5 ms·

Errr... How about turn on those Nuclear plants?

option 4y ago
- smcl 4y ago
  If said teenager was in charge of Germany's energy policy they'd be doubling down on Nuclear rather than falling back to Coal
shafyy 4y ago
Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).
- lolinder 4y ago
  Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?
  - fsh 4y ago
    There is currently almost no gas used for electricity generation in Europe (much too expensive). Even under normal conditions, heating and industry consume an order of magnitude more gas than electricity generation.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      EDIT: This is wrong, as the commenter notes below, this is energy, not electricity. Citation? The number that I consistently see cited is 1/4 of all electricity in EU comes from Natural Gas [0]. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
      - fsh 4y ago
        You are citing historical numbers for primary energy (mostly transportation and heating), not for electricity. ElectricityMaps has some live data for electricity generation: https://app.electricitymaps.com https://app.electricitymaps.com
        lolinder 4y ago
        Ah, good catch, my mistake. And thanks for the map! That's exactly what I was looking for.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Do you a citation for that? It seems unlikely that 20-25% of EU electrical generation shifted in the last couple of years. Solar has been cutting demand for more-expensive gas but 20% is still far more than “almost no”. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51258 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51258 > Starting in 2016, consumption of natural gas in Europe’s electric power sector increased as a result of the systematic retirement of coal-fired power plants across Europe and the retirement of nuclear power plants in Germany in particular. https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electricity-review-2022/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electri... > Fossil gas power declined 8% since 2019, generating 18% of EU electricity (524 TWh). I think the underlying discrepancy might be explained by electricitymaps.com reporting real-time usage. It would be very easy to believe that today's usage is not representative of an entire year when you're looking at a brief interval in summer when solar is running at maximum efficiency, heating needs are non-existent, and everyone on the continent has been reacting to the possibility that there might be a gas shortage at any time.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    Gas plants are almost universally peaker plants, designed to quickly ramp up and down, while nuclear plants are almost universally baseload. There’s nothing in principle stopping us from building peaker nuclear reactors, but nobody except the military ever does so. As a result, nuclear largely cannot substitute for gas without massive storage systems that don’t exist.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It could but so would accelerating solar and wind deployments. At this point those are probably more cost effective solutions. Trying to restart a reactor that youve been going through the shutdown process for about 5 years is probably going to cost more. It's super weird how many people think this restarting the nuke plants is a solution. It'll cost a lot and wont make much overall difference. (of course, neither will anything else really... there are zero short term solutions to Germany's russian gas dependence other than kowtowing).
    - lolinder 4y ago
      I wasn't proposing restarting nuclear plants as a solution. I was suggesting Germany made a huge mistake shutting them down in the first place. > (of course, neither will anything else really... there are zero short term solutions to Germany's russian gas dependence other than kowtowing). Kowtowing isn't a solution to Germany's Russian gas dependence, it's accepting it as inevitable. It may be the only solution to Germany's gas shortages.
- acdha 4y ago
  You're forgetting two things: not all natural gas is used for heating and Russia does not supply 100% of the natural gas used in Europe. If a nuclear plant can generate enough electricity to shut down a natural gas plant, the natural gas which would have been burned for electrical production is then available for applications like heating which are hard to quickly replace. Russia supplies about 40-45% of the EU's total natural gas, so there's a big question about how quickly imports can be scaled up. The energy mix in the EU electrical grid is roughly a quarter natural gas so there's a fairly large amount which could potentially be shifted to another electrical source. That leaves the question of how well all of those measures come together along with efficiency improvements and conservation (e.g. getting everyone in the EU to turn their thermostat down by 1°C would be roughly ⅓ of the total Russian imports according to https://www.iea.org/news/how-europe-can-cut-natural-gas-imports-from-russia-significantly-within-a-year https://www.iea.org/news/how-europe-can-cut-natural-gas-impo...). Given how seriously every government in NATO has been taking this, I would not be surprised to see things moving at faster paces than we're used to.
- hatware 4y ago
  > Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. Yeah, turns out that the folks running things put on a hell of a campaign to keep nuclear from being researched, and keep fossil fuel profits rolling in. This is the world we live in. It can take _months_ to switch if we organize ourselves properly, but good luck.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cm2187 4y ago
  Electric heaters are cheap (it's just a glorified resistance). It's easy to switch home heating from gas to electric (with portable devices). Maybe not for every room but enough to survive a winter or two. Water heating is more complicated.
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    Resistance heaters are a very inefficient way to heat (yes, I know they are 100% efficient), and I wonder if the grid could handle a significant number of homes switching to electrical resistance heat? Hopefully the government is already incentivizing switching to heat pumps, but that's not a quick solution.
  - shafyy 4y ago
    The heaters them themselves are cheap, but running them is not. I've done the calculation for my situation last year in Germany, and using the gas heating came out much cheaper (at least with gas prices last year). I think that's because most portable electric room heaters are not as efficient as the built in gas-based heaters. Does anyone know more about this topic?
    - cm2187 4y ago
      Cost isn't even the question. We are talking about a severe gas shortage scenario here.
- rlpb 4y ago
  My understanding is that a significant amount of natural gas is being used for electricity generation. Generate that electricity from another source, and more gas will immediately become available for direct heating. Of course we don't have the capacity to do that today, and that's the problem.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Yes, as I've said before, the problem for Germany and Europe more broadly is that nuclear reactors do not create natural gas.
pydry 4y ago
Bearing in mind the contents of this graph and that unlike gas nuclear power isnt dispatchable, how much difference do you think it would make? 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...
- ars 4y ago
  From that graph it looks like it would solve the problem completely. We are only talking about a 20 or 30% shortfall here.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Besides heating, natural gas is a major component in many industrial processes. It's also used as input for a wide variety of petrochemical products. Can't make those from nuclear power. People tend to overlook that nearly a quarter of all oil & gas goes into non-energy use. I can't think of a single modern product that doesn't use petroleum-based products in some way.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  Yes, but if you reduce natural gas use where there are alternatives, then you free it up for things where it's 100% necessary.

smcl 4y ago
If said teenager was in charge of Germany's energy policy they'd be doubling down on Nuclear rather than falling back to Coal

Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).

lolinder 4y ago
Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?
- fsh 4y ago
  There is currently almost no gas used for electricity generation in Europe (much too expensive). Even under normal conditions, heating and industry consume an order of magnitude more gas than electricity generation.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    EDIT: This is wrong, as the commenter notes below, this is energy, not electricity. Citation? The number that I consistently see cited is 1/4 of all electricity in EU comes from Natural Gas [0]. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
    - fsh 4y ago
      You are citing historical numbers for primary energy (mostly transportation and heating), not for electricity. ElectricityMaps has some live data for electricity generation: https://app.electricitymaps.com https://app.electricitymaps.com
      - lolinder 4y ago
        Ah, good catch, my mistake. And thanks for the map! That's exactly what I was looking for.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Do you a citation for that? It seems unlikely that 20-25% of EU electrical generation shifted in the last couple of years. Solar has been cutting demand for more-expensive gas but 20% is still far more than “almost no”. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51258 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51258 > Starting in 2016, consumption of natural gas in Europe’s electric power sector increased as a result of the systematic retirement of coal-fired power plants across Europe and the retirement of nuclear power plants in Germany in particular. https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electricity-review-2022/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electri... > Fossil gas power declined 8% since 2019, generating 18% of EU electricity (524 TWh). I think the underlying discrepancy might be explained by electricitymaps.com reporting real-time usage. It would be very easy to believe that today's usage is not representative of an entire year when you're looking at a brief interval in summer when solar is running at maximum efficiency, heating needs are non-existent, and everyone on the continent has been reacting to the possibility that there might be a gas shortage at any time.
- Filligree 4y ago
  Gas plants are almost universally peaker plants, designed to quickly ramp up and down, while nuclear plants are almost universally baseload. There’s nothing in principle stopping us from building peaker nuclear reactors, but nobody except the military ever does so. As a result, nuclear largely cannot substitute for gas without massive storage systems that don’t exist.
- pydry 4y ago
  It could but so would accelerating solar and wind deployments. At this point those are probably more cost effective solutions. Trying to restart a reactor that youve been going through the shutdown process for about 5 years is probably going to cost more. It's super weird how many people think this restarting the nuke plants is a solution. It'll cost a lot and wont make much overall difference. (of course, neither will anything else really... there are zero short term solutions to Germany's russian gas dependence other than kowtowing).
  - lolinder 4y ago
    I wasn't proposing restarting nuclear plants as a solution. I was suggesting Germany made a huge mistake shutting them down in the first place. > (of course, neither will anything else really... there are zero short term solutions to Germany's russian gas dependence other than kowtowing). Kowtowing isn't a solution to Germany's Russian gas dependence, it's accepting it as inevitable. It may be the only solution to Germany's gas shortages.
acdha 4y ago
You're forgetting two things: not all natural gas is used for heating and Russia does not supply 100% of the natural gas used in Europe. If a nuclear plant can generate enough electricity to shut down a natural gas plant, the natural gas which would have been burned for electrical production is then available for applications like heating which are hard to quickly replace. Russia supplies about 40-45% of the EU's total natural gas, so there's a big question about how quickly imports can be scaled up. The energy mix in the EU electrical grid is roughly a quarter natural gas so there's a fairly large amount which could potentially be shifted to another electrical source. That leaves the question of how well all of those measures come together along with efficiency improvements and conservation (e.g. getting everyone in the EU to turn their thermostat down by 1°C would be roughly ⅓ of the total Russian imports according to https://www.iea.org/news/how-europe-can-cut-natural-gas-imports-from-russia-significantly-within-a-year https://www.iea.org/news/how-europe-can-cut-natural-gas-impo...). Given how seriously every government in NATO has been taking this, I would not be surprised to see things moving at faster paces than we're used to.
hatware 4y ago
> Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. Yeah, turns out that the folks running things put on a hell of a campaign to keep nuclear from being researched, and keep fossil fuel profits rolling in. This is the world we live in. It can take _months_ to switch if we organize ourselves properly, but good luck.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cm2187 4y ago
Electric heaters are cheap (it's just a glorified resistance). It's easy to switch home heating from gas to electric (with portable devices). Maybe not for every room but enough to survive a winter or two. Water heating is more complicated.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  Resistance heaters are a very inefficient way to heat (yes, I know they are 100% efficient), and I wonder if the grid could handle a significant number of homes switching to electrical resistance heat? Hopefully the government is already incentivizing switching to heat pumps, but that's not a quick solution.
- shafyy 4y ago
  The heaters them themselves are cheap, but running them is not. I've done the calculation for my situation last year in Germany, and using the gas heating came out much cheaper (at least with gas prices last year). I think that's because most portable electric room heaters are not as efficient as the built in gas-based heaters. Does anyone know more about this topic?
  - cm2187 4y ago
    Cost isn't even the question. We are talking about a severe gas shortage scenario here.
rlpb 4y ago
My understanding is that a significant amount of natural gas is being used for electricity generation. Generate that electricity from another source, and more gas will immediately become available for direct heating. Of course we don't have the capacity to do that today, and that's the problem.
missedthecue 4y ago
Yes, as I've said before, the problem for Germany and Europe more broadly is that nuclear reactors do not create natural gas.

pydry 4y ago

Bearing in mind the contents of this graph and that unlike gas nuclear power isnt dispatchable, how much difference do you think it would make? 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...

ars 4y ago
From that graph it looks like it would solve the problem completely. We are only talking about a 20 or 30% shortfall here.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Besides heating, natural gas is a major component in many industrial processes. It's also used as input for a wide variety of petrochemical products. Can't make those from nuclear power. People tend to overlook that nearly a quarter of all oil & gas goes into non-energy use. I can't think of a single modern product that doesn't use petroleum-based products in some way.

Johnny555 4y ago
Yes, but if you reduce natural gas use where there are alternatives, then you free it up for things where it's 100% necessary.