4 ms·

in Germany they were replaced by renewables Do you have a reference for this? Germany has a very aggressive (and highly commendable) plan to move to renewables

by lemming 10y ago

in Germany they were replaced by renewables Do you have a reference for this? Germany has a very aggressive (and highly commendable) plan to move to renewables, but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal. Wikipedia seems to agree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany): At the same time, Germany continues to rely heavily on coal power, with usage increasing to offset the phase-out of nuclear energy.

Maakuth 10y ago
They really are adding renewable production at quite an aggressive pace: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Myself I'd prefer they would use that extra production to phase out coal first before shutting down their NPPs.
legulere 10y ago
This graphic shows it pretty well in my opinion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiem... Purple is nuclear energy. Dark green is biomass, light blue is wind power, yellow is solar power
- Maakuth 10y ago
  Pretty remarkable growth in PV! I do remember that Germany already had quite a bit of wind generators in the early 2000s, yet they seemed to have generated around the same amount of energy as the PV capacity of today. And that's been mostly build during this decade. What's missing from this graph, however, are imports. I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland.
  - hannob 10y ago
    > I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland. No, that is totally wrong. While in an open net and marked there are always small exports and imports going on, overall Germany is an electricity exporter and imports are very small overall and not very relevant.
    - davrosthedalek 10y ago
      There is another form of import which is much harder to judge. Germany imports a lot of stuff from e.g. China, so in some sense the energy production should offset what energy is used in other countries for the imported stuff.
      - hannob 10y ago
        That is true, but it's true for all countries. And it's a major failure of practically all existing climate and environmental regulations that they don't take this into account.
    - Maakuth 10y ago
      That might be true for net flows, but it seems that German production does not meet demand at nights very often, as per these statistics: https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm . I do think that situation will get worse with increased PV installations, as they don't produce during nights. Grid storage is going to be needed. Of course it's an open market and the German expensive production such as gas turbines will not produce if cheaper power can be imported.
  - petre 10y ago
    > Pretty remarkable growth in PV! No wonder. They have PV on almost every roof. Most of them have the south facing part fully covered as well.
hannob 10y ago
> but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal. There was a minor uptick in coal usage for a few years, however even that wasn't necessary, but due to bad policy (gas plants were standing still at the same time). By now coal usage is going down again. There were a couple of new constructions of coal plants, but all of them were started before the nuclear phaseout. And by now most of their operators recognize that their investments were failures and will probably never pay out. It isn't all ideal in Germany, but overall it's going into the right direction (and the success of solar in many countries these days wouldn't have been possible without the early investments in Germany that brought the prices down).
- vidarh 10y ago
  And without the decommissioning, vast amounts of money spent on the decommissioning could have been spent on renewables to replace coal instead, and far less coal would have still been necessary in order to compensate for the decommissioned capacity. It also meant less capacity available for export to countries whose fallback is fossil fuels from elsewhere. The German decommissioning alone is likely to have been a far greater public health disaster than all nuclear incidents in human history combined many times over.

by lemming 10y ago

Maakuth 10y ago

They really are adding renewable production at quite an aggressive pace: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Myself I'd prefer they would use that extra production to phase out coal first before shutting down their NPPs.

legulere 10y ago

This graphic shows it pretty well in my opinion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiem... Purple is nuclear energy. Dark green is biomass, light blue is wind power, yellow is solar power

Maakuth 10y ago
Pretty remarkable growth in PV! I do remember that Germany already had quite a bit of wind generators in the early 2000s, yet they seemed to have generated around the same amount of energy as the PV capacity of today. And that's been mostly build during this decade. What's missing from this graph, however, are imports. I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland.
- hannob 10y ago
  > I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland. No, that is totally wrong. While in an open net and marked there are always small exports and imports going on, overall Germany is an electricity exporter and imports are very small overall and not very relevant.
  - davrosthedalek 10y ago
    There is another form of import which is much harder to judge. Germany imports a lot of stuff from e.g. China, so in some sense the energy production should offset what energy is used in other countries for the imported stuff.
    - hannob 10y ago
      That is true, but it's true for all countries. And it's a major failure of practically all existing climate and environmental regulations that they don't take this into account.
  - Maakuth 10y ago
    That might be true for net flows, but it seems that German production does not meet demand at nights very often, as per these statistics: https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm . I do think that situation will get worse with increased PV installations, as they don't produce during nights. Grid storage is going to be needed. Of course it's an open market and the German expensive production such as gas turbines will not produce if cheaper power can be imported.
- petre 10y ago
  > Pretty remarkable growth in PV! No wonder. They have PV on almost every roof. Most of them have the south facing part fully covered as well.

hannob 10y ago

> but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal. There was a minor uptick in coal usage for a few years, however even that wasn't necessary, but due to bad policy (gas plants were standing still at the same time). By now coal usage is going down again. There were a couple of new constructions of coal plants, but all of them were started before the nuclear phaseout. And by now most of their operators recognize that their investments were failures and will probably never pay out. It isn't all ideal in Germany, but overall it's going into the right direction (and the success of solar in many countries these days wouldn't have been possible without the early investments in Germany that brought the prices down).

vidarh 10y ago
And without the decommissioning, vast amounts of money spent on the decommissioning could have been spent on renewables to replace coal instead, and far less coal would have still been necessary in order to compensate for the decommissioned capacity. It also meant less capacity available for export to countries whose fallback is fossil fuels from elsewhere. The German decommissioning alone is likely to have been a far greater public health disaster than all nuclear incidents in human history combined many times over.