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Germany's Water Consumption Down 17% Following Nuclear Reactor Shutdowns
- ritzaco 2y agoCan someone layman explain why the water is 'consumed' if it's used for cooling? Why can't it take the heat, be piped somewhere else to cool down again, and then be used again?
- mandarax8 2y agoGuess: it's too much water to cool down in a small local reservoir.
- roenxi 2y agoEvaporating water consumes a lot of heat. First the energy to get it to 100 degrees, then the latent energy to do the actual evaporation. Then the steam floats away so that is disposal handled. I'd imagine the volumes of heat are too large to the sort of refrigeration cycle you're talking about. It'd just boil the local rivers and lakes, or lead to a very hot block of dirt then stop working. Note that we're talking double-digit percentages of a country's water consumption here.
- joss82 2y agoIf it’s cooled in an “open cycle”, it means that the water vapor is released in the atmosphere, via these huge aero refrigerators towers. It will eventually fall back down as rain or snow. Water is not a scarce resource in Germany. Shutting down those plans was an ecological and economical disaster bordering on high treason.
- Zoadian 2y agononsense. the economy didn't even notice the shutdown. and those plants were more costly to operate than renewables are, so we're enjoying cheaper electricity now. it also wasn't an ecological disaster, in fact it didn't change anything in that regard.
- betimsl 2y agohow much is the cost of a kW in Germany?
- Sayrus 2y agoAccording to eurostat [1], Germany has one of the most expensive electricity (if not the most expensive due to a negative tax in Ireland) in Europe at ~0.35 to 0.40 EUR per kWh. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/8/8d/Electricity_prices_for_household_consumers%2C_first_half_2024_.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/8/...
- JanSt 2y agoAnd an additional (!) 6-7.5 cent per KWh is payed by the "Klima und Transformationsfonds" to the producers of renewable energy.
- emrox 2y agoit's for households. Energy prices for industry is much lower and in 2024 actually cheaper than 2017 (2024: 16,99, 2017: 17,09) Source: https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/bdew-strompreisanalyse/#:~:text=Strompreis%20in%20der%20Industrie https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/bdew-strompre...
- jeilers 2y agoProduction cost share for industry: 2017: 08,02 Cent 2024: 15,50 Cent Total cost is only less, because there are fewer levies and taxes.
- stop50 2y ago28.72ct/kwh is the cheapest for my location and 45.51ct/kwh if im in the Grundversorgung(if i fall out for whatever reason out of my regular contract this is the fallback)
- lupusreal 2y ago
- vaylian 2y agoWhy would shutting down the reactors be an ecological disaster?
- tzmudzin 2y agoYou could not replace them entirely with renewables, so fossil fuels were used
- Krssst 2y agoShutting down a nuclear reactor means postponing a coal plant shutdown. Coal being the worst way of generating electricity regarding CO2 emissions.
- mharig 2y ago[dead]
- joss82 2y agoSolar and wind cannot replace base load power. Especially not in Germany. They have to rely on peaker plants even more, and those are burning gas, emitting CO2. And they built more coal power plant units, like Datteln 4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datteln_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datteln_Power_Station
- myrmidon 2y ago> Solar and wind cannot replace base load power This is incorrect, and also completely misunderstanding how electricity pricing dynamics work. Power grids don't need base load providers at all. They need enough dispatchable sources (and/or imports) to cover demand at all times (at least if they want to avoid rolling blackouts like in SA). Providing base load is a privilege you get to enjoy if you have the lowest marginal price at all times (or are technically unable to regulate your output down, and would rather pay not to)-- cheap intermittent sources (solar/wind) make it very difficult for conventional plants to act as "base load provider" profitably.
- pintxo 2y agoActually, water is scarce in some parts of Germany [1], it might not look like it, but there are still drought conditions in the soil of some parts of Germany [2]. [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/wasser/extremereignisseklimawandel/trockenheit-in-deutschland-fragen-antworten#gibt-es-in-deutschland-ein-problem-mit-wasserknappheit- https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/wasser/extremereigniss... [2] https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937 https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937
- gen3 2y agoMy understanding is that with most current reactors there is an inner loop that is constantly recirculating (reactor to turbine) that does not leave containment. This goes through a heat exchange with other water to jettison waste heat from the system. This waste heat can be something like taking water from a river and ejecting it back into the river, just slightly warmer. I’m curious how much using less water actually matters. It’s not like the jettisoned water is dangerous or radioactive
- Sayrus 2y agoI'm no expert but the water evaporates and is released into the air through huge cooling towers. Cooling the water in a closed-loop system requires a huge cooling and storage infrastructure. Evaporation is around 2% of the water taken from rivers, the other 98% are released back into the river.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoEvaporative cooling, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower
- Y_Y 2y agoIs that all, or did coal consumption go up?
- abenga 2y agoIt doesn't matter if it went up or stayed the same (or even went down). Coal consumption would have gone down even faster if the nuclear plants stayed open. Closing the plants showed that they were not serious about reducing fossil fuel use, only green virtue signaling.
- sgt101 2y agowell - more Russian oligarch funding to be fair.
- sgt101 2y agoI think that they are importing much more gas, and that's been very painful, economically, because it was expected to come from Russia... but it hasn't (directly). I also think that there has been an increase in wind and solar - but Germany isn't in the greatest place for either of these geographically. The French people are getting a bad deal, having subsidized their nuclear fleet for fifty years it's now being heavily used to provide high cost export electricity to Germany and the UK, meaning that the French grid price is also high despite their probity and sense in building out nuclear.
- JanSt 2y agoFrance hasn't payed subsidies since 1981. EDF has payed a dividend nearly each year since then. EDF made $11bn profit last year and $10bn the year before. France energy prices have been reduced this year. Germany pays much higher prices.
- Y_Y 2y agoAre you talking about wholesale or retail? It seems that France and Germany pay similar wholesale rates: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-wholesale-electricity-price-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-whole...
- acidburnNSA 2y agoIt's not consumed. It's heated up a bit and returned to the water cycle. Not needed in Germany, but a 2 gigawatt nuclear plant can be hooked to a desalination plant that can make a billion gallons of fresh water from the sea, per day. It was once considered to use these to make agro-industrial parks. I recently got an archival film on this topic digitized and posted it here along with a bunch of technical papers: https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2025-01-30-no-greater-challenge-nuclear-agro-industrial-complex-film.html https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2025-01-30-no-greater-challen...
- menthe 2y agoCan we just flag this kind of misleading and propagandist content? It’s literally content+karma farming, and brainwashing hot garbage. Total rage bait that doesn’t have its place on platforms catering for higher educated and science oriented people. Nuclear plants evaporates water, water rains down a few kilometers away, gets collected in sewer, recycled/filtered and re-injected in the system. You know what doesn’t get recycled? Coal & gas burning pollution & CO2. And you know what doesn't get re-injected? Lost lives to pollution and global warming.
- DevX101 2y agoGerman manufacturing has also been down 15% compared to 2018 so this is mostly a reflection of reduced economic output. Between the nuclear shutdowns and the disruption of Russian energy sources, German manufacturing has been in a crisis the past few years. Also, nuclear reactors don't deplete water for cooling so the premise of this article doesn't make sense. It goes from water to steam, to rain, back to water.
- Schlaefer 2y ago> Also, nuclear reactors don't deplete water for cooling so the premise of this article doesn't make sense. It goes from water to steam, to rain, back to water. The premise of the article is pretty clear: It's a statistic about how much raw material was extracted by the industry. Nothing more, nothing less. There's also the number for agricultural consumption. But somehow we don't need a huge disclaimer about the water cycle to prevent hurting people who like agriculture.
- jeanlucas 2y ago> German manufacturing has also been down 15% compared to 2018 so this is mostly a reflection of reduced economic output. Between the nuclear shutdowns and the disruption of Russian energy sources, German manufacturing has been in a crisis the past few years. I like this point and it is something interesting about several statistics presented to the market. I always look for the social-economic context because usually these metrics reflect either the social moment or the economic trends.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zihotki 2y agoCorrelation does not imply causation.