this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?

Installed Wind Capacty - Germany

German Wind Capacity

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I have no idea and coal sucks and is the result of intense lobbying and corrupt politicians being bought for pennies on the dollar for the last 25 years.

The point isn't the water usage of nuclear power, since most of it is evaporated and returned to the cycle, so I'd be surprised if it's worse than coal in terms of actual consumption. However you need water in large quantities and the correct temperatures to be able to use it for cooling on nuclear.

If there is no water or not enough water of sufficient temperatures, then you can't cool the plant. It's simple as that.

Droughts overall are horrible for Europe just as much as anywhere else. We're losing tons of valuable topsoil, forrests are dying contributing to the continual errosion. All this could lead to salination and eventual death of farmland. Crop yields are unpredictable. No country on this planet can exist for any prolonged period of time with droughts, unless it can import everything it can't produce itself from elsewhere.

Water usage is generally a huge issue in Germany. Farmers take out far, far more than they're allotted already and there's almost no oversight. Large cities like Frankfurt am Main are pulling in water from surrounding areas, leaving them dry. And this isn't even touching on the basically free use of water for our industries at large. It's a really bad situation.

The only point where renewables would "rely" on water beyond their construction processes is either water generated power itself or energy storage (which comes down to the same).