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Germany's Energy Catastrophe

56 points by jseliger 4y ago

simonCGN 4y ago
Another of those propaganda articles by nuclear lobbyist.
daccle 4y ago
Yikes! Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power. Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). Finally explaining that there were only 28 deaths after the Chernobyl accident, ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer and deformed unborn children. Sorry, this article is totally wrong in so many ways.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  All deaths from nuclear anything ever are a rounding error compared to dirty power sources. Almost a hundred staff died in a hydro disaster in 2009, for some perspective.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    And 200,000 died in a 1975 chinese hydro disaster
- dijonman2 4y ago
  Nuclear is the best option, no? Of course it has risks but given how awful coal and other traditional power sources run it seems to be the best option. We are only going to use more and more energy, generating and lowering energy costs will be a net positive for all. Especially to support EVs.
  - skrause 4y ago
    Well, let's take a look at France: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p... > As the European Union moves to cut ties to Russian oil and gas in the wake of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, France has been betting on its nuclear plants to weather a looming energy crunch. Nuclear power provides about 70 percent of France’s electricity, a bigger share than any other country in the world. But the industry has tumbled into an unprecedented power crisis as EDF confronts troubles ranging from the mysterious emergence of stress corrosion inside nuclear plants to a hotter climate that is making it harder to cool the aging reactors. The outages at EDF, Europe’s biggest electricity exporter, have sent France’s nuclear power output tumbling to its lowest level in nearly 30 years, pushing French electric bills to record highs just as the war in Ukraine is stoking broader inflation. Instead of pumping vast amounts of electricity to Britain, Italy and other European countries pivoting from Russian oil, France faces the unsettling prospect of initiating rolling blackouts this winter and having to import power. Nuclear power is so good that France might have to import energy from German coal power plans next winter to avoid large scale blackouts.
    - hardlianotion 4y ago
      Like most of the western world, France permitted their nuclear capacity to rot while not making sufficient progress to secure other sources of relatively clean energy.
      - IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
        No true Scottish nuclear plant, I guess.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - cm2187 4y ago
        In fact president Macron initially intended to reduce nuclear energy to 50% of power generation. One of the many moronic policies he had to walk back (the other big one was further cuts to France’s defence budget).
    - mahkeiro 4y ago
      France currently has half the reactors stopped (28/56), but why? - 7 are stopped for refurbishment as their lifetime extension require important work - 13 are stopped for the corrosion issue detected - 3 are currently replacing the nuclear fuel - 5 are stopped for other technical issue It's true that this year France will only produce 300TWh instead of 350TWh last year which is not the gloom picture that you try to make. By Novembre most of the reactors are planned to be backed online.(https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/energie/infographies-baisse-de-production-nucleaire-prix-du-gaz-risques-de-penuries-sept-graphiques-pour-comprendre-la-crise-energetique-en-france_5245288.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/energie/infographies-ba...) The main problem is that the new reactors that were supposed to come online 10 years ago are still not there, and that the multiple offshore wind generation projects are still blocked!
- gambiting 4y ago
  >>ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer Which are, at absolute most and at the most pessimistic estimate, at few thousands excess deaths[0]. The same estimates for coal at are thousands.....per year, not for the last 40 years. [0] https://ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2021/chernobyl-at-35-years-an-oncologist-s-perspective/ https://ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2021/chernobyl-at-35-year...
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    Well, your comparison might also be invalid because we haven't used nuclear power to the scale coal is used. Maybe if there were many nuclear plants we might have seen many disaster?
    - ajuc 4y ago
      Both nuclear and coal were used more than solar. And solar caused more deaths per MWh produced than nuclear (cause people fall off roofs while installing/maintaining it). If you think scale matters - then you should also think that solar is more risky than nuclear by your own logic (because we're not using it on as big scale).
- dna_polymerase 4y ago
  It needs a catastrophic fail ihre for nuclear to become deadly for the masses. Germany replaced the nuclear power plants with coal and gas based plants whose Modus operandi is deadly for the masses. Even if you want to shutdown nuclear, Germany did it in an extremely stupid.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Because a picture says more than a thousand words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#/media/File:Energymix_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#/medi... Also: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Energy/Production/Tables/gross-electricity-production.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris... Nuclear power is mainly being replaced by renewables, not coal or gas. Natural gas only accounts for 15% of electricity production, the upcoming gap could probably easily be filled with alternatives. But it's main use isn't electricity, but for heating in private homes and all sort of processes in the industry. About half of all homes are heated with gas, you can't simply flip a switch and replace the gas heating in 20 million homes with electric heating. TL;DR: the pressing problem that needs solving is how to prioritize private homes versus the industry's use of natural gas, even if nuclear power plants would suddenly spring out of the ground for free, they wouldn't help much with this.
    - LunaSea 4y ago
      Oh is that why Germany pressured the EU to qualify gas as "green" energy and block nuclear energy from getting the same qualification?
      - turbinerneiter 4y ago
        Except they didn't block that. Both sources are now qualified as green, gas however only as use for easing the transition.
        LunaSea 4y ago
- elsjaako 4y ago
  Genuinely curious, because I haven't heard these arguments before. > Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power What climate impact? I though it was CO2 neutral (except for construction, which has similar costs to wind an solar). A quick google doesn't give me anything. > it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time I thought nuclear was basically a steam boiler, same as coal or gas plants? Why is the control slower for nuclear?
  - onli 4y ago
    It is in no way co2 neutral. Its strongest claim is that it emits less co2 than alternatives. This is based on a bunch of assumptions on how hard it is to get the raw material, that the radiated garbage is transported once (to storage that does not exist) etc. So it is bullshit, but it will always be claimed in these comment threads, right next to the lie of Chernobyl having killed basically no-one. Nuclear steam boilers are slow to control as their base reaction takes time to cool up or down. Good for base load, not fast coverage of highs.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    > Why is the control slower for nuclear? Maintaining a critical fission reaction is difficult and in a large plant you might have to coordinate hundreds of people in dozens of locations to reduce power. Starting up a plant takes math and precise measurements, and there’s a natural limit to the speed you can do so or else you can cause a runaway supercritical reaction. Also, to be the most efficient, they are designed to run at near capacity for their lifetimes, and reducing the power would cancel that, so it’s simply not designed into the system to be reactive like that, as opposed to a submarine plant which is designed to power up and down a bit over short time frames.
  - turbinerneiter 4y ago
    AFAIK nuclear output can be controlled only in a certain range, but if you go below a certain threshold it shuts off and you then have to restart it, which takes a lot of time. Coal has a similar issue, these plants also can't be turned on and off quickly. In fact, the term "base load" originally was driven more by the minimum amount of power that has to be consumed to keep a plant running. Only now with the move to renewables with varying output the meaning has shifted to the consumption side of things. Gas plants however can be turned on and off and easily, they work similar to aircraft engines. In Germany, the heat produced is then used for district heating, which gives these plants almost perfect efficiency. It's not a coincidence that Germany picked gas as supplement for renewables during the transition to 100% green energy. Gas (in the form of hydrogen directly ~ methane made from hydrogen) is also a key contender for very long term energy storage (in Germany, you have to save energy produced in the summer for use in winter, the batteries needed for that would be roughly in the order of ~50 million Tesla Model S (100kWh) batteries). The cost of overbuilding renewables and storing the energy in gas, with a lower round-trip efficiency, seems to be lower than building the big battery that would be needed. Wind is also better in winter than solar, which is why wind is such an important and hot topic in Germany. Solar doesn't bother anyone, but wind turbines are huge and people can see them in the landscape. Solar does not have this problem, but during the winter, the output goes down to almost nothing.
- LunaSea 4y ago
  The total number of deaths due to the nuclear energy production works wide is less than the animal number of french people dying due to air pollution by German coal plants.
- seszett 4y ago
  > Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). That's actually not been true for the last 40 years or so. In France, nuclear power plants have been doing load following without problem. They are apparently able to adjust their production by 80% over 30 minutes. One such episode is explained here: https://lenergeek.com/2019/03/07/mix-electrique-nucleaire-tristan-kamin/ https://lenergeek.com/2019/03/07/mix-electrique-nucleaire-tr...
  - illiac786 4y ago
    I read the article and I do not see the 80% mentioned. I really would have loved to read this, but they mentioned only 10GW of variation, that's roughly 20% I believe.
    - seszett 4y ago
      Another article talks specifically about the power modulation ability: https://lenergeek.com/2017/09/13/modulation-parc-nucleaire-edf-energies-renouvelables/ https://lenergeek.com/2017/09/13/modulation-parc-nucleaire-e...
      - illiac786 4y ago
        Yes, but they are quoting the EDF paper again — almost verbatim.
- BenoitP 4y ago
  > it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time Well, France has been doing it just fine for the last 33 years: > [...] flexible operation of nuclear reactors is possible and has been applied in France by EDF’s 58 reactors for more than 30 years without any noticeable or unmanageable impacts: no effects on safety or on the environment, and no noticeable additional maintenance costs, with an additional unplanned capability load factor estimated at only 0.5%. EDF’s nuclear reactors have the capability to vary their output between 20% and 100% within 30 minutes, twice a day, when operating in load-following mode From here (pdf): https://hal-edf.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01977209/document https://hal-edf.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01977209/document
  - illiac786 4y ago
    Would love to believe this, but that's EDF writing this. Any other source? Any real life example?
locallost 4y ago
Germany proceeded with their "nuclear exit" in 2011. Had they gone the other way and all in on nuclear, they would be in the same situation as they are today as planning and building nuclear plants takes a lot longer than 10 years. Actually they would be way worse because instead of having 50% of electricity coming from renewables, they would still have 45% of it coming from coal, instead of 25% in 2020 (did not check the latest numbers). On top of all that, for the price they are paying to get renewables basically today, they could only get a fraction of the energy in nuclear. And if that wasn't enough, one of the largest exporters of uranium to the EU is... Russia. One of the worst articles I have ever read in my life.
- ThePhysicist 4y ago
  The nuclear exit strategy dates back to 2000, so 22 years ago already.
- anttisalmela 4y ago
  They wouldn't have shut down all the working plants. Not that it matters much, wouldn't have been enough.
  - locallost 4y ago
    They were old, some came online in the 60s. Check the situation in France right now -- half of their aging fleet is offline because they basically can't get them to work. The NY Times had an article on it recently.
    - mytailorisrich 4y ago
      > because they basically can't get them to work That's completely BS. More French reactors are off than usual because of delayed scheduled maintenance caused by Covid.
      - throw827474737 4y ago
        Yeah, that problem didn't even exist already pre pandemic, right? Btw, you believe you can maintain those plants forever?
mvgcf 4y ago
This op-ed is getting things so utterly wrong, I don‘t even know where to start. The Energiewende (so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility) here in Germany is working just fine. It is a reasonable investment in our future. The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy. The lack of gas is problematic because it is a preliminary product used in chemical processes. This is where a looming recession might derive from. On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated, especially for the generation of nuclear power plants in use right now. They are expensive both in terms of dollars and in terms of their ecological footprint.
- Zanfa 4y ago
  > On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. Grid-scale storage (apart from hydro, but that's basically maxed out or unsuitable for most geographies) is still an unsolved problem for renewables, even the largest lithium-battery ones are basically a rounding error. You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables. Not even sure if there's enough lithium to make this work theoretically with current tech. > On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated Same is true for every other power source as well. Energy storage for renewables is never included, so you need backups, the €100 billion German defence package announced a few months ago is a direct consequence of "cheap" Russian gas, the millions of people suffering/dying from air pollution related issues from using coal. There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.
  - VaxWithSex 4y ago
    It's a solved problem for Germany. Electrolyze Hydrogen, store it in the existing gas infrastructure for the winter. Use the gas plants to burn it in the winter.
    - 4y ago
foepys 4y ago
You can still not safely eat mushrooms from the south-eastern parts of Bavaria because they are still contaminated by the Chernobyl desaster. The anti-nuclear stance is not irrational, it has strong roots in reality.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Could this be case of an extreme regulation, much like "everything is known to cause cancer in the state of California"? Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine are much closer to Chernobyl than Bavaria is, and the populations there regularly pick and eat mushrooms without suffering a wave of extra cancers.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
stewbrew 4y ago
I'm tired of these probably nuclear industry backed articles that are wrong and miss the point. 1. Nuclear energy is no solution. See here for an example how things turn out in real life (in German): https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Deutsche-Solaranlagen-haengen-Frankreichs-AKW-ab-article23450534.html https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Deutsche-Solaranlagen-haengen... 2. Germany doesn't really lack electricity. You cannot replace gas in industrial processes that need heat just like that with electricity. If you could, you could also use renewable energy. Things change very slowly on this side.
- mvgcf 4y ago
  This.
- ThePhysicist 4y ago
  There's a difference between peak energy production at noon in summer and let's say 10 pm on christmas eve. And yes, the energy grid probably won't collapse in winter, removing 12-16 GW of baseload power will have a strong effect on prices though. Phasing out nuclear could have been fine, it's just that we didn't have any plan to replace it (again, mind the difference between base load and intermittent power production), e.g. no large-scale storage solutions planned whatsoever, which makes us reliant on gas, coal and the EU grid to match supply and demand.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  > Germany doesn't really lack electricity. ... yet. There is an interesting report on the ARD Mediathek [1] right now in which - among other nuclear-involved people - the guy responsible the flow of electricity talks about power production and consumption. He points out that while it is true that at some points in time, renewables provided 95% of our consumption, there are still other times where they make up less than 1%. He then proceeds to explain that we do not have the energy storage to survive that, and that such an energy storage - with our current technology - will not be technically feasible, and that our neighbouring countries will not be able to support us if bad comes to worse. His prognosis is that if we proceed with the nuclear shutdown, we will perpetuate coal burning for the foreseeable future. Oh, right, some genius also decided to stop that. We like to think of ourselves to be enlightened trailblazers. But maybe we should take a step back and consider if we might be wrong. [1] https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/dokumentarfilm-im-ersten-atomkraft-forever/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3JlcG9ydGFnZSBfIGRva3VtZW50YXRpb24gaW0gZXJzdGVuL2MxZmQyNTQ3LWU0MWQtNDEwNy1iNGNlLTA2NmZhYjYyOWZmNA https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/dokumentar... - the part I'm talking about starts at about 35:35, German only (unfortunately)
RandomLensman 4y ago
There is no quick going back to nuclear power and right now the past is irrelevant - the future matters. Might as well skip on new fission and then maybe build fusion power plants (if and when). By the way: using coal as an emergency backstop if there is no gas was always the official plan.
- ssl232 4y ago
  Is Germany still capable of mining enough of its own coal for its own needs during such emergencies?
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    Kind of, it has a lot lignite mining and still some proper coal. If things last longer it certainly has lignite for quite a while and still thermal coal mining.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    No, but coal wouldn't work the same way as an instrument for political pressure the same way as pipeline-supplied gas does right now. Store enough for a few months and get coal shipped from elsewhere, same infrastructure etc. Buy someone else's shipments if need be, like with LNG currently, lots of poorer places are going to receive less than what they bought because Germany and the EU pay just about anything right now.
planb 4y ago
We don’t have an energy problem. We have a gas problem. I’m open for (re-)discussing nuclear energy here in Germany, but we could run 100% on nuclear or coal and a full gas stop by Russia would still have catastrophic consequences. We need gas for industrial/chemical processes and heating our homes. In fact, if the Energiewende had progressed a bit further, then more houses would have installed a heat pump by now.
- ajuc 4y ago
  You have foreign policy blindness problem, no independent media problem and most of all - "everything except making cars and exporting them doesn't matter" problem. Otherwise I can't explain how you were so dumb for 3 decades. It's not like Germany is so poor it can't afford to pay 50% more for gas. Or that it couldn't build an LNG terminal just in case. Poland which is much less wealthy - managed to do it. How come nobody in Germany seriously raised these issues for 3 decades? Mainstream didn't care cause industrial output was the only thing that mattered. And EE countries are russophobic, we Germans are so much smarter. They will understand eventually that it's for their own good. You have a lot of rethinking of your foreign policy to do. Germany can't continue to be an informal leader of EU with such obvious incompetency (and I'm charitable here, cause if it's not incompetency it's betrayal).
  - ggeorgovassilis 4y ago
    > no independent media This cannot be overstated. The entirety of German media (excluding niche outlets) across the political spectrum align on every important topic.
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    > Germany is so poor it can't afford to pay 50% more for gas Germany isn't. Many Germans are. If missing gas leads to industry breaking down, more Germans will be. Germans being made poor, especially for no good reasons other than the decisions of politicians abroad, tends to lead to unintended, but severe consequences. Already, wannabe autocrats are winding up their propaganda. Guess which countries they will have a look at first.
ajuc 4y ago
The funniest thing is - Germany was repeatedly warned by Eastern European states that this (literally this) will happen if they continue to build Nord Stream 1 and then Nord Stream 2 and try to "fix" Russia by trade. Russian government already poisoned Ukrainian presidential candidate in 2004. Killed opposition and journalists both in Russia and in EU. Invaded 2 countries (Chechnia and Georgia - I don't even count Lithuania cause it was technically USSR) and committed war crimes (especially in Chechnia). And Germany just ignored this cause cheap gas and "they will surely change if we just give them money". Like how dumb can you be? Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and probably others warned Germany and the rest of EU about this for decades. Polish president in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia said "Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and then, perhaps, my country - Poland". It wasn't some genius foresight- this was mainstream opinion in Poland and many other EE states for over a decade already. We warned about Russia using the pipelines for blackmail and about their ambitions to recreate USSR against the will of the people in post-communist states. By 2010 Russia already shut down gas for various EE states on several occasions to blackmail or punish them. Germany knew this and just ignored it. Probably cause it "couldn't happen to Germany and fuck EE". In 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time and annexed Crimea. Also supported dictator Assad in murdering his own citizens and used hybrid warfare on EU by helping him push refuges to EU which created a huge political crisis. Germany knew this and still sucked that gas like there's no tommorow and continued to build Nord Stream 2. Last year Russian agents blew up a big ammo warehouse in Czech Republic. Germany still continued with Nord Stream, cause you know, who cares about Czech Republic (their ally in NATO and EU). Oh, BTW - Germany also sold weapons to Russia and helped them train soldiers all through that time. They were supposed to stop after 2014 but they didn't. All the warnings and pleas to stop doing business with Russia and especially to stop sending them weapons and increasing energy dependency were dismissed by Germany (and other EU states to a lesser degree) as "russophobic" because these countries were "understandeably traumatized" and "didn't understand modern global politics". Basically Germany treated us like dumb kids while commiting slow extended suicide. It's mind-boggling how a big European state like Germany with big ambitions and supposedly independent media could be so ignorant for 3 decades with nobody in the country taking the warnings seriously.
- Tozen 4y ago
schroeding 4y ago
But even still having all nuclear power plants wouldn't help us much in the current situation, would it? We need gas not for power generation (we do, but that's only ~ 1/6 of the whole consumption, and will be lower if we use gas only to stabilize the power grid - we still have coal power plants on stand-by that can reduce the load on the gas power plants), but for our industry and heating. It's mostly burned directly. Sure, we could have replaced every boiler with a heat pump in the last 10 years, but we didn't. So we need gas for half of all buildings and that cannot be replaced by nuclear power. And we need a steady supply, as many gas boilers have old fuses that kick in if the gas pressure changes, bricking the boiler until a specalist resets it. So we can't even realistically ration it. :(
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Of course the flip side is that Germany is going cold turkey on coal and gas in the next few years. Once that process is completed, it will have a huge head start on other countries looking to slowly transition to being carbon neutral. That's actually a good thing. Short term it's disruptive for sure but it is already leading to huge public spending. Which of course also is the classic recipe to mitigate the risks of any potential recession and might actually set Germany up for huge economic growth soon after. That recession is arguably already happening. I don't think it will stay limited to Germany either. We've experienced those before. It will be fine. Russia may or may not pull the plug on German gas revenue. Hard to tell right now and they don't seem to be very rational right now. But by merely putting the threat on the table, they've set a few things in motion already. Their gas revenues are going to shrink a lot as the result of their recent actions. It's just going to be a function of how badly they need the cash by how quick that process will go. It's more than a little bit academic for me as I live in Berlin which is very dependent on Russian gas for heating and warm water. There's a very real chance I will have to deal with some level of heating and shower issues in the coming winter. I'm fully confident that whatever happens, Germany will figure it out though. Now that it has come this far, I'm actually in favor of ripping off that band aid and get it over with. Putin is threatening me personally with a cold shower. I'll take that cold shower when/if it comes to that. Putin might be good chess player but his poker game sucks. His bluff has been called. And now, we'll see if there ever was more than that. So far it just looks like a country self destroying its economy for no good reason at all.
- cm2187 4y ago
  I think the revenues will shrink to Russia ultimately as europe will cut its dependancy on gas, but in the short term, the squeeze on gas supply created a price hike that more than offset the reduced volumes for Russia. That may continue and finance Russia’s war.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Of course. The question is when. If they Russia cuts off the gas they basically will just destroy their economy faster. And it's a matter of time before production elsewhere ramps up to compensate. The coming winter will be a challenge, the winter after that it will be solved one way or another. Probably at great cost but it will be a lot less of an issue. Also, Russia needs more than just cash to fuel the war. They are currently cut off from a lot of essential imports and the international market and their army clearly is under-performing because of apparent logistical, supply, and morale issues. I think Germany might prove to have a lot more stamina than Russia. Riding out the next winter without Russian gas won't be fun but it will be able to deal with it. On the other hand, I don't think a second winter in the Ukraine is going turn things around for the Russians either and I think they are well aware of it. So, Putin can commit economical suicide or he can come back to the negotiation table. The question is what he has to bring to the table. It's not looking like he has much to offer.
la_fayette 4y ago
It will be a though challenge, although this text is just a nuclear power marketing. The numbers are also a bit different then reported: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE...
epups 4y ago
Germans simply won't admit this. I talked to some people who are in high positions in the Green Party, and they all have this obviously stupid belief that we will simply switch to renewables instead of reactivating nuclear. What they don't grasp is there is no such option. It's either nuclear or coal/gas. Any argument against nuclear must take into account the extreme damage Germany is doing to the environment with their current strategy.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BurningPenguin 4y ago
Yet another one, who thinks it's about electricity. We don't have much of a problem with that, since gas only makes up about 10% of the energy mix. About 75% of all households in Germany use gas and oil for heating. Your magic nuclear reactor won't change that. Switching those things takes some time, and it won't be done until next winter. All companies specialized in that are already booked out and there is a shortage on the necessary parts to build that stuff.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  They are quite fungible for heating. I don't know how prices compare, but UK is on a big drive to replace gas boilers in private homes with heat pumps. The main obstacle is actually poor general building standards and insulation. I believe German standards are quite a bit higher. Basically, the peak temperature produced by air-source heat pumps is lower than that from a boiler, so without better insulation they don't work so well (or something like that).
  - BurningPenguin 4y ago
    Idk what the exact differences are. I only know, that newer buildings are already required to have proper insulation, so for those that are built or (properly) renovated in, idk maybe the last 20 years or so, should be fine. But we also have plenty of older buildings, that need some work. That's probably also one of the reasons why many people go for wood pellets to replace the gas heater. Add to that all the really old buildings, that can't be renovated due to urban heritage protections. But as said, all the companies are booked out and parts aren't available fast enough, thanks to outsourcing to China...

56 points by jseliger 4y ago

Another of those propaganda articles by nuclear lobbyist.

Yikes! Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power. Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). Finally explaining that there were only 28 deaths after the Chernobyl accident, ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer and deformed unborn children. Sorry, this article is totally wrong in so many ways.

mhh__ 4y ago
All deaths from nuclear anything ever are a rounding error compared to dirty power sources. Almost a hundred staff died in a hydro disaster in 2009, for some perspective.
- cm2187 4y ago
  And 200,000 died in a 1975 chinese hydro disaster
dijonman2 4y ago
Nuclear is the best option, no? Of course it has risks but given how awful coal and other traditional power sources run it seems to be the best option. We are only going to use more and more energy, generating and lowering energy costs will be a net positive for all. Especially to support EVs.
- skrause 4y ago
  Well, let's take a look at France: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p... > As the European Union moves to cut ties to Russian oil and gas in the wake of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, France has been betting on its nuclear plants to weather a looming energy crunch. Nuclear power provides about 70 percent of France’s electricity, a bigger share than any other country in the world. But the industry has tumbled into an unprecedented power crisis as EDF confronts troubles ranging from the mysterious emergence of stress corrosion inside nuclear plants to a hotter climate that is making it harder to cool the aging reactors. The outages at EDF, Europe’s biggest electricity exporter, have sent France’s nuclear power output tumbling to its lowest level in nearly 30 years, pushing French electric bills to record highs just as the war in Ukraine is stoking broader inflation. Instead of pumping vast amounts of electricity to Britain, Italy and other European countries pivoting from Russian oil, France faces the unsettling prospect of initiating rolling blackouts this winter and having to import power. Nuclear power is so good that France might have to import energy from German coal power plans next winter to avoid large scale blackouts.
  - hardlianotion 4y ago
    Like most of the western world, France permitted their nuclear capacity to rot while not making sufficient progress to secure other sources of relatively clean energy.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
      No true Scottish nuclear plant, I guess.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - cm2187 4y ago
      In fact president Macron initially intended to reduce nuclear energy to 50% of power generation. One of the many moronic policies he had to walk back (the other big one was further cuts to France’s defence budget).
  - mahkeiro 4y ago
    France currently has half the reactors stopped (28/56), but why? - 7 are stopped for refurbishment as their lifetime extension require important work - 13 are stopped for the corrosion issue detected - 3 are currently replacing the nuclear fuel - 5 are stopped for other technical issue It's true that this year France will only produce 300TWh instead of 350TWh last year which is not the gloom picture that you try to make. By Novembre most of the reactors are planned to be backed online.(https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/energie/infographies-baisse-de-production-nucleaire-prix-du-gaz-risques-de-penuries-sept-graphiques-pour-comprendre-la-crise-energetique-en-france_5245288.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/energie/infographies-ba...) The main problem is that the new reactors that were supposed to come online 10 years ago are still not there, and that the multiple offshore wind generation projects are still blocked!
gambiting 4y ago
>>ignoring all the additional deaths by cancer Which are, at absolute most and at the most pessimistic estimate, at few thousands excess deaths[0]. The same estimates for coal at are thousands.....per year, not for the last 40 years. [0] https://ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2021/chernobyl-at-35-years-an-oncologist-s-perspective/ https://ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2021/chernobyl-at-35-year...
- cute_boi 4y ago
  Well, your comparison might also be invalid because we haven't used nuclear power to the scale coal is used. Maybe if there were many nuclear plants we might have seen many disaster?
  - ajuc 4y ago
    Both nuclear and coal were used more than solar. And solar caused more deaths per MWh produced than nuclear (cause people fall off roofs while installing/maintaining it). If you think scale matters - then you should also think that solar is more risky than nuclear by your own logic (because we're not using it on as big scale).
dna_polymerase 4y ago
It needs a catastrophic fail ihre for nuclear to become deadly for the masses. Germany replaced the nuclear power plants with coal and gas based plants whose Modus operandi is deadly for the masses. Even if you want to shutdown nuclear, Germany did it in an extremely stupid.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Because a picture says more than a thousand words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#/media/File:Energymix_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#/medi... Also: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Energy/Production/Tables/gross-electricity-production.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris... Nuclear power is mainly being replaced by renewables, not coal or gas. Natural gas only accounts for 15% of electricity production, the upcoming gap could probably easily be filled with alternatives. But it's main use isn't electricity, but for heating in private homes and all sort of processes in the industry. About half of all homes are heated with gas, you can't simply flip a switch and replace the gas heating in 20 million homes with electric heating. TL;DR: the pressing problem that needs solving is how to prioritize private homes versus the industry's use of natural gas, even if nuclear power plants would suddenly spring out of the ground for free, they wouldn't help much with this.
  - LunaSea 4y ago
    Oh is that why Germany pressured the EU to qualify gas as "green" energy and block nuclear energy from getting the same qualification?
    - turbinerneiter 4y ago
      Except they didn't block that. Both sources are now qualified as green, gas however only as use for easing the transition.
      - LunaSea 4y ago
elsjaako 4y ago
Genuinely curious, because I haven't heard these arguments before. > Totally ignoring the climate impact of nuclear power What climate impact? I though it was CO2 neutral (except for construction, which has similar costs to wind an solar). A quick google doesn't give me anything. > it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time I thought nuclear was basically a steam boiler, same as coal or gas plants? Why is the control slower for nuclear?
- onli 4y ago
  It is in no way co2 neutral. Its strongest claim is that it emits less co2 than alternatives. This is based on a bunch of assumptions on how hard it is to get the raw material, that the radiated garbage is transported once (to storage that does not exist) etc. So it is bullshit, but it will always be claimed in these comment threads, right next to the lie of Chernobyl having killed basically no-one. Nuclear steam boilers are slow to control as their base reaction takes time to cool up or down. Good for base load, not fast coverage of highs.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  > Why is the control slower for nuclear? Maintaining a critical fission reaction is difficult and in a large plant you might have to coordinate hundreds of people in dozens of locations to reduce power. Starting up a plant takes math and precise measurements, and there’s a natural limit to the speed you can do so or else you can cause a runaway supercritical reaction. Also, to be the most efficient, they are designed to run at near capacity for their lifetimes, and reducing the power would cancel that, so it’s simply not designed into the system to be reactive like that, as opposed to a submarine plant which is designed to power up and down a bit over short time frames.
- turbinerneiter 4y ago
  AFAIK nuclear output can be controlled only in a certain range, but if you go below a certain threshold it shuts off and you then have to restart it, which takes a lot of time. Coal has a similar issue, these plants also can't be turned on and off quickly. In fact, the term "base load" originally was driven more by the minimum amount of power that has to be consumed to keep a plant running. Only now with the move to renewables with varying output the meaning has shifted to the consumption side of things. Gas plants however can be turned on and off and easily, they work similar to aircraft engines. In Germany, the heat produced is then used for district heating, which gives these plants almost perfect efficiency. It's not a coincidence that Germany picked gas as supplement for renewables during the transition to 100% green energy. Gas (in the form of hydrogen directly ~ methane made from hydrogen) is also a key contender for very long term energy storage (in Germany, you have to save energy produced in the summer for use in winter, the batteries needed for that would be roughly in the order of ~50 million Tesla Model S (100kWh) batteries). The cost of overbuilding renewables and storing the energy in gas, with a lower round-trip efficiency, seems to be lower than building the big battery that would be needed. Wind is also better in winter than solar, which is why wind is such an important and hot topic in Germany. Solar doesn't bother anyone, but wind turbines are huge and people can see them in the landscape. Solar does not have this problem, but during the winter, the output goes down to almost nothing.
LunaSea 4y ago
The total number of deaths due to the nuclear energy production works wide is less than the animal number of french people dying due to air pollution by German coal plants.
seszett 4y ago
> Not understanding that nuclear doesn’t play well with renewables (it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time). That's actually not been true for the last 40 years or so. In France, nuclear power plants have been doing load following without problem. They are apparently able to adjust their production by 80% over 30 minutes. One such episode is explained here: https://lenergeek.com/2019/03/07/mix-electrique-nucleaire-tristan-kamin/ https://lenergeek.com/2019/03/07/mix-electrique-nucleaire-tr...
- illiac786 4y ago
  I read the article and I do not see the 80% mentioned. I really would have loved to read this, but they mentioned only 10GW of variation, that's roughly 20% I believe.
  - seszett 4y ago
    Another article talks specifically about the power modulation ability: https://lenergeek.com/2017/09/13/modulation-parc-nucleaire-edf-energies-renouvelables/ https://lenergeek.com/2017/09/13/modulation-parc-nucleaire-e...
    - illiac786 4y ago
      Yes, but they are quoting the EDF paper again — almost verbatim.
BenoitP 4y ago
> it is hard to control the output in a short amount of time Well, France has been doing it just fine for the last 33 years: > [...] flexible operation of nuclear reactors is possible and has been applied in France by EDF’s 58 reactors for more than 30 years without any noticeable or unmanageable impacts: no effects on safety or on the environment, and no noticeable additional maintenance costs, with an additional unplanned capability load factor estimated at only 0.5%. EDF’s nuclear reactors have the capability to vary their output between 20% and 100% within 30 minutes, twice a day, when operating in load-following mode From here (pdf): https://hal-edf.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01977209/document https://hal-edf.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01977209/document
- illiac786 4y ago
  Would love to believe this, but that's EDF writing this. Any other source? Any real life example?

locallost 4y ago

Germany proceeded with their "nuclear exit" in 2011. Had they gone the other way and all in on nuclear, they would be in the same situation as they are today as planning and building nuclear plants takes a lot longer than 10 years. Actually they would be way worse because instead of having 50% of electricity coming from renewables, they would still have 45% of it coming from coal, instead of 25% in 2020 (did not check the latest numbers). On top of all that, for the price they are paying to get renewables basically today, they could only get a fraction of the energy in nuclear. And if that wasn't enough, one of the largest exporters of uranium to the EU is... Russia. One of the worst articles I have ever read in my life.

ThePhysicist 4y ago
The nuclear exit strategy dates back to 2000, so 22 years ago already.
anttisalmela 4y ago
They wouldn't have shut down all the working plants. Not that it matters much, wouldn't have been enough.
- locallost 4y ago
  They were old, some came online in the 60s. Check the situation in France right now -- half of their aging fleet is offline because they basically can't get them to work. The NY Times had an article on it recently.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    > because they basically can't get them to work That's completely BS. More French reactors are off than usual because of delayed scheduled maintenance caused by Covid.
    - throw827474737 4y ago
      Yeah, that problem didn't even exist already pre pandemic, right? Btw, you believe you can maintain those plants forever?

mvgcf 4y ago

This op-ed is getting things so utterly wrong, I don‘t even know where to start. The Energiewende (so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility) here in Germany is working just fine. It is a reasonable investment in our future. The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy. The lack of gas is problematic because it is a preliminary product used in chemical processes. This is where a looming recession might derive from. On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated, especially for the generation of nuclear power plants in use right now. They are expensive both in terms of dollars and in terms of their ecological footprint.

Zanfa 4y ago
> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. Grid-scale storage (apart from hydro, but that's basically maxed out or unsuitable for most geographies) is still an unsolved problem for renewables, even the largest lithium-battery ones are basically a rounding error. You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables. Not even sure if there's enough lithium to make this work theoretically with current tech. > On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated Same is true for every other power source as well. Energy storage for renewables is never included, so you need backups, the €100 billion German defence package announced a few months ago is a direct consequence of "cheap" Russian gas, the millions of people suffering/dying from air pollution related issues from using coal. There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.
- VaxWithSex 4y ago
  It's a solved problem for Germany. Electrolyze Hydrogen, store it in the existing gas infrastructure for the winter. Use the gas plants to burn it in the winter.
  - 4y ago

foepys 4y ago

You can still not safely eat mushrooms from the south-eastern parts of Bavaria because they are still contaminated by the Chernobyl desaster. The anti-nuclear stance is not irrational, it has strong roots in reality.

inglor_cz 4y ago
Could this be case of an extreme regulation, much like "everything is known to cause cancer in the state of California"? Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine are much closer to Chernobyl than Bavaria is, and the populations there regularly pick and eat mushrooms without suffering a wave of extra cancers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

stewbrew 4y ago

I'm tired of these probably nuclear industry backed articles that are wrong and miss the point. 1. Nuclear energy is no solution. See here for an example how things turn out in real life (in German): https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Deutsche-Solaranlagen-haengen-Frankreichs-AKW-ab-article23450534.html https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Deutsche-Solaranlagen-haengen... 2. Germany doesn't really lack electricity. You cannot replace gas in industrial processes that need heat just like that with electricity. If you could, you could also use renewable energy. Things change very slowly on this side.

mvgcf 4y ago
This.
ThePhysicist 4y ago
There's a difference between peak energy production at noon in summer and let's say 10 pm on christmas eve. And yes, the energy grid probably won't collapse in winter, removing 12-16 GW of baseload power will have a strong effect on prices though. Phasing out nuclear could have been fine, it's just that we didn't have any plan to replace it (again, mind the difference between base load and intermittent power production), e.g. no large-scale storage solutions planned whatsoever, which makes us reliant on gas, coal and the EU grid to match supply and demand.
DocTomoe 4y ago
> Germany doesn't really lack electricity. ... yet. There is an interesting report on the ARD Mediathek [1] right now in which - among other nuclear-involved people - the guy responsible the flow of electricity talks about power production and consumption. He points out that while it is true that at some points in time, renewables provided 95% of our consumption, there are still other times where they make up less than 1%. He then proceeds to explain that we do not have the energy storage to survive that, and that such an energy storage - with our current technology - will not be technically feasible, and that our neighbouring countries will not be able to support us if bad comes to worse. His prognosis is that if we proceed with the nuclear shutdown, we will perpetuate coal burning for the foreseeable future. Oh, right, some genius also decided to stop that. We like to think of ourselves to be enlightened trailblazers. But maybe we should take a step back and consider if we might be wrong. [1] https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/dokumentarfilm-im-ersten-atomkraft-forever/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL3JlcG9ydGFnZSBfIGRva3VtZW50YXRpb24gaW0gZXJzdGVuL2MxZmQyNTQ3LWU0MWQtNDEwNy1iNGNlLTA2NmZhYjYyOWZmNA https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/dokus-im-ersten/dokumentar... - the part I'm talking about starts at about 35:35, German only (unfortunately)

RandomLensman 4y ago

There is no quick going back to nuclear power and right now the past is irrelevant - the future matters. Might as well skip on new fission and then maybe build fusion power plants (if and when). By the way: using coal as an emergency backstop if there is no gas was always the official plan.

ssl232 4y ago
Is Germany still capable of mining enough of its own coal for its own needs during such emergencies?
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Kind of, it has a lot lignite mining and still some proper coal. If things last longer it certainly has lignite for quite a while and still thermal coal mining.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  No, but coal wouldn't work the same way as an instrument for political pressure the same way as pipeline-supplied gas does right now. Store enough for a few months and get coal shipped from elsewhere, same infrastructure etc. Buy someone else's shipments if need be, like with LNG currently, lots of poorer places are going to receive less than what they bought because Germany and the EU pay just about anything right now.

planb 4y ago

We don’t have an energy problem. We have a gas problem. I’m open for (re-)discussing nuclear energy here in Germany, but we could run 100% on nuclear or coal and a full gas stop by Russia would still have catastrophic consequences. We need gas for industrial/chemical processes and heating our homes. In fact, if the Energiewende had progressed a bit further, then more houses would have installed a heat pump by now.

ajuc 4y ago
You have foreign policy blindness problem, no independent media problem and most of all - "everything except making cars and exporting them doesn't matter" problem. Otherwise I can't explain how you were so dumb for 3 decades. It's not like Germany is so poor it can't afford to pay 50% more for gas. Or that it couldn't build an LNG terminal just in case. Poland which is much less wealthy - managed to do it. How come nobody in Germany seriously raised these issues for 3 decades? Mainstream didn't care cause industrial output was the only thing that mattered. And EE countries are russophobic, we Germans are so much smarter. They will understand eventually that it's for their own good. You have a lot of rethinking of your foreign policy to do. Germany can't continue to be an informal leader of EU with such obvious incompetency (and I'm charitable here, cause if it's not incompetency it's betrayal).
- ggeorgovassilis 4y ago
  > no independent media This cannot be overstated. The entirety of German media (excluding niche outlets) across the political spectrum align on every important topic.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  > Germany is so poor it can't afford to pay 50% more for gas Germany isn't. Many Germans are. If missing gas leads to industry breaking down, more Germans will be. Germans being made poor, especially for no good reasons other than the decisions of politicians abroad, tends to lead to unintended, but severe consequences. Already, wannabe autocrats are winding up their propaganda. Guess which countries they will have a look at first.

ajuc 4y ago

The funniest thing is - Germany was repeatedly warned by Eastern European states that this (literally this) will happen if they continue to build Nord Stream 1 and then Nord Stream 2 and try to "fix" Russia by trade. Russian government already poisoned Ukrainian presidential candidate in 2004. Killed opposition and journalists both in Russia and in EU. Invaded 2 countries (Chechnia and Georgia - I don't even count Lithuania cause it was technically USSR) and committed war crimes (especially in Chechnia). And Germany just ignored this cause cheap gas and "they will surely change if we just give them money". Like how dumb can you be? Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and probably others warned Germany and the rest of EU about this for decades. Polish president in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia said "Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and then, perhaps, my country - Poland". It wasn't some genius foresight- this was mainstream opinion in Poland and many other EE states for over a decade already. We warned about Russia using the pipelines for blackmail and about their ambitions to recreate USSR against the will of the people in post-communist states. By 2010 Russia already shut down gas for various EE states on several occasions to blackmail or punish them. Germany knew this and just ignored it. Probably cause it "couldn't happen to Germany and fuck EE". In 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time and annexed Crimea. Also supported dictator Assad in murdering his own citizens and used hybrid warfare on EU by helping him push refuges to EU which created a huge political crisis. Germany knew this and still sucked that gas like there's no tommorow and continued to build Nord Stream 2. Last year Russian agents blew up a big ammo warehouse in Czech Republic. Germany still continued with Nord Stream, cause you know, who cares about Czech Republic (their ally in NATO and EU). Oh, BTW - Germany also sold weapons to Russia and helped them train soldiers all through that time. They were supposed to stop after 2014 but they didn't. All the warnings and pleas to stop doing business with Russia and especially to stop sending them weapons and increasing energy dependency were dismissed by Germany (and other EU states to a lesser degree) as "russophobic" because these countries were "understandeably traumatized" and "didn't understand modern global politics". Basically Germany treated us like dumb kids while commiting slow extended suicide. It's mind-boggling how a big European state like Germany with big ambitions and supposedly independent media could be so ignorant for 3 decades with nobody in the country taking the warnings seriously.

Tozen 4y ago

schroeding 4y ago

But even still having all nuclear power plants wouldn't help us much in the current situation, would it? We need gas not for power generation (we do, but that's only ~ 1/6 of the whole consumption, and will be lower if we use gas only to stabilize the power grid - we still have coal power plants on stand-by that can reduce the load on the gas power plants), but for our industry and heating. It's mostly burned directly. Sure, we could have replaced every boiler with a heat pump in the last 10 years, but we didn't. So we need gas for half of all buildings and that cannot be replaced by nuclear power. And we need a steady supply, as many gas boilers have old fuses that kick in if the gas pressure changes, bricking the boiler until a specalist resets it. So we can't even realistically ration it. :(

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Of course the flip side is that Germany is going cold turkey on coal and gas in the next few years. Once that process is completed, it will have a huge head start on other countries looking to slowly transition to being carbon neutral. That's actually a good thing. Short term it's disruptive for sure but it is already leading to huge public spending. Which of course also is the classic recipe to mitigate the risks of any potential recession and might actually set Germany up for huge economic growth soon after. That recession is arguably already happening. I don't think it will stay limited to Germany either. We've experienced those before. It will be fine. Russia may or may not pull the plug on German gas revenue. Hard to tell right now and they don't seem to be very rational right now. But by merely putting the threat on the table, they've set a few things in motion already. Their gas revenues are going to shrink a lot as the result of their recent actions. It's just going to be a function of how badly they need the cash by how quick that process will go. It's more than a little bit academic for me as I live in Berlin which is very dependent on Russian gas for heating and warm water. There's a very real chance I will have to deal with some level of heating and shower issues in the coming winter. I'm fully confident that whatever happens, Germany will figure it out though. Now that it has come this far, I'm actually in favor of ripping off that band aid and get it over with. Putin is threatening me personally with a cold shower. I'll take that cold shower when/if it comes to that. Putin might be good chess player but his poker game sucks. His bluff has been called. And now, we'll see if there ever was more than that. So far it just looks like a country self destroying its economy for no good reason at all.

cm2187 4y ago
I think the revenues will shrink to Russia ultimately as europe will cut its dependancy on gas, but in the short term, the squeeze on gas supply created a price hike that more than offset the reduced volumes for Russia. That may continue and finance Russia’s war.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Of course. The question is when. If they Russia cuts off the gas they basically will just destroy their economy faster. And it's a matter of time before production elsewhere ramps up to compensate. The coming winter will be a challenge, the winter after that it will be solved one way or another. Probably at great cost but it will be a lot less of an issue. Also, Russia needs more than just cash to fuel the war. They are currently cut off from a lot of essential imports and the international market and their army clearly is under-performing because of apparent logistical, supply, and morale issues. I think Germany might prove to have a lot more stamina than Russia. Riding out the next winter without Russian gas won't be fun but it will be able to deal with it. On the other hand, I don't think a second winter in the Ukraine is going turn things around for the Russians either and I think they are well aware of it. So, Putin can commit economical suicide or he can come back to the negotiation table. The question is what he has to bring to the table. It's not looking like he has much to offer.

la_fayette 4y ago

It will be a though challenge, although this text is just a nuclear power marketing. The numbers are also a bit different then reported: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE...

epups 4y ago

Germans simply won't admit this. I talked to some people who are in high positions in the Green Party, and they all have this obviously stupid belief that we will simply switch to renewables instead of reactivating nuclear. What they don't grasp is there is no such option. It's either nuclear or coal/gas. Any argument against nuclear must take into account the extreme damage Germany is doing to the environment with their current strategy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

BurningPenguin 4y ago

Yet another one, who thinks it's about electricity. We don't have much of a problem with that, since gas only makes up about 10% of the energy mix. About 75% of all households in Germany use gas and oil for heating. Your magic nuclear reactor won't change that. Switching those things takes some time, and it won't be done until next winter. All companies specialized in that are already booked out and there is a shortage on the necessary parts to build that stuff.

rich_sasha 4y ago
They are quite fungible for heating. I don't know how prices compare, but UK is on a big drive to replace gas boilers in private homes with heat pumps. The main obstacle is actually poor general building standards and insulation. I believe German standards are quite a bit higher. Basically, the peak temperature produced by air-source heat pumps is lower than that from a boiler, so without better insulation they don't work so well (or something like that).
- BurningPenguin 4y ago
  Idk what the exact differences are. I only know, that newer buildings are already required to have proper insulation, so for those that are built or (properly) renovated in, idk maybe the last 20 years or so, should be fine. But we also have plenty of older buildings, that need some work. That's probably also one of the reasons why many people go for wood pellets to replace the gas heater. Add to that all the really old buildings, that can't be renovated due to urban heritage protections. But as said, all the companies are booked out and parts aren't available fast enough, thanks to outsourcing to China...