9 ms·

Spain does not have many reactors, five I think, making up ~20% of the total power generation of the country. They also source their fuel from other countries l

Spain does not have many reactors, five I think, making up ~20% of the total power generation of the country. They also source their fuel from other countries like France, UK, or Russia. In contrast, the domestic renewable energy industry is growing steadily and is arguably one of the leaders among EU countries. I think they will be fine.

jevoten 3y ago
They should phase-out fossil fuels first, then. I'm so tired of "wind and solar instead of nuclear", while fossil fuels are still burnt.
- Panino 3y ago
  Sorry to be blunt, but the wind people are building wind, the solar people are building solar, the fossil fuels people are supporting that... and what are the nuclear people doing apart from posting on the Internet? AFAICT that's all they're doing.
  - google234123 3y ago
    Actually, the wind and solar (green people) also spend time attacking and blocking nuclear. See the anti nuclear movements
    - Panino 3y ago
      I think the people building wind earn the name pro-wind, same for solar as pro-solar, etc. And they are largely focused on their own efforts, as it's a lot of work to build power plants. I don't think online posters deserve to be called pro- anything since they don't really do anything other than talk, and it's mostly negative FUD so if anything they're anti-. The point I'm trying to make is that it seems that the people who claim to be pro-nuclear aren't actually in favor of nuclear, otherwise they'd be building it. Everyone else is building what they want, everyone except the supposed nuclear group.
      - google234123 3y ago
        Yes... find me images of the 100s of large demonstrations against wind or solar...
- otherme123 3y ago
  Nuclear reactors in Spain are very old. They have been phased out for years, and the nuclear lobby fights to keep the reactors on. This after a recent extension from 2028 to 2035. OTOH, fossil fuels are also being phased out. Coal is gone after years fighting the coal lobby. Fuel is also quite low. The remaining fossils are gas in combined cycle power plants, and they are lowest priority energy in the market, i.e. they only produce if all the other energies combined cannot produce enough. We have one of the best energy grids of Europe, and probably of the world. Blackouts are very rare events, the country is blessed both in sun and wind, and this 2023 half the energy produced was CO2 free. I'm sure they will phase out nuclear and fossils correctly in the next 10-15 years.
- rstuart4133 3y ago
  I don't know about Spain, but I can tell you what is happening in Australia. We aren't phasing out anything. "Phasing out" implies decommissioning a money making machine, and I've yet to see that happen anywhere. Yet, Australia looks like it will be one of the leaders in the changeover to renewables. Instead of "phasing out" we are replacing things when they no longer are making money. By chance and good luck most (all?) of our coal fired power stations were built decades ago, and so are becoming very expensive to maintain. Their private owners (who aren't about to take a loss for the public good and who would happily continue to pump out CO2 if it made a buck) are decommissioning them at a brisk pace. Politicians on the left like to claim their policies has something to do the rapid change over. Politicians on the right like to claim they are holding it up or stopping it. The reality seems to be neither are having much effect on the outcome. It's all driven by money. That said, the politicians of both sides sold the then publicly owned generators to private equity a decade or two ago. We were given lots of reasons by the pollies (like promises of cheaper power), most of which turned out to bullshit. But it did make this money driven transition possible. There are two reasons the coal fired stations are now making losses. One is the aforementioned "they are old" and hence getting expensive to maintain. But that doesn't explain why they are shutting down earlier than their planned lifetimes. The reason they are doing that is because renewables are economic poison for coal fired power stations. The planners counted on selling near 100% of the power they generated. But renewables are supplying 75% of the power (long term average of course, 150% in one hour and 0% in the next) in some parts of Australia. Coal plants can't vary their output fast enough to match indeterminacy of renewables, so they often find themselves pushing power into a market that is literally paying negative prices for it. Power prices go through the roof of course when renewables drop to 0%, but coal can't ramp up anywhere near quickly enough to take advantage of it. Instead, the gas peakers step in with their high priced generation. So coal can't win either way. Turns out that's a death sentence for a coal fired plant that's expensive to maintain, in spite of the fact that it's repaid it's capital costs years ago. Nuclear has the same problems competing against renewables, but on steroids. The capital costs take decades to recoup even with the assumption will make money from most of the demand in the plants catchment, and it's so bad at varying it's output to meet demand Japan (which has a lot of nuclear) has more pumped storage per unit generation (to soak up the excess output) than anywhere else on the planet. So it's not a surprise to me that Spain is phasing out nuclear. We would be far better off climate wise if they didn't, but this isn't driven by climate or safety concerns. The decision is driven my money.
gottorf 3y ago
> making up ~20% of the total power generation of the country > I think they will be fine What? 20% is a lot. It'd be a big deal if somebody asked me to phase out 20% of my income, for example. It seems like the opposite of sensible public policy.
- edent 3y ago
  Phase out and replace. If your spouse asked you to phase out the 20% of your income which comes from [insert distasteful activity here] and replace it with [insert wholesome activity here], would that be a big deal to you?
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    There's nothing "distasteful" about nuclear power, and renewables are quite unreliable (they only work when there's a sun or wind), so what Spain is doing is just plain stupidity.
    - BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago
      Yes to the first bit, but no to the second bit once you have batteries or other long-term storage, but that's not good for your narrative, now is it? Hate hate hate on all the either/or politics here. We need both (though increasingly less nuclear with time), and we needed it yesterday.
      - Detrytus 3y ago
        > once you have batteries or other long-term storage, but that's not good for your narrative, now is it? Well, I'd love to see that happening in my lifetime (I just turned 40, so that leaves like 30-40 more years for some breakthrough to happen). For now it seems that the technology is simply not there yet. EDIT: All of that is to say: I'd like for our policies to be based on the actual technology that we have, not on wishful thinking.
        3y ago
philwelch 3y ago
It’s a much larger share of the power generation of Catalonia. Is this really about nuclear power or undermining the economic self-sufficiency of a separatist region?
- pydry 3y ago
  It's more likely about the extreme cost (5x the LCOE of solar and wind), exactly as it was in Germany. And Spain has no need for nukes so why does it need a nuclear industry to provide industrial support for them? It's not Iran, Russia or America. I bet the US military industrial complex will be salty though, exactly as they were with Germany when their bean counters ordered a nuclear phase out.
  - gustavus 3y ago
    > exactly as it was in Germany. Oh you mean the Germany that had to turn to massive amounts of coal to keep up energy production in order to keep their people from starving because clean energy didn't pan out. Sounds like a great example especially when climate change is an existential threat to the entire human race.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      Yeah Germany is doing pretty badly they are up and now at 25% coal [0]. Back when they had 12.6% nuclear energy in the mix, it was only 29% [1] coal. Back in those days Germany used to burn much less coal... [0] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&... [1] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2021 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
    - pydry 3y ago
      Your talking point was one of the outputs of that American shamefest I was referring to. They were furious at Germany and so said... what you just did. The graph of Germany's energy mix over time doesnt quite tell the this story, however: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2023.png?itok=LaIvtDSu https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p... In fact it shows that nuclear power was never that relevant to Germany and that that loud hissy fit was about a change in < 5% of Germany's electricity mix. Why so controversial? Well, the reason for this political shamefest are a bit murky - possibly military related - but one thing is certain: it had less than nothing to do with environmentalism. That was a cover.
gustavus 3y ago
Hey I remember seeing this before in another European country. Can't remember the name of it, decided to shut down nuclear, renewables didn't turn out, put them in a precarious position when the geopolitical situation changed. Can't remember exactly what happened after that. Anyway I am sure it all worked out fine in the end.
- anticensor 3y ago
  Is it called Bundesrepublik Deutschland in their own language?
janice1999 3y ago
It's usually not that simple. Not all power sources are equal. Solar and wind, which Spain is focusing on, are very variable unlike geothermal and hydro for example. Nuclear and gas are very attractive for grid stability. Inter-connectors with other countries also help. Renewable + storage is going to get very exciting going forward, assuming we get battery storage less prone to fires.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Nuclear isn’t a great option for grid stability - you can’t easily vary it like gas or pumped or biomass.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Why would you need to vary free energy?
    - midasuni 3y ago
      Nuclear isn’t free If you can’t support peak load with nuclear you have to have variable load like gas or bio or pumped
      - stavros 3y ago
        Once the factory is running, what are the marginal savings if you reduce the number of kW produced? You can have nuclear for the base load and anything else for the peak load, and it would be better than not having nuclear for the base load.
        midasuni 3y ago
        How does that help stability? You still need the peakers, unless you propose building excess amounts at massive capital cost to be used for an hour or two a day
        3y ago

jevoten 3y ago

They should phase-out fossil fuels first, then. I'm so tired of "wind and solar instead of nuclear", while fossil fuels are still burnt.

Panino 3y ago
Sorry to be blunt, but the wind people are building wind, the solar people are building solar, the fossil fuels people are supporting that... and what are the nuclear people doing apart from posting on the Internet? AFAICT that's all they're doing.
- google234123 3y ago
  Actually, the wind and solar (green people) also spend time attacking and blocking nuclear. See the anti nuclear movements
  - Panino 3y ago
    I think the people building wind earn the name pro-wind, same for solar as pro-solar, etc. And they are largely focused on their own efforts, as it's a lot of work to build power plants. I don't think online posters deserve to be called pro- anything since they don't really do anything other than talk, and it's mostly negative FUD so if anything they're anti-. The point I'm trying to make is that it seems that the people who claim to be pro-nuclear aren't actually in favor of nuclear, otherwise they'd be building it. Everyone else is building what they want, everyone except the supposed nuclear group.
    - google234123 3y ago
      Yes... find me images of the 100s of large demonstrations against wind or solar...
otherme123 3y ago
Nuclear reactors in Spain are very old. They have been phased out for years, and the nuclear lobby fights to keep the reactors on. This after a recent extension from 2028 to 2035. OTOH, fossil fuels are also being phased out. Coal is gone after years fighting the coal lobby. Fuel is also quite low. The remaining fossils are gas in combined cycle power plants, and they are lowest priority energy in the market, i.e. they only produce if all the other energies combined cannot produce enough. We have one of the best energy grids of Europe, and probably of the world. Blackouts are very rare events, the country is blessed both in sun and wind, and this 2023 half the energy produced was CO2 free. I'm sure they will phase out nuclear and fossils correctly in the next 10-15 years.
rstuart4133 3y ago
I don't know about Spain, but I can tell you what is happening in Australia. We aren't phasing out anything. "Phasing out" implies decommissioning a money making machine, and I've yet to see that happen anywhere. Yet, Australia looks like it will be one of the leaders in the changeover to renewables. Instead of "phasing out" we are replacing things when they no longer are making money. By chance and good luck most (all?) of our coal fired power stations were built decades ago, and so are becoming very expensive to maintain. Their private owners (who aren't about to take a loss for the public good and who would happily continue to pump out CO2 if it made a buck) are decommissioning them at a brisk pace. Politicians on the left like to claim their policies has something to do the rapid change over. Politicians on the right like to claim they are holding it up or stopping it. The reality seems to be neither are having much effect on the outcome. It's all driven by money. That said, the politicians of both sides sold the then publicly owned generators to private equity a decade or two ago. We were given lots of reasons by the pollies (like promises of cheaper power), most of which turned out to bullshit. But it did make this money driven transition possible. There are two reasons the coal fired stations are now making losses. One is the aforementioned "they are old" and hence getting expensive to maintain. But that doesn't explain why they are shutting down earlier than their planned lifetimes. The reason they are doing that is because renewables are economic poison for coal fired power stations. The planners counted on selling near 100% of the power they generated. But renewables are supplying 75% of the power (long term average of course, 150% in one hour and 0% in the next) in some parts of Australia. Coal plants can't vary their output fast enough to match indeterminacy of renewables, so they often find themselves pushing power into a market that is literally paying negative prices for it. Power prices go through the roof of course when renewables drop to 0%, but coal can't ramp up anywhere near quickly enough to take advantage of it. Instead, the gas peakers step in with their high priced generation. So coal can't win either way. Turns out that's a death sentence for a coal fired plant that's expensive to maintain, in spite of the fact that it's repaid it's capital costs years ago. Nuclear has the same problems competing against renewables, but on steroids. The capital costs take decades to recoup even with the assumption will make money from most of the demand in the plants catchment, and it's so bad at varying it's output to meet demand Japan (which has a lot of nuclear) has more pumped storage per unit generation (to soak up the excess output) than anywhere else on the planet. So it's not a surprise to me that Spain is phasing out nuclear. We would be far better off climate wise if they didn't, but this isn't driven by climate or safety concerns. The decision is driven my money.

gottorf 3y ago

> making up ~20% of the total power generation of the country > I think they will be fine What? 20% is a lot. It'd be a big deal if somebody asked me to phase out 20% of my income, for example. It seems like the opposite of sensible public policy.

edent 3y ago
Phase out and replace. If your spouse asked you to phase out the 20% of your income which comes from [insert distasteful activity here] and replace it with [insert wholesome activity here], would that be a big deal to you?
- Detrytus 3y ago
  There's nothing "distasteful" about nuclear power, and renewables are quite unreliable (they only work when there's a sun or wind), so what Spain is doing is just plain stupidity.
  - BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago
    Yes to the first bit, but no to the second bit once you have batteries or other long-term storage, but that's not good for your narrative, now is it? Hate hate hate on all the either/or politics here. We need both (though increasingly less nuclear with time), and we needed it yesterday.
    - Detrytus 3y ago
      > once you have batteries or other long-term storage, but that's not good for your narrative, now is it? Well, I'd love to see that happening in my lifetime (I just turned 40, so that leaves like 30-40 more years for some breakthrough to happen). For now it seems that the technology is simply not there yet. EDIT: All of that is to say: I'd like for our policies to be based on the actual technology that we have, not on wishful thinking.
      - 3y ago

philwelch 3y ago

It’s a much larger share of the power generation of Catalonia. Is this really about nuclear power or undermining the economic self-sufficiency of a separatist region?

pydry 3y ago
It's more likely about the extreme cost (5x the LCOE of solar and wind), exactly as it was in Germany. And Spain has no need for nukes so why does it need a nuclear industry to provide industrial support for them? It's not Iran, Russia or America. I bet the US military industrial complex will be salty though, exactly as they were with Germany when their bean counters ordered a nuclear phase out.
- gustavus 3y ago
  > exactly as it was in Germany. Oh you mean the Germany that had to turn to massive amounts of coal to keep up energy production in order to keep their people from starving because clean energy didn't pan out. Sounds like a great example especially when climate change is an existential threat to the entire human race.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Yeah Germany is doing pretty badly they are up and now at 25% coal [0]. Back when they had 12.6% nuclear energy in the mix, it was only 29% [1] coal. Back in those days Germany used to burn much less coal... [0] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&... [1] https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2021 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...
  - pydry 3y ago
    Your talking point was one of the outputs of that American shamefest I was referring to. They were furious at Germany and so said... what you just did. The graph of Germany's energy mix over time doesnt quite tell the this story, however: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2023.png?itok=LaIvtDSu https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p... In fact it shows that nuclear power was never that relevant to Germany and that that loud hissy fit was about a change in < 5% of Germany's electricity mix. Why so controversial? Well, the reason for this political shamefest are a bit murky - possibly military related - but one thing is certain: it had less than nothing to do with environmentalism. That was a cover.

gustavus 3y ago

Hey I remember seeing this before in another European country. Can't remember the name of it, decided to shut down nuclear, renewables didn't turn out, put them in a precarious position when the geopolitical situation changed. Can't remember exactly what happened after that. Anyway I am sure it all worked out fine in the end.

anticensor 3y ago
Is it called Bundesrepublik Deutschland in their own language?

janice1999 3y ago

It's usually not that simple. Not all power sources are equal. Solar and wind, which Spain is focusing on, are very variable unlike geothermal and hydro for example. Nuclear and gas are very attractive for grid stability. Inter-connectors with other countries also help. Renewable + storage is going to get very exciting going forward, assuming we get battery storage less prone to fires.

midasuni 3y ago
Nuclear isn’t a great option for grid stability - you can’t easily vary it like gas or pumped or biomass.
- stavros 3y ago
  Why would you need to vary free energy?
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Nuclear isn’t free If you can’t support peak load with nuclear you have to have variable load like gas or bio or pumped
    - stavros 3y ago
      Once the factory is running, what are the marginal savings if you reduce the number of kW produced? You can have nuclear for the base load and anything else for the peak load, and it would be better than not having nuclear for the base load.
      - midasuni 3y ago
        How does that help stability? You still need the peakers, unless you propose building excess amounts at massive capital cost to be used for an hour or two a day
        3y ago