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Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

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Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#291

Post by diordiderot »

midjji wrote: post #219
BenoitP wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current technology, you can't transport electricity more than ~1000 km with acceptable losses. Atmospheric depressions are bigger than than, and the distance for solar are much bigger as well (other than cloudy, there's day and night).

We can transport it a fair bit further than that, but only under ideal circumstances that are rarely met, and its very rare the grid is built for it, its never been needed after all. For instance, regulatory issues usually mean that every country border crossed tends to have a transformer station, which makes minor changes at a 10% or so efficiency loss.

Europe. Same grid. 8% losses

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#292

Post by tuukkah »

midjji wrote: post #271
lb0 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must be looking at very different numbers - or what do you mean with regulation, requiring some safety standards? Nowhere nuclear got economic, required massive subsidies - and in the end has been driven by the need for the precious byproducts?

You can tell because for profit(if staterun) companies are building them across the world. France is drawing significant profits from existing nuclear, and constructing new. Nuclear has been ridiculously profitable for most countries which built them, with the sole exception of countries which started building them, then forbid nuclear. Many countries in Asia are building them because its cheaper than coal power. Mos…

Do you have a source for Finland moving the goalposts during the construction?

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#293

Post by finikytou »

stefan_ wrote: post #165
nkmnz wrote: post #51

price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2020: 45€ price of 1MWh on Dec 21 2021: 316€ https://www.wiwo.de/my/unternehmen/energie/knappheitspreise-...

price of 1MWh on Dec 23 2021 in France: >400€ https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/f... Spot markets be spotting, we can play this game all day long.

r u aware that france is paying for the wokeness of germany? just like americans paid for biden wokeness until he woke up and decided to reopen the old polluting coal plants

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#294

Post by smotah »

_ph_ wrote: post #95
GravitasFailure wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We no longer produce electricity with coal or nuclear! We just buy it from other countries and then browbeat them about environmental responsibility!" doesn't seem like a sustainable energy policy.

Germany is a net exporter of electricity. But Europe has a joint spot market for electricity, which is a good thing for all involved. No longer every country has to supply expensive peak power when surplus of neighbours can be used. And Switzerland and Austria are kind of European storage providers. A 1GW line to Norway went operational recently, which uses Norwegian water power for storage.

Fun fact: when electricity prices from Germany are negative (when there's big spike of intermittent electricity from renewable production) French grid operators strategically lower nuclear output and import this profitable energy.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#295

Post by danhor »

midjji wrote: post #279
jhgb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to power Except NOT having to heat is even more effective than burning fuel for heating locally. So the move away from gas heating to low-energy buildings is definitely stimulated by higher gas prices. > Same thing for france. I doubt that, since France seem to be actually using their interconnects. Can't comm…

Insulation is exactly as beneficial to gas and power heated homes. It does jack shit or worse for cooking though. France is self sufficient, but imports when prices are low in order to keep levels high in reservoirs, which further decreases prices over the year.

For cooking induction plates are much more efficient, transferring 90% of the energy as opposed to ~50% with gas stoves. Together with a gas plant efficiency of ~50%, they comes close in efficiency.

Gas stoves still come out on top price-wise, but part of that are asinine taxes, where gas is taxed less than electricity.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#296

Post by dane-pgp »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #258
_ph_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the new German government adjusted the phase-out of coal power to be as close as possible to 2030. 2038 was more a bad compromise by the previous government. And yes, nuclear power can be dangerous as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown. Those dangers could probably be addressed by new reactors, but those are very expensive. The big problem are the existing old reactors. They are not as safe and require…

The old reactors were intentionally unfunded for years to make them so expensive that it looked better to decommission them.

> underfunded ... expensive

You're at least going to have to provide some numbers if you want that conspiracy theory to be taken seriously.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#297

Post by chmod775 »

midjji wrote: post #208
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the thing about the earth is that it's big. If you have a big enough grid, it will be sunny and windy over a fairly consistent portion of that area.

It does not work that way. Long distance extreme high voltage transfer loses about 5% per 1000km, with the transformers adding another 10%, under ideal circumstances. In practice its higher, and thats on land. Sea cables lose 100x per km around 50% per 100km, again under ideal circumstances. In practice double the losses per distance, and if using existing grids, double it again, because most places dont build top en…

> Long distance extreme high voltage transfer loses about 5% per 1000km.

That's an incredibly low amount. Taking Berlin as an example, even 5000km lets you reach plenty of hot, sunny desert areas where any losses will be easily offset by vastly increased solar efficiency. Or you could spread out your wind energy sources to get more consistent coverage.

In fact that's pretty much what Singapore is doing: building a solar farm 5000km away in Australia.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#298

Post by fundad »

estaseuropano wrote: post #212
barney54 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6. Wholesale electricity rates have increased from 50 Euros/mwh to 250 Euros/mwh over the course of the last year. This isn't about averages. It's about meeting demand, which is especially important during the winter heating season.

But this is an issue of Russia putting the squeeze on gas prices, not an inherent issue of the German energy system.

Well having 70% Fossil Fuel share means you can be easily manipulated by petrostates she in fact You don’t want that

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#299

Post by michaelt »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #269
formerly_proven wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPUs are just resistive heating with extra steps, COP 1. Heat pumps can do way better most of the time.

Hardware for mining cryptocurrency is self-financing in a relatively short period of time when the electricity is "free" since you're using it for heat anyway. Heat pumps require a significant capital investment which would have to be recovered on only their efficiency improvement, since they don't otherwise generate revenue. The math is different for new construction. There heat pumps make a lot more sense because t…

> Hardware for mining cryptocurrency is self-financing in a relatively short period of time when the electricity is "free"

No it isn't. I know because I looked into it.

Assuming the price of bitcoin doesn't rise or fall, a cutting edge bit of dedicated bitcoin mining hardware will pay for itself in 3 years if operated continuously on free electricity, and will be effectively obsolete in 5 years, as difficulty increases and rewards drop.

So if you only operate the hardware 50% of the time it'll be obsolete before it's paid for itself.

Re: Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

#300

Post by monopoledance »

midjji wrote: post #279
jhgb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No not quite, burning fuel for heat locally will always be at least twice as effective as ideal conversion to power Except NOT having to heat is even more effective than burning fuel for heating locally. So the move away from gas heating to low-energy buildings is definitely stimulated by higher gas prices. > Same thing for france. I doubt that, since France seem to be actually using their interconnects. Can't comm…

Insulation is exactly as beneficial to gas and power heated homes. It does jack shit or worse for cooking though. France is self sufficient, but imports when prices are low in order to keep levels high in reservoirs, which further decreases prices over the year.

Or when their nuclear power plants boil their rivers...
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