I think it's less about Trump being a crook then being an idiot; so, if even Trump can see NS2/closing down nuclear power plants/not building LNG infrastructure is a mistake how is it that reasonably intelligent German politicians could not?
I don't know where you are getting your information from but Merkel isn't a member of the green party/movement.
Maybe you should have replaced "green movement" with "conservative party" because increasing energy efficiency was one of the things they used to print on their ads.
Well, Germany's leadership was and still is in bed with Russia, from Schröder to Scholz, so naturally importing Russian gas would be 'greener' than the alternatives.
The whole thing is a facade, the political leadership is insanely corrupt, with Scholz at the center. As long as Germany's industrialists keep getting cheap gas and cheap workforce form the east so their factories can make stuff cheaply, then nothing else matters.
> Who would have thought that Trump back in 2018 could so accurately predict Germany's current problems with Russian gas.
Oh not this again. American politicians only care about Europe when they want to make profit or surveil its citizens. Trump (or better, his speech writers) were upset that, at the time, Germany banned fracking.
“In 2020, Germany imported all of the hard coal it consumed with 31.8 million tonnes. Its leading coal suppliers were Russia (45.4%), the United States (18.3%) and Australia (12.3%)”
Renewables produce a lot of kilowatts to the system. The issue is that they translate into kilowatt_hours_ unevenly.
On some days you have so much overproduction that electricity is practically free and on others the price will go insanely high.
We still need a reliable base load - and Nuclear is the only one of those that can be constructed pretty much everywhere. Hydro is good, but there are only so many rivers you can dam without damaging the ecosystem and there is a finite number of locations. Wave/tidal power is looking good, but it needs to be next to an ocean.
Maybe the 2020's is when we get a reliable and cost-effective way of storing electricity overproduction on a grid scale.
> a bizarre stance, given that more than half the German public would like to see the plants running.
That is not true? I mean, I’m glad they linked to their sources, but already that link (which then references the YouGov poll that’s the primary source) only says "About half of Germans say nuclear energy should remain an option in climate policy" which is very different from re-enabling old nuclear plants.
That coupled with mentioning NS2 without NS1 or the existing transit pipelines leaves quite the taste.
Maybe they understand their situation a little better than you do?
Refurbishing those ancient nukes would steal money budgeted to putting up wind turbines. The wind turbine projects are adding generating capacity at a gangbuster pace that could not be matched patching up those ramshackle old contraptions.
They have already installed more renewable generating capacity (even figuring in capacity factor) than the nukes being proposed to restart. The coal plants were there already, and running already. It is disingenuous to pretend that they were started up just to fill in for the nukes.
As a physicist I would have absolutely preferred to keep nuclear around because it just makes sense in a technologically advanced, geographically and politically stable environment. Let me be blunt: that ship has sailed (train/left, horse/bolted, ...) and no complaints are going to change a thing. We can now regret that or just deal with it and move on. Renewables are faster too build and cheaper by now. They might not be able to provide baseload if sized to baseload but overprovisioning goes a far way already (from what I remember it is even the connections to wind/solar fields that are more expensive than the actual panels by now (or: panels are cheaper than the connectors), so it makes sense to maximize their utilization, not that of panels). We are also not living in a medieval self-sustenance society in which everything needs to be produced and consumed locally. Power can be moved in huge amounts quite successfully (look for Chinese examples of HVDC power lines if you are curious).
Either way: we should stop mooning over a bygone love, there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
Overprovisioning by how much? The installed capacity is over 60GW for wind and a bit under 60 GW for solar. This morning at 6 am, wind produced 3.9GW (6% of capacity) and solar 0.6GW (1%). At the same time, fossils produced 30GW and nuclear 4GW.
And right now, 15.24 wind is providing 16.8GW (26% of capacity, 21% of total electricity production in DE) and solar 23GW (38% capacity, 28% total production DE).
A single data point at 6am doesn't tell much, neither does one at 15.24.
The 6am data point shows you that simple overprovisioning is not sufficient. DE would have needed about 500 GW wind capacity to replace fossil fuels at 6am. At least without having any other backup.
“Let me be blunt: that ship has sailed (train/left, horse/bolted, ...) and no complaints are going to change a thing.”
You’ve presented precious little technical evidence to support such an absolute statement. Perhaps instead a nuclear engineer would be in a better position to make such an assessment, although I don’t know of one who would be unprofessional enough to make such a blunt statement without some supporting analysis. Assuming the infrastructure is still in place, it seems likely some reasonable effort could be made to restart a technology that was working perfectly well in Germany in, let’s see, January 2022.
Your blind faith in the scalability of renewables in a cloudy, not-very-windy country such as, say, Germany is touching, but unsupported by any analysis. Perhaps a power engineer should be consulted. Much sunnier, windier countries haven’t gone all in on renewables and instead have chosen a robust diverse energy technology portfolio. Perhaps they are wiser. Seems so in April 2022.
“Power can be moved…” from countries who weren’t foolish enough to make technical and economic decisions based on ideology in the first place and thus have electricity to offer to, say, Germany. Not the first time ideology took precedence over common sense in Germany’s history.
“stop mooning over a bygone love”…what an oddly romantic metaphor for nuclear power. “Your lovely face highlighted by the blue glow of Cherenkov Radiation…”. It was German politics that rejected nuclear power, not economics or national security or engineering or public safety. Nothing romantic about that, nor anything romantic about Germany changing its political mind on the matter as the situation warrants. I trust the abilities of German engineers more than the intelligence and integrity of German politicians. History strongly supports such an assessment.
> last year Germany’s entire wind fleet worked only 36 percent of the time, while its nuclear plants ran for over 80 percent of that same period
How can you take an article like this seriously? No one builds wind farms and expects them to run 24/7.
The author cites an article on "wind droughts" and ignores that these go hand in hand with rising temperatures and droughts. Rivers getting warmer and dryer is very bad for nuclear power plants, but if you write a biased article, you don't have to mention this.
The quote that nuclear energy could replace "30 percent of the Russian gas" is also completely off.
Then the author claims the Energiewende ended Germany's "energy sovereignty". No sources. Germany has been steadily decreasing fossil fuels, increasing renewables - I'd like to see a justification for this claim. How is not relying on Russian uranium worse for your energy sovereignty?
It mentions rising electricity prices and now I'm quoting the IEEE source for that claim:
> The average cost of electricity for German households has doubled since 2000. By 2019, households had to pay 34 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 22 cents per kilowatt-hour in France and 13 cents in the United States.
The consumer price comparison is pointless because Germany taxes electricity heavily. They should compare production cost. Germany is only slightly above Euro-zone average (which you can explain away with higher purchasing power) and only slightly more expensive than France, which makes me believe these people are just measuring inflation and don't want to admit it.
> The author cites an article on "wind droughts" and ignores that these go hand in hand with rising temperatures and droughts. Rivers getting warmer and dryer is very bad for nuclear power plants, but if you write a biased article, you don't have to mention this.
So we have one source where these effects (that go hand in hand) cause them to only be usable 36% of the time while with another source they can still be used 80% of the time?
32 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 81.4 ms ] threadIt seems more like Germany's leaders back then were more interested in appearing green.
One key quote is this one:
"The green movement is more interested in reducing energy consumption than in reducing emissions."
Which is of course not going to happen, so it makes little sense to wind down nuclear plants across the country.
The right thing to do would be to recognize the error from 2018 and start powering up those nuclear power plants again.
But I'm not sure he was right there either. Sure some of what he says bares a resemblance to Germanies situation. Hardly what I'd call "being right".
Maybe you should have replaced "green movement" with "conservative party" because increasing energy efficiency was one of the things they used to print on their ads.
The whole thing is a facade, the political leadership is insanely corrupt, with Scholz at the center. As long as Germany's industrialists keep getting cheap gas and cheap workforce form the east so their factories can make stuff cheaply, then nothing else matters.
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1516545893805273091
Guess what she suggested Belgium use to replace nuclear? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Russian gas of course! =)
[0] https://twitter.com/ziontree/status/1497998920739274757
Makes you question if Europe is really able to do anything seriously about the environment.
https://energywatch.com/EnergyNews/Policy___Trading/article1...
Oh not this again. American politicians only care about Europe when they want to make profit or surveil its citizens. Trump (or better, his speech writers) were upset that, at the time, Germany banned fracking.
From what I can tell fossil fuels aren't reliable either because you have to import them. They also tend to fail in winter.
“In 2020, Germany imported all of the hard coal it consumed with 31.8 million tonnes. Its leading coal suppliers were Russia (45.4%), the United States (18.3%) and Australia (12.3%)”
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/breaking-it-down-vict...
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48336
On some days you have so much overproduction that electricity is practically free and on others the price will go insanely high.
We still need a reliable base load - and Nuclear is the only one of those that can be constructed pretty much everywhere. Hydro is good, but there are only so many rivers you can dam without damaging the ecosystem and there is a finite number of locations. Wave/tidal power is looking good, but it needs to be next to an ocean.
Maybe the 2020's is when we get a reliable and cost-effective way of storing electricity overproduction on a grid scale.
That is not true? I mean, I’m glad they linked to their sources, but already that link (which then references the YouGov poll that’s the primary source) only says "About half of Germans say nuclear energy should remain an option in climate policy" which is very different from re-enabling old nuclear plants.
That coupled with mentioning NS2 without NS1 or the existing transit pipelines leaves quite the taste.
I'm not sure how they decided it would be a better idea to switch off nuclear before switching off their coal fired electric plants.
Refurbishing those ancient nukes would steal money budgeted to putting up wind turbines. The wind turbine projects are adding generating capacity at a gangbuster pace that could not be matched patching up those ramshackle old contraptions.
Now they're replacing nuclear with coal and renewables, which seems completely bonkers.
Either way: we should stop mooning over a bygone love, there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
Overprovisioning by how much? The installed capacity is over 60GW for wind and a bit under 60 GW for solar. This morning at 6 am, wind produced 3.9GW (6% of capacity) and solar 0.6GW (1%). At the same time, fossils produced 30GW and nuclear 4GW.
Source: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
A single data point at 6am doesn't tell much, neither does one at 15.24.
You’ve presented precious little technical evidence to support such an absolute statement. Perhaps instead a nuclear engineer would be in a better position to make such an assessment, although I don’t know of one who would be unprofessional enough to make such a blunt statement without some supporting analysis. Assuming the infrastructure is still in place, it seems likely some reasonable effort could be made to restart a technology that was working perfectly well in Germany in, let’s see, January 2022.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-ge...
“overprovisioning goes a far way already”
Your blind faith in the scalability of renewables in a cloudy, not-very-windy country such as, say, Germany is touching, but unsupported by any analysis. Perhaps a power engineer should be consulted. Much sunnier, windier countries haven’t gone all in on renewables and instead have chosen a robust diverse energy technology portfolio. Perhaps they are wiser. Seems so in April 2022.
“Power can be moved…” from countries who weren’t foolish enough to make technical and economic decisions based on ideology in the first place and thus have electricity to offer to, say, Germany. Not the first time ideology took precedence over common sense in Germany’s history.
“stop mooning over a bygone love”…what an oddly romantic metaphor for nuclear power. “Your lovely face highlighted by the blue glow of Cherenkov Radiation…”. It was German politics that rejected nuclear power, not economics or national security or engineering or public safety. Nothing romantic about that, nor anything romantic about Germany changing its political mind on the matter as the situation warrants. I trust the abilities of German engineers more than the intelligence and integrity of German politicians. History strongly supports such an assessment.
How can you take an article like this seriously? No one builds wind farms and expects them to run 24/7.
The author cites an article on "wind droughts" and ignores that these go hand in hand with rising temperatures and droughts. Rivers getting warmer and dryer is very bad for nuclear power plants, but if you write a biased article, you don't have to mention this.
The quote that nuclear energy could replace "30 percent of the Russian gas" is also completely off.
Then the author claims the Energiewende ended Germany's "energy sovereignty". No sources. Germany has been steadily decreasing fossil fuels, increasing renewables - I'd like to see a justification for this claim. How is not relying on Russian uranium worse for your energy sovereignty?
It mentions rising electricity prices and now I'm quoting the IEEE source for that claim:
> The average cost of electricity for German households has doubled since 2000. By 2019, households had to pay 34 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 22 cents per kilowatt-hour in France and 13 cents in the United States.
The consumer price comparison is pointless because Germany taxes electricity heavily. They should compare production cost. Germany is only slightly above Euro-zone average (which you can explain away with higher purchasing power) and only slightly more expensive than France, which makes me believe these people are just measuring inflation and don't want to admit it.
So we have one source where these effects (that go hand in hand) cause them to only be usable 36% of the time while with another source they can still be used 80% of the time?