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See how this strategy is turning out in Germany right now, turns out this "cheap cheap cheap energy" was not including the diplomatic, environmental and financi

See how this strategy is turning out in Germany right now, turns out this "cheap cheap cheap energy" was not including the diplomatic, environmental and financial costs of the gas backups.

croes 4y ago
How was the nuclear nuclear nuclear energy in France going? Germany had to burn more gas to substitute for France's downtime of nuclear power plants. The cost and time for the construction of new one not included and the risk of sabotage not mentioned. I bet russia will at least try to damage them as a revenge for the help of Ukraine.
- themaninthedark 4y ago
  Well, if Germany had more nuclear power they would not be burning gas to help France during the French downtime now would they? Nor would they be restarting coal power plants, the dirtiest form of energy. It's funny how the Green idea of a large grid that shares power, i.e. it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls flat when the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no longer blowing. The only fault of France is trusting Germany to have a sane power production plan when they entered a peering agreement with them.
  - croes 4y ago
    If Germany would have more nuclear power plants it would have more nuclear waste without nuclear repository. More problems like Asse and Brunsbüttel
    - croes 4y ago
      >it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls flat when the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no longer blowing. There is a difference between the outage of an nuclear power plant and the outage of wind turbine. One power plant less has a much bigger effect than thousand wind turbines without wind. Nuclear power plants are the equivalent of Cloudflare, one outage has massive effects. Wind turbines are decentralization and that's better especially since Russia return as the bad guy. Didn't hear much fear about Ukrainian wind turbines but lits of worries about nuclear power plants.
      - themaninthedark 4y ago
        Yes, one nuclear power plant has greater output than a large number of wind turbine. That is not what the analogy was about. The analogy is about how people pushing for wind and solar only/main are relying on every other area to be able to pick up the slack when their area is down. And the fact that they are not able or willing to pick up the slack when someone else's area is down. Your comment was that Germany is having to support France while they have their reactors down and viewing that in a negative light. If France was supplying power to Germany during a lull in the wind, the response would be "This is just so, even though the wind does not blow all the time, with enough interconnects we can ensure that a green grid is possible." There was even talk about expanding Europe's grid across to Libya in order to ensure that the wind would be blowing somewhere. That is just holding one energy source to an impossible standard(i.e. zero downtime) while giving generous excuses to the other.
      - realusername 4y ago
        You can't replace a nuclear plant with wind turbines. Just to replace Fessenheim (the french plant the greens closed), you would need 20k turbines ... without taking into account backups
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/2338-mingyang-myse16.0-242 https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/2338-mingyang-my... Last I checked 1840 was not 20,000 times 16. And an ancient leaking nuclear plant barely has a higher capacity factor than current gen offshore wind.
        realusername 4y ago
        A typical wind turbine on earth is more like 1.5MW... This outlier isn't representative of anything and it's not like you can build sea turbines ... in the east of France. > And an ancient leaking nuclear plant According to whom? Not the nuclear safety bodies at least. > current gen offshore wind. Those are a bit worse than nuclear plants but take roughly the same time to build anyways, the one in France which just went into production took 10 years of development + 4 years of planning so about 14 years.
    - themaninthedark 4y ago
      So Germany's inability to deal with their nuclear wast excuses them from spewing waste(CO2) out the end of a smokestack that we all have to deal with? How is France dealing with their waste? Can Germany pay France to take it?
      - croes 4y ago
        France still has no definitive way to cope with it's nuclear waste. Germany's CO2 output is thanks to some politicians who sabotaged the expansion of renewable energy on purpose.
        realusername 4y ago
        Germany spent 2x the whole french grid just on renewables already and it still does not work. How much do they need to spend? 4x, 10x ?
- realusername 4y ago
  Nuclear issues in France are due to the french greens who lobbied to stop investments hoping that renewables would take over (hence the crisis because they were wrong) The crisis in both countries is caused by renewables, just in different ways
  - lispm 4y ago
    That's nonsense. The crisis in France is because of aging reactors needing quite more maintenance. The reactor France builds is many years late and extremely expensive. France has for decades extremely nuclear friendly governments. The actual problem is money, number of engineers, technical capabilities, ...
    - realusername 4y ago
      The investments stopped on the last 20 years because the greens thought that renewables would take over, they even put the reduction of nuclear straight into the law. To my knowledge, that's the only form of energy with a specific target of reduction in the law, not even petrol is subject to it. The truth is that the nuclear grid is holding up quite well considering those facts, I don't know anything else where which would still work after two decades being forced to sell electricity below production costs to "competitors" (another subject) > France has for decades extremely nuclear friendly governments No it hasn't since the 90s at best.
      - lispm 4y ago
        > the greens There were never greens in the French government. > they even put the reduction of nuclear straight into the law after decades of little investing in renewable energy, which is now cheap. France has a long coast and lots of sunshine... Example: there are thousands of offshore wind turbines in Europe. A tiny fraction of those are in France. > two decades being forced to sell electricity below production The French nuclear industry now is mostly government owned. It picked up the failed business of EDF, which had debt of around 60 billion euros from exploding costs of new reactor constructions. It was always a political instrument to sell cheap electricity, while the tax payer pays for the hidden additional costs.
- lispm 4y ago
  Gas in Germany is mostly used for heating. There is not much Germany can do with gas to support France, where 26 (!!) nuclear reactors are offline. France supplies Germany with gas. Germany tries to support France with some electricity, but the majority of the will come from coal or renewables.
epistasis 4y ago
When Germany bought a lot of solar, it was not cheap. Germany's purchase are one reason that solar is so cheap today.

See how this strategy is turning out in Germany right now, turns out this "cheap cheap cheap energy" was not including the diplomatic, environmental and financial costs of the gas backups.

croes 4y ago

How was the nuclear nuclear nuclear energy in France going? Germany had to burn more gas to substitute for France's downtime of nuclear power plants. The cost and time for the construction of new one not included and the risk of sabotage not mentioned. I bet russia will at least try to damage them as a revenge for the help of Ukraine.

themaninthedark 4y ago
Well, if Germany had more nuclear power they would not be burning gas to help France during the French downtime now would they? Nor would they be restarting coal power plants, the dirtiest form of energy. It's funny how the Green idea of a large grid that shares power, i.e. it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls flat when the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no longer blowing. The only fault of France is trusting Germany to have a sane power production plan when they entered a peering agreement with them.
- croes 4y ago
  If Germany would have more nuclear power plants it would have more nuclear waste without nuclear repository. More problems like Asse and Brunsbüttel
  - croes 4y ago
    >it's always windy somewhere, suddenly falls flat when the neighbors wind(nuclear, in this case) is no longer blowing. There is a difference between the outage of an nuclear power plant and the outage of wind turbine. One power plant less has a much bigger effect than thousand wind turbines without wind. Nuclear power plants are the equivalent of Cloudflare, one outage has massive effects. Wind turbines are decentralization and that's better especially since Russia return as the bad guy. Didn't hear much fear about Ukrainian wind turbines but lits of worries about nuclear power plants.
    - themaninthedark 4y ago
      Yes, one nuclear power plant has greater output than a large number of wind turbine. That is not what the analogy was about. The analogy is about how people pushing for wind and solar only/main are relying on every other area to be able to pick up the slack when their area is down. And the fact that they are not able or willing to pick up the slack when someone else's area is down. Your comment was that Germany is having to support France while they have their reactors down and viewing that in a negative light. If France was supplying power to Germany during a lull in the wind, the response would be "This is just so, even though the wind does not blow all the time, with enough interconnects we can ensure that a green grid is possible." There was even talk about expanding Europe's grid across to Libya in order to ensure that the wind would be blowing somewhere. That is just holding one energy source to an impossible standard(i.e. zero downtime) while giving generous excuses to the other.
    - realusername 4y ago
      You can't replace a nuclear plant with wind turbines. Just to replace Fessenheim (the french plant the greens closed), you would need 20k turbines ... without taking into account backups
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/2338-mingyang-myse16.0-242 https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/2338-mingyang-my... Last I checked 1840 was not 20,000 times 16. And an ancient leaking nuclear plant barely has a higher capacity factor than current gen offshore wind.
        realusername 4y ago
        A typical wind turbine on earth is more like 1.5MW... This outlier isn't representative of anything and it's not like you can build sea turbines ... in the east of France. > And an ancient leaking nuclear plant According to whom? Not the nuclear safety bodies at least. > current gen offshore wind. Those are a bit worse than nuclear plants but take roughly the same time to build anyways, the one in France which just went into production took 10 years of development + 4 years of planning so about 14 years.
  - themaninthedark 4y ago
    So Germany's inability to deal with their nuclear wast excuses them from spewing waste(CO2) out the end of a smokestack that we all have to deal with? How is France dealing with their waste? Can Germany pay France to take it?
    - croes 4y ago
      France still has no definitive way to cope with it's nuclear waste. Germany's CO2 output is thanks to some politicians who sabotaged the expansion of renewable energy on purpose.
      - realusername 4y ago
        Germany spent 2x the whole french grid just on renewables already and it still does not work. How much do they need to spend? 4x, 10x ?
realusername 4y ago
Nuclear issues in France are due to the french greens who lobbied to stop investments hoping that renewables would take over (hence the crisis because they were wrong) The crisis in both countries is caused by renewables, just in different ways
- lispm 4y ago
  That's nonsense. The crisis in France is because of aging reactors needing quite more maintenance. The reactor France builds is many years late and extremely expensive. France has for decades extremely nuclear friendly governments. The actual problem is money, number of engineers, technical capabilities, ...
  - realusername 4y ago
    The investments stopped on the last 20 years because the greens thought that renewables would take over, they even put the reduction of nuclear straight into the law. To my knowledge, that's the only form of energy with a specific target of reduction in the law, not even petrol is subject to it. The truth is that the nuclear grid is holding up quite well considering those facts, I don't know anything else where which would still work after two decades being forced to sell electricity below production costs to "competitors" (another subject) > France has for decades extremely nuclear friendly governments No it hasn't since the 90s at best.
    - lispm 4y ago
      > the greens There were never greens in the French government. > they even put the reduction of nuclear straight into the law after decades of little investing in renewable energy, which is now cheap. France has a long coast and lots of sunshine... Example: there are thousands of offshore wind turbines in Europe. A tiny fraction of those are in France. > two decades being forced to sell electricity below production The French nuclear industry now is mostly government owned. It picked up the failed business of EDF, which had debt of around 60 billion euros from exploding costs of new reactor constructions. It was always a political instrument to sell cheap electricity, while the tax payer pays for the hidden additional costs.
lispm 4y ago
Gas in Germany is mostly used for heating. There is not much Germany can do with gas to support France, where 26 (!!) nuclear reactors are offline. France supplies Germany with gas. Germany tries to support France with some electricity, but the majority of the will come from coal or renewables.

epistasis 4y ago

When Germany bought a lot of solar, it was not cheap. Germany's purchase are one reason that solar is so cheap today.