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Europe doesn't just have an energy crisis though, if Russia decides to cut off the gas they straight up have insufficient energy to make it through the winter.
by ceeplusplus 4y ago
Europe doesn't just have an energy crisis though, if Russia decides to cut off the gas they straight up have insufficient energy to make it through the winter. The decline in the Euro is pricing in the risk of catastrophic shutdowns of industry across Europe.
All of it a result of moronic politics around nuclear and a failure to build out fossil fuel capacity while the green energy transition was still in progress.
- Flatcircle 4y agoNot building/using nuclear is almost criminal negligence. People will die from that mistake.
- nivenkos 4y agoWe can use coal for electricity, the issue is natural gas itself for industry and domestic heating.
- throwaway290 4y agoPeople are dying from that mistake. FTFY
- berkes 4y agoIf you started building a nuclear plant ten years ago, it will be finished when the crisis is way over. Nuclear certainly is crucial in the mix. And used as such: Europe has a lot of nuclear power. But nuclear is slow. Terribly so. Even an operational plant needs days to react to increasing or decreasing demands. And building such plants from scratch, or extending existing ones, takes decades. Never months.
- chitowneats 4y agoFamously, France does and Germany does not. This wasn't just some accident. Germany and their Green Party chose this.
- hef19898 4y agoAs others already pointed out, the nuclear exit strategy was decided upon under Merkel's conservative government. Some added information so: The Green party pushed for an exit of nuclear power as part of a social-docrat government. This exit eas actually pretty well worked out and planned. When Merkel took, one of the forst things was to throw that rather good plan out. Only to revert that decision, hastly at that, after Fukushima. That second nuclear exit, the one Germany is currrently going through, was hastly done, ill planned and rushed. And lastly, nuclear power does exactly nothing to compensate for reduced gas deliveries. Germany, as in deed a good portion of Europe, is heating with gas. And not nuclear power or electrical.
- fmajid 4y agoThe Germans are shutting down perfectly serviceable and world-leading (in terms of safety) nuclear reactors purely out of doctrinaire ideology of the Green Party.
- semigroupoid 4y agoThe shutdown was essentially started when Angela Merkel, who is a member of the conservative CDU, was chancellor.
- markus_zhang 4y agoI think money, perk and power go a longer way than ideology. There were probably backroom stuffs we didn't know about. It takes a LOT of cash to feul any movement that huge.
- droffel 4y agoI've been hearing the same line about nuclear plants taking decades to be built for decades, as if its a valid dismissal. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was a decade ago, the second best time is now. We should be scaling up our nuclear capacity.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoThe best time to plant a radioactive tree in your yard is never.
- pydry 4y agoSolar farms take six months. Wind farms 2-3 years. Pumped storage takes ~5 years and theres no shortage of locations: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-to-meet-all-our-renewable-energy-needs https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-spot-530-000-potenti... A non nuclear mix is also cheaper and isnt uninsurable without a catastrophe liability waiver. The best time to build a nuclear plant is 40 years ago.
- cuteboy19 4y agoPumped storage is cool but way more situational than you think
- hokkos 4y agoI have read several of those studies with an automated workflow to find suitable pumped hydro/wind/solar and they consistently miss local awareness. They often use deeply inaccurate land cover classification when the simple usage of open street map could have helped, and for hydro they underestimate the recent local opposition to destroy a village to build a dam.
- gonzo41 4y agoThere's a lot of low hanging fruit in the hydro landscape that people miss. I have a rivulet that runs near my house. It has weir dams at a few locations on it's path down our mountain, IT wouldn't be that hard to extract energy from the constant flowing water there to feed into the grid. There are turbines that exist to extract energy from a meter high head of water. Everyone thinks about power like you need one big dam, or one big plant (coal or otherwise). There's a lot of small fast flowing streams that have potential to create extra energy. I think hydro needs to be reimagined. IT always need to flood valleys to be in the mix.
- FooBarWidget 4y agoTen years ago was also when everybody was scared of nuclear, even more than today.
- baskethead 4y agoIt's only slow because of ridiculous and unnescessary regulations around it. They can easily speed things up while still keeping it safe, but their (and our/US's) laws are kicking themselves in the butt.
- usr1106 4y agoIn Western Europe (in a political meaning) only Finland has tried for several decades. It's now 12 years behind schedule and the official message is that it will be running in winter (colder in Finland than in many othe places) when the lack of Russian energy will become most visible. Direct import of electricity and gas from Russia have been already stopped. At the moment that's not a problem because it's summer and you can import from other European countries. I'd be very suprised if you can do that in winter. If the nuclear power plant is not ready people will sit in the cold in 6 months from now. Or they will compromise on safety and just run the plant anyway. It is already loaded. No idea what will happen, but I should stop discussing on HN and order firewood.
- coffeeblack 4y agoBuild? In Germany, we had plenty nuclear power plants. Then we turned them off and destroyed them.
- pydry 4y agoI look at this graph and think many things but "oh god if theyd just kept the nuclear plants switched on everythin would be ok" isnt one of them: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2021.png?itok=k2BK48jz https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... The amount of flak that purple sliver garners is way disproportionate to its importance - especially since it's not even dispatchable. Plus germany relies on natgas for a ton more than just electricity. Will we make fertilizer with nuclear power too?
- MisterPea 4y agoI think more so the precedent it set. Not switching on ~and~ not growing nuclear. It wouldn't be too ridiculous for Germany to be producing 30GW from nuclear by now. That's a 22GW spread from what it is today which isn't negligible. But yeah, people are definitely being a little over dramatic on the severity.
- pydry 4y agoThey probably could be producing 30GW of nuclear energy by now if they'd spent as much as they did on 58GW from solar and 56GW of wind combined. (Yeah it's about that expensive). Im not sure if shifting that allocation would have been such a good idea though coz theyd now be using even more gas and coal.
- outside1234 4y agoYes - but you can be assured they won't be Germans - so no policy change needed!
- arrrg 4y agoCan’t heat with nuclear. Not in a way that’s relevant for this, anyway. Heat is the main challenge and heating alone is problematic all by itself. Gas dependence was a huge mistake, nuclear is not the short term solution we are looking for and getting away from gas dependence in the past couldn’t have relied on nuclear. Think heating when you hear gas, not electricity.
- logicalmonster 4y ago> Can’t heat with nuclear. Not in a way that’s relevant for this, anyway. Are you able to expound on why this is the case? Are you specifically talking about furnaces that use some kind of oil being very common in Europe? Also, in an emergency situation, can't nuclear be used for heating, albeit through powering things like space heaters rather than the normal furnaces?
- hef19898 4y agoDomestic heating is done, mostly, by gas. Hard to replace all of Germany's (or Europes) domestic heating infrastructure with electric heating in couple of years. Not to speak about monts. So no, nuclear power cannot be used for heating and Europe definitely doesn't have an electricity problem.
- logicalmonster 4y agoIn an emergency situation (a matter of life and death for the vulnerable) can't space heaters be powered by electricity then?
- hef19898 4y agoShort answer no. Unless someone comes up woth a scalable domestic heating version, using electricity, of AWS. And stop spreading FUD about people freezing to death in there houses in winter, please.
- 4y ago
- skrause 4y agoNo. The gas is needed for heating homes and industial uses and that was already the case when Germany was using its peak nuclear power. Keeping the nuclear reactors would be almost no help with the current problem because Germany is using almost no gas for electricity.
- usr1106 4y agoAnd if you build more people will die in the next big accident. There is no doubt that there will be a next accident. For Chernobyl you can say criminal neglect was part of the system in the USSR. 3 Mile Island happenend in the world leader in technology. Japan used to have the reputation of having high security standards. Until Fukushima happened and they did not have the situation under control. There will always something fail, regardless how well it's designed. Not necessarily this year or not even in 5. But most of us still intend to live for decades, I'd assume. If a Jumbo crashes you expect around 400 death. If 2 crash into each other it's twice as many (search for Tenerife if you are too young to remember). If you build 2 skyscrapers for 16,000 employees you risk 16,000 deaths if the worst happens ("Less" than 3000 died, so the cold facts aren't that bad after all.) If you build build a nuclear power station with millions of people around, you risk many more deaths. Not everyone of them immediately, but cancers caused by radiation will continue for decades. Building such things is engineer hubris and some day something worse than what we have seen so far will happen.
- caeril 4y agoHow many people died or were injured (even medically, long after the fact) from Three Mile Island? Dramatic, sure, but nuclear power kills far, far, far fewer people than buckets of water or BIC lighters.
- usr1106 4y ago3 Mile Island has not killed anybody AFAIK, but it showed the the world's leading tech nation failed completely in responding to the accident. Some facts could be found only years later when the reactor could be inspected and others will remain in the dark forever because they just could not be collected in time. You want to trust a technology where even accidents without fatalities cannot be investigated? For Chernobyl the overall death toll is estimated between 50 and 4000. Nobody knows and nobody knows how to even count. How do you count the disabled and sick babies born after it? For Fukushima 1600 fatalities were reported during evacution. I am not an expert, but I guess it's difficult to attribute because the whole area was devastated already by the tsunami. There will be lucky outcomes also in the future. But if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of people around, some day we'll be out of luck.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoAnyone a bit better informed would be skeptical and the arguments are on the table for years now. The gas problem is about heating which nuclear energy could only supply indirectly with a low grade of efficiency. Germany, for example, only ever had 6% nuclear energy at its height. You can pretty clearly identify populists that now propose to change course. It would minimally easy the burden, perhaps, but there are more efficient alternatives. "People will die" from this mistake is hysteria. Nobody informed about the energy problems will take that seriously. Gas is not electrical power to start with.
- mjfl 4y agowill this have political blowback for the 'Green' parties?
- DSingularity 4y agoHow can it not? Unless things can reverse fast (ie imported energy capacity that has left returns overnight) European home heating costs will skyrocket this winter. The average household will look for someone to blame.
- arrrg 4y agoThey weren’t in charge of energy policy. In Germany for the last 16 years. They had completely different policy ideas to what was actually implemented. Blaming the greens is internationally some kind of dumb idea that likes to reduce politics to stereotypes. The real effects will be much more subtle and indirect. Could still end up with the greens losing votes. Currently it doesn’t look that way at all. (German perspective here.)
- Delk 4y agoIn Finland, the Greens actively and vocally opposed nuclear power at least up until recent years. They abdicated themselves from a coalition government in the early 2000's over that government's decision to grant a license for constructing an additional reactor at an existing plant. Rejecting nuclear power was definitely a visible part of their ideology. That part of the stereotype was actually true for a long time. I don't know about Germany, but it is my impression that opposition to nuclear power was a common theme among the green movement in general for decades. Obviously their agenda also included investing in renewables, as well as reducing consumption, but that wasn't going to happen fast enough, either for political or technological reasons. I have voted for the local Greens several times over the last couple of decades even though I disagreed with and was frustrated with the views they held on nuclear power until recently. I'm also unfortunately familiar with many of the common and overblown negative stereotypes towards the greens in general. Insofar as nuclear power could have played a part in reducing our dependency on fossil fuels over the lasts couple of decades, though, I don't think it's unfair to say the greens in many countries did a lot to hinder that.
- RandomLensman 4y agoNot sure the FX market is pricing that catastrophic risk and not simply low rates and high inflation. Why would only the FX market price it and not equities or German government bonds or vol markets? Also, when markets generally go down, equity and FX positions are the first to be liquidated to shore up cash.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoGerman companies have manufacturing presence all over the world, including substantial factories in the US. Those factories pay workers in dollars and sell products in dollars. They are somewhat isolated from the impacts of the EU failures. German govt bonds are still being purchased by the ECB under QE so it makes sense their yields are suppressed.
- RandomLensman 4y agoLet me phrase it differently: I don't see the need to invoke catastrophic risk to explain current FX moves. I would expect a tail event inferred from vol markets to start with.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago> if Russia decides to cut off the gas they straight up have insufficient energy to make it through the winter. I agree with your sentiment on massive incompetence regarding Energy policy but this is an exageration. 1. Russia won't cut off gas despite it's threats because gas is quite literally one of the few revenue sources for the Russian economy. Much like Qatar, Russia would implode without Gas money. 2. There are plenty of other gas providers Qatar, Norway, Algeria, even US/Canada LNG, who can sell to the EU. What they likely won't sell is at the cost of Russian gas which is the pressing point for Central and Eastern European countries. But the point is, you would shut down heavy industry and go into deficit before you were faced with a doomsday scenario of people freezing during winter.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoShutting down heavy industry is already a doomsday scenario. That would imply millions of people out of work and billions if not trillions of dollars of lost GDP. > Russia would implode without Gas money Russia can sell to China and India. US/CAN has insufficient LNG transport capacity to completely replace pipelines from Russia. Germany has insufficient import terminal capacity. Yes, they wouldn't run out of gas, but the price would likely spike 5-10x and crater the EU economy which is equally as bad.
- hef19898 4y agoLast time this happened, during the financial crisis in 2008, Germany recovered remarkably fast. China is doing it due to lockdowns. Shutting some gas hungry indistries down over winter isn't ahlf as bad as it sounds.
- rawfan 4y agoThat is not quite correct. First of all, Russia cannot simply sell to China and India. It takes years to build the necessary infrastructure to do that. Regarding import terminals: there are LNG terminals all over Europe that are far from their full capacity which all have connections to the German net. That alone would suffice in delivering enough LNG. Apart from that, we're on the fast track of having extra terminals ready by autumn. Also price spikes as massive as those you mentioned will be prevented by emergency government regulation of the market (already announced). As someone who works in the industry, I have a lot of confidence stating that we will be fine, thank you.
- kyleblarson 4y agoReminds me of the German UN delegates smugly laughing at Trump when he said that dependence on Russian oil is a bad thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg
- theplumber 4y agoTrump was basically a clown saying different things for different audiences. He said that we should be more friendly with Russia and that Russia has been trated unfairly. And then said we should buy more gas and oil from the U.S. What do you make of that? Why would you buy LNG from the U.S if Russia is such a great friend and its gas pipes are nearby? Then went at great lengths to say how Europe is the biggest foe for the United States and not Russia. Not to mention that fiasco at the Helsinky summit. If you talk a lot of nonsese people stop treating you seriously. If I remember right he fancied NK leader as well. Just a clown or showmen or whatever you want to call him but definitly a reliable adviser. Germany has been warned about its dependency on Russian gas by its EU neighbours and past U.S administrations long before that clown. It's just that Germany thought Russia is not completely stupid and made a risky and bad bet. Now it has to pay. It may be for the better because now it can invest in more renewables(i.e has a cleaner slate)
- davrosthedalek 4y agoWhile the strategy to let Russia sit on the table of grown ups did not work out in the end, I think it delayed Putins actions for a few years. I think Ukraine has much better chances than 5 years ago. And without the pandemic, it might have worked longer.
- int_19h 4y agoIt also gave Russia the opportunity to use Syria as a testing ground.
- halffaday 4y agoI would entertain the possibility that improving or maintaining the existing standards of living is not a policy objective of most representative governments or their key donors.