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Frustrated German here, hoping that the government will at some point realize that investing in nuclear is more useful than dismantling the German economy, so t
by ls15 4y ago
Frustrated German here, hoping that the government will at some point realize that investing in nuclear is more useful than dismantling the German economy, so that others will burn the fossil fuels that Germany does not need then anymore.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago[flagged]
- justin66 4y agoSomehow France manages to get most of its electricity from nuclear reactors.
- _ph_ 4y agoWell, thats a good point: they don't. Germany had to produce a lot of extra electricity to fill the gap left by too many French nuclear power plants not working. Fortunately they got some more back to the grid recently, but far too many are still out of order. And their only attempt at building a new reactor is many years late and over budget.
- delroth 4y agoThey absolutely do. Looking at November, https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electricity-trading https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electrici... will show you that Nov 19th was peak import with about 8GW net import at peak. On that day the French NPPs were on average producing 30GW of electricity out of a 55GW peak demand. When looking at electricity imports/exports it's also important to remember that France is a pretty big interconnect between the UK, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany. A bunch of electricity might be imported in France just to resell it to Italy, which is notoriously lacking in electricity production.
- _ph_ 4y agoI am confused. You say yourself, that in November they needed to import 8GW. Which was necessary because the nuclear power plants didn't produce enough electricity. It was even worse in summer, where they were not only dealing with reactors down for repairs but also reactors with reduced power/shut down due to lack of cooling water. So yes, France has a huge nuclear peak capacity, as they built a lot of reactors up to the 80ies. But basically none still then which means that they are increasingly fighting with keeping the old reactors running. Perhaps I was a bit short in my first post here, but they don't really have a strategy to deal with the situation. They would need to replace at least 50 power plants over the next 20 years to have a really good perspective, but no such plans in sight.
- delroth 4y agojustin66: > Somehow France manages to get most of its electricity from nuclear reactors. you: > Well, thats a good point: they don't. The data I linked to you absolutely proves that they do, nuclear is the majority of electricity production in France even in its current production crisis state. You are moving the goalposts in your reply, and I'm not interested in engaging any further given your dishonesty.
- justin66 4y agoThanks. As far as I can tell France understood their role in holding things together in the absence of cheap Russian energy, hence the push to get as much as possible back online by December. I assume they also understand they need a longer term solution since their reactors are pretty old. This is all orthogonal to the original topic, that it's not the EU and the EU commission who are responsible for Germany's massive failures regarding nuclear (any more than they are responsible for France's successes regarding nuclear).
- _ph_ 4y agoFirst of all: please stay polite and don't accuse people of dishonesty. Second: yes, the nuclear production is more than 50% of their electricity production. In that sense you are right. But the problem is what I wrote: it fell behind the required production capacity badly. France was no longer able to completely power its own grid for months. And the bad state of their reactors - they don't get any younger - will make this an increasingly larger challenge.
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoFrance and their reaction to the opec cartel under DeGaulle should be taught in schools. Please look up how modern French politicians sabotaged that country’s incredible nuclear rollout and replacement plan since 2015 by adopting laws that forced their energy industry to stop investing and roll back nuclear. You might break a screen or two if you aren’t familiar with those events seeing how stupid and evil it was.
- oblio 4y agoThe EU does many things in parallel and it has arms financing of green energy to the tune of many billion €.
- DisjointedHunt 4y agoYes, they’ve spent HUNDREDS of billions on “green” tech without a plan. How’d that work out for Germany. They forced France to adopt laws to cut off their nuclear plants back in 2015. INSPITE of a law that mandates lower energy production from nuclear right now, France still produces much more than that and the shortfall is from whatever the French government invested in as the replacement, which is green bullshit.
- ls15 4y agoYou may be surprised to see that Germany is a net exporter of power: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig7-german-power-import-export-1990-2022_0.png?itok=solCvCRy https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... The main issue with green tech is that it sometimes doesn't produce electricity, but when it does, it is great. I think Germany has to import electricity for about 8 days/year. With a bit of nuclear this could be brought to zero, now that natural gas is not a cost-effective option anymore.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago“Net” doesn’t really matter when there are large periods of time like the present where the population is burning firewood and coal to meet their energy needs. Very little documentation about that and much of it is labeled “green” under “biomass” which is very convenient.
- ls15 4y agoWhere Germany certainly fails is providing energy at consumer-friendly prices. We pay almost three times as much for electricity as people in the U.S. on average. Close to Denmark, who lead that ranking. Japan has to pay about half as much. https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/