13 ms·
Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been
by Taig 3y ago
Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy from its production and one big step towards a fully renewable and modern electricity grid.
- mahkeiro 3y agoGermany didn't replace nuclear energy at all. Germany is producing less electricity than when nuclear reactors were running.
- Taig 3y agoAnd what conclusion do you draw from this, or rather, how is this relevant to this thread?
- ambyra 3y agoBy bringing back coal, they killed thousands more of their own people people than if they stayed with nuclear. Reminds me of my gf who picked cigarettes back up to help her quit vaping.
- mahkeiro 3y agoThat this is a big pretend game to make the people responsible of the closing of nuclear power look not that bad in regard of the climate issue. Electricity generation should be increasing as we electrify transportation and heating. If this not what is happening then it means that globally the problem is just displaced. (Which doesn’t work at the planet scale)
- Taig 3y agoGermany has more energy generation capacity installed than it had last year. I certainly wish there would be a push for even more renewable and storage capacity, though. The fact that Germany is generating less energy has nothing to do with the phase out of nuclear though.
- mahkeiro 3y agoRaw energy generation is the bad number if you don’t take into account capacity factor. To replace 1MW of nuclear generation with a capacity factor of 0.9 you need almost 5MW of wind at 0.2. The 21 GW of nuclear energy of 2009 have barely been replaced in 2023 when taking into account the capacity factor.
- MagnumOpus 3y ago> more energy generation capacity installed than it had last year Nameplate capacity of a new solar plant with a capacity factor of 15% (remember, a cloudy country north of the 50th latitude) is not comparable with nameplate capacity of a well maintained nuclear plant with around 90% capacity factor...
- KptMarchewa 3y agoIf you could leave nuclear, and "replace" lignite with wind and solar instead, you actually replaced nuclear with lignite. >The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). No, it was made for bad reasons. >Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy _Existing_ nuclear reactors are the cheapest possible source of electricity. You already had to build them and will have to close them. Left is the cheapest part, of actually operating them.
- neuronic 3y agoYour comment is wrong and malicious and looking at the data proves you wrong. Using lignite only slowed the reduction of coal, nuclear was almost completely replaced by renewables. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&legendItems=0010011000000001100000&interval=year&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
- starbugs 3y agoCould you please explain how that chart proves your argument and how it makes the parent comment "malicious"?
- KptMarchewa 3y agoThis only shows that you could remove more coal keeping nuclear... https://i.imgur.com/4dH6osj.png https://i.imgur.com/4dH6osj.png Not to mention all the previously closed plants. Every MW of nuclear shut down while coal is still running is coal displacing nuclear.
- voqv 3y agoJust selecting 2023 as a timeframe isn't good data. You can see here [1] that on a time frame of 2000 to 2022 Germany is yet to replace reduction of nuclear generation (Kernkraft) with renewables. Construction of renewables in 2023 has only accelerated 50% relative to 2022 [2]. [1] https://www.tech-for-future.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Klimafreundlicher-Strom-in-Deutschland-2000-2022.png https://www.tech-for-future.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/... [2] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=month&partsum=1&year=2023 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....
- martinald 3y agoIt's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest). There is absolutely no reason the (ex-west) German nuclear power plants could not have been life extended. They were extremely reliable and about 10GWe of modern PWRs were finished in the late 80s. They could have easily be extended to at least 2030 had there been the political will at not a huge amount of cost. The RoI with current/previous high energy prices would have probably been 100 fold.
- Taig 3y ago> It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest). I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.
- eldaisfish 3y agoHow is energy storage a solved problem? All the battery storage in the world today would power half of Germany's minimum electrical load for minutes.
- adrianN 3y agoGermany has enough storage capacity for natural gas to last a couple of months. The same can be build for Hydrogen. Some of the existing infrastructure can even be reused.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago> for good reasons Like what? Surely nuclear is much cheaper than coal if we take at least some of the externalities into account? Carbon emissions are arguably not even the worst aspect of burning coal…
- Findeton 3y agoRenewable energy is unpredictable, thus you need a backup source of energy for when there's no wind, sunlight or rain. It's yet unfeasible to store large amounts of energy unfortunately so that means using either natural gas or coal, because you need to be able to rapidly increase/reduce/regulate the energy output. It's coal at the moment for Germany and that means more pollution and dirty politicians that don't care about the environment, just about votes. Actually nuclear power plants can nowadays also regulate their output fast enough, but they got rid of those.
- wongarsu 3y agoBefore Russia's invasion of Ukraine coal was on its way out due to purely economical factors: coal plants are more expensive to operate than natural gas plants. Of course recent months changed that since a lot of our gas used to come from Russia. If we went all-in on nuclear we could reactivate (East) German uranium mines that were closed shortly after reunification. But (traditional) nuclear also loses on economic factors, on top of being politically untenable.
- iSnow 3y agoJust to add: the German NPPs were not able to regulate output fast, b/c they were of an older generation.
- Moldoteck 3y agoit's possible to store huge amounts of energy with hydro, but at that point nuclear is not that bad in terms of price and nr of people killed by nuclear vs hydro accidents, so again Germany fkd up
- simondotau 3y agoActually, the death toll from hydro is many orders of magnitude worse than nuclear. It's almost insulting to compare them. (And before anyone pipes up, you don't get to exclude Chinese hydro from the ledger, for the same reason we don't exclude Soviet Union nuclear.)
- DeathArrow 3y ago>Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. Only reason nuclear energy is not viable is the people pushing against it, which means less nuclear plants are being built and prices skyrocketing. If people would have pushed for nuclear energy like they push for wind and solar, then we would have no coal or gas burning plants by now.
- Taig 3y agoA few reasons why people might be pushing against nuclear: - high electricity generation costs - "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant" - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can? - Unsolved long-term waste storage location - Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society - We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the energy needs of a couple generations, even though there are more sustainable and cheaper alternatives
- DeathArrow 3y agoThose are mainly fake.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Taig 3y agoSome of them are emotional, sure. But what is fake about them?
- ulfw 3y ago" - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can?" What does that even mean? There are no large earthquakes, let alone any tsunamis in Germany. And even if there were, most nuclear plants were not at the sea.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
- jskrablin 3y agoWhat Germany gained is more pollution, higher CO2 emissions and a lot of hopium that current energy fubar will somehow be resolved sometimes in the unspecified future using semi specified technology (there is no large scale energy storage solution available for renewables and it will stay like this for some years to come). Shutting down nuclear was a political decision, fueled by pure ideology (and some Russian help because natural gas exports). What entire EU gained is getting to support often unstable electricity grid in Germany. So we all gained a lot by the looks of it.
- starbugs 3y agoYep. We all gained primarily a lower living standard without reducing any CO2 consumption globally at all _and_ without improving the environment locally. Looks like a good policy to continue with, doesn't it?
- Taig 3y agoThe European electricity market is working quite well, imports and exports are expected to happen. Countries prefer to import electricity when it is cheaper than producing it themselves. Germany has more than enough capacity installed to handle its energy needs (even if a lot of this is still fossil). Germany does not have an "often unstable electricity grid", not at all. That information is simply wrong.
- jwr 3y agoIn other words, shutting down nuclear plants means a) replacing the energy generation with coal (mostly lignite), or b) importing energy from other countries, which generate it from coal (mostly lignite) like Poland. Importing will likely be "cheap", because we all agree to collectively pretend that externalities like CO2 emissions or catastrophic pollution from coal plants are not a thing. Can't see how any of these options are good.
- ulfw 3y agoOh no no. Germany loves importing nuclear electricity from France, Czech Republic and others too. Makes the government feel good about having quit nuclear, because somehow when it comes from across the border it's not so bad anymore.