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

3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

stopgas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 240 posts

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#131

Post by tempnow987 »

chmod775 wrote: post #50
wffurr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage, transmission lines, and over provisioning are also alternatives. Still blows my mind that Germany and other countries are closing nuclear facilities though.

> Still blows my mind that Germany and other countries are closing nuclear facilities though. That's kind of a misconception. Germany isn't (and wasn't) closing any nuclear plants that weren't about to closed anyways - it was all old plants. What Germany did was not bringing online new ones and instead choosing to invest that money elsewhere.

Haha. For those not following this post Fukushima germany basically cancelled / shortened the permits for a bunch of plants. This had nothing to do with plants being in such bad condition they would have closed anyways, that's a total lie in almost all cases.

Germany is shutting down pretty nice later gen plants commissioned in 1989. The US is still operating much older designs commissioned in 1969 (20 years older).

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#132

Post by lambdasquirrel »

ricardo81 wrote: post #38

Maybe I'm naive but I can see why Western countries tried to get Russia on board the world capitalism gravy train. Obviously the context has changed massively in the past month, maybe even since 2014. In any event, less reliance on fossil fuels is a good thing, and at the moment, less reliance on Russian fossil fuels in the EU is probably a good thing.

I still remember the pictures of Merkel and Putin, when Merkel was negotiating for this stuff. Putin brought a big dog because he knew Merkel had a fear of them. Hindsight is 20/20 perhaps.

It's really hard to understate the guilt that has existed in Germany over WWII. Also, in Western Europe, there's much more of an understanding that it was Russia that took the brunt of the fighting, not the U.S., and when the Berlin Wall fell, there were many who hoped for a new start.

But Russia, with its geography and its legacy, was notoriously difficult to switch over to capitalism. The 1998 crash of the ruble left deep scars on the country. It may have almost been inevitable that a figure like Putin would arise, in part because we (in the West) were naive about how capitalism would take hold there.

Regardless, there's the reality that there is now. Germany needs to be able to act in its own self-defense, and Europe needs to wean off of Russian fossil fuels, if only because the lines have been drawn. It's not clear that that arrangement was ever good for the rise of a friendly and economically healthy Russia.

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#133

Post by DocTomoe »

j-pb wrote: post #47
macspoofing wrote: post #17

If you double-down on renewables, then you double-down on natural gas. Germany decided to close down their nuclear and coal generation, so the only thing that is left is natural gas for base load (and to augment renewable intermittency problems).

Or on batteries, or on liquid salt thermal storage upgrades for old fossil plants, or on hydro storage, or on salt cavern pneumatic pressure, or on hydrogen, or on regenerative iron dust cycles, or... The idea that it's nuclear or fossil for baseload is a false dichotomy, that ingores the dozens of intermediary storage solutions. Solar is currently the cheapest source of energy with a margin. Add storage to an overpr…

Gas is more than electricity. You need gas for heating - good luck installing electric heating in millions of homes until the next winter - and you need gas for chemical processes.

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#134

Post by deeviant »

tromp wrote: post #122
deeviant wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Russian under a legal obligation to not invade their neighbor and murder it's people and cities?

You're confusing legal with moral.

No, I am not.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2022-02-...

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#135

Post by jka »

mikaeluman wrote: post #91

This has come up many times by now. But the supposed transition to renewable energy in Germany was merely a substitution of natural gas for nuclear power. What bothers me greatly is that Germany still has not come to turns with the fact that they need nuclear power. That is a long and costly investment to make and you need to start right away. LNG can only get you so far and renewable sources just can't provide the e…

Here are some statistics on the utilization and installed capacity of energy production in Germany today: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

And here are some estimated Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) figures by energy technology as of 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#136

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

mikaeluman wrote: post #91

This has come up many times by now. But the supposed transition to renewable energy in Germany was merely a substitution of natural gas for nuclear power. What bothers me greatly is that Germany still has not come to turns with the fact that they need nuclear power. That is a long and costly investment to make and you need to start right away. LNG can only get you so far and renewable sources just can't provide the e…

Well, fossil fuels are renewable on long enough timescales. Germans are just betting on the long game ;)

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#137

Post by internet_user »

qaq wrote: post #124
internet_user wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

regarding the security guarantees, it appears that memorandum was not legally binding, and provides no real guarantees, as per the US themselves, and pre-2014. "Regardless, the United States publicly maintains that "the Memorandum is not legally binding", calling it a "political commitment"."[0] " not legally binding ", below. "Media Statement by the U.S. Embassy in Minsk April 12, 2013 Repeated assertions by the gov…

Good Honest deal you got em.

Whats with snark?

seems that guarantees weren't worth the paper written on, in the first place, but everyone keeps on talking about them as if they were ironclad somehow.

The sad truth is there was no real guarantees at all, just an empty promise to make it politically feasible for the Ukrainian politicians to sign.

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#138

Post by kitkat_new »

mikaeluman wrote: post #91

This has come up many times by now. But the supposed transition to renewable energy in Germany was merely a substitution of natural gas for nuclear power. What bothers me greatly is that Germany still has not come to turns with the fact that they need nuclear power. That is a long and costly investment to make and you need to start right away. LNG can only get you so far and renewable sources just can't provide the e…

> and renewable sources just can't provide the energy needed, as should be clear by now (although it was widely understood for the past 30 years at least).

Renewable energy cost has fallen _a lot_, and Germany doesn't need nuclear power, IF it worked towards this goal: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#139

Post by aktenlage »

chmod775 wrote: post #50
wffurr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage, transmission lines, and over provisioning are also alternatives. Still blows my mind that Germany and other countries are closing nuclear facilities though.

> Still blows my mind that Germany and other countries are closing nuclear facilities though. That's kind of a misconception. Germany isn't (and wasn't) closing any nuclear plants that weren't about to closed anyways - it was all old plants. What Germany did was not bringing online new ones and instead choosing to invest that money elsewhere.

Do you have sources? If I remember correctly the closing of nuclear facilities (that weren't about to be closed anyways) was decided in the beginning of the century, when the green party was in the government the last time. Then a Merkel-led government dropped that decision. Then the Fukushima catastrophe happened and Merkel reinstated the exit from nuclear power.

What blows my mind is that by using nuclear power and creating nuclear waste for a few decades, society created a problem that coming generations have to take care of for millenia.

Re: 3,599,040,600 € wired by Germany to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine

#140

Post by hackerfromthefu »

c0nducktr wrote: post #72
plandis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person is a troll. For example here is one of their previous posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30681090 “Ask HN: Ukrainians, why don’t you surrender?”

That's not trolling, it's just not a popular opinion.

The theme of their posts seems consistent with what a russian psy-op would be. Probably a paid inciter/troll.
Post reply on HN