Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by flor1s » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

pzo wrote: post #336

flor1s wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is day and night really the problem here? Because I thought demand usually peaks at certain times of the day (e.g. early in the evening in California: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o... ), and actually bottoms out during the night. You would mostly use an interconnected grid (and storage) to compensate for this. Also there is wind energy which doesn't care about whether the sun shines or…

In most of the Europe the biggest use of energy for family will be heating except summer. In the future probably also charging electric car. This kind of power demand you need mostly at night when sleeping - during the day you are probsbly in the office. Transmitting power also consumes energy - you cannot have a electric wire across pacific to transmit power from US to EU without transformers - electric power line i…

At least in The Netherlands we mostly use centralised (gas-powered) heating, so nuclear energy is a tangential factor. Also there seems to be room for improvement in insulation and centralised thermal storage (warmtenet in Dutch). Electric cars seem both like both a problem and an opportunity, because you could charge them while being at the office and partly use their batteries for powering your home at night (in case you don't need a full charge to get to work in the morning).

Regarding rare earths, we will need them regardless of using nuclear or renewables for electric cars, so that seems partly tangential. For wind turbines their reliance on rare earths seems troublesome. It's geopolitically ironic that we (Western Europeans) get our gas from Russia and our rare earths from China.

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

#362

Post by roenxi » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

barney54 wrote: post #123

cmarschner wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to summarize, 1. Germany is a net exporter 2. Germany has reduced the production from fossil fuels from about 70% to about 37% within 30 years. 3. At the same time it cut nuclear power from around 28% to about 10. 4. It looks like without reducing nuclear power it could have replaced the equivalent amount of fossil fuels (achieving less than 20% fossil fuels by 2020). However, energy consumption has also gone up…

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.

7. Energy per capita has dropped by something like 20% from its peak in the 90s.

Germany is a great example that these renewable policies can't sustain an industrial lifestyle. Germany is something of a cautionary tale; adopting Germany's policies will make people worse off.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany

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

#363

Post by quelltext » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #322

monopoledance wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an argument that only works in theory. In reality you cannot switch heating modalities like underwear for whatever seems reasonable at the moment. Most houses are build with gas and oil heating systems. In some places like Berlin the gas infrastructure is very old and established. Even streetlights run on gas in some places and houses have generators in the basement to combine heat and electricity supply.

But this argument has been made for years. For decades. We are talking about banning the sales of combustion engine vehicles within 10 years. Surely in 10, 20 or 30 years one should be able to see pretty significant progress in the conversion of building heating systems? I’m assuming old multi story houses with gas heating typically use a water system (radiators) and only a single basement furnace? In that situation,…

> Now it’s electrical stoves and central heating in many places.

What's "central heating"? I believe Germany already uses central heating in most places. The question is what powers it. Can it be efficiently replaced by renewable-energy (!) electric heating vs. fossil? Other commenters have posited "no".

The way I see it, investing in nuclear should have been part of the plan, instead of replacing it with renewables (vs. doing so for those uses of fossil where renewables make sense). The fear of nuclear energy in Germany is just ridiculous IMO, and arguably has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With nuclear power on its way out know how and effort to research and to maintain existing plants and investment in it are at a minimum making continued operation now a liability.

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

#364

Post by reducesuffering » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #228

sitkack wrote: post #110

Convert EVs to have 10kw+ of grid intertied inverters. Build GWhr capacity batteries at the old nuclear facilities. Those facilities should at least be kept in warm standby. Machines switched off will rot and the whole steam and electricity aspect of a nuke plant is the same regardless of where the steam comes from. Sad, but we should work with what we have.

And how will you drive the discharged car in the morning? It's a non-starter proposition.

Non-starter? It's the actual grid battery storage solution a decade from now. EV owners will be able to pull and push electricity to the grid, incentivized by $. When the grid needs base load, $ paid to EV owners pushing electricity to the grid will keep rising until market equilibrium. Users can get notifications on a mobile app for certain $/kwh they'll be willing to receive to have their car go from 100% -> 60%, especially as battery storage gets larger and many people end up with 400 mile capacities where 90% of the time they use 50 miles during the day. Have a long trip coming up? Don't push electricity those days...

Especially with WFH (charge EV during day, give to grid at night, end up making $)

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

#365

Post by reducesuffering » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #53

What I don't understand is that Merkel is allegedly smart, yet she made this decision.

Then you also don't understand politics. Politicians are very constrained by what their populace wants or they're voted out.

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

#366

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

pkdpic wrote: post #28

dvt wrote: post #4

This is insane to me. Nuclear is the best long-term option for ecologically-friendly energy generation. This is absolutely a bad move, and the coal industry has done a great job of demonizing nuclear power.

> Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038 Good if they actually mean it maybe? > leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term... Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. This just seems asinine. But what do I know... Is there something impassably / chronically dangerous about nuclear power or is it just public fear that pushes us away from i…

No post body was provided.

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

#367

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

isatty wrote: post #227

Kon5ole wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's not an engineering problem but a human one. Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people we have to ensure no madmen get their hands on the waste for thousands of years after we have spent all the watt-hours the waste has produced. We're leaving that problem to hundreds of generations to come, who will get no benefit from it, just…

> Since the waste from a single power plant during one year of operation is enough to kill hundreds of millions of people Chances of that happening is minuscule and if left uncheck, global warming will kill more than that. > who will get no benefit from it, just so we can have cheap energy today Or they figure out better ways to use it that don’t involve killing people. > proverbial cloudy days According to this webs…

No post body was provided.

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

#368

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

pzo wrote: post #336

flor1s wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is day and night really the problem here? Because I thought demand usually peaks at certain times of the day (e.g. early in the evening in California: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o... ), and actually bottoms out during the night. You would mostly use an interconnected grid (and storage) to compensate for this. Also there is wind energy which doesn't care about whether the sun shines or…

In most of the Europe the biggest use of energy for family will be heating except summer. In the future probably also charging electric car. This kind of power demand you need mostly at night when sleeping - during the day you are probsbly in the office. Transmitting power also consumes energy - you cannot have a electric wire across pacific to transmit power from US to EU without transformers - electric power line i…

Electric cars are currently mostly charged at night (since that's when electricity is cheaper), but as solar becomes more prevalent, that will swap. Charging cars during the day is pretty easy, just require office parking lots to have chargers (and possibly subsidize).

You are right that you can't have an electric wire across the Pacific to get power from the US to the EU, but more because the EU doesn't border the Pacific. On a more serious note, Novia Scotia to Ireland is about 2600 miles, so it's on the edge of doable with HVDC, but it would be a massive project and slightly hard to justify.

I'm interested to know what rare earth metals make up so much of a wind turbine. According to https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/66861.pdf (page 65), around 99% of a turbine is accounted for by steel, fiberglass, iron, copper, and aluminum.

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

#369

Post by bftuh » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

estaseuropano wrote: post #231

BenoitP wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd imagine that somewhere there is always enough wind and sun in Europe. * wind: wind power production scales with the cube of the wind speed [1], so actual production only occurs about 25% of the time [2]. Also huge areas produce at the same time: the size of the average depression [3] can often be as large as the continent. * sun: solar panels don't produce at night. I don't think I need to source that claim. Cl…

Cloud is not really such a problematic factor: https://scijinks.gov/solar-energy-and-clouds/ And the nice thing about nights is that they are quite predictable. So not a very difficult problem to solve. Tesla power wall (I'd argue overpriced...): $10k [1] Cost of an average nuclear plant today: $20bn [2] (+operating costs) So you could buy and install 2Mio powerwalls for thr price of one nuclear plant. How many power…

Nothing in the article you linked to supports your claim that "Cloud is not really such a problematic factor". In fact, the article explicitly states:

> However, clouds can block light from the sun. So, do clouds affect the creation of energy by solar panels? Yes, but it depends on the types of clouds and where those clouds are in the atmosphere.

> When sunlight hits low clouds, a lot of that light – and heat – is reflected back into space. […] So, if you live in a place that commonly has a lot of low clouds, solar panels might not be able to produce as much energy as they would somewhere else.

——

> And the nice thing about nights is that they are quite predictable. So not a very difficult problem to solve.

Non-sequitur. The fact that it's predictable doesn't mean it's not a difficult problem.

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

#370

Post by scarby2 » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #342

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those 2019 numbers or 2021 numbers?

Numbers from 1 hour ago... From the UK, and assuming UK climate for COP figures. ~True with both retail capped prices, and wholesale market prices. There are still people in the UK installing heat pumps. Either they have a very rose tinted view of the future direction of electricity prices Vs gas, a rose tinted view of future government taxes/incentives, a rose tinted view of the environmental benefits (eg. By lookin…

from the UK - groundsource vs air-source heat pumps makes a huge difference. Last i checked:

- ground source was roughly parity with gas (with something like an 8x higher install cost)

- air source heat pumps were more expensive to operate but similar on install costs

However comparing on cost only misses the point, a heat pump is generally capable of cooling as well, which is becoming more of a necessity in the summer.

P.S. You can do silly things with ground loops like use excess solar power to cool during the summer or daytime storing that heat in the ground, then removing some of it in the winter/nighttime.