4 ms·

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power pl

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

_0w8t 4y ago
The answer for the war is coal and this is exactly what Germany is doing. It is simpler and cheaper to run the existing coal plants at the full capacity or even increase it than try to maintain the nuclear plants long past the original design lifespan and that were planned to be stopped for years. In retrospect it would be better if Germany did not decide to shutdown the nuclear, but presently this is a rational decision.
ivan_gammel 4y ago
The problem with nuclear is simply that it is irrelevant to the current situation. Won’t add enough energy to the grid, won’t solve the problem of gas demand at all, so it really doesn’t matter if Germany was right or wrong about it.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  It very much matters over the timespan of several decades. That is enough time in which many more nuclear power plants could have been brought online. Just because Germany made the gross error of not building out enough nuclear power to provide for their needs doesn’t mean it is impossible.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    No, it doesn't. The nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters and the chemical industry consuming copious amounts of natural gas. Any shortfall from the nuclear shutdown can be covered by the underutilized coal plants. It's temporarily inconvenient but doesn't necessitate gas imports in any way.
    - avar 4y ago
      > nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters[...] Yes they were, France uses around 40% electrical heating[1], Germany around 5%. Norway is almost entirely electrically heated. 1. From some quick online searching.
      - jhgb 4y ago
        Uh...are we still talking about Germany? Because in Germany they clearly weren't, unlike in case of France. And Norway's absolutely prodigious consumption of electricity (quadruple amount per capita) even underlines it: electrical heating is absolutely not the way to go forward -- efficient building codes are.
        avar 4y ago
        They weren't because of Germany's energy policy, not because nuclear is a bad fit for residential heating. We're talking about "[nuclear on] the timespan of several decades".
        jhgb 4y ago
        Germany has neither a nuclear military-industrial complex like the French do nor the opportunity to waste copious amounts of energy the way Norwegians do, so I fail to see how references to those countries are in any way relevant for Germans' situation. No amount of energy policy will compensate for their different circumstances to the extent of turning Germany into a second France or a second Norway.
        avar 4y ago
        Even if you think that's insurmountable problem there's an easy solution: Pay the French to build and operate them, they already do that for other foreign customers. But look at France's portion of nuclear at the start of the 70s, then the 90s. There's no reason except political will that Germany couldn't do the same.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  What is "enough"? If any solution has to solve all the problems to be considered at all, you're going to have trouble noticing solutions that chip away at the problem until it's solved.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    Enough means sufficient to mitigate the consequences of today’s gas crisis. Other people in this thread explained it well enough.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      If by "mitigate" you mean "completely solve", then you're committing an error of being blind to incremental solutions. If by "mitigate" you mean "make less painful", then indeed it is enough, as it's a step in the right direction.
- clemensley 4y ago
  France is produces 75% of its energy with nuclear. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... A German produces almost twice as much CO2 as a Frenchmen. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
  - Faaak 4y ago
    Careful: of it's electricity, not energy !
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    Yes, Germans have been wrong about nuclear. No, nobody will admit to that or change their minds, the end of nuclear in Germany will be celebrated as a success for the environment. No, changing the opinion now would not matter. Germany killed its nuclear industry decades ago. Being right about this would have mattered in the 80s and 90s. You don't get the CO2 or methane that has been emitted back into the ground or the people that died out of the ground by being right in 2022.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      The second best time to change course is today.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    So what? I know the numbers too, how does this make them relevant to today’s crisis? It cannot be solved by building more nuclear.
DelightOne 4y ago
> shutting down secure That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.
- clemensley 4y ago
  There is no dispute about the safety of nuclear. We have statistics going back decades. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=Nuclear%20energy%2C%20for%20example%2C%20results,solar%20are%20just%20as%20safe https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....
  - Arnt 4y ago
    Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways. Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear vote, after, against, because these people switched. If you want to argue about safety, I think you might do well do focus on the safety issue that made the significant voter segment change their opinion.
    - clemensley 4y ago
      Did you know that most likely nobody died from radiation after Fukushima? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
      - _ph_ 4y ago
        Well, people were evacuated in time. The big question is: can they come back, like ever? The threat isn't so much people dying from radiation if evacuated in time, it is that large regions of densely populated central Europe can become uninhabitable and not usable for agriculture.
    - 4y ago
Arnt 4y ago
It seems irrational because that's not what's happening. Those power plants can't be run next winter. Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023. But that would still leave them them down precisely in the period that matters most: Next winter.
- fulvioterzapi 4y ago
  > Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. Sounds like a long list of lame excuses.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    "Excuses"? If you know that your company shuts down one year from now, why would you be ordering spare parts for five years into the future? Especially if you've known that date for twenty years like Germans did?
    - fulvioterzapi 4y ago
      Sure, sure, but I find difficult to believe that an industrial superpower such as Germany can't find a solution in a couple of months. The the usual politicians' way of speaking. If there was the political will of having the nuclear power plants works, they would go and find the spare parts in a second. There's no political will (thank you Greens!) so they make up excuses.
      - ivan_gammel 4y ago
        Germany is an industrial superpower without military industrial complex and command vertical, meaning that the government is not set up to do such things quickly (in fact, I don’t think even China would be able to move that fast).

_0w8t 4y ago

The answer for the war is coal and this is exactly what Germany is doing. It is simpler and cheaper to run the existing coal plants at the full capacity or even increase it than try to maintain the nuclear plants long past the original design lifespan and that were planned to be stopped for years. In retrospect it would be better if Germany did not decide to shutdown the nuclear, but presently this is a rational decision.

ivan_gammel 4y ago

The problem with nuclear is simply that it is irrelevant to the current situation. Won’t add enough energy to the grid, won’t solve the problem of gas demand at all, so it really doesn’t matter if Germany was right or wrong about it.

towaway15463 4y ago
It very much matters over the timespan of several decades. That is enough time in which many more nuclear power plants could have been brought online. Just because Germany made the gross error of not building out enough nuclear power to provide for their needs doesn’t mean it is impossible.
- jhgb 4y ago
  No, it doesn't. The nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters and the chemical industry consuming copious amounts of natural gas. Any shortfall from the nuclear shutdown can be covered by the underutilized coal plants. It's temporarily inconvenient but doesn't necessitate gas imports in any way.
  - avar 4y ago
    > nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters[...] Yes they were, France uses around 40% electrical heating[1], Germany around 5%. Norway is almost entirely electrically heated. 1. From some quick online searching.
    - jhgb 4y ago
      Uh...are we still talking about Germany? Because in Germany they clearly weren't, unlike in case of France. And Norway's absolutely prodigious consumption of electricity (quadruple amount per capita) even underlines it: electrical heating is absolutely not the way to go forward -- efficient building codes are.
      - avar 4y ago
        They weren't because of Germany's energy policy, not because nuclear is a bad fit for residential heating. We're talking about "[nuclear on] the timespan of several decades".
        jhgb 4y ago
        Germany has neither a nuclear military-industrial complex like the French do nor the opportunity to waste copious amounts of energy the way Norwegians do, so I fail to see how references to those countries are in any way relevant for Germans' situation. No amount of energy policy will compensate for their different circumstances to the extent of turning Germany into a second France or a second Norway.
        avar 4y ago
        Even if you think that's insurmountable problem there's an easy solution: Pay the French to build and operate them, they already do that for other foreign customers. But look at France's portion of nuclear at the start of the 70s, then the 90s. There's no reason except political will that Germany couldn't do the same.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
What is "enough"? If any solution has to solve all the problems to be considered at all, you're going to have trouble noticing solutions that chip away at the problem until it's solved.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  Enough means sufficient to mitigate the consequences of today’s gas crisis. Other people in this thread explained it well enough.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    If by "mitigate" you mean "completely solve", then you're committing an error of being blind to incremental solutions. If by "mitigate" you mean "make less painful", then indeed it is enough, as it's a step in the right direction.
clemensley 4y ago
France is produces 75% of its energy with nuclear. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... A German produces almost twice as much CO2 as a Frenchmen. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
- Faaak 4y ago
  Careful: of it's electricity, not energy !
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Yes, Germans have been wrong about nuclear. No, nobody will admit to that or change their minds, the end of nuclear in Germany will be celebrated as a success for the environment. No, changing the opinion now would not matter. Germany killed its nuclear industry decades ago. Being right about this would have mattered in the 80s and 90s. You don't get the CO2 or methane that has been emitted back into the ground or the people that died out of the ground by being right in 2022.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    The second best time to change course is today.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  So what? I know the numbers too, how does this make them relevant to today’s crisis? It cannot be solved by building more nuclear.

DelightOne 4y ago

> shutting down secure That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.

clemensley 4y ago
There is no dispute about the safety of nuclear. We have statistics going back decades. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=Nuclear%20energy%2C%20for%20example%2C%20results,solar%20are%20just%20as%20safe https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....
- Arnt 4y ago
  Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster. A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways. Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear vote, after, against, because these people switched. If you want to argue about safety, I think you might do well do focus on the safety issue that made the significant voter segment change their opinion.
  - clemensley 4y ago
    Did you know that most likely nobody died from radiation after Fukushima? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      Well, people were evacuated in time. The big question is: can they come back, like ever? The threat isn't so much people dying from radiation if evacuated in time, it is that large regions of densely populated central Europe can become uninhabitable and not usable for agriculture.
  - 4y ago

Arnt 4y ago

It seems irrational because that's not what's happening. Those power plants can't be run next winter. Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023. But that would still leave them them down precisely in the period that matters most: Next winter.

fulvioterzapi 4y ago
> Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. Sounds like a long list of lame excuses.
- jhgb 4y ago
  "Excuses"? If you know that your company shuts down one year from now, why would you be ordering spare parts for five years into the future? Especially if you've known that date for twenty years like Germans did?
  - fulvioterzapi 4y ago
    Sure, sure, but I find difficult to believe that an industrial superpower such as Germany can't find a solution in a couple of months. The the usual politicians' way of speaking. If there was the political will of having the nuclear power plants works, they would go and find the spare parts in a second. There's no political will (thank you Greens!) so they make up excuses.
    - ivan_gammel 4y ago
      Germany is an industrial superpower without military industrial complex and command vertical, meaning that the government is not set up to do such things quickly (in fact, I don’t think even China would be able to move that fast).