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It seems to me that the whole gas debacle between Germany and Russia has been foretold for the last 20 years. That'd have been a good time to start booking the

It seems to me that the whole gas debacle between Germany and Russia has been foretold for the last 20 years. That'd have been a good time to start booking the contractor. And I'm really baffled as to why Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants _in the midst of all this_. Is the public opinion's balance so much in disfavour of nuclear vs. peace in Europe?

pgeorgi 5y ago
The plan to shut down nuclear power plants is from 2000 and ended a (for German terms) fierce societal debate. It was delayed a bit in 2010 (and then un-delayed a smaller bit in 2011 following the Fukushima incident), but the plan has been in force for 22 years. By now, even the power plant operators aren't very interested in keeping them running for longer because they already planned to turn them off and dismantle them. Keeping them on for longer means a significant investment to them, for unknown benefit as the societal rift will inevitably break open again. They might invest (so they can continue to operate things safely), delay the dismantling (probably also costs money because they likely started hiring companies already), only to be told a year later to shut things down again (all that money for nothing). An issue in that has been that renewables build-up has been all but sabotaged politically in the last years, and that storage technology didn't develop as well as estimated, making gas necessary as a peak load compensation mechanism, "hopefully" temporarily. Gas turbine operators are whining for years that they're operating at a loss but they're forced to continue to operate (getting the loss just about compensated I think) to ensure the grid's safety. Other than _that_, gas is mostly used for heating which is a distinct system. As such, any consideration of "nuclear vs. gas dependency in Germany" is something that seems to be mostly discussed outside Germany: No matter how many nuclear power plants we keep up, gas boilers just don't run on electricity (except for their controller module). As for booking a contractor 20 years ago: There are funding programmes to encourage folks to go for heat pump systems and other modernizations. The last electricity heating system that was widely deployed in Germany _was_ horribly inefficient, which is no surprise with technology that was already old in the 70s, and the idea "electricity for heating is a waste" has stuck. The political sabotage that I mentioned extended to not really caring about correcting such misconceptions.
vkou 5y ago
When it comes to dollars and cents, I think the past few days have made it clear that Western Europe cares a lot less about peace in Eastern Europe than the hopes and prayers rhetoric would have you think.

pgeorgi 5y ago

The plan to shut down nuclear power plants is from 2000 and ended a (for German terms) fierce societal debate. It was delayed a bit in 2010 (and then un-delayed a smaller bit in 2011 following the Fukushima incident), but the plan has been in force for 22 years. By now, even the power plant operators aren't very interested in keeping them running for longer because they already planned to turn them off and dismantle them. Keeping them on for longer means a significant investment to them, for unknown benefit as the societal rift will inevitably break open again. They might invest (so they can continue to operate things safely), delay the dismantling (probably also costs money because they likely started hiring companies already), only to be told a year later to shut things down again (all that money for nothing). An issue in that has been that renewables build-up has been all but sabotaged politically in the last years, and that storage technology didn't develop as well as estimated, making gas necessary as a peak load compensation mechanism, "hopefully" temporarily. Gas turbine operators are whining for years that they're operating at a loss but they're forced to continue to operate (getting the loss just about compensated I think) to ensure the grid's safety. Other than _that_, gas is mostly used for heating which is a distinct system. As such, any consideration of "nuclear vs. gas dependency in Germany" is something that seems to be mostly discussed outside Germany: No matter how many nuclear power plants we keep up, gas boilers just don't run on electricity (except for their controller module). As for booking a contractor 20 years ago: There are funding programmes to encourage folks to go for heat pump systems and other modernizations. The last electricity heating system that was widely deployed in Germany _was_ horribly inefficient, which is no surprise with technology that was already old in the 70s, and the idea "electricity for heating is a waste" has stuck. The political sabotage that I mentioned extended to not really caring about correcting such misconceptions.

vkou 5y ago

When it comes to dollars and cents, I think the past few days have made it clear that Western Europe cares a lot less about peace in Eastern Europe than the hopes and prayers rhetoric would have you think.