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Meanwhile Germany just decommissioned its last nuclear reactors. Given the challenges of baseload renewable generation, it's frustrating to watch working infras

by hit8run 11mo ago

Meanwhile Germany just decommissioned its last nuclear reactors. Given the challenges of baseload renewable generation, it's frustrating to watch working infrastructure being dismantled while we're still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

BoredPositron 11mo ago
By all the doomerism about German and nuclear there is at least Wendelstein 7-x doing frontier work. It's fine to get rid of legacy nuclear if there is a feasible bridge ahead.
- p2detar 11mo ago
  Not sure what the point of this comment is. China has its equivalent EAST, France has ITER. Countries can do both fission and fusion research. To me the problem isn't that Germany closed some legacy reactors, but that too little is done into looking into alternative designs.
  - preisschild 11mo ago
    Also France. Rip Superphênix
    - p2detar 11mo ago
      > Against a background of ongoing protest and low-level sabotage, on the night of January 18, 1982 an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade attack was launched against the unfinished plant. [0] I'm beyond speechless. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack
      - preisschild 11mo ago
        > On May 8, 2003, Chaïm Nissim, who in 1985 was elected to the Geneva cantonal legislature for the Swiss Green Party,[17] admitted carrying out the attack. He claimed that the weapons were obtained from Carlos the Jackal via the Belgian terrorist organisation Cellules Communistes Combattantes (Communist Combatant Cells).[18][19] Most peaceful green party member ^^
- Moldoteck 11mo ago
  The bridge in case of germany is coal and gas
- empiricus 11mo ago
  By the time stellarator designs become economical (tens of years in the most optimistic case), you can cover the entire Germany in PV panels. Or even grow an entire new generation of forrest. So far stellarators look just like interesting vaporware. I mean they are irrelevant to any current energy discussion.
littlecranky67 11mo ago
Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not suitable at all. And they were not fully functional past their expiry date.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not suitable at all It is given we're talking about perceptions. I see no evidence Germany's Greens are suddently rational when it comes to modern reactor designs, of which MSRs are one.
  - Moldoteck 11mo ago
    It's not just greens. Decision is jointly made by most parties. Spd is antinuclear. Cdu doesnt care. Afd probably just uses populism
- preisschild 11mo ago
  > And they were not fully functional past their expiry date. Most of Germany's Nuclear Power Plant could have run for many additional decades. Especially the Konvoi-PWRs from the 80's
- Moldoteck 11mo ago
  Us is extending licenses to 80y, heck Switzerland extended benzau to 64y. The expiry date talk is pure nonsense. German nuclear had excellent CF and extremely advanced safety, incl double containment
AngryData 11mo ago
To be fair, a lot of nuclear reactors around the world should be shut down just due to age and outdated designs. However they should also be being replaced with modern reactors, which few people have, which makes shutting them down while we are still largely utilizing fossil fuel power and chemical plants really dumb.
ViewTrick1002 11mo ago
Germany has a 500 GW interconnection queue for storage. It will be interesting to see how long the ”baseload” talking point lasts.
- gpm 11mo ago
  The baseload talking point has never made sense but storage doesn't make it make less sense. Baseload here is definitionally power sources that can't economically follow the demand curve. They carry the exact same problem that intermittent power sources like solar do, in that you need dispatchable power sources to augment them so that they can actually meet demand, the only difference is that the cause of this is that generation stays constant while load varies instead of both generation and load varying. Baseload is not, and has never been, a feature. It's just a drawback that can be handled so long as only some of your power comes from such sources. Batteries augment base load power sources the exact same way they augment intermittent ones, they take power from them when there is excess and give power back when there isn't making them effectively dispatachable power.
  - hunterpayne 11mo ago
    > The baseload talking point has never made sense Um, yes it has. When you use solar or wind for baseload, it must be backed up by a spinning reserve. When you calculate the combined CO2 output of both the renewables and the spinning reserve, you learn it is more than just using gas by itself (and often it is more than just using oil or coal). There has never been a renewable power source used for baseload that has reduced CO2 emissions per watt. The math and laws of physics basically prevents it from happening. You want that to change, learn how to purify poly-silica more efficiently. And nobody (and I mean nobody) is even working on that. You don't pay for power, you pay for power you control with a switch. Power you don't control is called an explosion.
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  Germany has the most expensive and dirtiest grid in the developed world. They get the majority of their baseload power from other countries, often generated by nuclear or gas. Also, that you think they have 500 GW of anything that generates power is pretty funny. The only thing your comment says is that you don't understand anything about how power is generated or how an electrical grid works. People like you are why we still use so much FFs. You can't solve AGW with accounting tricks. PS Maybe ask Spain how that renewable baseload generated power is doing for them.

by hit8run 11mo ago

BoredPositron 11mo ago

By all the doomerism about German and nuclear there is at least Wendelstein 7-x doing frontier work. It's fine to get rid of legacy nuclear if there is a feasible bridge ahead.

p2detar 11mo ago
Not sure what the point of this comment is. China has its equivalent EAST, France has ITER. Countries can do both fission and fusion research. To me the problem isn't that Germany closed some legacy reactors, but that too little is done into looking into alternative designs.
- preisschild 11mo ago
  Also France. Rip Superphênix
  - p2detar 11mo ago
    > Against a background of ongoing protest and low-level sabotage, on the night of January 18, 1982 an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade attack was launched against the unfinished plant. [0] I'm beyond speechless. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocket_attack
    - preisschild 11mo ago
      > On May 8, 2003, Chaïm Nissim, who in 1985 was elected to the Geneva cantonal legislature for the Swiss Green Party,[17] admitted carrying out the attack. He claimed that the weapons were obtained from Carlos the Jackal via the Belgian terrorist organisation Cellules Communistes Combattantes (Communist Combatant Cells).[18][19] Most peaceful green party member ^^
Moldoteck 11mo ago
The bridge in case of germany is coal and gas
empiricus 11mo ago
By the time stellarator designs become economical (tens of years in the most optimistic case), you can cover the entire Germany in PV panels. Or even grow an entire new generation of forrest. So far stellarators look just like interesting vaporware. I mean they are irrelevant to any current energy discussion.

littlecranky67 11mo ago

Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not suitable at all. And they were not fully functional past their expiry date.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> Comparing those old conventional reactors to MSR is not suitable at all It is given we're talking about perceptions. I see no evidence Germany's Greens are suddently rational when it comes to modern reactor designs, of which MSRs are one.
- Moldoteck 11mo ago
  It's not just greens. Decision is jointly made by most parties. Spd is antinuclear. Cdu doesnt care. Afd probably just uses populism
preisschild 11mo ago
> And they were not fully functional past their expiry date. Most of Germany's Nuclear Power Plant could have run for many additional decades. Especially the Konvoi-PWRs from the 80's
Moldoteck 11mo ago
Us is extending licenses to 80y, heck Switzerland extended benzau to 64y. The expiry date talk is pure nonsense. German nuclear had excellent CF and extremely advanced safety, incl double containment

AngryData 11mo ago

To be fair, a lot of nuclear reactors around the world should be shut down just due to age and outdated designs. However they should also be being replaced with modern reactors, which few people have, which makes shutting them down while we are still largely utilizing fossil fuel power and chemical plants really dumb.

ViewTrick1002 11mo ago

Germany has a 500 GW interconnection queue for storage. It will be interesting to see how long the ”baseload” talking point lasts.

gpm 11mo ago
The baseload talking point has never made sense but storage doesn't make it make less sense. Baseload here is definitionally power sources that can't economically follow the demand curve. They carry the exact same problem that intermittent power sources like solar do, in that you need dispatchable power sources to augment them so that they can actually meet demand, the only difference is that the cause of this is that generation stays constant while load varies instead of both generation and load varying. Baseload is not, and has never been, a feature. It's just a drawback that can be handled so long as only some of your power comes from such sources. Batteries augment base load power sources the exact same way they augment intermittent ones, they take power from them when there is excess and give power back when there isn't making them effectively dispatachable power.
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  > The baseload talking point has never made sense Um, yes it has. When you use solar or wind for baseload, it must be backed up by a spinning reserve. When you calculate the combined CO2 output of both the renewables and the spinning reserve, you learn it is more than just using gas by itself (and often it is more than just using oil or coal). There has never been a renewable power source used for baseload that has reduced CO2 emissions per watt. The math and laws of physics basically prevents it from happening. You want that to change, learn how to purify poly-silica more efficiently. And nobody (and I mean nobody) is even working on that. You don't pay for power, you pay for power you control with a switch. Power you don't control is called an explosion.
hunterpayne 11mo ago
Germany has the most expensive and dirtiest grid in the developed world. They get the majority of their baseload power from other countries, often generated by nuclear or gas. Also, that you think they have 500 GW of anything that generates power is pretty funny. The only thing your comment says is that you don't understand anything about how power is generated or how an electrical grid works. People like you are why we still use so much FFs. You can't solve AGW with accounting tricks. PS Maybe ask Spain how that renewable baseload generated power is doing for them.