34 ms·

The five-year engineering feat Germany pulled off in months

197 points by wallflower 4y ago

blamazon 4y ago
https://archive.ph/r0j21 https://archive.ph/r0j21
tommek4077 4y ago
The main point here was to remove certain blocking rights of environmentalists, that normally block such projects for years. They still can go to court but this is not blocking anything anymore. If someone brings real issues up, they now can be handled while building, nit in the planning phase as before.
- hnhg 4y ago
  The whole point is about identifying real issues before it is too late. And it is not like German politics is free of corruption.
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    Growing up, Germany always seemed like a paragon of virtue. Starting somewhere around the VW Emissions Scandal, my view has changed. Did Germany change over the last 20 years, or were my perceptions off from the get-go?
    - magic_hamster 4y ago
      That's a fascinating opinion, as I've never thought of Germany being a symbol of virtue. If anything, Germany is a paragon of bureaucracy. They have excellent engineering when used for good, but as history taught us, that's not always the case.
      - hnlmorg 4y ago
        Your comment here sounds like it is referencing WW2, which is a little silly. Germany changed massively after that (I mean, it was literally two countries for a few decades). Governments can look very different from one decade to the next. So it doesn’t make sense to reference a war-time government from 80 years ago as an example of how a current government behaves.
      - petesergeant 4y ago
        Maybe it's a Cold War propaganda relic? Growing up as an Englisher, history was divided into "Bad Germany" (1930-1945), and "Good (West) Germany", ever since, and the only real stereotype we had of the Germans was that they'd get up early to stake out spots by the pool on holiday. I have to assume that during the Cold War there was a great deal of propaganda highlighting the relative merits of West Germans.
        someweirdperson 4y ago
        Many regulations from before and even during the war are still valid today.
        andrepd 4y ago
        Yes. Most Nazis which held high-ranking posts before and during the war continued to do so in West Germany, under allied consent.
      - gumboza 4y ago
        Yes I have a German friend who spends 3 months a year filing their tax situation. German paperwork is insane. And because a lot of the country is surprisingly technologically backwards, everything is on actual paper still. Takes me about an hour to do the same in the UK and half of that is trying to remember how to log in and do it.
        lnsru 4y ago
        It’s just not true. Elster is already electronic for couple years. If you know what are doing it takes 4 hours max. I recommend your friend to find good tax advisor if he/she is not capable to do it by himself/herself.
    - herrherrmann 4y ago
      There’s an incredible amount of corruption among German politicians, especially among the “richer” parties CDU/CSU and FDP who are constantly being lobbied and bought by managers in the bigger industries (e.g. automobile and construction). That’s one of the reasons why Germany is so behind with environmental issues, technology/digitalization, and government transparency.
      - JanSt 4y ago
        Ah sure the CDU-Gazprom connection, who doesn‘t remember? (the left is equally corrupt as the liberals/conservatives)
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - someweirdperson 4y ago
        > technology/digitalization This isn't held back by the bigger industries but by entrenched boundaries of responsibilities in the administration (defined in the regulations), data protection, and over-engineering. Latest example: Warning the population. Instead of simply sending SMS to all active phones in an area, it has to be cell broadcast, which doesn't work on old phones. The reason seems to be (information in media is... limited) that sending SMS would not provide a way to send a cancel/warning-end message. That's only possible with cell broadcast. And that hasn't been used so far due to data protection concerns (there's a list of phones that have been warned, i.e. were in the affected area). We cannot solve things the simple way.
        hef19898 4y ago
        Oh, it aboslutely is held back by creative lobbying. Back in late 90s / early 2000s, Telekom (recently privatized telecom monopolist and owner of the landline network) lobbied hard against building up a fibre network by over selling wire based DSL using existing copper lines. Germany still pays for this.
        foepys 4y ago
    - beardedman 4y ago
      Your perceptions were off. They have excellent engineering culture, which has bolstered every part of the economy & allowed them to perform poorly almost everywhere else IMO.
      - formerly_proven 4y ago
        Germany has been coasting on the inertia of the economic power provided by its industry for a very long time.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I think Germans are asking similar questions. Brandenburg Airport was delayed a lot and for things which ought never to have gone wrong. I think Merkel made a joke about there still being plenty of high-quality German engineers, just that they all worked in Switzerland. But ich bin Ausländer, and my German isn't good enough to do an in-depth analysis of local media opinions on any topic, so I may just be focusing on a few headline cases and mistaking the details for the gestalt.
      - thomasz 4y ago
        The foreign conception of Germany as a paragon of effectiveness always did sound weird to me. The whole political system is set up to require broad consensus to move anything forward. That makes it really difficult to get any meaningful change out of that political system, unless there is a real, tangible pain that is felt throughout most of society. On the other hand, it should be noted that this approach has important positive effects.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - terminalcommand 4y ago
      Don't forget about the Wirecard scandal as well.
      - formerly_proven 4y ago
        Actually that dude was from Austria.
        terminalcommand 4y ago
        Didn't he operate in Germany? The country that allowed the fraud was Germany.
        konha 4y ago
        Exactly. The scandal wasn’t so much that a company defrauded investors (happens) but that regulators didn’t catch on to it and actively interfered with attempts to uncover it.
        ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        >Actually that dude was from Austria. This is not the first time some Austrian dude causes trouble in Germany :)
      - hackandthink 4y ago
        WireCard was really bad. Journalists (FT) who investigated and reported on the Wirecard scam were prosecuted. BaFin (Financial Supervisory Authority) supported WireCard (prohibiting short selling). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard#Berichterstattung_der_Financial_Times_und_Zeit_danach https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard#Berichterstattung_der...
    - lnsru 4y ago
      Since the businesses of relatives work/-ed for some time with big German businesses I heard from them locally unheard stories about cash only payments for the delivery drivers and re labeling the products with “made in Germany stickers” big style. I also used to work with experienced Siemens guys. They told me about old Siemens business development practices. Bribing clients was so normal like eating lunch every day. And now Germany has a chancellor involved in CumEx business in the past. For me Germany is another corrupt shady country with rich puppeteers pulling the strings from the shadows. Paragon of virtue is elsewhere.
      - ShredKazoo 4y ago
        >Paragon of virtue is elsewhere. Genuinely curious which countries HN users think are actually paragons of virtue. Multiple times, I've had the experience of thinking a country is a paragon of virtue, then finding a thread here or on reddit full of people from that country complaining about it... Seems like Singapore, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, and the Netherlands are the "paragon of virtue" countries people complain about the least.
        andrepd 4y ago
        Singapore is an authoritarian one-party state and Netherlands has the tax haven problem. I'd at least count them off.
        actionfromafar 4y ago
        The Netherlands are captured by narcotics “gangs”. They have corrupted courts and politicians. Too much money for too small country.
        noiwillnot 4y ago
        As an continental European, first time I heard about Netherlands as a "paragon of virtue". Is this some UK/US talking point?
        4y ago
    - hannob 4y ago
      You may want to check these for corruption scandals in Germany more than 20 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_affair
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      If you have one of the "cheater" VW diesels, and you smoke one cigarette while driving 100 miles, you have emitted more excess pollution than the car. The "Emissions Scandal" is largely bunk.
    - Garlef 4y ago
      > Did Germany change over the last 20 years, or were my perceptions off from the get-go? There has always been corruption. Germany under Kohl was also called Bimbesrepublik at times. "bimbes" being a cutesy/deragatory term for money in Kohl's idiom. https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5883815/Ab-heute-steht-die-Bimbesrepublik-vor-Gericht.html https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5883815/Ab-he...
      - tartoran 4y ago
        Petty or serious corruption? I too had quite good perceptions of Germany and they’re changing as of late
        luckylion 4y ago
        I believe it's mostly just that more comes to light these days and private media companies are more willing to poke at it. A lot of it is also not super extreme, so you can argue it away if you want to and squint on each individual item, and ignore the sum.
    - verisimi 4y ago
      I think this was a fake scandal. The aim was to engineer a legislative and social move away from petrol and diesel cars, and engineer acceptance in environmental restrictions (or greater governance), in support of the fake climate crisis, that no one has seen. Except in statistics. Most of what we see are meta narratives playing out, that are meant to capture the minds, and get us to consent willingly to greater governance. Turkeys voting for Christmas.
      - andrepd 4y ago
        I struggle to comprehend the mental gymnastics where laws that prevent other people from gassing you are "taking away your freedom".
        verisimi 4y ago
        I didn't say anything about taking away freedom. I said - "get us to consent willingly to greater governance". You believe the stories you are told, you trust the emissions testing, you trust the government to do something, the law-making process, the corrections to the bad acts on the part of corporations, etc. You've literally no idea whether any of that is true! I doubt you even think you are being gassed by cars. But you probably support early scraping of functional cars, subsidising of electric cars (even though they are dirty to produce and not fit for purpose), artificially increasing the cost of travel (fuel taxes), food production, deliveries, etc, you support forcing cumbersome travel options on everyone (public transport accessible via tracking ids), decreasing parking, pedestrianising of areas, etc. But these options are not ones you wanted either! You have simply been told they are good, you are saving the planet. You might not believe in religion, while you pay penance for your sinful nature. In the past, towns and cities were engineered in order to provide access for cars - people then were told that was good, and believed it! It seems to me, that whatever government tells people is good, if they see it on a screen, they believe it! Even though they are actually poorer and have less options. Its amazing to me, that this is all it takes! To take ever more money from people, for less - you simply tell them on TV! And I'm the one doing mental gymnastics! Do you actually notice the world at all? Do you verify any of your cherished beliefs? Has the water risen? Is it warmer? Was weather ever unchanging?
    - croes 4y ago
      They didn't. Remember the decades of corruption they found in Greece? Companies like Siemens were the ones who bribed greece politicians.
    - croes 4y ago
      BTW lots of that "virtue" is based on the fact that some things deemed illegal in countries are legal in germany. For instance if you pay a politician after they have done you a "favor" it's not corruption, it only is if you pay the beforehand. For years Germany is urged to implement certain anti-corruption laws but they don't do it because it would hinder their "politcal work".
    - coffeeblack 4y ago
      It changed quite a bit.
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    - philipkglass 4y ago
      I had a similar rosy view of the Japanese nuclear industry in 2010. After the Fukushima accident in 2011, I found that it would have been prevented if the Fukushima plant had followed regulations as strict as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires, or if it had just built protections like the nearby Onagawa plant had built [1]. With further digging, I found that Japan had a rather poor nuclear safety culture before Fukushima too [2] [3]. I had even read about the 1999 criticality accident around the time it happened but downplayed its significance in my mind. Due to a combination of excellent consumer products exported from Japan and positive cultural stereotypes circulating in the US about Japanese attention to rules and quality, I incorrectly discounted prior evidence of defective nuclear safety culture in Japan. With hindsight I also think that language barriers play a role in leaning on stereotypes. When companies with English-speaking employees have internal problems that leadership is ignoring, I can read complaints from lower level employees (anonymous or otherwise) posted online. But I don't know where Japanese power plant workers hang out online. Even if I did I wouldn't be able to understand what they're writing. So my views get colored more by whatever makes it into English-language media, which may be less representative. [1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0379 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.037... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#1995_sodium_leak_and_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#1995...
- mrweasel 4y ago
  That honestly completely insane that the legal process makes up for the vast majority of time in infrastructure projects like this. I'm all for environmental concerns, taking in complaint from future neighbors, all that stuff, but allowing it to drag out important projects years is problematic. Sometimes I feel like listing to possible complains from people living around affected areas is a waste of time. Denmark pretty much can't build windmills anymore, because they will: "Ruin my view". Seriously, the city I live in wants to close a coal fired power plant, and replace it with a number of windmills, on the same plot of land, but no, that will ruin someones view (which is currently a power plant). You also can't do cell phone towers, because they are ugly (fair enough), yet you still allow yourself to complain about poor coverage in the same area.
  - Lutger 4y ago
    On the one hand: I agree that years of delay are pretty wasteful, considering a lot of projects are really needed to solve urgent problems. With windmills, the same thing happened in my village, which was all up in arms against them. On the other hand, democracy is inherently slow and wasteful, if you want to protect also the rights of the minority, that will have a cost. What if it isn't something like windmills that clearly are a net improvement for society over coal, and the objections aren't merely 'not a nice view'? For example, suppose some big corp wants to frack the environment to pieces for big bucks, leaving a poisoned, nearly unlivable habitat for the nearby village. How can we safeguard against this, in a way that the village inhabitants can protest against such threats with real teeth, without grinding everything to a halt that is a mere nuisance but offers real benefits to society?
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      Democracy is not inherently slow and wasteful, as you see here Germany created this large project in short order. They did not abandon democracy to achieve it. The key is that the "environmentalists", politicians, judiciary, activists, and people who would block the process were threatened with feeling the pain of the missing infrastructure. Amazing how quickly they abandon their high horses when it looks like it will cost them something, then it's full throttle with construction and fossil fuels. They like to be "all in this together" when they're inflicting this kind of pain on others though, so what seems to be inherent is people's desire to wield power and authority over others.
- Angostura 4y ago
  The road to environmental destruction is paved with "we'll sort it out later"
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    I don't know why this comment was down-voted. I feel exactly the same. When I saw the news source, Wall Street Journal, I wasn't surprised to see how much the article focused on sweeping away "pesky" environmental laws. Ask anyone who lived in Germany, UK, US, Japan in the 1970s. They can tell you all about life before environmental laws. It was hell. And sadly, the narrative is always stolen away by complaints about "my view will be ruined", ignoring all of the good these laws do for our environment. It would be better to improve the environmental laws to exclude "views" as something to be protected.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      > It was hell. That's crazy, and no, it wasn't. Yes, there was lots of pollution. No, it wasn't hell. And much of what enables the high quality of life today with less pollution is build upon what was done then. > It would be better to improve the environmental laws to exclude "views" as something to be protected. And to be more focused on humans. If you weigh a city's needs vs that of field mice and you side with the activists who pretend to speak for the field mice, you've lost sight of what's important.
      - asadotzler 4y ago
        >And to be more focused on humans. If you weigh a city's needs vs that of field mice and you side with the activists who pretend to speak for the field mice, you've lost sight of what's important. If you side with the humans in cities, and the only environmental laws you have are for their protection, you will screw your rural neighbors something awful. Countries already under-fund and often abuse the rights of rural communities and their citizens, which make up over 25% of the European people. Sure, the 75% in urban areas are able to out-vote the 25% rural population, but that doesn't make screwing over your neighbors a good thing.
- _the_inflator 4y ago
  Yes, but to add some context to it: The very party that initiated this complex, was previously instrumental in installing environmental blocking rights, Habeck's Green Party. ;)
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Where you stand depends on where you sit.
blamazon 4y ago
LNG is pretty fascinating technology. A real product of our times. Have you ever seen the inside of an LNG tanker pressure vessel? Allow me to show you! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Liquid_natural_gas_membrane_tank.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Liquid_n... I don't know why they're waffle pattern yet but it sure looks cool. One day I want to stand inside one.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  I assume that the waffle pattern allows thermal contraction and expansion without "crinkling" or worse.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Web search says you're right - negative 162 Celsius / 260 fahrenheit! Wow! About twice as cold as the coldest natural place on earth apparently.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      I think you are calculating as "twice the distance from 0 C", which is a relatively arbitrary zero point. Change the zero point and the ratios change. The coldest measured temperature is -89.2 C, so -162 C is indeed about twice that C value. However, in Kelvin that's 184 K for Vostok and 111 K for LNG, which is only 40% colder.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        How many people use kelvin to quantify temperature.
        wtcactus 4y ago
        I think the point is that -2C is not twice as cold as -1C, that would imply that -1C was infinitely more cold than 0C. An analogy is the same as seen with percentages. It's wrong to say, for instance, that 2% growth, it's double of 1% growth.
Erikun 4y ago
"In March, the German government asked energy companies to weigh a seemingly impossible engineering task. Could a new liquefied natural gas import terminal, which normally takes at least five years to build, be erected in this port town by year’s end?" For anyone wondering what the specific feat was.
- cbmuser 4y ago
  Germany didn’t build a complete LNG terminal. Instead, they built docks for floating LNG terminals which itself are going to be rented from other countries.
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    But already, that's good engineering. If the constraints rule out the "standard" solution, change the constraints.
  - axlee 4y ago
    They solved the problem still. Germany doesn't care about having a LNG terminal per se, they care about being able to import enough LNG without relying on russian pipelines.
    - headsoup 4y ago
      Nothing like stressful and unnecessary workarounds to problems of political chest beating and doubling down.
      - illiac786 4y ago
        Unnecessary? How would you solve the current problem instead (without going back in time)?
        headsoup 4y ago
        My point is we shouldn't be here in the first place
kulor 4y ago
One for https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast
monsecchris 4y ago
It's a regulatory feat.
082349872349872 4y ago
In months ... with a unionised workforce. (but not an un-ionised one; I'm sure there was plenty of NADP+ involved in construction)
epolanski 4y ago
Off topic, but why don't we limit paywalled articles on ycombinator?
- hkxer 4y ago
  archive.ph
  - epolanski 4y ago
    The fact that you have ways to avoid paywalls doesn't change my question imho.
    - kappuchino 4y ago
      Wouldn't it be more constructive to give arguments first for the opposite: Why should hacker news limit paywalled articles. Since you acknowledge you are already offtopic, you could add a little more than just ask a question that is a little too broad for an easy answer.
      - trasz2 4y ago
        I'd say HN should prefer the URL that fits its readers best. Which in this case means paywalled URLs should be replaced with the available workarounds for that problem, ie URLs through that archive.ph.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Not everything of value is available for free. Obviously few people subscribe to several newspapers, but I expect HN users subscribe to one or two.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 4y ago
ekkeke 4y ago
Congrats to Germany for this one, I wish we could do the same in the UK. It has seemed to me that the planning system in its current state is actually badly damaging our economy and posperity. We don't build enough houses, and when we do, the infrastructure that's needed to support them takes decades to build. I've been hearing about another heathrow runway, and new trainline, etc for years and yet it seems we're no closer to having these built. Now we're stuck paying most of our income into a 30 year mortgage rather than anything useful/productive. That money could have gone into the productive economy.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Crossrail/Elizabeth Line was completed this year, with roughly a 3 year delay. Heathrow expansion has considerable opposition, the flight path overflies millions of people. High Speed 2 is under construction. An additional nuclear power plant was approved last week. Britain's problems for major infrastructure are the North/South divide and a general opposition to government investment, not environmentalism.
  - rich_sasha 4y ago
    HS2 is many years delayed and billions (tens of?) over budget. And drastically cut down. Not sure I'd use it as a success story.
    - bionade24 4y ago
      You can call it failed or success after 10 years in operation. Before that, it's still an ongoing process. Infrastructure is for the long-term.
      - danw1979 4y ago
        Parts of HS2 (the northern bits) won’t ever be built. From where I’m sitting in York, it already looks like a failure.
        4y ago
cbmuser 4y ago
The headline is misleading. What Germany did here was building a dock for a floating LNG terminal, not the LNG terminal itself. The whole point floating LNG terminals is to be able to provide a site within a very short timeframe. Germany didn’t build a fixed LNG terminal yet neither did they build a floating LNG terminal themselves. These floating terminals are rented from other countries.
loxs 4y ago
We need them to starve just a little bit and the world will start becoming a much better place. Most of our (EU's) problems are literally caused by Germany's double standards over the past 20 years.
- quonn 4y ago
  Care to explain?
Jibbedeyeah 4y ago
- mvcatsifma 4y ago
  That is a pretty wild claim. Mind backing it up?
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    There is no evidence as far as I know, but logic can give you some hints in this case. Who would profit the most from physically cutting out Europe from Russian gas? Consider the USA. They now plan to sell LNG to Europe for 4x the price it's sold domestically. This was still going to happen, but since the pipeline has been severed, it is now a certainty that the deal will go forward. That is, the possibility of Europe getting scared of the crisis and backtracking on its distancing from Russia is now null. Now it's either rely on the US overpriced LNG or starve and suffer the cold. Isn't that convenient? Given the low consideration the US have of Europe behind the curtains (who doesn't remember Victoria Nuland's famous "Fuck the EU"?), doesn't that make it even more evident?
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      > Who would profit the most from physically cutting out Europe from Russian gas? Ooh, ooh, I know, I know! Australia! Unless you were going for Qatar? I think Qatar is making the most buck right now by diverting its sales of LNG from Asia to Europe instead, but I don't have the exact statistics in front of me. Although actually the best answer is probably Russia. The fact that the pipeline is no longer operational means that Russia no longer has to pay contract penalties for failing to deliver the gas it was contractually obligated to deliver. (Natural gas is usually delivered via long-term fixed-price contracts).
      - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
panick21_ 4y ago
German rejection of nuclear might go down as one of the most self destructive non war related choice by any government. Even if you are gone say not to build anything new, just maintaining what they had would have resulted in significantly more energy then all energy they are getting from LNG now.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  It still makes me laugh that trump called them out and they called him an idiot and now it’s one of the few things he got right.
  - readams 4y ago
    Trump would often get things right but for the wrong reasons. I call this the "Donald Trump stopped clock principle"
    - bionade24 4y ago
      Sadly, many people don't understand that. Either because the refuse everything said & done by him or because they don't see the actual motivation he had to act in that way. Applies to many other entities, too.
    - bluetangflan 4y ago
      What was the “wrong reason” he got it right here for? The reasoning is dead-simple obvious - becoming reliant on a nation-state which does not share your values and shared-future is a foolish idea. Further even, “the haters” for lack of a better term - spent his term calling him a Putin-Puppet so why would he be suggesting folks decouple from Russia? The only thing coming to mind on that note would be a they-do-the-opposite level 33rd Dimension Chess move a la the Obama-Republican skit from Key & Peele. Uncharitably, this just reads like cope. A grade school inability to admit your rival has the ability to be intelligent and correct with their own legitimate belief system. Again, like the K&P skit.
    - lostmsu 4y ago
AndyMcConachie 4y ago
So let me get the timeline right. 1) USA becomes a natural gas exporter based on fracking mostly in the Appalachians. 2) USA tells Germany they can't turn on Nordstream 2. Threatens German officials if they turn it on. 3) Russia invades Ukraine. 4) Some country sabotages Nordstream 2. 5) Germany builds port to import natural gas via the sea. Mostly from Qatar and USA, but definitely not from Russia. Did I miss anything? Now I read an article in the WSJ praising Germany for helping USA's natural gas exports. Meanwhile the German Greens get more militaristic and anti-environment every year. It's cheaper to import natural gas via a pipeline than via diesel powered ships, and it's impossible to deliver enough via ships for all of Europe. Yet the German Greens prefer burning diesel to get their natural gas in slowly if it means we can pretend to be sanctioning Russia. But were not actually sanctioning Russia because we're stil buying fuel from them, only at a set price. As a European I get sick of being America's bitch sometimes. Russia is still selling all of their natural gas and oil. We've accomplished nothing but gimped ourselves for the sake of licking American boots. The USA just told ASML, Dutch supplier of chip making infrastructure, that they are not allowed to sell to China. Why, because China bad and we're America's bitch. That's the only reason given. Once again ASML was forced into compliance by threats from the Americans, and they complied because we're their little bitch that they get to smack around. My winter gas prices are through the roof. Not because of Russia, or Ukraine, or any European reason. But because the Americans won't let us buy gas from Russia and instead force us to import it via the sea from the USA, Qatar, etc.
- _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
  Point 4 and 5 should be switched around. Germany decided to build the LNG terminals before Norstream 2 was sabotaged. Pretty important, because at that point it was already very questionable if Nordstream 2 would ever go into operation.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Yes, you missed something. In between #1 and #2 (2019) is the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  - VictorPath 4y ago
OtomotO 4y ago
Super happy we've finally solved the climate catastrophe ;-)
coliveira 4y ago
This is a misleading piece. What Germany did was to rent a floating LNG terminal. The real terminal still needs to be built, unless they want to add this cost to the already extremely high cost of LNG, for the long run. The so called solutions that Germany found to the gas problem only can be considered throwing large amounts of money to the equation. It may work in the short term, but the country still needs to find a way to support its industry for the years to come, or it will go broke.
- tuukkah 4y ago
  Dunno about the numbers for Germany, but Estonia and Finland rented a floating terminal for ten years. That should be long-term enough to phase off all major demand of LNG. Regarding the cost, I calculate a miniscule fixed cost of 0.1 cent / kWh or 1 EUR/MWh, assuming the capacity will be used in full. "The vessel’s evaporation capacity is 140 GWh/day and even more than 40 TWh per year [--] The total cost of the LNG floating terminal project is estimated at EUR 460 million under a 10-year lease. In addition, there will be costs related to the volume of use." https://gasgrid.fi/en/fsru-en/lng-floating-terminal/ https://gasgrid.fi/en/fsru-en/lng-floating-terminal/
- KarlKemp 4y ago
  I don't think there is any floating structure in the world that amounts to more than a rounding error in the context of the German budget, let alone a few barges with pipes and pumps.
jacquesm 4y ago
"Never let a crisis go to waste" You'll see a lot more of this.
jbverschoor 4y ago
“There’s no such thing as 10x Taalent”
WalterBright 4y ago
It's awesome what can be done when you clear away all the bureaucracy. I bet nuclear plants could be built on the same timescale.
- aktenlage 4y ago
  I bet those nuclear power plants would be less safe. Much "bureaucracy" is there for a reason
  - SamReidHughes 4y ago
    It could just as well free up budget to make things safer.
  - Raydovsky 4y ago
    There wasn't much bureaucracy in the 70s. The reactors built in the 70s in France are as safe as they get.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      They still took around 5 years and have barely higher availability than a wind turbine.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  This has historical precedent. Many plants were built in such time scales. About a quarter of them shut down early or destroyed themselves because they were so unreliable, the rest generated electricity less frequently and with more correlated outage than a wind turbine. China is the only exception, but they still take 4-8x as long to build a nuclear plant compared to a wind farm, it's just that both take less time.
axiolite 4y ago
Unfortunately, Germany's currently problems are self-inflicted and were entirely predictable. They were encouraged to build LNG terminals and reduce their reliance on Russian gas back in 2014: Following the 2014 February coup in Ukraine and Crimea's reunification with Russia, the administration of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, called upon the EU member states to cut their reliance on Russian gas, citing "security" reasons. Speaking at the March 2014 EU-US Summit in Brussels, Obama urged the US' European allies to hurry up with the conclusion of the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), offering US liquefied natural gas (LNG) in exchange. https://sputniknews.com/20180331/obama-trump-lng-europe-china-1063093406.html https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit-idUSBREA2P0W220140326
- vertis 4y ago
  I'm really unclear why you linked such a biased news source. But for clarity: The Revolution of dignity has absolutely no signs of a coup. It resulted in presidential and parlimentary elections. Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    As a German i agree with your point, but also agree with the point of the grandparent. It was predictable and the people responsible for Germany's heavy reliance on Russian gas unsurprisingly are getting paid through intermediaries by Russia. There have been an abundance of coverage on it, even from state media... but nothing ever changes. Heck, the current head of the government was/is involved in the biggest financially scandal of Germany's history and got away with it by "forgetting" everything.
    - vertis 4y ago
      Yes agreed. Just couldn't go past the source. I'm not German, but have clients in Munich and have been learning German (i.e more than a remote armchair view). Have considered moving to Germany. This last year has disappointed me. I really thought Germany was one of the most rational actors in Europe and globally. Nowhere is perfect, and I don't expect it, but the way Germany has dithered about sending tanks (and other things) just saddens.
funstuff007 4y ago
FIFA awarding the World Cup to Qatar now appears to be quite prescient.
rdl 4y ago
Compared to the 3(?) year engineering feat Germany didn't pull off in less than 12 years (BER airport)...
yetanotherforg 4y ago
Fear of russian aggression gave us the internet, nuclear weaponry, jet engines and the space program. russia's genocide in Ukraine is proving to be a huge catalyst for green energy and drone technology. Those of us whose ancestry include refugees from russia's Pogroms are very happy to see a future with an impotent russia.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Fear of russian aggression gave us the internet, nuclear weaponry, jet engines and the space program. This isn't quite true. Jet engines were already being developed during WWII, including in Germany. The space program in the US was partially a by-product of the German rocketry developments. So yes, wars and conflict have driven many technological developments, but some of them go back farther than you think, or are not just because of "fear of russian aggression".
  - yetanotherforg 4y ago
    Yes, and between the terroristic birth of communism, and 9/11, protection from russia's annexation of dozens of countries and their sociopathic disregard for life was as the primary motivation of Europe and America's defense research. Now they are also helping get the contrarians behind green power. It will also the lazy oil-bearing gulf states hang themselves. Yes the germans created rocketry and the first jet engines, which they created as weapons against the communists. In cooperation with Europe, the United States of America annexed hitler's scientists and technologies, and used them to help defend ourselves from the communist plague. We also quite successfully commercialized these technologies. Fear of being a communist slave by a country which has no problems working or starving its captives to death in the name of the state ideoloy, well, it's a hell of a motivator. I remember my great grandmothers' stories about the russian pogroms very well.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
This article's comment section wins the award for most really smart people saying really dumb things because they hold strong opinions on subject matter far outside their area of expertise.

197 points by wallflower 4y ago

https://archive.ph/r0j21 https://archive.ph/r0j21

The main point here was to remove certain blocking rights of environmentalists, that normally block such projects for years. They still can go to court but this is not blocking anything anymore. If someone brings real issues up, they now can be handled while building, nit in the planning phase as before.

hnhg 4y ago
The whole point is about identifying real issues before it is too late. And it is not like German politics is free of corruption.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  Growing up, Germany always seemed like a paragon of virtue. Starting somewhere around the VW Emissions Scandal, my view has changed. Did Germany change over the last 20 years, or were my perceptions off from the get-go?
  - magic_hamster 4y ago
    That's a fascinating opinion, as I've never thought of Germany being a symbol of virtue. If anything, Germany is a paragon of bureaucracy. They have excellent engineering when used for good, but as history taught us, that's not always the case.
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      Your comment here sounds like it is referencing WW2, which is a little silly. Germany changed massively after that (I mean, it was literally two countries for a few decades). Governments can look very different from one decade to the next. So it doesn’t make sense to reference a war-time government from 80 years ago as an example of how a current government behaves.
    - petesergeant 4y ago
      Maybe it's a Cold War propaganda relic? Growing up as an Englisher, history was divided into "Bad Germany" (1930-1945), and "Good (West) Germany", ever since, and the only real stereotype we had of the Germans was that they'd get up early to stake out spots by the pool on holiday. I have to assume that during the Cold War there was a great deal of propaganda highlighting the relative merits of West Germans.
      - someweirdperson 4y ago
        Many regulations from before and even during the war are still valid today.
      - andrepd 4y ago
        Yes. Most Nazis which held high-ranking posts before and during the war continued to do so in West Germany, under allied consent.
    - gumboza 4y ago
      Yes I have a German friend who spends 3 months a year filing their tax situation. German paperwork is insane. And because a lot of the country is surprisingly technologically backwards, everything is on actual paper still. Takes me about an hour to do the same in the UK and half of that is trying to remember how to log in and do it.
      - lnsru 4y ago
        It’s just not true. Elster is already electronic for couple years. If you know what are doing it takes 4 hours max. I recommend your friend to find good tax advisor if he/she is not capable to do it by himself/herself.
  - herrherrmann 4y ago
    There’s an incredible amount of corruption among German politicians, especially among the “richer” parties CDU/CSU and FDP who are constantly being lobbied and bought by managers in the bigger industries (e.g. automobile and construction). That’s one of the reasons why Germany is so behind with environmental issues, technology/digitalization, and government transparency.
    - JanSt 4y ago
      Ah sure the CDU-Gazprom connection, who doesn‘t remember? (the left is equally corrupt as the liberals/conservatives)
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - someweirdperson 4y ago
      > technology/digitalization This isn't held back by the bigger industries but by entrenched boundaries of responsibilities in the administration (defined in the regulations), data protection, and over-engineering. Latest example: Warning the population. Instead of simply sending SMS to all active phones in an area, it has to be cell broadcast, which doesn't work on old phones. The reason seems to be (information in media is... limited) that sending SMS would not provide a way to send a cancel/warning-end message. That's only possible with cell broadcast. And that hasn't been used so far due to data protection concerns (there's a list of phones that have been warned, i.e. were in the affected area). We cannot solve things the simple way.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Oh, it aboslutely is held back by creative lobbying. Back in late 90s / early 2000s, Telekom (recently privatized telecom monopolist and owner of the landline network) lobbied hard against building up a fibre network by over selling wire based DSL using existing copper lines. Germany still pays for this.
      - foepys 4y ago
  - beardedman 4y ago
    Your perceptions were off. They have excellent engineering culture, which has bolstered every part of the economy & allowed them to perform poorly almost everywhere else IMO.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      Germany has been coasting on the inertia of the economic power provided by its industry for a very long time.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I think Germans are asking similar questions. Brandenburg Airport was delayed a lot and for things which ought never to have gone wrong. I think Merkel made a joke about there still being plenty of high-quality German engineers, just that they all worked in Switzerland. But ich bin Ausländer, and my German isn't good enough to do an in-depth analysis of local media opinions on any topic, so I may just be focusing on a few headline cases and mistaking the details for the gestalt.
    - thomasz 4y ago
      The foreign conception of Germany as a paragon of effectiveness always did sound weird to me. The whole political system is set up to require broad consensus to move anything forward. That makes it really difficult to get any meaningful change out of that political system, unless there is a real, tangible pain that is felt throughout most of society. On the other hand, it should be noted that this approach has important positive effects.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - terminalcommand 4y ago
    Don't forget about the Wirecard scandal as well.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      Actually that dude was from Austria.
      - terminalcommand 4y ago
        Didn't he operate in Germany? The country that allowed the fraud was Germany.
        konha 4y ago
        Exactly. The scandal wasn’t so much that a company defrauded investors (happens) but that regulators didn’t catch on to it and actively interfered with attempts to uncover it.
      - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
        >Actually that dude was from Austria. This is not the first time some Austrian dude causes trouble in Germany :)
    - hackandthink 4y ago
      WireCard was really bad. Journalists (FT) who investigated and reported on the Wirecard scam were prosecuted. BaFin (Financial Supervisory Authority) supported WireCard (prohibiting short selling). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard#Berichterstattung_der_Financial_Times_und_Zeit_danach https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard#Berichterstattung_der...
  - lnsru 4y ago
    Since the businesses of relatives work/-ed for some time with big German businesses I heard from them locally unheard stories about cash only payments for the delivery drivers and re labeling the products with “made in Germany stickers” big style. I also used to work with experienced Siemens guys. They told me about old Siemens business development practices. Bribing clients was so normal like eating lunch every day. And now Germany has a chancellor involved in CumEx business in the past. For me Germany is another corrupt shady country with rich puppeteers pulling the strings from the shadows. Paragon of virtue is elsewhere.
    - ShredKazoo 4y ago
      >Paragon of virtue is elsewhere. Genuinely curious which countries HN users think are actually paragons of virtue. Multiple times, I've had the experience of thinking a country is a paragon of virtue, then finding a thread here or on reddit full of people from that country complaining about it... Seems like Singapore, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, and the Netherlands are the "paragon of virtue" countries people complain about the least.
      - andrepd 4y ago
        Singapore is an authoritarian one-party state and Netherlands has the tax haven problem. I'd at least count them off.
      - actionfromafar 4y ago
        The Netherlands are captured by narcotics “gangs”. They have corrupted courts and politicians. Too much money for too small country.
        noiwillnot 4y ago
        As an continental European, first time I heard about Netherlands as a "paragon of virtue". Is this some UK/US talking point?
        4y ago
  - hannob 4y ago
    You may want to check these for corruption scandals in Germany more than 20 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_affair
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    If you have one of the "cheater" VW diesels, and you smoke one cigarette while driving 100 miles, you have emitted more excess pollution than the car. The "Emissions Scandal" is largely bunk.
  - Garlef 4y ago
    > Did Germany change over the last 20 years, or were my perceptions off from the get-go? There has always been corruption. Germany under Kohl was also called Bimbesrepublik at times. "bimbes" being a cutesy/deragatory term for money in Kohl's idiom. https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5883815/Ab-heute-steht-die-Bimbesrepublik-vor-Gericht.html https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5883815/Ab-he...
    - tartoran 4y ago
      Petty or serious corruption? I too had quite good perceptions of Germany and they’re changing as of late
      - luckylion 4y ago
        I believe it's mostly just that more comes to light these days and private media companies are more willing to poke at it. A lot of it is also not super extreme, so you can argue it away if you want to and squint on each individual item, and ignore the sum.
  - verisimi 4y ago
    I think this was a fake scandal. The aim was to engineer a legislative and social move away from petrol and diesel cars, and engineer acceptance in environmental restrictions (or greater governance), in support of the fake climate crisis, that no one has seen. Except in statistics. Most of what we see are meta narratives playing out, that are meant to capture the minds, and get us to consent willingly to greater governance. Turkeys voting for Christmas.
    - andrepd 4y ago
      I struggle to comprehend the mental gymnastics where laws that prevent other people from gassing you are "taking away your freedom".
      - verisimi 4y ago
        I didn't say anything about taking away freedom. I said - "get us to consent willingly to greater governance". You believe the stories you are told, you trust the emissions testing, you trust the government to do something, the law-making process, the corrections to the bad acts on the part of corporations, etc. You've literally no idea whether any of that is true! I doubt you even think you are being gassed by cars. But you probably support early scraping of functional cars, subsidising of electric cars (even though they are dirty to produce and not fit for purpose), artificially increasing the cost of travel (fuel taxes), food production, deliveries, etc, you support forcing cumbersome travel options on everyone (public transport accessible via tracking ids), decreasing parking, pedestrianising of areas, etc. But these options are not ones you wanted either! You have simply been told they are good, you are saving the planet. You might not believe in religion, while you pay penance for your sinful nature. In the past, towns and cities were engineered in order to provide access for cars - people then were told that was good, and believed it! It seems to me, that whatever government tells people is good, if they see it on a screen, they believe it! Even though they are actually poorer and have less options. Its amazing to me, that this is all it takes! To take ever more money from people, for less - you simply tell them on TV! And I'm the one doing mental gymnastics! Do you actually notice the world at all? Do you verify any of your cherished beliefs? Has the water risen? Is it warmer? Was weather ever unchanging?
  - croes 4y ago
    They didn't. Remember the decades of corruption they found in Greece? Companies like Siemens were the ones who bribed greece politicians.
  - croes 4y ago
    BTW lots of that "virtue" is based on the fact that some things deemed illegal in countries are legal in germany. For instance if you pay a politician after they have done you a "favor" it's not corruption, it only is if you pay the beforehand. For years Germany is urged to implement certain anti-corruption laws but they don't do it because it would hinder their "politcal work".
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    It changed quite a bit.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    I had a similar rosy view of the Japanese nuclear industry in 2010. After the Fukushima accident in 2011, I found that it would have been prevented if the Fukushima plant had followed regulations as strict as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires, or if it had just built protections like the nearby Onagawa plant had built [1]. With further digging, I found that Japan had a rather poor nuclear safety culture before Fukushima too [2] [3]. I had even read about the 1999 criticality accident around the time it happened but downplayed its significance in my mind. Due to a combination of excellent consumer products exported from Japan and positive cultural stereotypes circulating in the US about Japanese attention to rules and quality, I incorrectly discounted prior evidence of defective nuclear safety culture in Japan. With hindsight I also think that language barriers play a role in leaning on stereotypes. When companies with English-speaking employees have internal problems that leadership is ignoring, I can read complaints from lower level employees (anonymous or otherwise) posted online. But I don't know where Japanese power plant workers hang out online. Even if I did I wouldn't be able to understand what they're writing. So my views get colored more by whatever makes it into English-language media, which may be less representative. [1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0379 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.037... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#1995_sodium_leak_and_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#1995...
mrweasel 4y ago
That honestly completely insane that the legal process makes up for the vast majority of time in infrastructure projects like this. I'm all for environmental concerns, taking in complaint from future neighbors, all that stuff, but allowing it to drag out important projects years is problematic. Sometimes I feel like listing to possible complains from people living around affected areas is a waste of time. Denmark pretty much can't build windmills anymore, because they will: "Ruin my view". Seriously, the city I live in wants to close a coal fired power plant, and replace it with a number of windmills, on the same plot of land, but no, that will ruin someones view (which is currently a power plant). You also can't do cell phone towers, because they are ugly (fair enough), yet you still allow yourself to complain about poor coverage in the same area.
- Lutger 4y ago
  On the one hand: I agree that years of delay are pretty wasteful, considering a lot of projects are really needed to solve urgent problems. With windmills, the same thing happened in my village, which was all up in arms against them. On the other hand, democracy is inherently slow and wasteful, if you want to protect also the rights of the minority, that will have a cost. What if it isn't something like windmills that clearly are a net improvement for society over coal, and the objections aren't merely 'not a nice view'? For example, suppose some big corp wants to frack the environment to pieces for big bucks, leaving a poisoned, nearly unlivable habitat for the nearby village. How can we safeguard against this, in a way that the village inhabitants can protest against such threats with real teeth, without grinding everything to a halt that is a mere nuisance but offers real benefits to society?
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    Democracy is not inherently slow and wasteful, as you see here Germany created this large project in short order. They did not abandon democracy to achieve it. The key is that the "environmentalists", politicians, judiciary, activists, and people who would block the process were threatened with feeling the pain of the missing infrastructure. Amazing how quickly they abandon their high horses when it looks like it will cost them something, then it's full throttle with construction and fossil fuels. They like to be "all in this together" when they're inflicting this kind of pain on others though, so what seems to be inherent is people's desire to wield power and authority over others.
Angostura 4y ago
The road to environmental destruction is paved with "we'll sort it out later"
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  I don't know why this comment was down-voted. I feel exactly the same. When I saw the news source, Wall Street Journal, I wasn't surprised to see how much the article focused on sweeping away "pesky" environmental laws. Ask anyone who lived in Germany, UK, US, Japan in the 1970s. They can tell you all about life before environmental laws. It was hell. And sadly, the narrative is always stolen away by complaints about "my view will be ruined", ignoring all of the good these laws do for our environment. It would be better to improve the environmental laws to exclude "views" as something to be protected.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > It was hell. That's crazy, and no, it wasn't. Yes, there was lots of pollution. No, it wasn't hell. And much of what enables the high quality of life today with less pollution is build upon what was done then. > It would be better to improve the environmental laws to exclude "views" as something to be protected. And to be more focused on humans. If you weigh a city's needs vs that of field mice and you side with the activists who pretend to speak for the field mice, you've lost sight of what's important.
    - asadotzler 4y ago
      >And to be more focused on humans. If you weigh a city's needs vs that of field mice and you side with the activists who pretend to speak for the field mice, you've lost sight of what's important. If you side with the humans in cities, and the only environmental laws you have are for their protection, you will screw your rural neighbors something awful. Countries already under-fund and often abuse the rights of rural communities and their citizens, which make up over 25% of the European people. Sure, the 75% in urban areas are able to out-vote the 25% rural population, but that doesn't make screwing over your neighbors a good thing.
_the_inflator 4y ago
Yes, but to add some context to it: The very party that initiated this complex, was previously instrumental in installing environmental blocking rights, Habeck's Green Party. ;)
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Where you stand depends on where you sit.

blamazon 4y ago

LNG is pretty fascinating technology. A real product of our times. Have you ever seen the inside of an LNG tanker pressure vessel? Allow me to show you! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Liquid_natural_gas_membrane_tank.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Liquid_n... I don't know why they're waffle pattern yet but it sure looks cool. One day I want to stand inside one.

ahartmetz 4y ago
I assume that the waffle pattern allows thermal contraction and expansion without "crinkling" or worse.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Web search says you're right - negative 162 Celsius / 260 fahrenheit! Wow! About twice as cold as the coldest natural place on earth apparently.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    I think you are calculating as "twice the distance from 0 C", which is a relatively arbitrary zero point. Change the zero point and the ratios change. The coldest measured temperature is -89.2 C, so -162 C is indeed about twice that C value. However, in Kelvin that's 184 K for Vostok and 111 K for LNG, which is only 40% colder.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      How many people use kelvin to quantify temperature.
      - wtcactus 4y ago
        I think the point is that -2C is not twice as cold as -1C, that would imply that -1C was infinitely more cold than 0C. An analogy is the same as seen with percentages. It's wrong to say, for instance, that 2% growth, it's double of 1% growth.

Erikun 4y ago

"In March, the German government asked energy companies to weigh a seemingly impossible engineering task. Could a new liquefied natural gas import terminal, which normally takes at least five years to build, be erected in this port town by year’s end?" For anyone wondering what the specific feat was.

cbmuser 4y ago
Germany didn’t build a complete LNG terminal. Instead, they built docks for floating LNG terminals which itself are going to be rented from other countries.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  But already, that's good engineering. If the constraints rule out the "standard" solution, change the constraints.
- axlee 4y ago
  They solved the problem still. Germany doesn't care about having a LNG terminal per se, they care about being able to import enough LNG without relying on russian pipelines.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    Nothing like stressful and unnecessary workarounds to problems of political chest beating and doubling down.
    - illiac786 4y ago
      Unnecessary? How would you solve the current problem instead (without going back in time)?
      - headsoup 4y ago
        My point is we shouldn't be here in the first place

kulor 4y ago

One for https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast

monsecchris 4y ago

It's a regulatory feat.

082349872349872 4y ago

In months ... with a unionised workforce. (but not an un-ionised one; I'm sure there was plenty of NADP+ involved in construction)

epolanski 4y ago

Off topic, but why don't we limit paywalled articles on ycombinator?

hkxer 4y ago
archive.ph
- epolanski 4y ago
  The fact that you have ways to avoid paywalls doesn't change my question imho.
  - kappuchino 4y ago
    Wouldn't it be more constructive to give arguments first for the opposite: Why should hacker news limit paywalled articles. Since you acknowledge you are already offtopic, you could add a little more than just ask a question that is a little too broad for an easy answer.
    - trasz2 4y ago
      I'd say HN should prefer the URL that fits its readers best. Which in this case means paywalled URLs should be replaced with the available workarounds for that problem, ie URLs through that archive.ph.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Symbiote 4y ago
Not everything of value is available for free. Obviously few people subscribe to several newspapers, but I expect HN users subscribe to one or two.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
4y ago

ekkeke 4y ago

Congrats to Germany for this one, I wish we could do the same in the UK. It has seemed to me that the planning system in its current state is actually badly damaging our economy and posperity. We don't build enough houses, and when we do, the infrastructure that's needed to support them takes decades to build. I've been hearing about another heathrow runway, and new trainline, etc for years and yet it seems we're no closer to having these built. Now we're stuck paying most of our income into a 30 year mortgage rather than anything useful/productive. That money could have gone into the productive economy.

Symbiote 4y ago
Crossrail/Elizabeth Line was completed this year, with roughly a 3 year delay. Heathrow expansion has considerable opposition, the flight path overflies millions of people. High Speed 2 is under construction. An additional nuclear power plant was approved last week. Britain's problems for major infrastructure are the North/South divide and a general opposition to government investment, not environmentalism.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  HS2 is many years delayed and billions (tens of?) over budget. And drastically cut down. Not sure I'd use it as a success story.
  - bionade24 4y ago
    You can call it failed or success after 10 years in operation. Before that, it's still an ongoing process. Infrastructure is for the long-term.
    - danw1979 4y ago
      Parts of HS2 (the northern bits) won’t ever be built. From where I’m sitting in York, it already looks like a failure.
      - 4y ago

cbmuser 4y ago

The headline is misleading. What Germany did here was building a dock for a floating LNG terminal, not the LNG terminal itself. The whole point floating LNG terminals is to be able to provide a site within a very short timeframe. Germany didn’t build a fixed LNG terminal yet neither did they build a floating LNG terminal themselves. These floating terminals are rented from other countries.

loxs 4y ago

We need them to starve just a little bit and the world will start becoming a much better place. Most of our (EU's) problems are literally caused by Germany's double standards over the past 20 years.

quonn 4y ago
Care to explain?

Jibbedeyeah 4y ago

mvcatsifma 4y ago
That is a pretty wild claim. Mind backing it up?
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  There is no evidence as far as I know, but logic can give you some hints in this case. Who would profit the most from physically cutting out Europe from Russian gas? Consider the USA. They now plan to sell LNG to Europe for 4x the price it's sold domestically. This was still going to happen, but since the pipeline has been severed, it is now a certainty that the deal will go forward. That is, the possibility of Europe getting scared of the crisis and backtracking on its distancing from Russia is now null. Now it's either rely on the US overpriced LNG or starve and suffer the cold. Isn't that convenient? Given the low consideration the US have of Europe behind the curtains (who doesn't remember Victoria Nuland's famous "Fuck the EU"?), doesn't that make it even more evident?
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    > Who would profit the most from physically cutting out Europe from Russian gas? Ooh, ooh, I know, I know! Australia! Unless you were going for Qatar? I think Qatar is making the most buck right now by diverting its sales of LNG from Asia to Europe instead, but I don't have the exact statistics in front of me. Although actually the best answer is probably Russia. The fact that the pipeline is no longer operational means that Russia no longer has to pay contract penalties for failing to deliver the gas it was contractually obligated to deliver. (Natural gas is usually delivered via long-term fixed-price contracts).
    - pastacacioepepe 4y ago

panick21_ 4y ago

German rejection of nuclear might go down as one of the most self destructive non war related choice by any government. Even if you are gone say not to build anything new, just maintaining what they had would have resulted in significantly more energy then all energy they are getting from LNG now.

philliphaydon 4y ago
It still makes me laugh that trump called them out and they called him an idiot and now it’s one of the few things he got right.
- readams 4y ago
  Trump would often get things right but for the wrong reasons. I call this the "Donald Trump stopped clock principle"
  - bionade24 4y ago
    Sadly, many people don't understand that. Either because the refuse everything said & done by him or because they don't see the actual motivation he had to act in that way. Applies to many other entities, too.
  - bluetangflan 4y ago
    What was the “wrong reason” he got it right here for? The reasoning is dead-simple obvious - becoming reliant on a nation-state which does not share your values and shared-future is a foolish idea. Further even, “the haters” for lack of a better term - spent his term calling him a Putin-Puppet so why would he be suggesting folks decouple from Russia? The only thing coming to mind on that note would be a they-do-the-opposite level 33rd Dimension Chess move a la the Obama-Republican skit from Key & Peele. Uncharitably, this just reads like cope. A grade school inability to admit your rival has the ability to be intelligent and correct with their own legitimate belief system. Again, like the K&P skit.
  - lostmsu 4y ago

AndyMcConachie 4y ago

So let me get the timeline right. 1) USA becomes a natural gas exporter based on fracking mostly in the Appalachians. 2) USA tells Germany they can't turn on Nordstream 2. Threatens German officials if they turn it on. 3) Russia invades Ukraine. 4) Some country sabotages Nordstream 2. 5) Germany builds port to import natural gas via the sea. Mostly from Qatar and USA, but definitely not from Russia. Did I miss anything? Now I read an article in the WSJ praising Germany for helping USA's natural gas exports. Meanwhile the German Greens get more militaristic and anti-environment every year. It's cheaper to import natural gas via a pipeline than via diesel powered ships, and it's impossible to deliver enough via ships for all of Europe. Yet the German Greens prefer burning diesel to get their natural gas in slowly if it means we can pretend to be sanctioning Russia. But were not actually sanctioning Russia because we're stil buying fuel from them, only at a set price. As a European I get sick of being America's bitch sometimes. Russia is still selling all of their natural gas and oil. We've accomplished nothing but gimped ourselves for the sake of licking American boots. The USA just told ASML, Dutch supplier of chip making infrastructure, that they are not allowed to sell to China. Why, because China bad and we're America's bitch. That's the only reason given. Once again ASML was forced into compliance by threats from the Americans, and they complied because we're their little bitch that they get to smack around. My winter gas prices are through the roof. Not because of Russia, or Ukraine, or any European reason. But because the Americans won't let us buy gas from Russia and instead force us to import it via the sea from the USA, Qatar, etc.

_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
Point 4 and 5 should be switched around. Germany decided to build the LNG terminals before Norstream 2 was sabotaged. Pretty important, because at that point it was already very questionable if Nordstream 2 would ever go into operation.
ceejayoz 4y ago
Yes, you missed something. In between #1 and #2 (2019) is the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- VictorPath 4y ago

OtomotO 4y ago

Super happy we've finally solved the climate catastrophe ;-)

coliveira 4y ago

This is a misleading piece. What Germany did was to rent a floating LNG terminal. The real terminal still needs to be built, unless they want to add this cost to the already extremely high cost of LNG, for the long run. The so called solutions that Germany found to the gas problem only can be considered throwing large amounts of money to the equation. It may work in the short term, but the country still needs to find a way to support its industry for the years to come, or it will go broke.

tuukkah 4y ago
Dunno about the numbers for Germany, but Estonia and Finland rented a floating terminal for ten years. That should be long-term enough to phase off all major demand of LNG. Regarding the cost, I calculate a miniscule fixed cost of 0.1 cent / kWh or 1 EUR/MWh, assuming the capacity will be used in full. "The vessel’s evaporation capacity is 140 GWh/day and even more than 40 TWh per year [--] The total cost of the LNG floating terminal project is estimated at EUR 460 million under a 10-year lease. In addition, there will be costs related to the volume of use." https://gasgrid.fi/en/fsru-en/lng-floating-terminal/ https://gasgrid.fi/en/fsru-en/lng-floating-terminal/
KarlKemp 4y ago
I don't think there is any floating structure in the world that amounts to more than a rounding error in the context of the German budget, let alone a few barges with pipes and pumps.

jacquesm 4y ago

"Never let a crisis go to waste" You'll see a lot more of this.

jbverschoor 4y ago

“There’s no such thing as 10x Taalent”

WalterBright 4y ago

It's awesome what can be done when you clear away all the bureaucracy. I bet nuclear plants could be built on the same timescale.

aktenlage 4y ago
I bet those nuclear power plants would be less safe. Much "bureaucracy" is there for a reason
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  It could just as well free up budget to make things safer.
- Raydovsky 4y ago
  There wasn't much bureaucracy in the 70s. The reactors built in the 70s in France are as safe as they get.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    They still took around 5 years and have barely higher availability than a wind turbine.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
This has historical precedent. Many plants were built in such time scales. About a quarter of them shut down early or destroyed themselves because they were so unreliable, the rest generated electricity less frequently and with more correlated outage than a wind turbine. China is the only exception, but they still take 4-8x as long to build a nuclear plant compared to a wind farm, it's just that both take less time.

axiolite 4y ago

Unfortunately, Germany's currently problems are self-inflicted and were entirely predictable. They were encouraged to build LNG terminals and reduce their reliance on Russian gas back in 2014: Following the 2014 February coup in Ukraine and Crimea's reunification with Russia, the administration of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, called upon the EU member states to cut their reliance on Russian gas, citing "security" reasons. Speaking at the March 2014 EU-US Summit in Brussels, Obama urged the US' European allies to hurry up with the conclusion of the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), offering US liquefied natural gas (LNG) in exchange. https://sputniknews.com/20180331/obama-trump-lng-europe-china-1063093406.html https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit-idUSBREA2P0W220140326

vertis 4y ago
I'm really unclear why you linked such a biased news source. But for clarity: The Revolution of dignity has absolutely no signs of a coup. It resulted in presidential and parlimentary elections. Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  As a German i agree with your point, but also agree with the point of the grandparent. It was predictable and the people responsible for Germany's heavy reliance on Russian gas unsurprisingly are getting paid through intermediaries by Russia. There have been an abundance of coverage on it, even from state media... but nothing ever changes. Heck, the current head of the government was/is involved in the biggest financially scandal of Germany's history and got away with it by "forgetting" everything.
  - vertis 4y ago
    Yes agreed. Just couldn't go past the source. I'm not German, but have clients in Munich and have been learning German (i.e more than a remote armchair view). Have considered moving to Germany. This last year has disappointed me. I really thought Germany was one of the most rational actors in Europe and globally. Nowhere is perfect, and I don't expect it, but the way Germany has dithered about sending tanks (and other things) just saddens.

funstuff007 4y ago

FIFA awarding the World Cup to Qatar now appears to be quite prescient.

rdl 4y ago

Compared to the 3(?) year engineering feat Germany didn't pull off in less than 12 years (BER airport)...

yetanotherforg 4y ago

Fear of russian aggression gave us the internet, nuclear weaponry, jet engines and the space program. russia's genocide in Ukraine is proving to be a huge catalyst for green energy and drone technology. Those of us whose ancestry include refugees from russia's Pogroms are very happy to see a future with an impotent russia.

midoridensha 4y ago
>Fear of russian aggression gave us the internet, nuclear weaponry, jet engines and the space program. This isn't quite true. Jet engines were already being developed during WWII, including in Germany. The space program in the US was partially a by-product of the German rocketry developments. So yes, wars and conflict have driven many technological developments, but some of them go back farther than you think, or are not just because of "fear of russian aggression".
- yetanotherforg 4y ago
  Yes, and between the terroristic birth of communism, and 9/11, protection from russia's annexation of dozens of countries and their sociopathic disregard for life was as the primary motivation of Europe and America's defense research. Now they are also helping get the contrarians behind green power. It will also the lazy oil-bearing gulf states hang themselves. Yes the germans created rocketry and the first jet engines, which they created as weapons against the communists. In cooperation with Europe, the United States of America annexed hitler's scientists and technologies, and used them to help defend ourselves from the communist plague. We also quite successfully commercialized these technologies. Fear of being a communist slave by a country which has no problems working or starving its captives to death in the name of the state ideoloy, well, it's a hell of a motivator. I remember my great grandmothers' stories about the russian pogroms very well.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

This article's comment section wins the award for most really smart people saying really dumb things because they hold strong opinions on subject matter far outside their area of expertise.