Good call. Germany is really stubborn in its intent to shut down its nuclear power stations by the end of this year. This would be a great loss of baseload power, which would not just affect Germany but also its neighbours. Sign the petition and share it! I did already. Here is a complete walk-through: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTWT7RY1tTjgBI2in5bG4cdRTme...
Well, the government is right now struggling with itself to draft a bill to postpone the shutdown of two of the remaining three 3 NPPs until spring next year. If that fails, the current law requires that they shut down by the end of this year. The 3rd one will be shut down by the end of this year regardless.
In fact this started already many years ago. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation assumed its place, Germany still had the upper hand in the German-Russian relations I think. Germany had supported Russia with loans. They even sent financial aid to Russia in order to help them support their own soldiers that were returning from former East Germany in 1994. But in time Russia's economy grew and with the initiation of the German "Energiewende" and the beginning of the nuclear phase-out in 2011 Germany more and more relied on Russian gas.
What do you mean by "brigading like this"? The German parliament (Bundestag) doesn't restrict the right to support petitions to German citizens or to people with German residency even. I'm not a lawyer but I think this is in line with the fact that "jedermann" (everyone) is allowed to submit petitions to the parliament. The "basic rights" listed in the German constitution are really valid for everyone.
You are correct, it's article 17 of the Grundgesetz [1] and due to the stipulation of "jedermann" (everyone) any person regardless of age, place of residency or citizenship has the right to petition the German parliament.
Us nuclear proponents have been saying for decades not to dismantle functioning power plants and build new ones. It’s a bit disingenuous to now say it’s not possible due to “supply chain crisis”. If we had been running on home made nuclear and not imported Russian gas we would not be in this situation at all; it was completely avoidable.
Assume for a moment Germany would have build a whole new fleet of nuclear reactors in the 90s. Completely politically impossible then, but let’s assume.
It wouldn’t change much about the current gas crisis. Miniscule changes, maximum. Because the gas crisis is not an electricity crisis [1].
91% of the gas used in Germany is not used for electricity generation.
It’s used for heating, for cooking, both at homes and for industrial applications, from industrial ovens and in the chemical industry think fertilizer, etc.
And even if we had the electricity “too cheap to meter” since the 90s, my assumption is that it wouldn’t have made a dent in the existing infrastructure of gas usage. There is an enormous 50+ years path dependency there, in a way housing infrastructure is technical debt on a gigantic scale.
Replacing all the existing infrastructure even with massive governmental support and the necessary subventions is a generational project, minimum 20 years in my estimation. First producing the necessary heat pumps and other electrical heaters, building out the net, isolating 100+ year old building, etc. Those are processes which need supply of electrical heater, a huge mass of people capable to install them and first and and foremost money to finance those massive expenditures. 20 years is my optimistic take.
And for our thought experiment, would people have done it, when not in a crisis mode? To never change a running system or only change it when being forced is simply human.
I’m neither arguing pro or contra nuclear electricity. I’m just annoyed because nuclear proponents never seem to think about what’s happens outside of their reactor, the distribution and the actual use. On paper “energy” is fungible. In reality it really is not. Or rather: only with the efforts a country-wide 100x Manhattan project.
When being repeatedly told that nuclear electricity would have helped, “How, exactly?” is not only a perfectly reasonable question but also the far more interesting aspect of the problem.
[1] Given how interconnected the European electricity net is, is there an electricity crisis possible? Cross-border trade not just exists but is for years an essential feature of the European net.
Nuclear power is not strictly for electricity generation, trials were made outside Stockholm with the ~50MW Ågesta power plant to use nuclear for district heating. It was supposed to be the first of many but for political reasons they stopped this project. A decision I obviously disagree with.
I did not argue that nuclear power should be used only for electricity.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 58.8 ms ] threadCurrently at 34449/50000, although I don't know if brigading then like this will be okay.
According to this chart the major rise in natural gas in Germany was in the 80s and 90s.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_17.html
It wouldn’t change much about the current gas crisis. Miniscule changes, maximum. Because the gas crisis is not an electricity crisis [1].
91% of the gas used in Germany is not used for electricity generation.
It’s used for heating, for cooking, both at homes and for industrial applications, from industrial ovens and in the chemical industry think fertilizer, etc.
And even if we had the electricity “too cheap to meter” since the 90s, my assumption is that it wouldn’t have made a dent in the existing infrastructure of gas usage. There is an enormous 50+ years path dependency there, in a way housing infrastructure is technical debt on a gigantic scale.
Replacing all the existing infrastructure even with massive governmental support and the necessary subventions is a generational project, minimum 20 years in my estimation. First producing the necessary heat pumps and other electrical heaters, building out the net, isolating 100+ year old building, etc. Those are processes which need supply of electrical heater, a huge mass of people capable to install them and first and and foremost money to finance those massive expenditures. 20 years is my optimistic take.
And for our thought experiment, would people have done it, when not in a crisis mode? To never change a running system or only change it when being forced is simply human.
I’m neither arguing pro or contra nuclear electricity. I’m just annoyed because nuclear proponents never seem to think about what’s happens outside of their reactor, the distribution and the actual use. On paper “energy” is fungible. In reality it really is not. Or rather: only with the efforts a country-wide 100x Manhattan project.
When being repeatedly told that nuclear electricity would have helped, “How, exactly?” is not only a perfectly reasonable question but also the far more interesting aspect of the problem.
[1] Given how interconnected the European electricity net is, is there an electricity crisis possible? Cross-border trade not just exists but is for years an essential feature of the European net.
I did not argue that nuclear power should be used only for electricity.
- Can you build up enough district heating and especially the pipelines for that in say the timespan of a generation? In all the built-up cities?
- Are there enough places near cities with the necessary rivers for the needs of nuclear plants?
- What happens to those places outside of cities, e.g. the countryside?
The mess we’re in now in Europe will not be easy to solve because of a lack of foresight, which was my point.