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> When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Often coal! The implication that this is what happened in Germany is misinformation. None

> When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Often coal! The implication that this is what happened in Germany is misinformation. None of the energy production of retired nuclear plants in Germany was replaced by coal. Renewable energy replaced the vast majority of it over the last 10 years, and coal use is down by 50% in that period.

ogrisel 6y ago
Here are some numbers to back this statement: https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&period=annual&year=all https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&p... It's true that in the first 3 years after the decision to speed-up the closure of nuclear in Germany in 2011, coal use increased. But more recently it went down drastically and was replaced mostly by wind and solar on a yearly basis. Here is similar data but not just Germany (using the data from the 2020 BP statistical review): https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/ogrisel/energy_charts/blob/master/electricity.ipynb https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/ogrisel/energy_charts/bl...
- enaaem 6y ago
  They still use a lot of brown coal, which is dirty as hell. The way I see it, they could have had reduced the CO2 output more by keeping nuclear and investing into renewables. Missed potential really. The debate is not renewables vs nuclear. It's nuclear vs fossil .
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    The reason for that is the coal lobby, not necessity. Datteln 4 is going online because the government has already approved it, and is afraid that it will get sued if it turns around and rescinds the approval.
  - ogrisel 6y ago
    The debate is low carbon vs high carbon (if we all agree that climate change is the number #1 pbm).
belorn 6y ago
I wish government bundled nuclear dismantling with similar goals for fossil fuels. They should add in the phase-out that by 2030, all fossil and nuclear plants will be phased out. No new fossil fueled plants should be allowed to be built. It would be really enjoyable to see how they would solve that while still keeping an functional energy grid (buying fossil generated power from neighbors during bad weather would be cheating), and the scientific progress from such attempt would benefit the world greatly.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Exactly. Coal is not replacing anything. That would imply a growing amount of coal plants. The opposite is true in even the most pro coal markets (like the US). France still has a lot of nuclear plants left (and of course hardly any coal at all). The one discussed in the article was the smallest one in any case according to this overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Fran.... Interestingly, this overview excludes solar and wind. Especially solar would be popular in the sense that there are loads of small domestic deployments and comparatively small plants that collectively add up to a lot of production with more coming online all the time. Most of the country gets a decent amount of sun throughout the year and like pretty much anywhere else, the French have been deploying loads of solar panels on their roofs. Also they've been growing their wind deployment in the order of about 1GW/year in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_France Basically, what the article conveniently also overlooks is that France actually exports more energy than it imports: it produces more than it consumes. The numbers in this article are a bit out of date but paint a clear picture of imports decreasing year over year until 2015 and actually being smaller than exports in any case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France. I did not find any more recent number but I have no reason to assume that this trend turned around in the last 6 years (the opposite actually). Mostly imports and exports are driven by capacity and energy cost. Nuclear is not exactly known to be cheap, so exporting over capacity with tiny margins (or at a loss) in a market increasingly dominated by new, clean, cheap energy sources is less attractive than shutting down what was probably a plant with a comparatively high operational overhead. I'm guessing more plants will follow in the next years for exactly the same reason.
DuskStar 6y ago
And, had Germany not gotten rid of those nuclear power plants, the new renewable generation would have replaced coal. Sure, you can say that renewables replaced nuclear - but at the end of the day, Germany is using coal+renewables instead of nuclear+renewables.
- funcDropShadow 6y ago
  And it still produces more than 30% less CO2 per capita than the us. The sources are in another comment of me.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    So what? "It does 30% better than the worst large country in the world, while also being 30% poorer per capita" (since Germany's per-capita GDP is ~46k, while the US's is ~65k) isn't exactly a glowing commendation.
fulafel 6y ago
In electricity production, in absence of diminishing consumption, new production always replaces something. IOW - in absence of that coal plant, something else would be running (or less electricity would be used).

ogrisel 6y ago

Here are some numbers to back this statement: https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&period=annual&year=all https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&p... It's true that in the first 3 years after the decision to speed-up the closure of nuclear in Germany in 2011, coal use increased. But more recently it went down drastically and was replaced mostly by wind and solar on a yearly basis. Here is similar data but not just Germany (using the data from the 2020 BP statistical review): https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/ogrisel/energy_charts/blob/master/electricity.ipynb https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/ogrisel/energy_charts/bl...

enaaem 6y ago
They still use a lot of brown coal, which is dirty as hell. The way I see it, they could have had reduced the CO2 output more by keeping nuclear and investing into renewables. Missed potential really. The debate is not renewables vs nuclear. It's nuclear vs fossil .
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  The reason for that is the coal lobby, not necessity. Datteln 4 is going online because the government has already approved it, and is afraid that it will get sued if it turns around and rescinds the approval.
- ogrisel 6y ago
  The debate is low carbon vs high carbon (if we all agree that climate change is the number #1 pbm).

belorn 6y ago

I wish government bundled nuclear dismantling with similar goals for fossil fuels. They should add in the phase-out that by 2030, all fossil and nuclear plants will be phased out. No new fossil fueled plants should be allowed to be built. It would be really enjoyable to see how they would solve that while still keeping an functional energy grid (buying fossil generated power from neighbors during bad weather would be cheating), and the scientific progress from such attempt would benefit the world greatly.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Exactly. Coal is not replacing anything. That would imply a growing amount of coal plants. The opposite is true in even the most pro coal markets (like the US). France still has a lot of nuclear plants left (and of course hardly any coal at all). The one discussed in the article was the smallest one in any case according to this overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Fran.... Interestingly, this overview excludes solar and wind. Especially solar would be popular in the sense that there are loads of small domestic deployments and comparatively small plants that collectively add up to a lot of production with more coming online all the time. Most of the country gets a decent amount of sun throughout the year and like pretty much anywhere else, the French have been deploying loads of solar panels on their roofs. Also they've been growing their wind deployment in the order of about 1GW/year in recent years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_France Basically, what the article conveniently also overlooks is that France actually exports more energy than it imports: it produces more than it consumes. The numbers in this article are a bit out of date but paint a clear picture of imports decreasing year over year until 2015 and actually being smaller than exports in any case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France. I did not find any more recent number but I have no reason to assume that this trend turned around in the last 6 years (the opposite actually). Mostly imports and exports are driven by capacity and energy cost. Nuclear is not exactly known to be cheap, so exporting over capacity with tiny margins (or at a loss) in a market increasingly dominated by new, clean, cheap energy sources is less attractive than shutting down what was probably a plant with a comparatively high operational overhead. I'm guessing more plants will follow in the next years for exactly the same reason.

DuskStar 6y ago

And, had Germany not gotten rid of those nuclear power plants, the new renewable generation would have replaced coal. Sure, you can say that renewables replaced nuclear - but at the end of the day, Germany is using coal+renewables instead of nuclear+renewables.

funcDropShadow 6y ago
And it still produces more than 30% less CO2 per capita than the us. The sources are in another comment of me.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  So what? "It does 30% better than the worst large country in the world, while also being 30% poorer per capita" (since Germany's per-capita GDP is ~46k, while the US's is ~65k) isn't exactly a glowing commendation.

fulafel 6y ago

In electricity production, in absence of diminishing consumption, new production always replaces something. IOW - in absence of that coal plant, something else would be running (or less electricity would be used).