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Germany currently pays 20 billion Euros per year for subsidizing renewables. Yet, after doing this so-called energy transition for almost 25 years now and spen
by cbmuser 2y ago
Germany currently pays 20 billion Euros per year for subsidizing renewables.
Yet, after doing this so-called energy transition for almost 25 years now and spending hundreds of billions of Euros on it, the country still has more than 130 coal-fired power plants while France has only two with one actually being decommissioned.
Despite these facts, there are still plenty of people here on HN and other platforms that are convinced that wind and solar are the way to go instead of nuclear.
I will never understand that!
- stavros 2y agoBoth are the way to go. Let's stop this "either solar or nuclear" mentality.
- teractiveodular 2y agoNuclear was a great choice in the 1970s, when France started seriously investing in it, but solar & wind have come a long way since then.
- Mo3 2y agoNuclear is still by the far the best in any kind of metric
- coldtea 2y agoIf one doesn't count the ever-present possibility of freak accidents, the externalities, or the endless heaps of subsidies for nuclear (some covert in the way of colonial arrangements and other ways, others open), yes.
- ta1243 2y agoIs it really? The cost per MWh generated seems far higher
- derriz 2y agoCould you name these metrics? Because, nuclear loses according to all of these metrics, for a start: 1. the cost of energy produced. 2. operational flexibility (ability to follow demand). 3. operational cost (the average nuclear plant in the US employs 750). 4. project risk Pretty much everything beats nuclear on 1, 3 and 4 while gas turbines, batteries and hydro beat nuclear on 2. It doesn't even win on the fuel cost metric, given wind turbines and solar PV have zero costs in this regard.
- adrianN 2y agoExcept cost, construction time, and public acceptance.
- stavros 2y agoThey have. So has nuclear.
- j-pb 2y agoYou mean by becoming more expensive over time[0]? 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
- stavros 2y agoBread has become more expensive over time too. I still buy it.
- j-pb 2y agoIt seems that you haven't checked out the reference, because during the same time renewables became 2x cheaper than Nuclear at it's best, and 4x cheaper than Nuclear is right now. If you still buy the same brand of 4$ bread made from exotic imported ingredients and a non-bio-degradable packaging that needs to be stored for thousands of years and can only be bought in 2 Ton Loafs from a government-owned centralized bakery that hasn't baked bread in years, and requires a nuclear physics degree to be sliced. Instead of buying the 1$ Bread that is currently produced in high quantities, can be bought from your lokal bakery, has bio-degradable packaging, mostly local incredients, can be baked by any engineer and bought and cut by private individuals. Then I think that could be called nostalgic at best. It certainly doesn't speak of economic literacy.
- stavros 2y agoIf I can only buy the $1 bread during the day, that's an issue, as I might also be hungry at night.
- j-pb 2y agoAt night most people sleep so you don't need as much bread, and in case you do get hungry you can just eat the other brand that costs 1$. The "Dunkelflaute" is extremely rare [0]. 0: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
- lousken 2y agoThe issue is that you need both - a stable source of power like nuclear for solar or wind to work
- stavros 2y agoI feel like that's exactly what I said.
- senectus1 2y agothe problem is, every time the sun shines and the wind blows it makes the investment in nuclear a sinking ship.. you cant throttle nuclear power plants like that, so they keep producing energy you cant charge for. They keep producing waste, they keep chewing up fuel and they continue being a saftey issue. What needs to happen is baseload storage, batteries, pumped hydro, hydrogen/ammonia.
- zozbot234 2y agoNuclear power can be dispatched/throttled. The reason why it's not done in practice is because it's uneconomic - the cost of nuclear power is almost all in building the plant and in the subsequent decommissioning, the power itself is almost free once you account for that. So you're better off producing, even under very unfavorable conditions. (Negative prices for power due to excess production can theoretically happen, but they will be solved if storage can be expanded and demand response can be deployed at scale. And renewables are even less capable of throttling in case of negative prices.)
- defrost 2y agoI'm 100% on the renewable energy arc and have been for decades. However .. > and they continue being a saftey issue. this just gets tedious. I'm been in exploration geophysics and resource estimation, modelling, resource processing, etc for decades and batteries, hydrogen | ammonia aren't going to be any safer than existing nuclear reactors. eg: South Korea battery maker apologises for deadly fire but says it complied with safety rules following a massive factory fire that killed 23 workers https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-begins-search-answers-after-battery-plant-fire-kills-22-2024-06-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-begin... and there's not much of a renewables industry without seperated rare earth products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynas https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/malaysia-allow-lynas-import-raw-materials-containing-radioactive-material-2023-10-24/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/malaysia-allow-l... this comes with radioactive waste storage requirements that rival the nuclear inustry.
- h0l0cube 2y agoBuilding new nuclear night have been a worthwhile proposition 10-15 years ago, but if you build one now, the exponential growth of grid storage will render it useless by all measures once it is finally in operation. Definitely decommissioning existing nuclear makes no sense for the next decade or two.
- bgnn 2y agoIs there data about this exponential growth of grid storage? Here in the Netherlands grid is over-capacity and cannot be expandee easily because it should have been planned 10-15 years ago. Grid storage is in a worse state than the grid itself. A related report: https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/energy-resources-industrials/articles/energy-storage-development-of-the-market.html https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/energy-resources-indus...
- h0l0cube 2y agoGrid storage additions 2017-2022: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-scale-battery-storage-additions-2017-2022 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/annual-grid-s... It’s exponential growth, very similar to the growth curve of solar and wind. What’s different is the curve is even more explosive than either, to the point that it will surpass daily renewable consumption in little over a decade.
- zozbot234 2y agoThe only grid storage that matters at scale is pumped hydro. Everything else is literally a drop in the bucket. And you can't practically scale pumped hydro beyond what's there now.
- nilsherzig 2y agoDisclaimer I haven't researched the two points I'm going to make, they are just things I've heard from people around me. 1. Nuclear power also never produced a profit in Germany / had to be subsidized the entire time. 2. France has some weird agreements with their former colonies in africa allowing them to basically steal the resources needed to make atomic energy at their scale viable. Booth points might be partly wrong, but could be worth looking into
- vladvasiliu 2y agoI don't know about your first point, but the second doesn't seem correct. Here's a Le Monde article with details on where the Uranium comes from: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-quel-point-la-france-est-elle-dependante-de-l-uranium-nigerien_6184374_4355770.html https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/03/a-qu... It's in French, but thre's a graph showing the distribution which should be legible. TLDR: a good chunk (~20%) comes from a former colony (Niger), but it's not the largest. Other main suppliers have not been French colonies.
- coldtea 2y agoPerhaps they are people who understand that the failure mode or nuclear, whether it's an accident at the station or regarding the long term byproducts storage (and also transfer), is not that good of a bet. Or the kind of people who don't buy the assurances (from players, scientists working in the industry, and fanboys) Or the kind of people who are not convinced by statistics about the "low" past impact of accidents and leaks, because they can see how they're downplayed and under-measured by governments trying to save face or promote further nuclear plans, but more importantly, because it just takes one grave accident to kill tons of people, doesn't matter if 200 previous accidents were "tame" enough.
- GaggiX 2y agoDams have killed tens of thousands of people, the latest incident 10 months ago killed 10000-20000 people, yet I always see people bring up how dangerous nuclear is.
- coldtea 2y agoWell, the dam that killed those people was built to prevent flooding, and help with water for irrigation. It's was a neccessary preventive structure to avoid people dying in the first place - that failed after 15 years of lack of government, civil war, and related non-maintenance. Not something they've built despite having other options. At least it wasn't a nuclear factory that could fall into the hands of ISIS (also operating there), and whose materials could be used for bringing havoc all over the globe.
- j-pb 2y agoI'll never understand how people can have easy access to the latest price metrics [0], which clearly shows that renewables are miles ahead of nuclear, and still largue against them. 20 billion Euros would only give you a SINGLE nuclear power plant at best [1]. If the conservative government we had for the 10 years prior hadn't sabotaged the Energiewende we could have hit 100% renewables by now, instead we had the "Altmaier-Delle" [3][4]. France build Nuclear instead of Coal from the get go, if we could turn back time and do the same in Germany too, great. But unless we invent a time machine, the next best thing is investing into the cheapest CO2-Free technology we have right now, and that's renewables. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source 1: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edfs-nuclear-project-britain-pushed-back-2029-may-cost-up-34-bln-2024-01-23/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edfs-nuclear-project... 2: https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl/truebe-bilanz-von-peter-altmaier-wirtschaftsminister-ohne-plan-wie-schlecht-war-altmaier-wirklich-eine-abrechnung_id_24342042.html https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl/true... 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmceuO02uI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmceuO02uI
- zozbot234 2y agoRenewables are not truly CO2-free because sometimes the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. And then renewable fans have to rely on peaker natgas plants, that emit CO2 (though less of it on a kWh basis than oil or especially coal).
- j-pb 2y agoDunkelflaute is extremely rare if you have a sufficiently large grid [0]. That's the beauty of european collaboration, you can have german and spanish renewable jump in for each other, norwegian pumped hydro in the super rare case that neither have wind or sun, and french nuclear, should that happen while the storage is empty and you don't feel like reducing steel production for the day (which is btw also a totally valid way to balance the grid). 0: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
- GaggiX 2y ago>HN and other platforms that are convinced that wind and solar are the way to go instead of nuclear. Wind and solar with nuclear is the way to go, in my opinion the perfect balance.
- imtringued 2y agoThose subsidies are the result of getting rid of the EEG surcharge. Before that, the EEG surcharge funded the entirety of the feed in tarrifs. When you consider the fact that the CO2 price was introduced a few years ago, it means that the government merely shifted the burden away from electricity consumers to CO2 polluters, but it also reclassifies the payments as a subsidy that has to be paid through taxes rather than surcharges.
- anovikov 2y agoWell, Germany is now at around 65% of renewable power and is set to go coal-free in a few years. These concerns are outdated.
- bamboozled 2y agoCoal-free, but how much gas?
- anovikov 2y agoMaybe to the tune of 15% or so, for now. With very gradual reduction to zero through 2050.
- svara 2y agoIf Germany gets this right, then, very little gas. The role of gas peaker plants in a system dominated by PV and wind is as a dispatchable backup for weather patterns in which storage is insufficient. By building out storage, load shifting and long distance transmission, you can squeeze out gas almost completely. You still need it for those very low probability situations that would be disproportionately expensive to also cover with storage (since storage becomes exponentially more expensive the more you build, since it needs to be used exponentially less). At some point, it'll hopefully be possible to eliminate carbon emissions from gas plants entirely with CCS or by burning synthetic gas.
- zozbot234 2y agoHow can you realistically build out storage when the bulk of current storage is pumped hydro, which can't realistically be scaled up and is not obviously enough for the possibility of lengthy, geographically vast "cold snaps" of renewables-hostile weather. Is this about feasible, proven technology or just sci-fi speculation?
- anovikov 2y agoJust add batteries. It's cheap. Fleet of installed grid batteries will exceed pumped hydro in maybe 2-3 years and will keep expanding at a crazy rate after. Storage is solved. In general, renewable electricity is solved. Energy transition problems is now about marine and air transport for which no applicable solution exists yet (ammonia is too problematic from too many angles and hydrogen stubbornly refuses to really take off).
- coffeeri 2y agoThat comparison lacks as France heavily subsidizes nuclear energy as well. At the same time having to demolish and rebuild multiple reactors. Nuclear energy was never cheap. I don’t have the numbers but I doubt that France made the better net-deal.
- Tade0 2y agoI think a good indicator here is that EDF, after several years of partial privatisation, became an essentially (92%) state owned company again - partly because they've lost €19bln when it suffered nuclear power plant outages along with scheduled maintenance. France doesn't really seem to have a plan for when their current fleet of nuclear reactors reaches decommissioning age. There's no schedule for replacing them, much less expanding generation capacity.
- energy123 2y agoSolar and wind were too expensive twenty years ago. Nuclear was the only option back then. Everyone should have done nuclear but they didn't. But it's not twenty years ago right now. France is the way France is because of decisions they made decades ago. Given none of us have access to a time machine, the best decision is to pursue the most cost effective and fastest to deploy technology today, which is solar and wind.
- tass 2y agoWere the nuclear plants shut down in a way which prevents them from being restarted? Restarting them could be faster and more cost effective than burning coal while waiting for new solar and wind installations.
- energy123 2y agoEarly closure of nuclear plants is climate arson. There's no reason for it aside from ideology and hysteria. I'm not in favour of new nuclear for most countries (excepting those that have a track record of building plants quickly and cheaply, or due to seasonal instability of solar) because the capex makes it uncompetitive with solar and wind, but existing nuclear should be kept online for as long as possible.
- adrianN 2y agoNot doing nonessential maintenance for twenty years because you know that your plant will be shut down is really not good if you want to eventually restart it.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoRenewables are competitive with just running a nuclear plant in some places. Lazard is US focused but they put running a nuclear plant at 32 dollars and the cheapest wind at $27 and cheapest solar at $29. That's not including any refurbishment costs. I think France publishes some numbers recently for the cost of their refurbishment program and I don't remember them being particularly great for nuclear, even if they met their cost projections.
- svara 2y agoPhotovoltaics and batteries have been on a multi-decade exponential decline in cost. The world is installing about twice as much PV capacity every day in 2024 as it did in all of 2004. (1) The dynamics are so crazy, anything you've read or learnt about this 2 years ago is already outdated. Extrapolating this another 2 decades into the future, all of the world's primary energy consumption will be covered by PV. Those subsidies, in particular those in Germany, have had an important role in enabling this. Now, what Germany did with nuclear is still insane, and it's not all smooth sailing to a carbon free 2045, but I think that should pretty clearly help you understand why people think that way. (1) https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar...
- adrianN 2y agoThe number of coal fired power plants is a lot less interesting than the amount of carbon per kWh, which has come down continuously in Germany, thanks to more and more renewable capacity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...