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

#441

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

fsh wrote: post #36

I am afraid this thread is going to be heavy on strongly held opinions and very light on facts and figures. In a futile attempt to compensate, here is the history of gross electricity production in Germany [1]. And here is the electricity import/export statistics [2]. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Energymi... [2] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Infografiken/Energie/stroma...

The carbon intensity of economy as a whole is an interesting stat that doesn't get enough attention.

There's no noticeable affect on Germany's path to net zero, compared with neighbouring countries.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?conte...

Sweden seems the long term success story, despite the more northern location presumbly needing more energy for heating. They have the highest carbon fees in the world, and like Germany seem to have been a bit stop'n'go when it comes to nuclear, changing the date when they intend to phase them out a few times, but generally closing them being the trend.

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

#442

Post by hagbard_c » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #358

hagbard_c wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, really. The price of electricity is set through a controlled market mechanism at "Nord Pool", the electricity producers exchange for the Nordic countries. Nearly all producers and sellers have pages showing these prices, here's an example: https://www.vattenfall.se/elavtal/elpriser/timpris-pa-elbors... and another: https://elen.nu/dagens-spotpris/se3-stockholm/ Timpris på elbörsen (on the first site, "vattenfall…

I'm still trying to work out the numbers. I'm quite surprised that Scandinavia is having even more problems than say the UK because you have rather a lot of useful topological features (really big hills and mountains and lakes at elevation - ie potential energy). You are also closer to the Ukraine than us for gas so that should be cheaper too. Our consumer energy market is a bit strange. We have a national grid for e…

We're not surprised by these problems because we saw them coming, it's just really disheartening to see the expected negative downfall of the policies enacted by the "green" party and its followers. Add to this the fact that this party hardly has any support - they are currently underneath the 4% limit and will most likely disappear from Riksdagen (the Swedish parliament) and it becomes even more incongruous that they have been allowed to have such an extraordinary negative effect on the future energy supply in this country. To add insult to injury they recently stepped out of the coalition (between the "green" "miljöpartiet" (which means "environmental party")) and the social democrats, less than a year before the coming elections. They're now in supposed opposition, acting as if the negative effects are all someone else's fault. May they never reach the threshold again so that those who care for the environment stop believing this party is the one to vote for.

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

#443

Post by BenjiWiebe » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #431

wumpus wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric heating? Do you mean resistive heating, or heat pumps? It's been difficult in this discussion to figure out what people are saying.

And when you say resistive, do you mean element within (an electric) boiler, radiators to work as normal, or something more direct, electric radiators/underfloor/etc.? I think it doesn't really matter much what is meant throughout - point was about shifting gas demand on to the electricity supply, and whether the grid could cope with it if everyone did that to a meaningful degree.

Resistive heating means using 1kw of electricity to get 1kw of heat.

Heat pumps use 1kw of electricity to get >1kw heat.

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

#444

Post by amai » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

Germany could reduce its total CO2 emissions by 10% simply by shutting down only three lignite power plants: Neurath, Niederaußem, Jänischwalde. These three alone produce 81 Million tons of CO2 per year:

https://energy-charts.info/charts/emissions/chart.htm?l=de&c...

It is really unclear to me why everyone is talking about shutting down nuclear power plants, but nobody talks about shutting down lignite power plants.

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

#445

Post by fho » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 3:53 PM 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. Germany does not import a lot of energy ... but when it does it does so mostly from France [1]. I suggest that is because the french nuclear reactors provide an abundant amount of energy.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/06...

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

#446

Post by OJFord » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #443

OJFord wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when you say resistive, do you mean element within (an electric) boiler, radiators to work as normal, or something more direct, electric radiators/underfloor/etc.? I think it doesn't really matter much what is meant throughout - point was about shifting gas demand on to the electricity supply, and whether the grid could cope with it if everyone did that to a meaningful degree.

Resistive heating means using 1kw of electricity to get 1kw of heat. Heat pumps use 1kw of electricity to get >1kw heat.

Not necessarily, it's just uncorrelated since it's not what's doing the actual heating.

Similarly a gas boiler uses 1kW electricity (for the pump) to get potentially >1kW heat out of radiators (and pipes). Because that heat is energy conserved from the gas, not the electricity.

Anyway I didn't mention heat pumps or compare them to resistive heating so I'm not sure what I'm defending.

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

#447

Post by luckylion » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #432

luckylion wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, but imminent doom is essentially a hobby in Germany. We have the term Angstlust which I always found quite fitting: deriving pleasure from fear. It's an interesting realization when you've grown up in Germany and then live outside of it for a while and realize that not everyone is constantly worried about the world ending tomorrow.

Curious, I’ve not noticed that moving to Berlin from the UK. Where did you go? In wondering if the U.K. is just as bad, or if Berlin is unusually chill.

Denmark. I didn't have the impression that Berlin is different in that regard (though it's very different in many, so maybe?).

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

#448

Post by robertlagrant » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

wumpus wrote: post #387

robertlagrant wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Percentages are misleading when it comes to power sources that only work some of the time.

That wasn't theoretical installed base, it was actual power produced.

> That wasn't theoretical installed base, it was actual power produced

That's not what I'm saying. On a windy day, then doubling your number of wind turbines will (roughly) double your power output. But if there's no wind, your output drops to zero. Contrast that with nuclear power, where doubling capacity doubles output always.

So with nuclear power you could say that based on what current output we have, if we build X more capacity we could retire all polluting energy sources.

With wind (say) you can't say that.

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

#449

Post by HansHamster » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

smotah wrote: post #350

monopoledance wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's democracy. We were much closer to Chernobyl, than all the Americans promoting yesterday's easy future here. Some parts in Germany are suffering the fallout still, when mushrooms and wild game make the Geiger counters beep in the news. Germany is extremely population dense and nobody wants to live next to radioactive waste. Especially in rich Bavaria were all the AKWs have been build (and where they had suitable…

> nobody wants to live next to radioactive waste. It seems irrational as sealed high profile waste doesn't leak any radiations beyond the natural ambiant radioactive noise. The problem may arise in a very long time due to water molecules progressively entering and exiting the enclosure during thousands of years. One could live and sleep every night in a nuclear waste storage building and nothing will happen to them.…

> The problem may arise in a very long time due to water molecules progressively entering and exiting the enclosure during thousands of years.

Or you know, after a couple of decades because the storage containers really don't like salt water and start to corrode. And as recovery of the waste was not foreseen initially, it gets really difficult and expensive now.

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

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

#450

Post by pjscott » Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #404

pjscott wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasn't it the new Finnish nuclear plant that cost 11 billion Euros? Olkiluoto unit 3 is a pretty extreme outlier in construction costs. The same amount of power generation capacity from CPR1000 plants (widely used in China today) would cost closer to 2.5 billion Euros, and construction times are about 5 years.

Is Vogtle in Georgia also an outlier?

Yes, and so is the new Flamanville reactor. It's funny: out of the fifty or so commercial nuclear reactors that came online in the past decade, for some reason those still-under-construction debacles are the only ones most people have heard about.