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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
by 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 agoIt 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 agoNo, 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 agoUh...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 agoThey 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 agoGermany 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 agoEven 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.
- jhgb 4y agoPerhaps. But saying with 20/20 hindsight of the 2020s that people of the 1970s should have made momentously different decisions for the future of whole national industries for decades to come doesn't feel any less arrogant to me. And that's even assuming that the international situation decades ago was the same as one of today, which it wasn't either.
- avar 4y agoI'm talking about what should be done today, not crying over the milk spilt in the 70s. I only mentioned the 70s to show how rapidly nuclear could be built to replace other energy sources. If you look at any longer term projections on the German or EU energy mix in the next 10-30 years, natural gas will still be critical to the energy mix in 2050 if current plans continue. E.g. [1] shows a nice summary of that. Thus arguments like "efficient building codes" are a red herring. You'll still need to heat your efficiently insulated buildings. The current plans for doing that are fundamentally still those spearheaded by Germany and others before 2014. If the EU has a serious commitment to longer term sanctions on Russia those plans need to change. I don't think they will. I think we'll still be buying Russian gas then, and that Germany et al will find some way to sell out Ukraine in the next couple of years. But one can always hope for better. 1. https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/scenarios/what-are-scenarios/_jcr_content/par/tabbedcontent/tab/textimage_25172244.stream/1504104048141/87b2684f712f1da82ef32d07b19555920412d451/shell-energy-scenarios-germany.pdf https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...
- rhn_mk1 4y agoWhat 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 agoEnough means sufficient to mitigate the consequences of today’s gas crisis. Other people in this thread explained it well enough.
- rhn_mk1 4y agoIf 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 agoFrance 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 agoCareful: of it's electricity, not energy !
- formerly_proven 4y agoYes, 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 agoThe second best time to change course is today.
- ivan_gammel 4y agoSo what? I know the numbers too, how does this make them relevant to today’s crisis? It cannot be solved by building more nuclear.