20 ms·

The lesson about the end of nuclear in Germany

68 points by Enimesnas 3y ago

illiarian 3y ago
"Future is not baseload except we actually need baseload, but let's call it by different names like flexible generation and magical non-existent new types of storage"
- bayesian_horse 3y ago
  It's not baseload if it's not on all the time. The point of the article is that what was previously supplied by "baseload" is now generated from a flexible mix, with hardly anything generating 100% of the time.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    It only means that there's still baseload, only covered by a much more fragile and complex system. If there was no baseload you wouldn't care if intermittent power generation went to zero. Because "Base load is the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over 24 h."
    - brazzy 3y ago
      In most discussions about power generation, "baseload" is used to mean generation technologies that provide a constant, fixed output.
  - _ph_ 3y ago
    And one needs to understand that "base load" is mostly a concept important for slow, bad to regulate power plants. In those times, a lot of effort was spent on creating "base load" so the power plants have the least requirement for regulation. This will switch to more agile consumption where you get much cheaper electricity when you can time your consumption. So the amount of energy which was previously part of "base load" will be reduced considerably.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      > base load" is mostly a concept important for slow, bad to regulate power plants. You've just described renewables. > So the amount of energy which was previously part of "base load" will be reduced considerably. There's a minimum of required electricity that you have to provide every day, and you can't escape that.
      - _ph_ 3y ago
        Thanks for showing your skewed view on things. No, renewables are easy to regulate and nothing about them is slow. You can regulate solar in milliseconds, wind in a couple of seconds. They don't have to produce when there is no demand. And yes, you have to provide as much electricity as is pulled from the grid. But that does no longer have to be done in a constant fashion as with nuclear and coal. That is why I write that "base load" is reduced. Overall energy consumption isn't. It will actually rise with the electrification of mobility and heating. That is, why there is a need for a huge buildup of renewables.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > No, renewables are easy to regulate and nothing about them is slow. Renewables are among the slowest power sources to ramp up production. Which is complicated by the fact that they are intermittent. > That is, why there is a need for a huge buildup of renewables. 1. At what cost 2. What happens to generation on a quiet night?
        bayesian_horse 3y ago
        Your arguments are fueled by a lack of understanding. Ramping down renewables is lots faster and easier. The stability argument is just populistic bullshit. Plausible on the surface, not a concern in actual practice. You are acting like those who plan and build this renewable capacity never thought of that. The goal with renewables is to reduce the total emissions. There are still plenty of years left in that process before you even need any storage to cover capacity fluctuation. Because even when covering SOME extra capacity with fossil fuels SOME of the times, total emissions are still getting reduced. Is it that some people just want to ignore that a coal plant that doesn't produce energy also doesn't produce emissions?
- pydry 3y ago
  Pumped storage, grid scale batteries and syngas all exist. When combined with solar and wind they can all easily compete with nuclear power on cost, they're just more expensive than natural gas for peaking.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > Pumped storage Very limited in where you can build it > grid scale batteries Don't exist. You severely underestimate the needs of the grid > syngas Aka burning furl and calling it carbon neutral. And have they passed the 1MW mark
    - pydry 3y ago
      >Very limited in where you can build it There was a scientific study that looked this precise question and found 10x as many sites as necessary >grid scale batteries Don't exist. Your assertion is trivially disproven with a quick google. >Aka burning furl and calling it carbon neutral aka making hydrogen from excess solar/wind, storing it, burning it and turning that into electricity. it's unfortunately only 50% efficient but that still makes it cheaper than nuclear power.
- Joeri 3y ago
  I think the opinion piece is overly reductive on what the strategy is, and that makes it easy to dismiss it in this way. Actually diving into the details paints a different picture. The actual EU strategy hinges on multiple interacting elements. Making more of the demand steerable, to align peak use better with peak production. Overbuilding renewables capacity so it can still provide enough even at lower efficiency. Wind at sea at a never before seen scale (decided this week at the north sea conference) to have a form of base load (there is dunkelflaute but in general wind at sea is reliable at producing a certain amount of base load). And last but not least the EU hydrogen strategy, where a transport and storage network will be built similar to that for natural gas (in fact converting over that infrastructure), that then can be used to respond to demand in a steerable way, and that can be fed through shipping and pipelines from regions where renewables are most cost-effective at producing hydrogen. Skeptics like to pretend the EU doesn’t have a renewables strategy beyond hope, but if you dig into it they (like in most things the EU does) have actually worked out a detailed and pragmatic strategy.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > The actual EU strategy There is a strategy beyond populism and FUD? > Overbuilding renewables capacity so it can still provide enough even at lower efficiency. And the cost of overbuilding is? > And last but not least the EU hydrogen strategy, where a transport and storage network will be built similar to that for natural gas Again, some future magical solution with unspecified costs
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      > And the cost of overbuilding is? For renewables? Absolutely huge. We would need 10-20x the nameplate power. Perhaps even more. The only reason renewables "work" at the moment is that all other energy sources work overtime to compensate. (And the EU's hydrogen strategy is a huge green elephant -- but Timmerman has invested most of his political capital in it so the idea doesn't go away until he does.)
Luc 3y ago
Very misguided opinion piece... in my opinion. It's hard to think and reason clearly about these issues, it seems. Especially for the German public.
- Enimesnas 3y ago
  The commentator is French
  - oaiey 3y ago
    Right. And in reality discussing French energy politics by reflecting on the German politics.
  - Luc 3y ago
    Yes I know, I was referring to the debate in Germany itself. I think it's genuinely hard for most Germans, due to the anti-nuclear culture.
    - skrause 3y ago
      As someone who is mostly neutral on nuclear power: The pro-nuclear fanboyism I see on Hacker News and large parts of Reddit is mostly as irrational as the anti-nuclear culture in parts of Germany. Any thread that mentions "energy" and "Germany" here is full of completely full of incorrect facts about Germany energy infrastructure.
      - bayesian_horse 3y ago
        [flagged]
- cies 3y ago
  Very hard to reason about. I got that wind turbines do not actually produce more energy than was needed to build them. This is not shown in these charts, i.e. the energy needed to build the wind turbines was largely used outside of Germany, it was part of the price buy them. edit: thanks commenters, i stand corrected
so-and-so 3y ago
No doubt a hard decision, but IMHO it's correct. Accidents do happen and are extremely hard to deal with. Trying to increase safety has resulted in expences and construction time hugely increasing. The only countries that can deliver nuclear reactors mostly on time and on budget (China, Russia, SK) are the ones that are known to skip on safety.
- christkv 3y ago
  You do realize that France right next door has tons of reactors and are building more.
  - flask_manager 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - skrause 3y ago
    > are building more Fun fact: In the last 20 years France has reduced its nuclear power output by just about the same total amount as Germany. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation?tab=chart&country=FRA%7EDEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation...
  - _rrnv 3y ago
    Plus Czech Rep, Austria (and Switzerland) all have plenty of nuclear plants and energy, and will fight the EU to keep them. Germany stance is ideological at best and irrational at worst. Time will tell if it works well for German in the end. Unfortunately their recent track record with risky decisions is not great (I refer to the refugee crisis and the reliance on russian gas).
    - bayesian_horse 3y ago
      Bullshit. There was no "decision" in the refugee crisis, we had to take in the refugees because of our constitution and frankly because we (constitutionally and fortunately) don't have the means to get rid of them even if we wanted to. So far everything works well for Germany. Relying on Russian gas meant cheaper power for quite some time. Hard to tell if alternatives would have fared better. Hindsight is always 20/20. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is irrational from any standpoint and not expecting him and his country shooting themselves in their feet that way wasn't illogical.
mrpopo 3y ago
The failure of EDF in France is not due to nuclear power inherent limitations, but to massive underinvestment from the French government. The Energiewende has cost the Germans more than 150 billion €, all that with lenient EU regulations. Whereas in France, the new EPR in Flamanville, for all it being talked about as a failed investment, has cost 1/10th of that. With 10x the money and economies of scale, we could have had a crazy nuclear capacity with very strict, modern standards. Whether France will build nuclear or renewables, the problem is they had to do it 10 years ago.
- martin_a 3y ago
  > we could have had a crazy nuclear capacity with very strict, modern standards. Would that help though, if drought periods hit Western Europe, like last year, and water levels in the rivers are as low as they were?
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    I'm sure, they can figure that out with something similar to irrigation channels and/or solar panels along river/channels to prevent evaporation. Would they do this? That's another question
  - illiarian 3y ago
    0.18% of nuclear power generation was lost due to water levels and temperatures. Also nothing stops you from building nuclear plants in other locations
  - Wilya 3y ago
    In France last summer, some plants had indeed to be shut down because of the drought but: * a minority of plants were involved, it was only an issue because it happened on top of other issues (planned maintenances delayed due to covid, corrosion issues) * the problem isn't actually the drought, it was the heat. The plants could keep operating, but they would have rejected water too hot, in breach of environmental regulations. Besides, new plants can be built close to the sea instead of rivers to account for that.
faeriechangling 3y ago
>Is that what you usually hear? That replacing nuclear (a lot of it) by (a lot of) renewables will actually reduce fossil fuel use in the power sector? And yet it is the main lesson here. I don't follow the logic whatsoever.
- hannob 3y ago
  Doesn't matter if you follow that logic, it's what the numbers say. Maybe it becomes clearer if you look at them, e.g. chart 3 on that page: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    Yes that's pointing out the correlation once again, but it doesn't shed any light on what I'm confused by, which is why reducing nuclear power usage would have a causative link to reducing fossil fuel usage.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      I think the key word you missed was "replacing". Yes switching off nuclear and doing nothing else would have that effect. But that's not what they did, they pivoted to a renewable heavy grid.
      - faeriechangling 3y ago
        If they pivoted to a renewable heavy grid, could it not be the same governmental policies which depreciated nuclear also depreciated coal/oil? From what I can see Germany started giving governmental support to renewables in 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source... Also renewables simply just became far more economically viable relative to nuclear/coal/oil on a technological level in that time. So to me, the more natural conclusion is "why, renewables became more economically feasible, so they pushed out all these other forms of energy" not "Take out nuclear energy - and coal/oil fall like dominos". I really don't understand the basis for the causation being drawn in the article.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
[flagged]
bad_alloc 3y ago
While people continue to push nuclear as a silver bullet, the painful fact is that nuclear won't be reliable enough in the dry Europe we are facing: Italy, France and Spain are in extreme drought and France in particular had to shut down nuclear power plants due to lack of water. In Germany rivers are also low and having plants like Isar 3 evaporate 770L/s is not sustainable in summer. Wind and Solar can be intermittent but the drought is here to stay. A flexible system which reacts to electric availability is needed for the future. Wasting water in huge cooling towers will threaten food security.
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  What is the sea?
  - bad_alloc 3y ago
    Not usable without desalination and far away from most reactor sites.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      Power plant coolant does not require desalination, but it does obviously require that the plant be built next to the sea. Which works fine for the UK and France but Germany has less coastline and more of it is either national park, tourist destination, or busy port.
      - _ph_ 3y ago
        The problem of course is the proximity to power consumers or you have to expand the grid. Besides, coastlines are ideal places for wind power generation, which is why the north of Germany has no energy scarcity.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > The problem of course is the proximity to power consumers or you have to expand the grid. What's your opinion on UK-Morocco powerline then?
igravious 3y ago
Imagine replacing nuclear partly with biomass and not taking the opportunity to phase out coal burning. There's no rational argument that's pro "saving the planet" that can explain that. As in, zero arguments. That's delusional, plain and simple.
mgaunard 3y ago
Once the world is fucked up because we failed to act, I wonder if ecologists who blocked our one way of solving the problem when we could will be held accountable. Governments remain widely delusional so far and no other government is stepping into their bad decisions.
- bayesian_horse 3y ago
  Ever questioned if maybe experts and politicians who deal with these issues daily are less delusional than you? "Ecologists" weren't the ones who nuked nuclear. Popular opinion did. Impossible accidents happening a couple times too often didn't help.
  - mgaunard 3y ago
    Public opinion is entirely fabricated.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  I wonder if people who stood by and did nothing will find a way to blame their failure on “ecologists”.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
frafra 3y ago
"Nuclear requires the huge volumes of storage/flexible capacity provided by large scale hydro": sorry, what?
- bayesian_horse 3y ago
  Because electricity demand fluctuates. It's uneconomical to build enough nuclear capacity to satisfy peak demand. So even if you were to go to 100% nuclear, you'd have to store the excess power to satisfy the peaks.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    What a load of crap. Nuclear has been load following (and required to load following by EU regulations) since forever. Capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute. https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
    - bayesian_horse 3y ago
      That's not fast enough. Also, running nuclear plants at much below peak capacity is hardly efficient, increasing the cost. Again: This is a problem no country experienced so far, because even France doesn't have that much capacity.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > That's not fast enough. That's more than fast enough. You could see it in the graphs in the document if you bothered to read it. Note: renewables like wind and solar are orders of magnitude slower, intermittent, and actually require grid-scale storage
        bayesian_horse 3y ago
        You don't get the fact that nuclear power requires just as much storage, right France has this problem in a hidden way: They have to import power in the summer, because they DONT have that peak capacity, nuclear or otherwise. To provide that with nuclear, they would either need storage or increase the number of their nuclear plants, and probably like 50%.
jiggywiggy 3y ago
Meta comment. Maybe i misunderstand the downvote mechanism on HN. IMO it should be used for inconsiderate, rude, spam etc. but not against an opinion you disagree with. Everytime I post something against nuclear it gets a huge amount of downvotes. In this case it didn't happen to me, but happens to another user, see comments at the bottom of the tree. I would say just don't upvote, or better write an argument why you disagree. Otherwise leads to huge amount of group think because opposing ideas are pushed down instead of debated.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  HN guidelines are explicit in that downvotes on a thing you disagree with are ok. That said, I do at times upvote comments that I strongly disagree with but are nevertheless so well argued that I disagree with them disappearing. I bet I’m not the only one.
- nologic01 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - pjc50 3y ago
    The problem is that bad quality comments are cheap and good rebuttals are hard. The downvote mechanism does improve quality and people usually know why they got downvoted even if they won't admit it.
    - nologic01 3y ago
      My (admittedly short) experience with the platform is no, people will rush to down or upvote on the basis of general sentiment, maybe scanning the first sentence etc.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        I tried explaining a downvote, and my explanation of the downvote was downvoted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35710269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35710269
dist-epoch 3y ago
[flagged]
HaukeHi 3y ago
Continued reliance on outdated nuclear technology might not have the same crucial global technology spillovers as investments in other clean energy (including advanced nuclear). Since the best path towards global decarbonization is through global technology spillover into emerging economies, the actors that have the best emissions score may, surprisingly, not be the most effective actors at reducing the global rate of emissions in the future. This has some counterintuitive implications. Consider that Germany has higher carbon emissions than France even though it has invested more heavily in solar than its neighbor, which uses much more nuclear. Should advanced economies like Germany leave their nuclear plants running? Perhaps, but it will not make a very large dent in global emissions because 75% of all future emissions will come from emerging economies, which will not adopt the kind of (non-advanced) nuclear power currently in use in Germany. Consider that German citizens environmental footprints are currently less than 4% of the global total, a share that is on the decline. At one point, German subsidies drove ~⅓ of the global solar adoption, ~86% of which occurred outside Germany (6x) - see https://founderspledge.com/stories/changing-landscape#fnref1 https://founderspledge.com/stories/changing-landscape#fnref1
- _ph_ 3y ago
  Just a little comment for correctness, since April 15th, all German nuclear reactors are switched off.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    Yup. And had to burn coal on that night because solar generation was at 0%, and wind generation was at 5% of installed capacity.
    - _ph_ 3y ago
      Germany would have had to burn coal that night anyway. The output of the remaining 3 reactors would have been only a fraction of the electricity requirements anyway. Meanwhile the buildup of renewables continues and part of the "lost" production capacity will be filled in soon.
acidioxide 3y ago
Germany is now a net exporter of energy, but is going to become a net importer precisely because of nuclear phase-out. As described in the IEAs report [0]: "The government expects it can meet future generation needs after the nuclear and plannedncoal phase-outs with additional renewables capacity, energy efficiency measures and increased imports (given an estimated 80 GW to 90 GW of overcapacity regionally) (Eckert, 2019). However, Germany’s switch from a net exporter of electricity to a net importer will also have implications for regional power generation adequacy." [0] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/60434f12-7891-4469-b3e4-1e82ff898212/Germany_2020_Energy_Policy_Review.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/60434f12-7891-4469-...
naranha 3y ago
This article shows that it pays off to diversify. Invest in all low carbon tech. -isms, be it pro- or anti-nuclearism get us nowhere and poison the public debate.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  But "pro-nuclearism" is just being pro-science and pro-reality. How on Earth can that poison any debate? One side is lying and the other is not and you claim they are equally bad?!
  - bayesian_horse 3y ago
    To be in favor of nuclear power you need to ignore the fat tail risk structure. And nuclear power proponents are using plenty of lies. Like the one where the only alternative to nuclear power is coal power. What you claim to be "reality" and "science" is just a convenient selection of either. It is entirely rational to claim that the risk of nuclear power is not calculable, and to not have enough appetite to carry that risk.
xvilka 3y ago
While overall power generation might benefit from the "shock therapy" of this kind, power-hungry industries do not agree and move their manufacturing to other countries.
mduerksen 3y ago
The article succumbs to wishful thinking in critical areas: "So yes, Germany has a lot of gas-fired plants, and a lot of coal-fired plants, but they are actually used very little - only when demand (including from France) is very high and renewables supply is very low - which does happen, but not that often anymore." This will continue to happen for the foreseeable future during the winter months. Solar is almost neglible, and wind obviously has slumps. To fix this problem, the article brings up the recurring theme of saviour technologies that simply are not there yet: "flexible generation, whether hydro, new forms of storage" Total consumption for 2021 in Germany: ~500TWhs [1]. That means ~10TWhs per week. At the moment our storage capacity is in the small GWhs ballpark [2]. We would have to increase this thousandfold. I haven't seen this gap adressed with actual projects yet. [1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164149/umfrage/netto-stromverbrauch-in-deutschland-seit-1999/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164149/umfrag... [2] https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/transformation/speicher/wachsender-markt-deutschland-mehr-als-sieben-gigawatt-speicherleistung-installiert https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/transformation/speicher/w...
- silvestrov 3y ago
  I don't think this is wishful thinking as Denmark is ahead of Germany in switching to renewables and Denmark is already in the situation you quote. Many people completely ignore how well EU contries are interconnected and how EU is pressuring Germany to become even more well connected to other contries. So electricity generation in EU should never be considered at country level only. Today it is windy in Denmark. Wind mills produce 103% of current consumption, solar 33%, bio/coal 17%. Surplus is exported to Norway, Sweden, Nederlands and Germany. During night time this often switches around and we import from those contries. Most days wind blows in Denmark during day time and not during night time, so we are extra hard hit by up-and-downs in renewable generation. Tech for long distance transmission of electricity has also improved a lot over the past years but this is often ignored when speaking about renewables.
  - mduerksen 3y ago
    Lack of sun/wind in Denmark correlates strongly with lack of sun/wind in Germany and surrounding countries. The importing of electricity works precisely because the surrounding countries still have the "baseline" power plants the article dismisses so boldly. Transmitting electricity over larger distances remains very expensive, which is why the idea of using the African sun for Europe (e.g. Desertec[1]) has stalled [2]. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcgdh_0gyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcgdh_0gyo
custommarket1 3y ago
[flagged]
nologic01 3y ago
The problem I have with nuclear is that I cannot isolate any technical discussion of sustainability pros and cons, the practicalities and realism of specific energy transition paths etc. from the stark fact that we (as homo sapiens) are an unreliable, warmongering, self-destructive species. As we speak there is a war in Europe and - in case you missed it - there is a recurring death dance around a major nuclear plant in Ukraine [1]. How can we ignore the depressing reality that geopolitical strife is not under control? For as long as the risks from deliberate attacks on energy infrastructure are within the realm of the likely the only sane approach is to ensure that such attacks would have only contained impact. In other words, the menu of energy transition options we have is not independent from what sort of political world we envisage to prevail. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-visual-guide-ukraine-russia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/war-zaporizhzh...
krellenstein 3y ago
This is a pretty misleading piece. A couple of major errors: The central argument is that renewables basically replaced nuclear in Germany. But that is not* what happened. Simply put -- the continued operation of coal generation replaced the shut down nuclear, nearly on a one on one basis. These coal plants, all of them, would have been shut down absent the atomausstieg. Today, Germany currently produces about the same amount of power from coal (~160 TWh/y) as its nuclear fleet did before the shutdowns began (~160 TWh/y). Had Germany not shutdown its nuclear fleet it would burn zero coal today -- and would emit ~130 million tons of CO2-eq less greenhouse gases. While Germany did reduce slightly coal power generation, it did this by dramatically increasing renewable generation and* fossil gas generation. Recall that fossil gas electricity generation has increased massively since the nuclear phase out began -- increasing from by more than a third since the beginning of the phase out. I don't really think anyone would argue that renewables plus fossil gas backup can not replace baseload power -- it can, just not particularly cleanly or cheaply. The problem is that the German approach -- despite spending over €500 billion on the energiewiende -- did not make a low carbon electrical grid. It made an expensive, dirty grid. In 2022, a kWh of power generated in Germany produced on average 385 grams of greenhouse gas (in CO2-eq) -- 2021 was barely better at 365 g per kWh. Compare that to France, where in 2022 a kWh of power produces 85 g per kWh -- 4.5 times* cleaner. Furthermore, power is dramatically more expensive in Germany -- in 2022, a kWh of power was €0.3279 in Germany vs.€0.2086 in France. *Furthermore, there are basic errors here. Nuclear power doesn't need pumped hydro -- literally Germany has more pumped hydro than France, despite not having the "Alps" etc
- Schroedingersat 3y ago
  Shutting down a third of something rather than all of it isn't "replacing nuclear" with it. France's nuclear fleet is designed to use imports and exports to the rest of europe for storage to be economical. Somebody needs the storage. These are just the same tired lies.
- locallost 3y ago
  This is pretty much all false. The 500 billion figure gets parroted around a lot, but there is no basis for it. Also, coal use has basically almost halved since 10 years ago, and gas did not actually increase, it's still usually around 13-14%. In absolute numbers it went down because of less electricity use. The number are here, gas is in yellow: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2023-03-22.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... The comparison is also not between France and Germany, but Germany now and Germany 20 years ago. The difference is massive, and the only counter argument can be that France did more with nuclear in the 70s and 80s, which is fine, but it's been the only country in the world that's done that, and France itself has not been able to replicate that. Germany on the other hand kickstarted a non-existing industry, that's been on an exponential growth worldwide in the last decade, and doesn't appear to be stopping. I think this comment in the thread was very insightful and should be read by everyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711724
taylodl 3y ago
I think it's too soon to reach any conclusions. Yes, Germany is shedding it's base load generation. Yes, so far that hasn't been a problem and Germany still has excess power to sell to France at peak market pricing. Let's at least get through a nasty Summer and a nasty Winter before we declare success. I really hope Germany is successful and proves to be the model for the rest of the industrialized nations. But we don't have enough evidence yet to call this a success.

68 points by Enimesnas 3y ago

"Future is not baseload except we actually need baseload, but let's call it by different names like flexible generation and magical non-existent new types of storage"

bayesian_horse 3y ago
It's not baseload if it's not on all the time. The point of the article is that what was previously supplied by "baseload" is now generated from a flexible mix, with hardly anything generating 100% of the time.
- illiarian 3y ago
  It only means that there's still baseload, only covered by a much more fragile and complex system. If there was no baseload you wouldn't care if intermittent power generation went to zero. Because "Base load is the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over 24 h."
  - brazzy 3y ago
    In most discussions about power generation, "baseload" is used to mean generation technologies that provide a constant, fixed output.
- _ph_ 3y ago
  And one needs to understand that "base load" is mostly a concept important for slow, bad to regulate power plants. In those times, a lot of effort was spent on creating "base load" so the power plants have the least requirement for regulation. This will switch to more agile consumption where you get much cheaper electricity when you can time your consumption. So the amount of energy which was previously part of "base load" will be reduced considerably.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > base load" is mostly a concept important for slow, bad to regulate power plants. You've just described renewables. > So the amount of energy which was previously part of "base load" will be reduced considerably. There's a minimum of required electricity that you have to provide every day, and you can't escape that.
    - _ph_ 3y ago
      Thanks for showing your skewed view on things. No, renewables are easy to regulate and nothing about them is slow. You can regulate solar in milliseconds, wind in a couple of seconds. They don't have to produce when there is no demand. And yes, you have to provide as much electricity as is pulled from the grid. But that does no longer have to be done in a constant fashion as with nuclear and coal. That is why I write that "base load" is reduced. Overall energy consumption isn't. It will actually rise with the electrification of mobility and heating. That is, why there is a need for a huge buildup of renewables.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > No, renewables are easy to regulate and nothing about them is slow. Renewables are among the slowest power sources to ramp up production. Which is complicated by the fact that they are intermittent. > That is, why there is a need for a huge buildup of renewables. 1. At what cost 2. What happens to generation on a quiet night?
        bayesian_horse 3y ago
        Your arguments are fueled by a lack of understanding. Ramping down renewables is lots faster and easier. The stability argument is just populistic bullshit. Plausible on the surface, not a concern in actual practice. You are acting like those who plan and build this renewable capacity never thought of that. The goal with renewables is to reduce the total emissions. There are still plenty of years left in that process before you even need any storage to cover capacity fluctuation. Because even when covering SOME extra capacity with fossil fuels SOME of the times, total emissions are still getting reduced. Is it that some people just want to ignore that a coal plant that doesn't produce energy also doesn't produce emissions?
pydry 3y ago
Pumped storage, grid scale batteries and syngas all exist. When combined with solar and wind they can all easily compete with nuclear power on cost, they're just more expensive than natural gas for peaking.
- illiarian 3y ago
  > Pumped storage Very limited in where you can build it > grid scale batteries Don't exist. You severely underestimate the needs of the grid > syngas Aka burning furl and calling it carbon neutral. And have they passed the 1MW mark
  - pydry 3y ago
    >Very limited in where you can build it There was a scientific study that looked this precise question and found 10x as many sites as necessary >grid scale batteries Don't exist. Your assertion is trivially disproven with a quick google. >Aka burning furl and calling it carbon neutral aka making hydrogen from excess solar/wind, storing it, burning it and turning that into electricity. it's unfortunately only 50% efficient but that still makes it cheaper than nuclear power.
Joeri 3y ago
I think the opinion piece is overly reductive on what the strategy is, and that makes it easy to dismiss it in this way. Actually diving into the details paints a different picture. The actual EU strategy hinges on multiple interacting elements. Making more of the demand steerable, to align peak use better with peak production. Overbuilding renewables capacity so it can still provide enough even at lower efficiency. Wind at sea at a never before seen scale (decided this week at the north sea conference) to have a form of base load (there is dunkelflaute but in general wind at sea is reliable at producing a certain amount of base load). And last but not least the EU hydrogen strategy, where a transport and storage network will be built similar to that for natural gas (in fact converting over that infrastructure), that then can be used to respond to demand in a steerable way, and that can be fed through shipping and pipelines from regions where renewables are most cost-effective at producing hydrogen. Skeptics like to pretend the EU doesn’t have a renewables strategy beyond hope, but if you dig into it they (like in most things the EU does) have actually worked out a detailed and pragmatic strategy.
- illiarian 3y ago
  > The actual EU strategy There is a strategy beyond populism and FUD? > Overbuilding renewables capacity so it can still provide enough even at lower efficiency. And the cost of overbuilding is? > And last but not least the EU hydrogen strategy, where a transport and storage network will be built similar to that for natural gas Again, some future magical solution with unspecified costs
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    > And the cost of overbuilding is? For renewables? Absolutely huge. We would need 10-20x the nameplate power. Perhaps even more. The only reason renewables "work" at the moment is that all other energy sources work overtime to compensate. (And the EU's hydrogen strategy is a huge green elephant -- but Timmerman has invested most of his political capital in it so the idea doesn't go away until he does.)

Luc 3y ago

Very misguided opinion piece... in my opinion. It's hard to think and reason clearly about these issues, it seems. Especially for the German public.

Enimesnas 3y ago
The commentator is French
- oaiey 3y ago
  Right. And in reality discussing French energy politics by reflecting on the German politics.
- Luc 3y ago
  Yes I know, I was referring to the debate in Germany itself. I think it's genuinely hard for most Germans, due to the anti-nuclear culture.
  - skrause 3y ago
    As someone who is mostly neutral on nuclear power: The pro-nuclear fanboyism I see on Hacker News and large parts of Reddit is mostly as irrational as the anti-nuclear culture in parts of Germany. Any thread that mentions "energy" and "Germany" here is full of completely full of incorrect facts about Germany energy infrastructure.
    - bayesian_horse 3y ago
      [flagged]
cies 3y ago
Very hard to reason about. I got that wind turbines do not actually produce more energy than was needed to build them. This is not shown in these charts, i.e. the energy needed to build the wind turbines was largely used outside of Germany, it was part of the price buy them. edit: thanks commenters, i stand corrected

so-and-so 3y ago

No doubt a hard decision, but IMHO it's correct. Accidents do happen and are extremely hard to deal with. Trying to increase safety has resulted in expences and construction time hugely increasing. The only countries that can deliver nuclear reactors mostly on time and on budget (China, Russia, SK) are the ones that are known to skip on safety.

christkv 3y ago
You do realize that France right next door has tons of reactors and are building more.
- flask_manager 3y ago
  [flagged]
- skrause 3y ago
  > are building more Fun fact: In the last 20 years France has reduced its nuclear power output by just about the same total amount as Germany. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation?tab=chart&country=FRA%7EDEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation...
- _rrnv 3y ago
  Plus Czech Rep, Austria (and Switzerland) all have plenty of nuclear plants and energy, and will fight the EU to keep them. Germany stance is ideological at best and irrational at worst. Time will tell if it works well for German in the end. Unfortunately their recent track record with risky decisions is not great (I refer to the refugee crisis and the reliance on russian gas).
  - bayesian_horse 3y ago
    Bullshit. There was no "decision" in the refugee crisis, we had to take in the refugees because of our constitution and frankly because we (constitutionally and fortunately) don't have the means to get rid of them even if we wanted to. So far everything works well for Germany. Relying on Russian gas meant cheaper power for quite some time. Hard to tell if alternatives would have fared better. Hindsight is always 20/20. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is irrational from any standpoint and not expecting him and his country shooting themselves in their feet that way wasn't illogical.

mrpopo 3y ago

The failure of EDF in France is not due to nuclear power inherent limitations, but to massive underinvestment from the French government. The Energiewende has cost the Germans more than 150 billion €, all that with lenient EU regulations. Whereas in France, the new EPR in Flamanville, for all it being talked about as a failed investment, has cost 1/10th of that. With 10x the money and economies of scale, we could have had a crazy nuclear capacity with very strict, modern standards. Whether France will build nuclear or renewables, the problem is they had to do it 10 years ago.

martin_a 3y ago
> we could have had a crazy nuclear capacity with very strict, modern standards. Would that help though, if drought periods hit Western Europe, like last year, and water levels in the rivers are as low as they were?
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  I'm sure, they can figure that out with something similar to irrigation channels and/or solar panels along river/channels to prevent evaporation. Would they do this? That's another question
- illiarian 3y ago
  0.18% of nuclear power generation was lost due to water levels and temperatures. Also nothing stops you from building nuclear plants in other locations
- Wilya 3y ago
  In France last summer, some plants had indeed to be shut down because of the drought but: * a minority of plants were involved, it was only an issue because it happened on top of other issues (planned maintenances delayed due to covid, corrosion issues) * the problem isn't actually the drought, it was the heat. The plants could keep operating, but they would have rejected water too hot, in breach of environmental regulations. Besides, new plants can be built close to the sea instead of rivers to account for that.

faeriechangling 3y ago

>Is that what you usually hear? That replacing nuclear (a lot of it) by (a lot of) renewables will actually reduce fossil fuel use in the power sector? And yet it is the main lesson here. I don't follow the logic whatsoever.

hannob 3y ago
Doesn't matter if you follow that logic, it's what the numbers say. Maybe it becomes clearer if you look at them, e.g. chart 3 on that page: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Yes that's pointing out the correlation once again, but it doesn't shed any light on what I'm confused by, which is why reducing nuclear power usage would have a causative link to reducing fossil fuel usage.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    I think the key word you missed was "replacing". Yes switching off nuclear and doing nothing else would have that effect. But that's not what they did, they pivoted to a renewable heavy grid.
    - faeriechangling 3y ago
      If they pivoted to a renewable heavy grid, could it not be the same governmental policies which depreciated nuclear also depreciated coal/oil? From what I can see Germany started giving governmental support to renewables in 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source... Also renewables simply just became far more economically viable relative to nuclear/coal/oil on a technological level in that time. So to me, the more natural conclusion is "why, renewables became more economically feasible, so they pushed out all these other forms of energy" not "Take out nuclear energy - and coal/oil fall like dominos". I really don't understand the basis for the causation being drawn in the article.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

[flagged]

bad_alloc 3y ago

While people continue to push nuclear as a silver bullet, the painful fact is that nuclear won't be reliable enough in the dry Europe we are facing: Italy, France and Spain are in extreme drought and France in particular had to shut down nuclear power plants due to lack of water. In Germany rivers are also low and having plants like Isar 3 evaporate 770L/s is not sustainable in summer. Wind and Solar can be intermittent but the drought is here to stay. A flexible system which reacts to electric availability is needed for the future. Wasting water in huge cooling towers will threaten food security.

bondarchuk 3y ago
What is the sea?
- bad_alloc 3y ago
  Not usable without desalination and far away from most reactor sites.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Power plant coolant does not require desalination, but it does obviously require that the plant be built next to the sea. Which works fine for the UK and France but Germany has less coastline and more of it is either national park, tourist destination, or busy port.
    - _ph_ 3y ago
      The problem of course is the proximity to power consumers or you have to expand the grid. Besides, coastlines are ideal places for wind power generation, which is why the north of Germany has no energy scarcity.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > The problem of course is the proximity to power consumers or you have to expand the grid. What's your opinion on UK-Morocco powerline then?

igravious 3y ago

Imagine replacing nuclear partly with biomass and not taking the opportunity to phase out coal burning. There's no rational argument that's pro "saving the planet" that can explain that. As in, zero arguments. That's delusional, plain and simple.

mgaunard 3y ago

Once the world is fucked up because we failed to act, I wonder if ecologists who blocked our one way of solving the problem when we could will be held accountable. Governments remain widely delusional so far and no other government is stepping into their bad decisions.

bayesian_horse 3y ago
Ever questioned if maybe experts and politicians who deal with these issues daily are less delusional than you? "Ecologists" weren't the ones who nuked nuclear. Popular opinion did. Impossible accidents happening a couple times too often didn't help.
- mgaunard 3y ago
  Public opinion is entirely fabricated.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
I wonder if people who stood by and did nothing will find a way to blame their failure on “ecologists”.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

frafra 3y ago

"Nuclear requires the huge volumes of storage/flexible capacity provided by large scale hydro": sorry, what?

bayesian_horse 3y ago
Because electricity demand fluctuates. It's uneconomical to build enough nuclear capacity to satisfy peak demand. So even if you were to go to 100% nuclear, you'd have to store the excess power to satisfy the peaks.
- illiarian 3y ago
  What a load of crap. Nuclear has been load following (and required to load following by EU regulations) since forever. Capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute. https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
  - bayesian_horse 3y ago
    That's not fast enough. Also, running nuclear plants at much below peak capacity is hardly efficient, increasing the cost. Again: This is a problem no country experienced so far, because even France doesn't have that much capacity.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      > That's not fast enough. That's more than fast enough. You could see it in the graphs in the document if you bothered to read it. Note: renewables like wind and solar are orders of magnitude slower, intermittent, and actually require grid-scale storage
      - bayesian_horse 3y ago
        You don't get the fact that nuclear power requires just as much storage, right France has this problem in a hidden way: They have to import power in the summer, because they DONT have that peak capacity, nuclear or otherwise. To provide that with nuclear, they would either need storage or increase the number of their nuclear plants, and probably like 50%.

jiggywiggy 3y ago

Meta comment. Maybe i misunderstand the downvote mechanism on HN. IMO it should be used for inconsiderate, rude, spam etc. but not against an opinion you disagree with. Everytime I post something against nuclear it gets a huge amount of downvotes. In this case it didn't happen to me, but happens to another user, see comments at the bottom of the tree. I would say just don't upvote, or better write an argument why you disagree. Otherwise leads to huge amount of group think because opposing ideas are pushed down instead of debated.

skrebbel 3y ago
HN guidelines are explicit in that downvotes on a thing you disagree with are ok. That said, I do at times upvote comments that I strongly disagree with but are nevertheless so well argued that I disagree with them disappearing. I bet I’m not the only one.
nologic01 3y ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 3y ago
  The problem is that bad quality comments are cheap and good rebuttals are hard. The downvote mechanism does improve quality and people usually know why they got downvoted even if they won't admit it.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    My (admittedly short) experience with the platform is no, people will rush to down or upvote on the basis of general sentiment, maybe scanning the first sentence etc.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      I tried explaining a downvote, and my explanation of the downvote was downvoted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35710269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35710269

dist-epoch 3y ago

[flagged]

HaukeHi 3y ago

Continued reliance on outdated nuclear technology might not have the same crucial global technology spillovers as investments in other clean energy (including advanced nuclear). Since the best path towards global decarbonization is through global technology spillover into emerging economies, the actors that have the best emissions score may, surprisingly, not be the most effective actors at reducing the global rate of emissions in the future. This has some counterintuitive implications. Consider that Germany has higher carbon emissions than France even though it has invested more heavily in solar than its neighbor, which uses much more nuclear. Should advanced economies like Germany leave their nuclear plants running? Perhaps, but it will not make a very large dent in global emissions because 75% of all future emissions will come from emerging economies, which will not adopt the kind of (non-advanced) nuclear power currently in use in Germany. Consider that German citizens environmental footprints are currently less than 4% of the global total, a share that is on the decline. At one point, German subsidies drove ~⅓ of the global solar adoption, ~86% of which occurred outside Germany (6x) - see https://founderspledge.com/stories/changing-landscape#fnref1 https://founderspledge.com/stories/changing-landscape#fnref1

_ph_ 3y ago
Just a little comment for correctness, since April 15th, all German nuclear reactors are switched off.
- illiarian 3y ago
  Yup. And had to burn coal on that night because solar generation was at 0%, and wind generation was at 5% of installed capacity.
  - _ph_ 3y ago
    Germany would have had to burn coal that night anyway. The output of the remaining 3 reactors would have been only a fraction of the electricity requirements anyway. Meanwhile the buildup of renewables continues and part of the "lost" production capacity will be filled in soon.

acidioxide 3y ago

Germany is now a net exporter of energy, but is going to become a net importer precisely because of nuclear phase-out. As described in the IEAs report [0]: "The government expects it can meet future generation needs after the nuclear and plannedncoal phase-outs with additional renewables capacity, energy efficiency measures and increased imports (given an estimated 80 GW to 90 GW of overcapacity regionally) (Eckert, 2019). However, Germany’s switch from a net exporter of electricity to a net importer will also have implications for regional power generation adequacy." [0] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/60434f12-7891-4469-b3e4-1e82ff898212/Germany_2020_Energy_Policy_Review.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/60434f12-7891-4469-...

naranha 3y ago

This article shows that it pays off to diversify. Invest in all low carbon tech. -isms, be it pro- or anti-nuclearism get us nowhere and poison the public debate.

peterfirefly 3y ago
But "pro-nuclearism" is just being pro-science and pro-reality. How on Earth can that poison any debate? One side is lying and the other is not and you claim they are equally bad?!
- bayesian_horse 3y ago
  To be in favor of nuclear power you need to ignore the fat tail risk structure. And nuclear power proponents are using plenty of lies. Like the one where the only alternative to nuclear power is coal power. What you claim to be "reality" and "science" is just a convenient selection of either. It is entirely rational to claim that the risk of nuclear power is not calculable, and to not have enough appetite to carry that risk.

xvilka 3y ago

While overall power generation might benefit from the "shock therapy" of this kind, power-hungry industries do not agree and move their manufacturing to other countries.

mduerksen 3y ago

The article succumbs to wishful thinking in critical areas: "So yes, Germany has a lot of gas-fired plants, and a lot of coal-fired plants, but they are actually used very little - only when demand (including from France) is very high and renewables supply is very low - which does happen, but not that often anymore." This will continue to happen for the foreseeable future during the winter months. Solar is almost neglible, and wind obviously has slumps. To fix this problem, the article brings up the recurring theme of saviour technologies that simply are not there yet: "flexible generation, whether hydro, new forms of storage" Total consumption for 2021 in Germany: ~500TWhs [1]. That means ~10TWhs per week. At the moment our storage capacity is in the small GWhs ballpark [2]. We would have to increase this thousandfold. I haven't seen this gap adressed with actual projects yet. [1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164149/umfrage/netto-stromverbrauch-in-deutschland-seit-1999/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164149/umfrag... [2] https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/transformation/speicher/wachsender-markt-deutschland-mehr-als-sieben-gigawatt-speicherleistung-installiert https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/transformation/speicher/w...

silvestrov 3y ago
I don't think this is wishful thinking as Denmark is ahead of Germany in switching to renewables and Denmark is already in the situation you quote. Many people completely ignore how well EU contries are interconnected and how EU is pressuring Germany to become even more well connected to other contries. So electricity generation in EU should never be considered at country level only. Today it is windy in Denmark. Wind mills produce 103% of current consumption, solar 33%, bio/coal 17%. Surplus is exported to Norway, Sweden, Nederlands and Germany. During night time this often switches around and we import from those contries. Most days wind blows in Denmark during day time and not during night time, so we are extra hard hit by up-and-downs in renewable generation. Tech for long distance transmission of electricity has also improved a lot over the past years but this is often ignored when speaking about renewables.
- mduerksen 3y ago
  Lack of sun/wind in Denmark correlates strongly with lack of sun/wind in Germany and surrounding countries. The importing of electricity works precisely because the surrounding countries still have the "baseline" power plants the article dismisses so boldly. Transmitting electricity over larger distances remains very expensive, which is why the idea of using the African sun for Europe (e.g. Desertec[1]) has stalled [2]. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcgdh_0gyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcgdh_0gyo

custommarket1 3y ago

[flagged]

nologic01 3y ago

The problem I have with nuclear is that I cannot isolate any technical discussion of sustainability pros and cons, the practicalities and realism of specific energy transition paths etc. from the stark fact that we (as homo sapiens) are an unreliable, warmongering, self-destructive species. As we speak there is a war in Europe and - in case you missed it - there is a recurring death dance around a major nuclear plant in Ukraine [1]. How can we ignore the depressing reality that geopolitical strife is not under control? For as long as the risks from deliberate attacks on energy infrastructure are within the realm of the likely the only sane approach is to ensure that such attacks would have only contained impact. In other words, the menu of energy transition options we have is not independent from what sort of political world we envisage to prevail. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-visual-guide-ukraine-russia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/war-zaporizhzh...

krellenstein 3y ago

This is a pretty misleading piece. A couple of major errors: The central argument is that renewables basically replaced nuclear in Germany. But that is not* what happened. Simply put -- the continued operation of coal generation replaced the shut down nuclear, nearly on a one on one basis. These coal plants, all of them, would have been shut down absent the atomausstieg. Today, Germany currently produces about the same amount of power from coal (~160 TWh/y) as its nuclear fleet did before the shutdowns began (~160 TWh/y). Had Germany not shutdown its nuclear fleet it would burn zero coal today -- and would emit ~130 million tons of CO2-eq less greenhouse gases. While Germany did reduce slightly coal power generation, it did this by dramatically increasing renewable generation and* fossil gas generation. Recall that fossil gas electricity generation has increased massively since the nuclear phase out began -- increasing from by more than a third since the beginning of the phase out. I don't really think anyone would argue that renewables plus fossil gas backup can not replace baseload power -- it can, just not particularly cleanly or cheaply. The problem is that the German approach -- despite spending over €500 billion on the energiewiende -- did not make a low carbon electrical grid. It made an expensive, dirty grid. In 2022, a kWh of power generated in Germany produced on average 385 grams of greenhouse gas (in CO2-eq) -- 2021 was barely better at 365 g per kWh. Compare that to France, where in 2022 a kWh of power produces 85 g per kWh -- 4.5 times* cleaner. Furthermore, power is dramatically more expensive in Germany -- in 2022, a kWh of power was €0.3279 in Germany vs.€0.2086 in France. *Furthermore, there are basic errors here. Nuclear power doesn't need pumped hydro -- literally Germany has more pumped hydro than France, despite not having the "Alps" etc

Schroedingersat 3y ago
Shutting down a third of something rather than all of it isn't "replacing nuclear" with it. France's nuclear fleet is designed to use imports and exports to the rest of europe for storage to be economical. Somebody needs the storage. These are just the same tired lies.
locallost 3y ago
This is pretty much all false. The 500 billion figure gets parroted around a lot, but there is no basis for it. Also, coal use has basically almost halved since 10 years ago, and gas did not actually increase, it's still usually around 13-14%. In absolute numbers it went down because of less electricity use. The number are here, gas is in yellow: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2023-03-22.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... The comparison is also not between France and Germany, but Germany now and Germany 20 years ago. The difference is massive, and the only counter argument can be that France did more with nuclear in the 70s and 80s, which is fine, but it's been the only country in the world that's done that, and France itself has not been able to replicate that. Germany on the other hand kickstarted a non-existing industry, that's been on an exponential growth worldwide in the last decade, and doesn't appear to be stopping. I think this comment in the thread was very insightful and should be read by everyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711724

taylodl 3y ago

I think it's too soon to reach any conclusions. Yes, Germany is shedding it's base load generation. Yes, so far that hasn't been a problem and Germany still has excess power to sell to France at peak market pricing. Let's at least get through a nasty Summer and a nasty Winter before we declare success. I really hope Germany is successful and proves to be the model for the rest of the industrialized nations. But we don't have enough evidence yet to call this a success.