 40 years when we need the knowledge again? I think the knowledge doesn't has to start from zero. Germany can ask for foreign aid from China. > If nuclear would be cheap in the western world I'd be all for it but we just can't do large projects in our ccurrent system. I agree, given the fact that it took 15 years…

Gas/Hydrogen are Germany's answer to you last point. You can store energy created by renewables this way easily and use it when needed. Right now we can't produce enough hydrogen though, so gas can be used in the meantime, but in the future the entire infrastructure, such as power plants, pipelines or port terminals can be switched to hydrogen: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/EN/Areas/Energy/HydrogenCor... You could…

Germans public should be informed that:

1. Deuterium - Tritium fueled fussion power plants will produce low-level radioactive waste, in form of neutron activated structural matterials. Tritium is radioactive gas with tendency to leak. Antinuclear activists are already concerned with tritium leaks in current nuclear plants. Future nuclear fussion plants will handle much larger tritium inventories then current fission plants.

2. There exist designs for nuclear fusion–fission hybrid plants. You can use hybrid plant to make nuclear bomb material - plutonium.

"One of the most detailed of these studies was published in 1980 by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). They noted that the hybrid would produce most of its energy indirectly, both through the fission events in the reactor, and much more by providing 239Pu to fuel other fission reactors. In this overall picture, the hybrid is filling a role that is essentially identical to the breeder reactor. Both require chemical processing to remove the bred 239Pu, both presented the same proliferation and safety risks as a result, and both produced about the same amount of fuel. Since the bred fuel is the primary source of energy in the overall cycle, the two systems were almost identical in the end."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion%E2%80%93fission...

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#112

Post by leonidasrup »

JackSlateur wrote: post #77
FinnKuhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas/Hydrogen are Germany's answer to you last point. You can store energy created by renewables this way easily and use it when needed. Right now we can't produce enough hydrogen though, so gas can be used in the meantime, but in the future the entire infrastructure, such as power plants, pipelines or port terminals can be switched to hydrogen: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/EN/Areas/Energy/HydrogenCor... You could…

Hydrogen is a bad idea because it is dangerous (highly explosive) and also leaky, due to the size of the atom To transport hydrogen, you need complex infrastructure (real cold trunk or whatever) and you still leak, so the overall efficiency is bad

The Flammable Range (also called Explosive Range), the concentration range of a gas or vapor that will burn (or explode) if an ignition source is introduced, for hydrogen is much larger then for methane.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-l...

Becuse of hydrogen embrittlement you have to be carefull with material selection for pipes, storage tanks holding hydrogen. This not a big problem, but it means old pipes used for natural gas can not be used for hydrogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#113

Post by leonidasrup »

trencedamp wrote: post #106
mDyJzDPmBdG wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? For the same reason we don't build hydro plants everywhere, they depend on local conditions and all best spots are already used. Iceland can access geothermal power in entire country so they did.

I take your point that they rely on local conditions, but those conditions are certainly not as restrictive as for hydro.

In most places, thermal conductivity of rock is very low.

"The conductive heat flux averages 0.1 MW/km2. These values are much higher near tectonic plate boundaries where the crust is thinner. They may be further augmented by combinations of fluid circulation, either through magma conduits, hot springs, hydrothermal circulation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#114

Post by leonidasrup »

M95D wrote: post #103
FinnKuhn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays it is mostly two things. The 1st reason is nuclear waste. Germany is more densely populated than the US so you can't store it far away from humans. The solution tried before was to just store it deep underground. Turns out that might even be worse than storing it on the surface as it turned out and it has been a total disaster (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine ). There have been more cancer cas…

They stored nuclear waste in a salt mine? OMG! But I'm not against nuclear power. Even with the increasted cancer rates, solar and wind are much more deadly - many workers die by falling off the roof.

Transuranic radioactive waste from US nuclear weapon programs is stored in WIPP. The storage rooms at the WIPP are 2,150 feet (660 m) underground in a salt formation of the Delaware Basin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#115

Post by leonidasrup »

atwrk wrote: post #87
Saline9515 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China still uses a massive amount of coal, and has a lot of southern idle land. Germany has been doing what you say for the last 15 years, it didn't seem to work out so well.

What makes you think Germany didn't do well with renewables? This almost looks like a hockey stick graph: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene...

Germany invested a lot money and still burns coal, imports a lot of natural gas for electricity production, has higher electricty prices then France and higher emmisions then France.

"The energy transition will require considerable added investment. Estimates of the total amount of annual investment vary from 15 to 40 billion euros, or 0.5 to 1.2 percent of Germany’s current gross domestic product (GDP) of around 3,200 billion euros."

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/how-much-does-ger...

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#116

Post by leonidasrup »

pydry wrote: post #90
Saline9515 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels and wind turbines are useful, but don't provide the base power a network needs to be stable, and on-demand capacity to give some flexibility. Ironically, fossil fuel electricity plants have to be built as part of renewables projects to make them viable. This is why after having spent a trillion of euros in renewables, Germany still has the highest cost of electricity and still relies on French nuclear to…

Neither does nuclear power. This is why when half of the French nuclear power plants were down for unscheduled maintenance in 2022 they had to import German solar and wind energy and burn a ton of gas. Gas, batteries, grid interconnects and pumped storage are the only things which can stabilise the grid to properly match supply with demand. There is far more money available for all of them if you don't have to spend…

Its an irony that in 2022 the most problematic were the newest N4 reactors, not the oldest one.

Another irony was that already in in 2015, the French National Assembly voted that by 2025 only 50% of France's energy will be produced by nuclear plants. So in a way the nuclear reactors themself helped to fullfill the 2015 promise.

To be serious. After event in 2011 Fukushima, French nuclear energy didn't get much support from French politicians and was seen only as a necessary evil, which will be sooner or later replaced with German style energie transition. Only after the 2022 Russian invasion and stopping of Russian gas started the French politicians to understand the value of electricity source not dependent on foreign gas imports.

Germany imports all of its gas and batteries, has no significant potential for pumped storage (in relation to the size of its electricity grid).

Solar panels were not the cause of Spain's blackout, insufficient voltage control in solar invertors was a contributing factor. Like with many serious accidents, there was not a single cause of Spain's blackout, but many factors.

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#117

Post by DoctorOetker »

AngryData wrote: post #69
DoctorOetker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I need steady state gigawatt scale power in a specific location, Nuclear is the only green option. I don't believe that is true: one way to produce electricity is a thermal engine driving a generator, but for a thermal engine you need both a cold heat bath and a hot heat bath. Those 2 heat baths could be externally delivered (a stream of ice, and a stream of steam, say) or one of the 2 heat baths could be chosen…

It is an intriguing idea but that is still one hell of a coolant loop with a hell of a lot of mass continously lofted through the atmosphere and subject to weather patterns. A wire I could see doing it but lofting a pair of tubes to transfer a significant volume of fluids seems not far off space-elevator level material science to me.

Zeppelins flew above the tropopauze, zeppelins could fly both east and west, against and along windflow.

Now imagine ~500 zeppelins flying above each other, forming a "tower", seems perfectly feasible (no space-elevator tech needed), but bombastic. Now instead of flying a single vertical stack of zeppelins you could easily comprehend that we could also fly 6 such towers so that for each layer 6 zeppelins arranged in a hexagon could maintain position. So we could fly "toroidal zeppelins" and stack them, we might even space them vertically saving on the number of toroidal zeppelins needed. It doesn't seem impossible, it just seems understudied, it certainly doesn't have associated fundamental exponential scaling properties like a space elevator. Why do we feel so obliged to defend nuclear energy (and the dubious sources selling nuclear fuel, as well as the associated dual use issues) if humans could turn global warming into a democratic power plant? all inhabited regions have a much colder atmosphere above the local height of the tropopause.

Why shouldn't we at least pour more resources in investigating even a slight possibility that we can generate green energy 24/7, with net-negative global warming, cooling the globe and rewarding ourselves with energy?

I don't agree ground level to tropopause heat chimneys require unproven materials (like a space elevator needs).

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#118

Post by nkmnz »

maxhille wrote: post #110
nkmnz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at least we can agree that Germany’s reliance on Russian gas has been far deadlier than all nuclear and fracking accidents combined. Regarding your arguments: ad 1: This happened only because public opinion had been shaped by the movements mentioned in my previous comment for the last 40 to 50 years. Otherwise, how would you explain the fact that Fukushima did not have the same effect on policy or public opinion i…

> You should stop relying on such low-resolution thinking when discussing a complex issue like German energy policy. It is funny that you are criticizing my ability to reason when you are not even able to (in two comments now) even address the (as explicitly stated in my personal reply to you) single point I was making. > This happened only because public opinion had been shaped by the movements mentioned in my previ…

> What/who do you mean with "movements"?

Peace movement, environmental movement, anti-nuclear movement.

> Are you implying that 1986 was a Russian propaganda plot?

Two things can be true at the same time. Something can be objectively bad, but the magnitude of consequences can still depend on how bad actors exploit their opportunity. Ignoring that is what I refer to as "low-resolution thinking". You see Chernobyl or Fukushima and you have emotions about them and think that those emotions are shared by everyone around you, including policy makers, which must have ultimately caused the policies, because they align well with your emotions. But you completely ignore the Zeitgeist and who's been invested heavily into shaping it in their interest. (I think this is much more relevant with regard to Fukushima than Chernobyl - with the latter, Russian interests were much more focussed on deception and deflection, especially towards their satellites. Also, the ability to manipulate the West was strongly diminished by that time, especially compared with their influence on Schröder and Merkel in the 2000s/10s.)

> you are not even able to (...) even address the (...) single point I was making.

Your "single point" was actually two points, that's why you've used a numbered list... but jokes aside, I've addressed them very well:

1. the "the Fukushima disaster" was a huge wave killing >20.000, but contrary to the rest of the world, we've cared much more about the hand full of people killed by radiation (and ~2000 killed by the combination of tsunami and the incident at the NPP) - the greens even declared the 20.000 killed purely by the wave as killed by the NPP, and they do so every year on social media since. You cannot reasonably explain why Germany reacted so distinctively different than other nations without pointing to the history of the movements since the 1960s/70s, and to the interest that Russia traditionally holds in German energy policy.

2. I've also addressed your lie about fracking. Fracking is being used in Germany today and it has been in use since the 1960s. There are new regulations about which types of fracking can be performed where, using which kind of fracking agents, which are generally good regulations. Everything else is fear mongering by interested parties, such as the lobbyists for solar and wind (which I am a HUGE fan of - the technologies, not the lobbyists), and Russian assets.

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#119

Post by maxhille »

nkmnz wrote: post #118
maxhille wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should stop relying on such low-resolution thinking when discussing a complex issue like German energy policy. It is funny that you are criticizing my ability to reason when you are not even able to (in two comments now) even address the (as explicitly stated in my personal reply to you) single point I was making. > This happened only because public opinion had been shaped by the movements mentioned in my previ…

> What/who do you mean with "movements"? Peace movement, environmental movement, anti-nuclear movement. > Are you implying that 1986 was a Russian propaganda plot? Two things can be true at the same time. Something can be objectively bad, but the magnitude of consequences can still depend on how bad actors exploit their opportunity. Ignoring that is what I refer to as "low-resolution thinking". You see Chernobyl or F…

Where is fracking being done in Germany today?

Re: Germany maybe found a new source of renewable energy

#120

Post by fmajid »

leonidasrup wrote: post #109
fmajid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviets are a more likely culprit, as then just like now most of their revenues came from oil and gas exports. They secretly supported the Rote Armee Fraktion (Baader-Meinhof) terrorists via the Stasi, so funding the Greens to stymie intermediate range ballistic missile deployments in Germany, with securing hydrocarbon sales as a cherry on top, would not at all be out of character. Back when I was in high school…

Investing enough into renewables combined with grid scale storage to cover a prolonged Dunkelflaute is very expensive, therefor German government is investing in new gas-fired power plants with capacity of 11 GW, with state subsidies. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-passes-law-subs... Even a weak long Dunkelflaute can happen: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/prolonged-dunkelflaute-...

And this is exactly why Germany is not serious about its obligations to fight Global Warming. Always choosing the easy or demagogic way out, whether it was running on cheap Russian gas, or mothballing nuclear and restarting lignite coal power plants.
Post reply on HN