15 ms·

9mo from the start of the Ukrainian war. For all the criticism modern governments get (often rightly) it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminal

9mo from the start of the Ukrainian war. For all the criticism modern governments get (often rightly) it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminals. And it does show we have just as much productive capacity in western societies today as we did 100 years ago. What’s missing is consensus that problems should actually be solved, not used to enrich yet another rentier class. I hope Germany learns from this and keeps away some of the barriers to growth they regulated into existence.

kakwa_ 4y ago
> it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminals. Except they weren't really "built" in 9 months. Höegh Esperanza (the floating terminal), was commissioned in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6egh_Esperanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6egh_Esperanza In reality, oversimplifying wildly, it took 9 months to negotiate the contract and "plug" this preexisting terminal into the German gas network. However, it's still impressive that our societies have tools like that available to handle unforeseen situations and crisis.
bamboozled 4y ago
Would be nice if they did the same thing with Nuclear and Renewables though wouldn't it? Some how they can "go to war" for gas, but when it comes to climate change it's, "meh"?
- Luc 4y ago
  Fifty years of anti-nuclear movement has left its mark.
  - tgv 4y ago
    If the best retort the nuclear industry had was a Russian-Ukrainian war, then it's not so odd to see why.
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      Actual retorts: - we don’t have the mineral supplies for other non-fossil options - nuclear has a better safety record, all in - nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers - nuclear can supply the base load - nuclear produces rare elements that help with advanced medicine But you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and many people were raised in a green-washed death cult. Like most religious people, they uncritically repeat that faith and become angered if you point out the inconsistencies.
      - flir 4y ago
        > nuclear has a better safety record, all in Better than... wind turbines? Solar panels? Hydroelectric?
        mensetmanusman 4y ago
        Due to installation deaths, PV has higher deaths per kWhr install: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
        jefftk 4y ago
        Note that your source is specifically "rooftop solar", not solar overall.
        jefftk 4y ago
        The safety profile of hydro and nukes are dominated by large rare events, which makes prediction tricky. Hydro is much less safe historically because of a single event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Wind and solar don't have catastrophic failures, but people installing and repairing them do sometimes fall. Residential rooftop solar is especially bad here, since the deaths are divided over a relatively small amount of generation capacity. Still, overall wind and solar are safer than nukes, and data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. More: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safes...
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    I am 100% in favor of any technology that allows us to stop emitting CO2 in a short time-frame, including nuclear. My reservation about the pro-nuclear (online) argument is that it always seems to be framed more as an excuse to "punch some hippies" than as a serious effort to calculate the cost of deploying nuclear at scale, let alone an effort to marshal political opinion to a state that would allow for any of it to happen.
    - ouid 4y ago
      You are the first person I have ever heard present this sentiment.
      - marmetio 4y ago
        Yeah I've never heard of it, either. I haven't even really seen hippies in the opposition. They're just normal people who, as soon as they hear the word "nuclear", panic really hard and refuse to receive any new information that would actually address their concerns.
        Arnt 4y ago
        Try it. Say my concern is that the relevant nuclear operators are organisationally similar to TEPCO. Give me some new information that either explains how they are different, or explains that an organisation like TEPCO is well suited to run a nuclear reactor safely.
        marmetio 4y ago
        You're kind of proving my point here. Your concern is that an operator can be unsafe, which is valid and will always be true. So no, I won't argue against your contrived framing. The only true fix would be a reactor and fuel design that can't melt down. A walk-away safe design that, even if you intentionally induced the worst disaster, still wouldn't pose a real threat to the public. Then it wouldn't matter if the operator was a cartoon villain determined to destroy the city. This is the part that people still don't want to hear. They can't accept that their pet concern can be eliminated by approaching the problem differently and breaking their assumptions. They look for new concerns, but educating them doesn't help because when they run out of unaddressed concerns, they just circle back to old concerns that were already addressed. Their concern was never more than an excuse. They just want the answer to fit their preconceived notions. For nuclear to be accepted, it needs better public messaging, because ultimately people are reacting emotionally rather than thinking critically.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
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- dr-detroit 4y ago
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- Archelaos 4y ago
  It is the same spirit of pocketing profits and deferring problems to later generations that is behind nuclear power as it is behind fossil fuels. Both are evil. By acknowledging this, Germany is ethically ahead of most other societies on this planet.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    Considering the nuclear power shutdowns, it's not so clear that any acknowledgement was made. To me, it seems to confirm business as usual, especially the continued expansion of lignite mines.
  - froh 4y ago
    yes! wind, solar and decentralized buffer storage can make us independent from both mined fuels, uranium and fossils, real fast once there is a political willpower to do so. Merkel as a quantum physicist, a PhD at that, knew how to read statistics and forecasts. her exit from nuclear was an incredibly wise and far sighted political measure. I hope we'll be wise enough to stick with it.
    - nforgerit 4y ago
      had to lol at praising Merkel. Well what _actually_ happened was that due to nuclear lobbying her cabinet decided in 2010 to stall the already decided exit by the former government under chancellor schröder (in 2004 ircc). Then 9 months later Fukushima happened and due to german angst in public polls she announced 3 days afterwards to make the nuclear exit even shorter than in the beginning which happened to be end of 2022. This all led to hefty fines (ircc couple billions) paid by tax payers.
      - froh 4y ago
        I'd never thought I'd praise Merkel for anything. still her change of direction to a shorter exit was remarkable.
        nforgerit 4y ago
- ajross 4y ago
  Renewable generation in Germany has quadrupled in the last decade (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany). You're framing it differently, but your argument is mostly just about "nuclear" and will devolve into the same tired arguments. So I'll give my standard statement, I guess: Nuclear is failing not because of resistance from hippies or whatever. It's failing because it's far, far, far too expensive, by more than an order of magnitude vs. other renewable choices. There's zero value in spending Euros on a reactor when we could build a bazillion wind turbines and hydro pumps and battery farms for that cash. Nuclear might have a home at the very end of the process when we're trying to wind down the last of the gas peaker plants. But no, nuclear will never represent a significant fraction of renewable power generation. Never. No one wants to write that check.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    I'm making a different point. We're already in serious trouble due to climate change, and our future looks increasingly bleak due to it becoming worse. It's a big enough issue that the whole world should really be at war with burning fossil fuels right now, our best minds should be focused on solving this issue, yesterday. What this article proves proves is that we're capable of solving really hard problems in very short amounts of time, "if the inventive is there". Clearly it was, I can't help but feel it has a little bit to do with profits and political motivations, which is why moving to renewables is happening (because it makes economic sense), but is the political drive and will to do more there? I don't think so.
  - ljlolel 4y ago
    it's too expensive because of resistance from hippies who constantly interfere with more regulations and changing regulations and requirements. They can be built safely and cheaply and mined with local swedish uranium if not for all of the ever shifting regulations from the political resistance tactics.
    - xg15 4y ago
      And yet the pro-nuclear argument is that nuclear power is safe thanks to regulations. That's circular reasoning.
albertzeyer 4y ago
I don't really have any idea, but maybe building such terminals is way easier than building other things like nuclear reactors or whatever?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Floating terminals can be relocated anywhere in the world on short notice. It’s an LNG processor with a ship built around it. They’re also cheap, typically ~$50M-$100M/year to lease.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  Of course, but nevertheless it was fast. It should be noted, however, that what has been built so far is only a precursor to a "real" terminal that has yet to be built. And that environmental concerns have not been adequately considered due to the hasty implementation. The special circumstances caused by the failures of previous governments have also prompted the Green Party, under whose ministerial initiative the construction took place, to prioritise speed over thoroughness. However, due to these special circumstances and the previous negligence, this case is not suitable as a general recommendation for the future.
Denvercoder9 4y ago
They didn't exactly build a terminal, they upgraded an existing jetty to allow a floating terminal to dock and connect to the gas network on the main land. Engineering-wise it was a fairly straightforward job.
- selectodude 4y ago
  Nothing is straightforward when you're dealing with an explosive gas under extremely high pressure. This was a large project and completing it on time in 9 months is laudable.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    LNG is not a gas, it is a cryogenic liquid. Cryogenic liquids are not easy, but are anyway not "under extremely high pressure", nor is LNG especially explosive: there is rarely enough oxygen immediately at hand for a good explosion, as opposed to a big fire. (Rockets would have a big tank of LOX right there.) A big fire can be bad, but is nothing like a detonation.
    - b3orn 4y ago
      The LNG is regasified before entering the gas network.
      - moloch-hai 4y ago
        But not at the terminal.
        cormacrelf 4y ago
        Uh, yes at the terminal. The floating LNG terminal is a ship, and the liquid is gas by the time it gets to the jetty. https://www.rwe.com/en/research-and-development/project-plans/floating-lng-terminals https://www.rwe.com/en/research-and-development/project-plan...
seper8 4y ago
>modern governments Did a "modern government" create this terminal or did a public company "simply" respond to market demand or other incentives like subsidies?
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  The government introduced a 'red tape cutting law' to speed up the process (also, it's remarkable because it's the first 'high profile project' in Germany I can remember that was finished in time). https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/klimaschutz/secure-gas-supply-2038906 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/klimaschutz/se...
  - seper8 4y ago
    Oh so the government removed some of the red tape (which it made itself) and suddenly the project was able to be finished on time?
    - flohofwoe 4y ago
      Well, the 'red tape' exists so that the public also has a say in the planning process of infrastructure projects (it is their money after all that pays for those projects, but also often unfortunately results in pointless NIMBY-ism of small interest groups). So cutting the red tape actually means taking away freedom from the people, which is a serious matter and shouldn't be taken lightly (I agree though that the two sides of the problem need to be better balanced in Germany - in the end the main problem (usually) isn't the government, but a public opinion that's somewhere between indifferent to openly hostile towards change / progress).
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Red tape provides space for graft, which wants projects never completed. Grafty projects are finally completed when it looks like the money would dry up regardless. Nukes are among the graftiest projects (alongside urban tunnels, some places). NB, even without the graft and even discounting public subsidy, they would be among the most expensive power sources, so there is never a good reason to build one.

kakwa_ 4y ago

> it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminals. Except they weren't really "built" in 9 months. Höegh Esperanza (the floating terminal), was commissioned in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6egh_Esperanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6egh_Esperanza In reality, oversimplifying wildly, it took 9 months to negotiate the contract and "plug" this preexisting terminal into the German gas network. However, it's still impressive that our societies have tools like that available to handle unforeseen situations and crisis.

bamboozled 4y ago

Would be nice if they did the same thing with Nuclear and Renewables though wouldn't it? Some how they can "go to war" for gas, but when it comes to climate change it's, "meh"?

Luc 4y ago
Fifty years of anti-nuclear movement has left its mark.
- tgv 4y ago
  If the best retort the nuclear industry had was a Russian-Ukrainian war, then it's not so odd to see why.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Actual retorts: - we don’t have the mineral supplies for other non-fossil options - nuclear has a better safety record, all in - nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers - nuclear can supply the base load - nuclear produces rare elements that help with advanced medicine But you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and many people were raised in a green-washed death cult. Like most religious people, they uncritically repeat that faith and become angered if you point out the inconsistencies.
    - flir 4y ago
      > nuclear has a better safety record, all in Better than... wind turbines? Solar panels? Hydroelectric?
      - mensetmanusman 4y ago
        Due to installation deaths, PV has higher deaths per kWhr install: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
        jefftk 4y ago
        Note that your source is specifically "rooftop solar", not solar overall.
      - jefftk 4y ago
        The safety profile of hydro and nukes are dominated by large rare events, which makes prediction tricky. Hydro is much less safe historically because of a single event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Wind and solar don't have catastrophic failures, but people installing and repairing them do sometimes fall. Residential rooftop solar is especially bad here, since the deaths are divided over a relatively small amount of generation capacity. Still, overall wind and solar are safer than nukes, and data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. More: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#what-are-the-safes...
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I am 100% in favor of any technology that allows us to stop emitting CO2 in a short time-frame, including nuclear. My reservation about the pro-nuclear (online) argument is that it always seems to be framed more as an excuse to "punch some hippies" than as a serious effort to calculate the cost of deploying nuclear at scale, let alone an effort to marshal political opinion to a state that would allow for any of it to happen.
  - ouid 4y ago
    You are the first person I have ever heard present this sentiment.
    - marmetio 4y ago
      Yeah I've never heard of it, either. I haven't even really seen hippies in the opposition. They're just normal people who, as soon as they hear the word "nuclear", panic really hard and refuse to receive any new information that would actually address their concerns.
      - Arnt 4y ago
        Try it. Say my concern is that the relevant nuclear operators are organisationally similar to TEPCO. Give me some new information that either explains how they are different, or explains that an organisation like TEPCO is well suited to run a nuclear reactor safely.
        marmetio 4y ago
        You're kind of proving my point here. Your concern is that an operator can be unsafe, which is valid and will always be true. So no, I won't argue against your contrived framing. The only true fix would be a reactor and fuel design that can't melt down. A walk-away safe design that, even if you intentionally induced the worst disaster, still wouldn't pose a real threat to the public. Then it wouldn't matter if the operator was a cartoon villain determined to destroy the city. This is the part that people still don't want to hear. They can't accept that their pet concern can be eliminated by approaching the problem differently and breaking their assumptions. They look for new concerns, but educating them doesn't help because when they run out of unaddressed concerns, they just circle back to old concerns that were already addressed. Their concern was never more than an excuse. They just want the answer to fit their preconceived notions. For nuclear to be accepted, it needs better public messaging, because ultimately people are reacting emotionally rather than thinking critically.
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
dr-detroit 4y ago
[dead]
Archelaos 4y ago
It is the same spirit of pocketing profits and deferring problems to later generations that is behind nuclear power as it is behind fossil fuels. Both are evil. By acknowledging this, Germany is ethically ahead of most other societies on this planet.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Considering the nuclear power shutdowns, it's not so clear that any acknowledgement was made. To me, it seems to confirm business as usual, especially the continued expansion of lignite mines.
- froh 4y ago
  yes! wind, solar and decentralized buffer storage can make us independent from both mined fuels, uranium and fossils, real fast once there is a political willpower to do so. Merkel as a quantum physicist, a PhD at that, knew how to read statistics and forecasts. her exit from nuclear was an incredibly wise and far sighted political measure. I hope we'll be wise enough to stick with it.
  - nforgerit 4y ago
    had to lol at praising Merkel. Well what _actually_ happened was that due to nuclear lobbying her cabinet decided in 2010 to stall the already decided exit by the former government under chancellor schröder (in 2004 ircc). Then 9 months later Fukushima happened and due to german angst in public polls she announced 3 days afterwards to make the nuclear exit even shorter than in the beginning which happened to be end of 2022. This all led to hefty fines (ircc couple billions) paid by tax payers.
    - froh 4y ago
      I'd never thought I'd praise Merkel for anything. still her change of direction to a shorter exit was remarkable.
      - nforgerit 4y ago
ajross 4y ago
Renewable generation in Germany has quadrupled in the last decade (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany). You're framing it differently, but your argument is mostly just about "nuclear" and will devolve into the same tired arguments. So I'll give my standard statement, I guess: Nuclear is failing not because of resistance from hippies or whatever. It's failing because it's far, far, far too expensive, by more than an order of magnitude vs. other renewable choices. There's zero value in spending Euros on a reactor when we could build a bazillion wind turbines and hydro pumps and battery farms for that cash. Nuclear might have a home at the very end of the process when we're trying to wind down the last of the gas peaker plants. But no, nuclear will never represent a significant fraction of renewable power generation. Never. No one wants to write that check.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  I'm making a different point. We're already in serious trouble due to climate change, and our future looks increasingly bleak due to it becoming worse. It's a big enough issue that the whole world should really be at war with burning fossil fuels right now, our best minds should be focused on solving this issue, yesterday. What this article proves proves is that we're capable of solving really hard problems in very short amounts of time, "if the inventive is there". Clearly it was, I can't help but feel it has a little bit to do with profits and political motivations, which is why moving to renewables is happening (because it makes economic sense), but is the political drive and will to do more there? I don't think so.
- ljlolel 4y ago
  it's too expensive because of resistance from hippies who constantly interfere with more regulations and changing regulations and requirements. They can be built safely and cheaply and mined with local swedish uranium if not for all of the ever shifting regulations from the political resistance tactics.
  - xg15 4y ago
    And yet the pro-nuclear argument is that nuclear power is safe thanks to regulations. That's circular reasoning.

albertzeyer 4y ago

I don't really have any idea, but maybe building such terminals is way easier than building other things like nuclear reactors or whatever?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Floating terminals can be relocated anywhere in the world on short notice. It’s an LNG processor with a ship built around it. They’re also cheap, typically ~$50M-$100M/year to lease.
Archelaos 4y ago
Of course, but nevertheless it was fast. It should be noted, however, that what has been built so far is only a precursor to a "real" terminal that has yet to be built. And that environmental concerns have not been adequately considered due to the hasty implementation. The special circumstances caused by the failures of previous governments have also prompted the Green Party, under whose ministerial initiative the construction took place, to prioritise speed over thoroughness. However, due to these special circumstances and the previous negligence, this case is not suitable as a general recommendation for the future.

Denvercoder9 4y ago

They didn't exactly build a terminal, they upgraded an existing jetty to allow a floating terminal to dock and connect to the gas network on the main land. Engineering-wise it was a fairly straightforward job.

selectodude 4y ago
Nothing is straightforward when you're dealing with an explosive gas under extremely high pressure. This was a large project and completing it on time in 9 months is laudable.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  LNG is not a gas, it is a cryogenic liquid. Cryogenic liquids are not easy, but are anyway not "under extremely high pressure", nor is LNG especially explosive: there is rarely enough oxygen immediately at hand for a good explosion, as opposed to a big fire. (Rockets would have a big tank of LOX right there.) A big fire can be bad, but is nothing like a detonation.
  - b3orn 4y ago
    The LNG is regasified before entering the gas network.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      But not at the terminal.
      - cormacrelf 4y ago
        Uh, yes at the terminal. The floating LNG terminal is a ship, and the liquid is gas by the time it gets to the jetty. https://www.rwe.com/en/research-and-development/project-plans/floating-lng-terminals https://www.rwe.com/en/research-and-development/project-plan...

seper8 4y ago

>modern governments Did a "modern government" create this terminal or did a public company "simply" respond to market demand or other incentives like subsidies?

flohofwoe 4y ago
The government introduced a 'red tape cutting law' to speed up the process (also, it's remarkable because it's the first 'high profile project' in Germany I can remember that was finished in time). https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/klimaschutz/secure-gas-supply-2038906 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/klimaschutz/se...
- seper8 4y ago
  Oh so the government removed some of the red tape (which it made itself) and suddenly the project was able to be finished on time?
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Well, the 'red tape' exists so that the public also has a say in the planning process of infrastructure projects (it is their money after all that pays for those projects, but also often unfortunately results in pointless NIMBY-ism of small interest groups). So cutting the red tape actually means taking away freedom from the people, which is a serious matter and shouldn't be taken lightly (I agree though that the two sides of the problem need to be better balanced in Germany - in the end the main problem (usually) isn't the government, but a public opinion that's somewhere between indifferent to openly hostile towards change / progress).
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Red tape provides space for graft, which wants projects never completed. Grafty projects are finally completed when it looks like the money would dry up regardless. Nukes are among the graftiest projects (alongside urban tunnels, some places). NB, even without the graft and even discounting public subsidy, they would be among the most expensive power sources, so there is never a good reason to build one.