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> 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

> 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)

epups 4y ago
It's amazing how many well intentioned people cannot grasp this very simple point. There is no way to run a grid solely on solar and wind. Therefore the choice isn't between those and nuclear, it's between nuclear and coal/gas.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  And now the fourth largest economy in the world with a huge and extremely capable engineering base is committed to finding a way. Given that storage and other supporting tech for renewables has so far received hardly any serious funding at all, I think it's quite realistic to expect a success story there. Just consider what the many billions invested into fracking tech did to the US accessible gas reserves, and that wasn't thought to be technologically and economically feasible by most knowledgeable people either. A fully renewable grid really is terra incognita, no one's done that before, of course there are a lot of open questions. But being a trailblazer might pay off handsomely if it does work out well, as others will want such a grid too.
  - epups 4y ago
    Sure, I support that. But one thing doesn't preclude the other. Invest in nuclear now to get rid of coal, and at the same time invest in research that may or may not pay off.
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      Olkiluoto is bound to be 13 years late at four times the budget, the other ones in France and the UK look like they're going the same way, and Germany demonstrably sucks at these large-scale projects (think BER airport), so any new reactors probably wouldn't be ready before the 2040s, but they would be ridiculously expensive. That kind of money buys a lot of storage research and solar capacity.
      - epups 4y ago
        Ok, so since Germany is slow at building existing stuff, it will somehow be better at building non-existing, future tech stuff. Until then, gas and coal and we kill thousands.
        dividedbyzero 4y ago
        > it will somehow be better at building non-existing, future tech stuff Those power plants and the Berlin airport went the way they did because of the immense corruption around such extremely large, expensive, long-term construction projects. There's a whole sector in construction exploiting the inane legislation around these things. There's no way that's going to change anytime soon, and it's not a purely German issue either (as the European nuclear projects demonstrate). At least so far, the push into renewables looks like it will require very few such monolithic large-scale projects at all, and even then, they should be a lot less complex and cheaper than the current generation of nuclear plants (and a lot faster to build). A lot of the concepts for storage are also well-suited to a distributed build-out, and that involves making people order a bunch of things from China, set them up and network them, which we're all doing all the time anyway and which tends to works pretty efficiently. The whole thing is by no means a guaranteed short-term success, but I'd say the chances of this working out nicely aren't bad at all.

epups 4y ago

It's amazing how many well intentioned people cannot grasp this very simple point. There is no way to run a grid solely on solar and wind. Therefore the choice isn't between those and nuclear, it's between nuclear and coal/gas.

dividedbyzero 4y ago
And now the fourth largest economy in the world with a huge and extremely capable engineering base is committed to finding a way. Given that storage and other supporting tech for renewables has so far received hardly any serious funding at all, I think it's quite realistic to expect a success story there. Just consider what the many billions invested into fracking tech did to the US accessible gas reserves, and that wasn't thought to be technologically and economically feasible by most knowledgeable people either. A fully renewable grid really is terra incognita, no one's done that before, of course there are a lot of open questions. But being a trailblazer might pay off handsomely if it does work out well, as others will want such a grid too.
- epups 4y ago
  Sure, I support that. But one thing doesn't preclude the other. Invest in nuclear now to get rid of coal, and at the same time invest in research that may or may not pay off.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Olkiluoto is bound to be 13 years late at four times the budget, the other ones in France and the UK look like they're going the same way, and Germany demonstrably sucks at these large-scale projects (think BER airport), so any new reactors probably wouldn't be ready before the 2040s, but they would be ridiculously expensive. That kind of money buys a lot of storage research and solar capacity.
    - epups 4y ago
      Ok, so since Germany is slow at building existing stuff, it will somehow be better at building non-existing, future tech stuff. Until then, gas and coal and we kill thousands.
      - dividedbyzero 4y ago
        > it will somehow be better at building non-existing, future tech stuff Those power plants and the Berlin airport went the way they did because of the immense corruption around such extremely large, expensive, long-term construction projects. There's a whole sector in construction exploiting the inane legislation around these things. There's no way that's going to change anytime soon, and it's not a purely German issue either (as the European nuclear projects demonstrate). At least so far, the push into renewables looks like it will require very few such monolithic large-scale projects at all, and even then, they should be a lot less complex and cheaper than the current generation of nuclear plants (and a lot faster to build). A lot of the concepts for storage are also well-suited to a distributed build-out, and that involves making people order a bunch of things from China, set them up and network them, which we're all doing all the time anyway and which tends to works pretty efficiently. The whole thing is by no means a guaranteed short-term success, but I'd say the chances of this working out nicely aren't bad at all.