4 ms·

We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have

We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have no state who wants to store the nuclear waste. We believe the future is renewables and we invest heavily into it.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).
- rob74 5y ago
  From what I understand the current plan to store renewable energy is to convert it to hydrogen - this hydrogen can either be used to power vehicles, or in power plants (converted natural gas power plants or plants that have been designed from the outset to operate flexibly with hydrogen or natural gas)
- wongarsu 5y ago
  It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.
  - Dma54rhs 5y ago
    Pumped hydro has very specific geological restrictions and take because of ecological snd safety risks even longer to build than nuclear. Both way too long.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines. Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to replace all the gas plant capacity is unrealistic, and green hydro is almost 100 times more expensive than natural gas. Nuclear is expensive, but its not that expensive. There is a strange thing with hydrostorage. To my knowledge there does not exist a single example of a commercial operation that buys renewables to pump water and then generate energy to sell when the price goes up. There does exist one commercial operation that I know where an energy company uses storage to balance their fleet of (mostly) fossil fuel plants when they need to spin down/up. It keeps their operations more stable, and they said something to the point of "In the future we might use this to buy renewables when the price is low and sell when the energy is needed".
    - baud147258 5y ago
      though the gas from Russia (and everywhere else) isn't just used in power plants, but also to directly heat homes. So gas supply isn't just a matter of producing enough electricity to compensate
    - rurban 5y ago
      Germany is not Austria nor Switzerland. There are no mountains to pump up the water to. The heights are ridiculous here. 9-15m, compared to 200-800m
      - blackbrokkoli 5y ago
        I mean our southerly neighbors were nice enough to share some of the mountains, leading to things like Schluchsee[1], which is definitely the most aesthetically pleasing battery I have seen far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schluchsee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schluchsee
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        There are deep cavities that water could be pumped out of, and drained back into. You could even store hydrogen in them at the same time.
- credit_guy 5y ago
  The vision of the European Union is that the future is renewables + hydrogen. Initially I was skeptical, but recently I realized that it does make a lot of sense. You can start by first converting coal power plants to natural gas. That will cut the emissions by at least a factor of 2. Then, when the hydrogen infrastructure is built up, you replace the natural gas with hydrogen. Initially it can be "brown" hydrogen, but then you can transition to "blue" hydrogen, and finally with green hydrogen [1]. [1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrogen-colour-spectrum https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrog...

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).

rob74 5y ago
From what I understand the current plan to store renewable energy is to convert it to hydrogen - this hydrogen can either be used to power vehicles, or in power plants (converted natural gas power plants or plants that have been designed from the outset to operate flexibly with hydrogen or natural gas)
wongarsu 5y ago
It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  Pumped hydro has very specific geological restrictions and take because of ecological snd safety risks even longer to build than nuclear. Both way too long.
- belorn 5y ago
  Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines. Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to replace all the gas plant capacity is unrealistic, and green hydro is almost 100 times more expensive than natural gas. Nuclear is expensive, but its not that expensive. There is a strange thing with hydrostorage. To my knowledge there does not exist a single example of a commercial operation that buys renewables to pump water and then generate energy to sell when the price goes up. There does exist one commercial operation that I know where an energy company uses storage to balance their fleet of (mostly) fossil fuel plants when they need to spin down/up. It keeps their operations more stable, and they said something to the point of "In the future we might use this to buy renewables when the price is low and sell when the energy is needed".
  - baud147258 5y ago
    though the gas from Russia (and everywhere else) isn't just used in power plants, but also to directly heat homes. So gas supply isn't just a matter of producing enough electricity to compensate
  - rurban 5y ago
    Germany is not Austria nor Switzerland. There are no mountains to pump up the water to. The heights are ridiculous here. 9-15m, compared to 200-800m
    - blackbrokkoli 5y ago
      I mean our southerly neighbors were nice enough to share some of the mountains, leading to things like Schluchsee[1], which is definitely the most aesthetically pleasing battery I have seen far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schluchsee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schluchsee
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      There are deep cavities that water could be pumped out of, and drained back into. You could even store hydrogen in them at the same time.
credit_guy 5y ago
The vision of the European Union is that the future is renewables + hydrogen. Initially I was skeptical, but recently I realized that it does make a lot of sense. You can start by first converting coal power plants to natural gas. That will cut the emissions by at least a factor of 2. Then, when the hydrogen infrastructure is built up, you replace the natural gas with hydrogen. Initially it can be "brown" hydrogen, but then you can transition to "blue" hydrogen, and finally with green hydrogen [1]. [1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrogen-colour-spectrum https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrog...