8 ms·

I can understand concern about radioactive waste, but what does coal have to do with this?

bewaretheirs 3y ago
Germany's replacing nuclear and Russian natural gas with coal. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energy-crisis https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity-renewables-4700b442 https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity...
- runarberg 3y ago
  This myth is very loud at the moment, I hear it on every HN thread about nuclear. Look at the data. Germany replaced nuclear pretty much 1:1 with solar + wind. Now there has been an increase in coal, but only because 2020 had an unusually low usage (you can guess why) and because 2022 saw an increase (again, I think you know an event at fault). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#/media/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...
  - sam_lowry_ 3y ago
    Because of variability of wind and solar production, there will always be coal and gas burning. Someone somewhere has to maintain the requested load level or the network would desync. By desync I mean that its frequency will deviate from 50Hz enough to turn off the over- or underloaded sectors.
    - legulere 3y ago
      There are alternatives to gas, which are starting to get deployed: Demand control: There are already some electricity tariffs offering prices based on hourly market rates. There are plans to make them more accessible for customers by rolling out intelligent meters faster. Heating and Car charging are massive users for electricity that can be moved off to better hours. Batteries: already financially attractive today, even though there are senseless taxes and duties on it. Biomass like biogas: currently this is driven mostly as base load because of incentives, but it could play a bigger role as a dispatchable electricity source. Green hydrogen: Can be used for longer-term storage. Production can be turned off in low electricity supply times. This one is the one most far out.
      - sam_lowry_ 3y ago
        Batteries are not financially attractive in Belgium where I live. And by not attractive I mean that it is slightly more financially attractive to generate surplus electricity with solar panels during the day than to use electricity at night even without factoring in the battery cost. Biomass and green hydrogen are utopian dreams. Hydrogen because it is so small that it always leaks. Biomass because it is not scaleable. Demand control is the only viable option, but this means lower quality of life.
        runarberg 3y ago
        Has the quality of life significantly decreased as they have replaced nuclear power with solar + wind? I guess we can also look at the data to find that out. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/human_development/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/human_development/
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - belorn 3y ago
    Its a myth that you can replace an intermittent energy source with dispatchable energy source. I will at any time sell 2x worth of solar + wind for 1x worth of nuclear energy, as long I can choose what day and time I get the 1x of nuclear and when I can sell the 2x of solar + wind. With the European energy market being what it is, the price difference between high supply and low supply has gone well beyond 100x.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      Again, look at the data. As nuclear power is decreased, wind + solar is pretty much equally increased. You can’t dispute this fact. How it was done is another question, different from whether it was done—because it was indeed indisputably done—coal did never at any point replace nuclear power, solar + wind did. This is not a myth. You have to ask somebody knowledgeable in German energy policy on how they replaced an intermittent energy source with a dispatchable one. I can think of a few possibilities, perhaps they enacted policies and pricing scheme based on the time of usage. Perhaps they patched up inefficiencies where load was greatest, perhaps they increased storage somehow. I don’t know, but all I know is that it was done, the data tells us that much.
      - belorn 3y ago
        There are many ways to do it, and all of those are being deployed in Europe. A common strategy is to use export intermittent energy while importing dispatchable one. This how a country like Denmark can produce wind power that is over 100% of yearly demand, while at the same time only consuming about 50% of that energy. The rest is imports. Selling wind and solar when supply is high and importing energy when supply is low is naturally quite expensive, but statistically they are produce more wind than they are consuming. From a production perspective they are clean. From a consumption perspective, they are not. An other popular method, deployed in germany, is to keep as much capacity of fossil fuel energy as possible. Fossil fuel subsidies are great to keep the power plant in a operational mode until the weather changes from optimal to suboptimal. This also has the big drawback of being very expensive, but in terms of production it promotes large numbers of wind and solar while keeping the fossil fuel production down to periods when the weather is suboptimal. Sadly there is a lot of periods of suboptimal weather so its not very clean strategy, but its better than operating the coal and gas plants 24/7.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > Germany replaced nuclear pretty much 1:1 with solar + wind. In other words, instead of fully removing coal by nuclear, they replaced nuclear with solar+wind.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      The myth is that Germany replaced nuclear with coal. This myth is false, and obviously false. How fast they did and could have weaned off coal is another question. I don’t know how fast they could have if they had kept the reactors running, perhaps more perhaps less. The energy market is a very dynamic system and one should avoid overly simplistic models and predictions. We could just as easily be arguing that Germany could have spent it’s excessive GDP to fund green infrastructure projects in poorer countries, and there for prevented even more green house gasses from polluting our climate. By several factors greater than by cleaning their domestic energy production. But they didn’t, so why would we talk about it?
      - kilotaras 3y ago
        > The myth is that Germany replaced nuclear with coal. This myth is false, and obviously false. Starting point: nuclear + coal Option 1: nuclear + renewables Option 2 (selected): coal + renewables While this is true, that yes, Germany didn't replace nuclear with coal directly, the delta between option 1 and 2 (which was the choice made) is (-nuclear, +coal).
        runarberg 3y ago
        In 2013 (2 years after the decision to shut down nuclear) 45% of Germany's electricity production came from coal. In 2021 this was down to 30%. So -15% coal delta. The data does not support your narrative. I’m not aware of any specific policy about coal (which would be a justifiable criticism of German energy policy which has nothing to do with nuclear) but coal is down nonetheless even as nuclear power plants are being shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_electricity_production.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...
spfzero 3y ago
The parent's first sentence may have been sarcastic.
- ShroudedNight 3y ago
  If so, that ball landed squarely in Nathan Poe's hazard.
lnsru 3y ago
On bad winter days goal plus gas generated 80% of electricity in Germany. It’s crazy to turn off functional (and I guess safe enough) nuclear plants and generate lost 6 GW capacity burning coal like during first Industrial Revolution.

Germany's replacing nuclear and Russian natural gas with coal. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energy-crisis https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity-renewables-4700b442 https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-coal-energy-electricity...

runarberg 3y ago
This myth is very loud at the moment, I hear it on every HN thread about nuclear. Look at the data. Germany replaced nuclear pretty much 1:1 with solar + wind. Now there has been an increase in coal, but only because 2020 had an unusually low usage (you can guess why) and because 2022 saw an increase (again, I think you know an event at fault). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#/media/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...
- sam_lowry_ 3y ago
  Because of variability of wind and solar production, there will always be coal and gas burning. Someone somewhere has to maintain the requested load level or the network would desync. By desync I mean that its frequency will deviate from 50Hz enough to turn off the over- or underloaded sectors.
  - legulere 3y ago
    There are alternatives to gas, which are starting to get deployed: Demand control: There are already some electricity tariffs offering prices based on hourly market rates. There are plans to make them more accessible for customers by rolling out intelligent meters faster. Heating and Car charging are massive users for electricity that can be moved off to better hours. Batteries: already financially attractive today, even though there are senseless taxes and duties on it. Biomass like biogas: currently this is driven mostly as base load because of incentives, but it could play a bigger role as a dispatchable electricity source. Green hydrogen: Can be used for longer-term storage. Production can be turned off in low electricity supply times. This one is the one most far out.
    - sam_lowry_ 3y ago
      Batteries are not financially attractive in Belgium where I live. And by not attractive I mean that it is slightly more financially attractive to generate surplus electricity with solar panels during the day than to use electricity at night even without factoring in the battery cost. Biomass and green hydrogen are utopian dreams. Hydrogen because it is so small that it always leaks. Biomass because it is not scaleable. Demand control is the only viable option, but this means lower quality of life.
      - runarberg 3y ago
        Has the quality of life significantly decreased as they have replaced nuclear power with solar + wind? I guess we can also look at the data to find that out. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/human_development/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/human_development/
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- belorn 3y ago
  Its a myth that you can replace an intermittent energy source with dispatchable energy source. I will at any time sell 2x worth of solar + wind for 1x worth of nuclear energy, as long I can choose what day and time I get the 1x of nuclear and when I can sell the 2x of solar + wind. With the European energy market being what it is, the price difference between high supply and low supply has gone well beyond 100x.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    Again, look at the data. As nuclear power is decreased, wind + solar is pretty much equally increased. You can’t dispute this fact. How it was done is another question, different from whether it was done—because it was indeed indisputably done—coal did never at any point replace nuclear power, solar + wind did. This is not a myth. You have to ask somebody knowledgeable in German energy policy on how they replaced an intermittent energy source with a dispatchable one. I can think of a few possibilities, perhaps they enacted policies and pricing scheme based on the time of usage. Perhaps they patched up inefficiencies where load was greatest, perhaps they increased storage somehow. I don’t know, but all I know is that it was done, the data tells us that much.
    - belorn 3y ago
      There are many ways to do it, and all of those are being deployed in Europe. A common strategy is to use export intermittent energy while importing dispatchable one. This how a country like Denmark can produce wind power that is over 100% of yearly demand, while at the same time only consuming about 50% of that energy. The rest is imports. Selling wind and solar when supply is high and importing energy when supply is low is naturally quite expensive, but statistically they are produce more wind than they are consuming. From a production perspective they are clean. From a consumption perspective, they are not. An other popular method, deployed in germany, is to keep as much capacity of fossil fuel energy as possible. Fossil fuel subsidies are great to keep the power plant in a operational mode until the weather changes from optimal to suboptimal. This also has the big drawback of being very expensive, but in terms of production it promotes large numbers of wind and solar while keeping the fossil fuel production down to periods when the weather is suboptimal. Sadly there is a lot of periods of suboptimal weather so its not very clean strategy, but its better than operating the coal and gas plants 24/7.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > Germany replaced nuclear pretty much 1:1 with solar + wind. In other words, instead of fully removing coal by nuclear, they replaced nuclear with solar+wind.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    The myth is that Germany replaced nuclear with coal. This myth is false, and obviously false. How fast they did and could have weaned off coal is another question. I don’t know how fast they could have if they had kept the reactors running, perhaps more perhaps less. The energy market is a very dynamic system and one should avoid overly simplistic models and predictions. We could just as easily be arguing that Germany could have spent it’s excessive GDP to fund green infrastructure projects in poorer countries, and there for prevented even more green house gasses from polluting our climate. By several factors greater than by cleaning their domestic energy production. But they didn’t, so why would we talk about it?
    - kilotaras 3y ago
      > The myth is that Germany replaced nuclear with coal. This myth is false, and obviously false. Starting point: nuclear + coal Option 1: nuclear + renewables Option 2 (selected): coal + renewables While this is true, that yes, Germany didn't replace nuclear with coal directly, the delta between option 1 and 2 (which was the choice made) is (-nuclear, +coal).
      - runarberg 3y ago
        In 2013 (2 years after the decision to shut down nuclear) 45% of Germany's electricity production came from coal. In 2021 this was down to 30%. So -15% coal delta. The data does not support your narrative. I’m not aware of any specific policy about coal (which would be a justifiable criticism of German energy policy which has nothing to do with nuclear) but coal is down nonetheless even as nuclear power plants are being shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Germany_electricity_production.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

spfzero 3y ago

The parent's first sentence may have been sarcastic.

ShroudedNight 3y ago
If so, that ball landed squarely in Nathan Poe's hazard.

lnsru 3y ago

On bad winter days goal plus gas generated 80% of electricity in Germany. It’s crazy to turn off functional (and I guess safe enough) nuclear plants and generate lost 6 GW capacity burning coal like during first Industrial Revolution.