Meanwhile in Germany:
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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You are aware that this is over 5 years old data (2017!) for the German electricity mix, right?
Please don't get me wrong, the scale up of renewable energy sources is certainly not going fast enough in Germany (thanks to our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years until 2021!), but please argue this position using the real data for 2023 (57.7% renewables in the German electricity mix)!
You're right, I'm sorry. I chose the picture because it was the first okay one I found in English. I'll change it right away.
and the next 16 years, if everything works well Γ
The past 16 years have been conservative. The next 16 are for the far-right populists. There's a difference.
Hence the formulation "if everything works well"
I love how we literally canβt do shit for ourselves here in Italy
You keep repeating this point but renewable energy HAS to be exported when production is over the grid absorption rate. And coal plants have to be on continuously to guarantee baseload due to you moronic energy policies. You can't bring up a (cherripicked for a single extraordinary year) graph you don't understand and think it's a gotcha. Not even mentioning the fact that France exports its energy too.
This year is an anomaly because nuclear production was low because some power plants had to shut down for maintenance. Germany typically imports power from France.
I have found this nice article (in French) :
https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/exportations-délectricité-françaises-en-allemagne-finir-steven-lorant
It's ... more complex than one picture.
The average idea is that :
Why do you use this tone?
Good for providing up to date data.
But damn, Germany could have been 65% fossil free if they hadn't closed the nuclear plants prematurely.
Such a waste of carbon budget.
Anyway, you're probably going to have a conservative government again after this one. Hope you don't become the big laggards.
Noooooooo... The decision to get out of nuclear was made over ten years ago. It is done. The last three nuclear plants that shut down this and last year were not serviced, not licensed, had no fuel and no newly trained operators. Stop reviving this debate. What is the real crime here is that the conservative government did next to nothing to push renewables as an alternative. They were bought/lulled by cheap russian gas. Even now, conservative governments in the south and the east of the country refuse to build up renewable energy production for purely ideological reasons. Even if those decisions hurt their own economy.
Nope, at least over 20, in 2000. Quick overview:
Sorry I still don't get it: why not reviving this debate? It's never too late to kick-off construction of new nuclear plants.
do you know how long it takes until a nuclear powerplant is planned and built?
Until then renewables are 20x cheaper then nuclear power.
the debate has gone one or the other way for years. the people don't want nuclear power, only our conservative, corrupt parties want it and try to push it every few years; thankfully without any luck.
I know perfectly well that we're talking about decades of planning, yeah. I still believe every country will need a mix of different energy sources on top of renewables. I think Germany is very short-sighted there.
Well then your thinking is very bad.
Constructing new ones take waaaaaaaaaaay too long and is much more expensive than building equally power capable regenerative energy plants in a fraction of that time.
Germans and their anti-nuclear cult have convinced themselves of a lot of falsehoods. It's impossible to argue.
Germany is a small country (compared to the USA or China), which means they can easily trade with their neighbors. So, they will just overbuild renewables and trade for nuclear electricity with their neighbors, including us (Netherlands), but mostly Poland and France, which will build the most nuclear plants in the EU.
That's the plan we compromised in the EU.
They pretend to be nuclear free and we go along with their delusion.
Even France is getting rid of nuclear, they are by far not building enough replacements and their share of nuclear went down too, quite drastically and actually more than Germany ^^
And the nuclear plants on a relevant level are a very big question in Poland too.
We're not getting rid of nuclear, our objectif is to build a balanced mix of energy sources. Nuclear energy will remain the primary source of energy for decades, no reason to change. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't increase the share of renewables in parallel.
You mean supplement the lack of power when the French nuclear plants are having and causing river trouble again, right?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05
And here's a good explanation of something many people seem to find confusing: https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/20180302.html
If the approval process continues as it currently does and solar installations do not slow down massivly, by the end of the term the approved renewbales projects should bring Gemany above 80% renewables. Practically speaking that would be the coal exit done. Maybe not fully, but they would not matter much.
As for the rest, the current plan for hydrogen power plants is currently being negotiated with the EU. The good news it looks like a deal has been reached and if the plans shown by the current government are implemented, that would basicly mean a full coal exit and the starategic storage question being answered.
Basicly the current German government has passed laws for an estimated 64% redcution of emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. The current target is 65%. So with a bit of luck it will work out.
Yes, I see the advantage of CO2 neutrality, but:
The amount of active Nuclear repository sites for spent nuclear fuel and high level waste is... underwhelming.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
60 years time to find a suitable hole to drop the waste into and very limited success so far. Nobody wants it in the own backyard (even if it would be suited.).
The other end of the chain (mining and enrichment) doesn't look like an environmental success story either, or does it? Poisoned groundwater looks like an issue to me... also if it happens in Canada or Kazakhstan.
The dots in between... One meltdown around every 20 years (worldwide) ? - the area here is just too densely populated to risk one here. They started to dismantle the first plant in Germany in 89 - still not done.
Edit: in my eyes the cons (I just named a few of them) outweigh the advantages. I mean the co2- neutrality is a big plus, but is it enough to justify the risks and damages? Aren't there better alternatives? Am I wrong? Please bring facts.
Edit again: thinking further, for me the question to answer is not, either add more CO2 to the atmosphere or have (more) nuclear fission plants. It is the question, how to remove fossils from the energy mix without having to use nuclear fission. With the one extreme to only use what you have and its many backdraws.
Not true. One big problem in Germany is that the grid can't handle all the electricity generated by renewables so they often shut them down. Something you can't do with nuclear l. Since nuclear got of the grid it got more capacity for renewables hence the share jumped this year.
You can shut down or scale back energy/electricity produced from nuclear power plants as well by controlling the reaction rate. What would have been ideal was if nuclear had remained and the renewables took the production capacity share from fossil fuels
The German nuclear plants needed maintenance and refurbishment. Makes sense to invest an other billion to run it for 2 more years.
The renewable energy share skyrocketed since the nuclear shutdown
That's not how that works, mate. Nuclear is the highest priority of energy generation because it's ultra cheap to produce and completely stable (once you have the reactors built, that is). If Germany still had those power plants, they could've dumped fossil and kept renewables, all while investing in energy storage.
Not how the laws work in Germany: Renewables always have priority, they get to sell their production first, everyone else has to make do with the rest of the demand.
Well, duh - intermittent generation means it makes the most sense to use while you can and wait on scalable power for when your load demands more power than is available. What I meant by that is that, of all scalable sources, you always go for Nuclear first.
Except that if you calculate the complete cost including building the plants it's stupendously expensive compared to renewables even including energy storage.
Which is irrelevant, unless you're representing a profit-seeking corporation (if that were the case, fuck off, then).
I do like nuclear, but of course the costs matter regardless of profit seeking. If you have two options that are same benefit but one costs more, to go with that one is just wasteful.
They're not the same benefit. The cost of extracting the materials for building renewable infrastructure is also immense, and that infrastructure must be completely swapped out every couple decades.
Why is that irrelevant? These plants don't run forever and are very expensive. You wouldn't buy a car either that costs 15 million Euro, but in return just uses 1liter of diesel per 100km.
Compared to solar and wind, they may as well last forever. We're talking the difference between a century or more (nuclear) to complete exhaustion in just a couple decades (solar).
I wouldn't buy a car, period.
That is factually incorrect. The oldest reactors still in service are around 60years old and have to be maintained and repaired at high costs as safety relevant parts are heavily deteriorated.
With rising safety measures new plants get more expensive from year to year all the while renewables get cheaper and cheaper in production.
Nuclear costs double per kilowatt than solar tho??
And Nuclear Plants are always built by for profit companies?
Could you cite your source?
I can. But I'm not gonna. I'm lazy.
Here's one of many(pdf inside)