7 ms·

> In the first stress test in spring, the German government pointed out that nuclear units would hardly help to save gas as gas demand in Germany was mainly dri

by jamil7 4y ago

> In the first stress test in spring, the German government pointed out that nuclear units would hardly help to save gas as gas demand in Germany was mainly driven by heat production and industrial use. That's what I already thought was the case and the article adds it as the last paragraph. I get a lot of people want to focus on the nuclear angle but it's only one part of a frustrating string of poor energy choices by Germany's politicians. Edit: removed a word.

scythe 4y ago
Germany is not an island. The EU burns plenty of gas for electricity. Germany could simply sell nuclear electricity to other EU members so they will burn less gas. And isn't this kind of cooperation the whole point of the EU?
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Well, currently a lot of electricity goes from Germany to France, as 50% of the French nuclear plants are not operational at the moment. (A lot need maintenance, others are down because of the heat)
  - scythe 4y ago
    This doesn't contradict anything I said. - Everything needs maintenance; nuclear plants are by no means unique in this regard. France may have planned badly, so that many plants are down at once, but this is not a systemic problem with nuclear power. - Europe overall was unprepared for the heat wave, but we are not really concerned with energy demand during heat waves (which are short, and when sunshine is plentiful) but rather during the winter (which is long, and dark in EU). So again, more nuclear capacity in Germany could offset gas-fired power plants throughout EU.
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      I would not be so arrogant to assume the German power industry would solve the problems so much better than the French. The French mostly suffers from the fact that it has become prohibitively expensive to build new reactors. And of course: Germany currently has 3 operational reactors, new ones could be available in 10-15 years earliest. There had been plenty of warnings, because in the last 10 years it was quite common for the French grid to be borderline in the summer, cooling always was a tight spot. And nuclear is a bad offset for gas-fired power plants, as they are rather used as quick power plants, that is something nuclear is the worst at.
      - scythe 4y ago
        >I would not be so arrogant The rest of your comment contradicts this. >The French mostly suffers from the fact that it has become prohibitively expensive to build new reactors. This is another red herring. You complained that French reactors are down for maintenance, I responded to that. Construction costs do not cause reactors to go down for maintenance. To your second paragraph, again, the energy supply in the summer is not the central problem. Existing solar does well in the summer. >And nuclear is a bad offset for gas-fired power plants, as they are rather used as quick power plants, that is something nuclear is the worst at. Alone, this is true. However, batteries take up very little space and large installations can be put up quickly. Solar is nice in the long term but takes a long time to install at reasonable scale.
- freeflight 4y ago
  > Germany could simply sell nuclear electricity to other EU members so they will burn less gas. Germany is already the largest electricity exporter on the planet [0]. Germany is also the only economy of its size class that has an actual renewable share close to 50% [1], while comparable economies, like Japan or the US, hover at around 20% renewables. In that context it's extremely questionable how Germany gets constantly blamed for all kinds of things related to energy, when it was literally were the renewable energy change was pioneered not just technologically [2] but particularly regulation wise [3]. [0] https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country/ https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country... [1] https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewable-energy https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewabl... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
  - scythe 4y ago
    >Germany is already the largest electricity exporter on the planet This is not relevant, again, unless it would be impractical to install more transmission lines. >renewable share Using the wrong statistic is not a good comparison, what matters is the fraction of fossil fuels. The classification of "renewables" here is crafted to specifically exclude nuclear while for some absurd reason permitting hydropower (which is terrible for river ecosystems). If you invent a metric specifically to support your ideology, it supports your ideology. However, it doesn't convince anyone who is paying attention to the facts. >it's extremely questionable how Germany gets constantly blamed It's not Germany that is truly to blame. It's the anti-nuclear movement which is to blame, and Germany is just one of its many victims. However, this movement led Germany to make bad decisions recently, and those decisions can be criticized specifically, regardless of what else was done.
    - freeflight 4y ago
      > This is not relevant, again, unless it would be impractical to install more transmission lines. It is very relevant, why should all the burden to fix all the worlds problems fall exclusively on Germany when Germany already has done so much and was literally the first to recognize the problem? > The classification of "renewables" here is crafted to specifically exclude nuclear Yes, because uranium is not a renewable resource, it's actually a very finite resource. And if you want to see "wrong statistics" playing around with stuff like that, then you need to look at the UK who gets absurdly inflated "electricity from CO2 free sources" shares so it can act like its energy sector is renewable and sustainable, when it's really not. > It's not Germany that is truly to blame. It's the anti-nuclear movement which is to blame Just two paragraphs ago you were arguing for Germany to fix it, and now it's some "anti-nuclear movement to blame", all under a submission that comes from a rather questionable source, with its very own lobby, to begin with [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153029
IMTDb 4y ago
Of current gas demand. The thing is that Germany was planning on significantly increasing their gas demand by building many gas reactors [1] to work in tandem with renewables. Since building new gas plants isn't really an option anymore, and renewable can't produce reliable electricity by themselves regardless of cost, we are back to nuclear. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-needs-20-30-gw-new-gas-plants-ensure-supply-security-rwe-ceo https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-needs-20-30-gw-...
- hannob 4y ago
  > The thing is that Germany was planning on significantly increasing their gas demand by building many gas reactors [1] to work in tandem with renewables. I wanted to explain what's wrong with this statement, because that's simply not true. But I don't have to: You just need to read the text that you linked to: "As Germany ramps up renewables and exits coal and nuclear power, it may need more gas power capacity, which would mostly be put to use at times of high electricity needs and little wind or sunshine – and not necessarily lead to more overall gas consumption."
  - marsven_422 4y ago
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    That’s a really silly statement. You know what would reduce gas consumption even more? Reliable nuclear reactors with constant output.
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      And you still have no dispatchable solution.
    - croes 4y ago
      Nuclear energy is bad at providing flexible output and that's what is needed. And with rising temperatures the exiting power plants aren't reliable at all because the the need cool water supply
b112 4y ago
If every German apartment dweller bought one 1500W, plug in heater, gas use would plummet. It would make a massive difference for this winter.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  Well, don't do that exactly, they're inefficient (but at least they're cheap). Ideal would be every house having a heat pump installed. Then you can heat a home much more efficiently using electricity than just going resistive.
  - Balero 4y ago
    That won't make a massive difference for this winter thought. They need a fix that is going to be months away, not years.
  - thinkcontext 4y ago
    The problem with heat pumps is scale. 30M out of Germany's 40M homes use gas or oil for heat. Last year 150K heat pumps were installed in the country. The government has set a goal of 500K installed per year by 2024 with 6M total reached by 2030. Every one possible should be installed, it just won't make a dent.
  - ParksNet 4y ago
    A lot of homes and apartments already have AC. They are heat pumps. Just use them in heat mode.
  - freeflight 4y ago
    Heat pump hardware, and installation talent, is massively supply constrained and can't keep up with the demand. [0] [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/europes-booming-demand-for-heat-pumps-exposes-bottlenecks/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eur...
- layer8 4y ago
  Gas would have to become much more expensive than electricity for that to happen at scale. Saying “if everyone would do X” isn’t very useful if the incentives aren’t in place that would compel everyone to do X.
thinkcontext 4y ago
Industry and residential heat may be larger users than electricity but its still significant. In 2021 gas produced slightly more of Germany's electricity than nuclear, coal produced over twice as much as nuclear. If more nuclear went offline those numbers worse would be worse. As it is Germany is having to restart old coal and oil generators. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany

by jamil7 4y ago

scythe 4y ago

Germany is not an island. The EU burns plenty of gas for electricity. Germany could simply sell nuclear electricity to other EU members so they will burn less gas. And isn't this kind of cooperation the whole point of the EU?

_ph_ 4y ago
Well, currently a lot of electricity goes from Germany to France, as 50% of the French nuclear plants are not operational at the moment. (A lot need maintenance, others are down because of the heat)
- scythe 4y ago
  This doesn't contradict anything I said. - Everything needs maintenance; nuclear plants are by no means unique in this regard. France may have planned badly, so that many plants are down at once, but this is not a systemic problem with nuclear power. - Europe overall was unprepared for the heat wave, but we are not really concerned with energy demand during heat waves (which are short, and when sunshine is plentiful) but rather during the winter (which is long, and dark in EU). So again, more nuclear capacity in Germany could offset gas-fired power plants throughout EU.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    I would not be so arrogant to assume the German power industry would solve the problems so much better than the French. The French mostly suffers from the fact that it has become prohibitively expensive to build new reactors. And of course: Germany currently has 3 operational reactors, new ones could be available in 10-15 years earliest. There had been plenty of warnings, because in the last 10 years it was quite common for the French grid to be borderline in the summer, cooling always was a tight spot. And nuclear is a bad offset for gas-fired power plants, as they are rather used as quick power plants, that is something nuclear is the worst at.
    - scythe 4y ago
      >I would not be so arrogant The rest of your comment contradicts this. >The French mostly suffers from the fact that it has become prohibitively expensive to build new reactors. This is another red herring. You complained that French reactors are down for maintenance, I responded to that. Construction costs do not cause reactors to go down for maintenance. To your second paragraph, again, the energy supply in the summer is not the central problem. Existing solar does well in the summer. >And nuclear is a bad offset for gas-fired power plants, as they are rather used as quick power plants, that is something nuclear is the worst at. Alone, this is true. However, batteries take up very little space and large installations can be put up quickly. Solar is nice in the long term but takes a long time to install at reasonable scale.
freeflight 4y ago
> Germany could simply sell nuclear electricity to other EU members so they will burn less gas. Germany is already the largest electricity exporter on the planet [0]. Germany is also the only economy of its size class that has an actual renewable share close to 50% [1], while comparable economies, like Japan or the US, hover at around 20% renewables. In that context it's extremely questionable how Germany gets constantly blamed for all kinds of things related to energy, when it was literally were the renewable energy change was pioneered not just technologically [2] but particularly regulation wise [3]. [0] https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country/ https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country... [1] https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewable-energy https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewabl... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
- scythe 4y ago
  >Germany is already the largest electricity exporter on the planet This is not relevant, again, unless it would be impractical to install more transmission lines. >renewable share Using the wrong statistic is not a good comparison, what matters is the fraction of fossil fuels. The classification of "renewables" here is crafted to specifically exclude nuclear while for some absurd reason permitting hydropower (which is terrible for river ecosystems). If you invent a metric specifically to support your ideology, it supports your ideology. However, it doesn't convince anyone who is paying attention to the facts. >it's extremely questionable how Germany gets constantly blamed It's not Germany that is truly to blame. It's the anti-nuclear movement which is to blame, and Germany is just one of its many victims. However, this movement led Germany to make bad decisions recently, and those decisions can be criticized specifically, regardless of what else was done.
  - freeflight 4y ago
    > This is not relevant, again, unless it would be impractical to install more transmission lines. It is very relevant, why should all the burden to fix all the worlds problems fall exclusively on Germany when Germany already has done so much and was literally the first to recognize the problem? > The classification of "renewables" here is crafted to specifically exclude nuclear Yes, because uranium is not a renewable resource, it's actually a very finite resource. And if you want to see "wrong statistics" playing around with stuff like that, then you need to look at the UK who gets absurdly inflated "electricity from CO2 free sources" shares so it can act like its energy sector is renewable and sustainable, when it's really not. > It's not Germany that is truly to blame. It's the anti-nuclear movement which is to blame Just two paragraphs ago you were arguing for Germany to fix it, and now it's some "anti-nuclear movement to blame", all under a submission that comes from a rather questionable source, with its very own lobby, to begin with [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32153029

IMTDb 4y ago

Of current gas demand. The thing is that Germany was planning on significantly increasing their gas demand by building many gas reactors [1] to work in tandem with renewables. Since building new gas plants isn't really an option anymore, and renewable can't produce reliable electricity by themselves regardless of cost, we are back to nuclear. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-needs-20-30-gw-new-gas-plants-ensure-supply-security-rwe-ceo https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-needs-20-30-gw-...

hannob 4y ago
> The thing is that Germany was planning on significantly increasing their gas demand by building many gas reactors [1] to work in tandem with renewables. I wanted to explain what's wrong with this statement, because that's simply not true. But I don't have to: You just need to read the text that you linked to: "As Germany ramps up renewables and exits coal and nuclear power, it may need more gas power capacity, which would mostly be put to use at times of high electricity needs and little wind or sunshine – and not necessarily lead to more overall gas consumption."
- marsven_422 4y ago
- oneoff786 4y ago
  That’s a really silly statement. You know what would reduce gas consumption even more? Reliable nuclear reactors with constant output.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    And you still have no dispatchable solution.
  - croes 4y ago
    Nuclear energy is bad at providing flexible output and that's what is needed. And with rising temperatures the exiting power plants aren't reliable at all because the the need cool water supply

b112 4y ago

If every German apartment dweller bought one 1500W, plug in heater, gas use would plummet. It would make a massive difference for this winter.

CydeWeys 4y ago
Well, don't do that exactly, they're inefficient (but at least they're cheap). Ideal would be every house having a heat pump installed. Then you can heat a home much more efficiently using electricity than just going resistive.
- Balero 4y ago
  That won't make a massive difference for this winter thought. They need a fix that is going to be months away, not years.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  The problem with heat pumps is scale. 30M out of Germany's 40M homes use gas or oil for heat. Last year 150K heat pumps were installed in the country. The government has set a goal of 500K installed per year by 2024 with 6M total reached by 2030. Every one possible should be installed, it just won't make a dent.
- ParksNet 4y ago
  A lot of homes and apartments already have AC. They are heat pumps. Just use them in heat mode.
- freeflight 4y ago
  Heat pump hardware, and installation talent, is massively supply constrained and can't keep up with the demand. [0] [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/europes-booming-demand-for-heat-pumps-exposes-bottlenecks/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eur...
layer8 4y ago
Gas would have to become much more expensive than electricity for that to happen at scale. Saying “if everyone would do X” isn’t very useful if the incentives aren’t in place that would compel everyone to do X.

thinkcontext 4y ago

Industry and residential heat may be larger users than electricity but its still significant. In 2021 gas produced slightly more of Germany's electricity than nuclear, coal produced over twice as much as nuclear. If more nuclear went offline those numbers worse would be worse. As it is Germany is having to restart old coal and oil generators. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany