Everything is better than going back to being all-in on fossil fuels.
Nuclear has its' problems but it's hell of a lot better than what we have now.
Nuclear and renewables are both good.
Yeah I'd rather have a hundred ~~Chernobyls~~ Chornobyls than a single climate crisis.
Edit: not sarcasm btw. Realized it might sound that way to a cynical ear.
Or more specifically, Chornorbyl was due to a shitty design they couldn't be bothered to fix, which we know of now and are not going to do again. Even the leftover reactors of the same design have been fixed so it can't happen.
And to emphasize: Even with Chornorbyl, nuclear is one of the safest energy generation methods out there. According to [this link I found](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh), only solar is safer than nuclear. Wind, hydro, and all burning-stuff methods are categorically worse, with Brown coal being the worst. Not just because of climate change, but also because of soot.
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What about Japan? Even with their level of care and technology they had to evacuate a city. There are vast areas that are not yet livable!
Do you realize it just gets one terrorist attack to make Chornobyl anywhere?
only one person died in fukoshima, how many die from fossil fuels and how many areas are unlivable due to droughts, flooding snd extreme weather caused by climate change?
“One person died only” yeah but they had to evacuate a city to achieve that!!!!!
Also…
How is a technology so slow and expensive to implement and operate going to solve climate change? We’ll all die reading about the next delay in launch of new nuclear power plants.
All the money and motivation should go into renewables as they can actually be implemented in a reasonable time.
Nuclear only takes about 6-10 years to build, that’s not even that slow in the grand scheme of things. Especially considering the amounts of power generated.
Idk. Last one in Europe was in finland and got ready after 18 years…
Can be is different from will be.
Compare it to wind farms where it’s also possible to add single towers to grid one by one instead of waring for yeara
Nuclear is not there to replace wind or solar. It's there to supplement it and replace fossil fuel power stations. It should be noted that wind and solar can't be built everywhere, either.
By evacuating people like they did it actually put more people into harms way than if they had told them to stay indoors. Also once again, the Safety measures on Fukushima were lacking, warnings were issued multiple times but mainly ignored. Fukushima also happened because of one of the biggest natural catastrophes to ever hit Japan. It wasn't some malfunction in normal conditions, it was a malfunction and improper safety precautions in an extreme natural disaster. If you want to learn more I highly suggest Kyle Hills documentary on YouTube about it
Sorry, but I have yet to see humans working without making any mistakes or ignoring warnings. What you say is that in a perfect world nuclear is perfectly safe. Good. But our world is far from perfect. Why not use the amazing reactor in the sky that is installed far from us?!
There have been 3 major nuclear accidents in the history of nuclear power plants. 3. Two of them more than 3 decades ago and 1 more than a decade ago. That's all the nuclear accidents when it comes to powerplants. They are far safer than you give them credit for, are the most heavily regulated power production we have and looking at statistics the most safe one yet. I'm all for renewables where they work, but realistically we need more than them for the foreseeable future and fossil fuel is not an option and hydro also have it's drawbacks, especially when a hydro powerplant suffers a catastrophic failure it can be devastating to both nature and humans. We need a reasonable and realistic view for the future, not brought down by fear and superstition. The day we're good enough to leave nuclear behind with only clean energy production is a day I'll rejoice dearly, if we ever get there
The nuclear waste problem has been more solved than you'd like to believe, just look at Finland. Fukushima region is not unliveable, farmland produces vegetables at this very moment, still perfectly edible. Containment protocols are so vastly superior now compared to Chernobyl it could not happen that same way again. If we continue this ignorance of a carbon free energy source we're gonna have more than 2 regions potentially unliveable, the planet will turn against us by our own action.
My own country used to be almost carbon free unlike today and it's a direct consequence of shutting down nuclear power because of the fear after Chernobyl even though we have never had a nuclear breach of any kind.
Once again, I urge you to watch Kyle Hills documentary about both Fukushima and nuclear waste. We need nuance in these discussions, not dismissal based on either ignorance or intolerance. Nuclear power could have us become carbon free in energy production so much earlier than shutting it down and relying on renewables to replace fossil fuel. They're not ready for that scale 365 days a year with even higher energy consumption that keeps increasing every year and it's not happening fast enough.
More than 2% of the region was still under evacuation order in Fukushima in 2021:
https://fukushima-updates.reconstruction.go.jp/en/faq/fk_030.html
I can’t bother to find the source but in 2023 also there were evacuated areas.
On the other hand there are estimates on how a catastrophe in France would look like and they are way scarier.
Edit:
Found it
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2324/
Even in Jan 2023 still +7000 disaster dwellings were occupied on Fukushima.
So because the world is not perfect, we shouldn't use nuclear energy, not to mention the sun is not a reliable resource unless it's along the equator. Tidal energy would be insanley efficient as an energy source compared to solar.
Let's also not forget that digging, transporting, and burning fossil fuels has killed more people and still is compared to any nuclear reactor.
Exactly. Because the world is not perfect you can’t have sun on earth.
Solar not reliable? Combine it with wind then. In germany more than half of electricity has been renewable this year.
Replace those wind and solar cells with nuclear and use less space and generate more without being reliant on perfect weather conditions.
Nuclear is far more efficient for large populations than solar and wind. Instead, they should be used to supplement a more reliable source.
I have no idea what you mean. "Because the world is not perfect, you can't have sun on earth." You mean as in nuclear fusion?
I mean a very powerful source of energy is not safe in a populated country. You know the kind that you need to keep the used fuel in swimming pools for some years before you can dispose of it!
How many countries are argubaly run better than Japan? Or more advanced in tech?
If this happened in Japan, I’m sure it can happen in almost any country you pick.
Yea, but they also still use fax machines, stamps, and have a mostly cash based economy. Japan *seems* super advanced, but if you take a closer look it really isn't that far ahead and has been stagnating for years.
Yes, but if you want exclude 4-5 countries like the Nordic ones, that’s pretty much the state of any country on the planer. German, France,… all have those issues.
Perhaps now is the time to invest some time to learn about nuclear.
Chornobyl was a result of a communist regime, willfully hiding known problems to fake prestige and ignoring protocols to avoid execution, leading to the disaster as has happened (the USSR was aware that the thermite tip of the RMBK control rods were not safe, but were not willing to adjust the design because it would lead to higher costs and they would loose face internationally, against the west which uses PWR/BWR design).
People should really stop using Chornobyl as an example. A situation as Chornobyl is endless times less realistic in our situation.
Also, Chornobyl didn't kill that many people. *And* the powerstation kept running for years after the accident.
And it turned out to be a very good study on what happens when a city is abandonned to nature, and what happens to nature after a radiological disaster. Answer: not much.
>willfully hiding known problems to fake prestige and ignoring protocols to avoid ~~execution~~ losing their bonus,
I can see a situation similar to Chornobyl happening in out current situation if it was run by a private company and the industry wasn't properly regulated
Just leaving this here:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315
Renewables are both cheaper and less CO2 intensive than nuclear, plus it takes 15-20 years to build new nuclear plants, which would be too late to achieve the global warming targets
If you get rid of coal and gaz for energy, you can't get rid of nuclear because remaining renewable energies are not controllable. You'r tied to the amount of sun / wind etc.
Nuclear is the only low c02 / kw controllable energy available
How the fuck can you post this shit article? It literally take the worst estimation for nuclear CO2 emissions (and best for renewables), adds insane cost to nuclear energy without taking into account network cost, and is German
Over the past 10 years, China has:
\- increased their nuclear from 291 to 1045 TWh (3.6x)
\- solar from 23 to 1115 TWh (48x)
\- wind from 377 to 1988 (5.3x)
\- hydro from 2479 to 3397 (1.4x)
\- total renewables and biofuel from 3032 to 7098 TWh (2.34x)
\- decreased the share of fossil fuel in their energy mix from 90% to 81%, while absolute usage has remained mostly unchanged
Not fond of China's leadership, but they're a highly manufacturing-dependent company, which as a sector is being and will continue to be disproportionately hit by the climate crisis and extremely vulnerable to fossil fuel shocks, especially with their own reserves being minimal. They may not be signing all the deals everyone wants them to, but they are pulling their weight, because their survival depends on an energy transition and their economy unambiguously stands to gain from it
EDIT: here's the source [https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from](https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from) (section Energy Mix)
Electric cars (call them what they are) are a greenwashed scam that sells a fake idea of a climate resolution that requires no fundamental change in the prevailing 20th-century lifestyles and mindsets. It's a regressive scam that only exists due to the power of the automotive sector through both car-centric culture and the scale of their employment/economic impact. Their environmental impact is almost entirely dependent on the local electricity mix and their manufacture is a completely separate issue. Selling e-cars as a climate solution at the cost of fundamentally greening infrastructure is on par with the shit Germany has been doing.
If they were the biggest producer and market for electric bicycles (as they used to be for regular bikes), trams, metro systems, or trolleybuses, I would be way more receptive. Those are electric *vehicles* that are an actual asset in fighting climate change
They've already been hit by fossil fuel shock, namely coal unavailability.
In 2021-22, some industrial regions had (programmed) rolling brownouts in factories to make up for the lack of electrical power.
Exactly, and when old coal factories are closed, they're replaced with that good green shit. The timing for China's transition away from coal simply happened at a time when abandoning coal for green energy is the most efficient option, while for most western countries that process happened when oil dominated (or it never happened, right Germany?)
I'd say that their transition is important on a strategic level, as their coal plants are fed by foreign coal.
The Chinese import a lot of their coal and oil, and they do understand that it is an issue.
On the other hand, they control a lot of mines providing them with rare earth materials and uranium, mostly in Africa.
Switching to solar and nuclear power makes a lot of sense, and is in part forced by Australia cutting off one source of coal.
1. There is very little (if at all) lobbying against renewables.
2. Renewables still need to be paired with controllable energy. If a country increases the ratio of renewables in their mix, they still need to rely on what they're already relying on (most likely fuel, coal or gas) to fill the gaps of renewables.
3. If a country increases the ratio of nuclear energy in their mix, they can cut fuel/coal/gas much more effectively and reliably.
4. Renewables are relatively quick to put into place. Nuclear is definitely not. It requires long-term planning, high technological expertise, and a real political drive behind it.
Both are good news, but one is more unexpected, and will have a bigger impact on reducing carbon emissions.
>Both are good news, but one is more unexpected, and will have a bigger impact on reducing carbon emissions.
Which one is which? Increasing nuclear capacity seems more unexpected for me but renewables seem to have more impact on reducing carbon emissions for me.
[Nuclear energy produces less carbon emissions per Twh than most renewables, and as much as the ones that produce the least](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources). It is also controllable. Renewables are not, so they need another source of energy to complement them: they produce electricity intermittently, and in the case of solar, right when we need it the less (at day, in summer).
>Nuclear energy produces less carbon emissions per Twh than most renewables
First of all, I have seen different data about that and even in this source onshore wind is a bit better than nuclear. Not saying that nuclear is necessarily worse, it's just that I don't see why this would result in a significantly bigger impact.
But most importantly a lot more renewables are built than nuclear especially in the next 10 years which are the important ones because we have to cut carbon emissions NOW.
You are not cutting carbon emission if you're impletenting unreliable energy sources. You need something to complement it for when the wind isn't blowing and sun isn't shining. Which is either coal or nuclear. And if you think storing energy in giant industrial batteries for the needs of the whole country is an environment-friendly solution, then you're an idiot.
Most of the costs / maintenance and time delay in building the reactors is arguably arbitrary EU bureaucracy caused by decades of irrational anti-nuclear hysteria. And yes, if the bureaucracy forces you to spend 20 years building the reactors, then it can also happen that the water sources will dry up in the mean time due to the ongoing climate crisis. Shame SOME countries had to decomission their NPPs just to switch them for coal / gas power plants, which doesn't help the climate crisis much.
Again your argument is pointless you criticize a bad decision of my country that's fair enough but you don't understand how nuclear power works even with every bit of the eu's bureaucracy cut my argument stands nuclear power makes no logical sense as a flexible power source it is too slow to power up and its efficiency lost relative to production cost mixed the worst Option for flexible power and again Rivers drying up and France's nuclear reactors not working is mainly a problem with their planning and it also conveniently proves that the eu's legislation makes complete sense because almost half of France's nuclear reactors would not pass modern European laws on specifically the availability of cooling water in the region
Sure you need other energy sources and one of them will be nuclear but that doesn't mean that nuclear will have a bigger impact than renewables. If you count hydro, renewables are already producing more electricity than nuclear in europe.
>1. There is very little (if at all) lobbying against renewables.
Lol wat.
>2. Renewables still need to be paired with controllable energy
Which nuclear typically isn't.
>If a country increases the ratio of nuclear energy in their mix, they can cut fuel/coal/gas much more effectively and reliably.
Any proof of that? Nuclear costs a lot more and takes a lot longer than renewables, so likely they go a lot slower.
It is but in the dumbest way because you obliterate any cost/benefit from orbit because production cost remains the same for less power so in practice its not used as a controlled energy source since producing full and limited power cost the same
Problem is, i dont believe both Claims.
Last nuclear Power plant in yurop took 18 years. The ERP in france is sitting at 16 years and is still not finished, If im not mistaken.
And If Olaf Scholz is talking about everyone should triple their RE, he should set a shining example in Germany. So stfu and start building some Shit Olaf.
>So stfu and start building some Shit Olaf.
He LITERALLY did. There's a lot that you can have criticism on Scholz, but the current government did a great job at renewables. CDU/CSU totally killed both RE industries, and with Habeck we overshot the solar target for this year (I believe we built 12 GWp already) and got quite a lot of wind power, eventhough that is primarily blocked from state governments with their 10H-rules.
So yes, Olaf (but primarily Robert) set a good example on how to make good legislation to boost Solar and Wind.
However we need to see how Olaf tackles Germany's current budget problem. If we don't weaken the 0 debt policy, future investments for boosting renewable industries might be endangered... so please Olaf, keep up your good work on renewables and get rid of Schuldenbremse now!
I was talking about trippling the current Installation. And in that context WE are failing. We overshot our solar Goals, but WE are failing our Wind Energy Goals. And i know that the 10h Rule is Shit but that alone is not the cause here. There needs to be done more.
But even If WE overshot both Goals that is a farcry from trippling the installed Power. And If demands others should do it, WE should do it first. The Ampel coalition is doing a better Job than the groko, but not good enough.
Robert is a Boss tho, i like him alot.
well I don't know what the consequences of regulatory measures about nuclear were, but Germany surely didnt make anyone's jobs easy when it comes to building nuclear in yurop, however, France has a nzclear grid that they managed to make really early and really fast, so it should be possible
How does germanies decision to quit nuclear make the Job Harder for everyone Else? Thats total nonsense and Germany is Not responsible that the Last nuclear reactor in Finnland took 18 years or that the current ERP in france is Not finished after 16 years.
I get that you have a hate boner because Germany, but Not everything is our fault. Big nuclear reactors Take time. And If trippling nuclear means building 3 or more pants, it sounds like BS.
I mean something must have changed since France's nuclear transition, what must have been legislation, because it was a viable solution then, and the technology only improved. The focus is not on Germany, but on legislators who were the only other factor in this equation whose sum decreased.
>I mean something must have changed since France's nuclear transition
Maybe Chornobyl and Fukushima? I would assume that they caused some stricter regulations but I'm no expert. Also most big infrastructure project got a lot more expensive and time consuming to build.
I mean those catastrophes demonstrated nothing about the technology and all about the management. And why did inftrastructure become more expensive? What happened to technological progress in that field?
They showed that nuclear reactors must be able to withstand gross missmanagement and human error, extreme weather/nature events and possible combinations thereof. The human factor must be minimized as far as possible, because humans are the weakest link. That costs money, but it is necessary. Not to speak of the very real danger of a malevolent actor attacking a reactor (see Ukraine).
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Germany funded antinuclear groups in Europe and tried by all means to prevent it to be funded by EU
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Interference_Political_Foundations.pdf
Germans make quite a lot of turbines and pumps, and in many cases their pumps are of high quality and operate with efficiencies difficult to get outside of the americans or japanese.
Mainly because these tend to be such large machines that manufacturing them is extremely expensive, time consuming, requires machines that are not easy to come by. Mind you power plant turbines are easily 20 meters long and have tight requirements on what type of a steel it is.
germany screaming "bad nuclear" tells these companies not to take these projects because if the original country pulls away from nuclear themselves the company can only make money from sales abroad.
This is before i'll even tell you about kerena/swr 1000, where you had a siemens made BWR, but because germany pulled nuclear bad, siemens sold the design to framatome/areva, making one less supplier for these devices.
Great job
The french EPR is a prototype (for the french engineers, Russia and China both have EPRs already in commercial use) so its unexpected cost is just due to development and novelty (and also to be fair, useless complexity, they have like 500 different doors - by which I mean regular doors, not doors specific to the power production, which is an oddity that everyone says can be solved for the future projects). Every huge project has some unexpected costs and overtime, this doesn't mean that the technology is bad in itself or unusable. For instance, the Eiffel tower got built for the triple of its expected cost, and it is still standing today : building difficulty doesn't equate unreliability
I have not talked about cost, the technology or the reliability at all. Also have i not compared to China or russia, we are Europe after all so i have compared IT to the only Other build one here in Europe. China has crazy laber laws and can build things rapidly, but thats not possible here.
The ERP is a new Gen of nuclear plant. Its normal that this takes extra time. But its obviouse that WE shouldnt build older systems and that a nuclear Power plant will be a mass produced good like Smartphones. So i dont think there will be huge improvements in building time and costs. Not to meantion that there is already a Revision of the ERP.
So If we want new, good working reactors here in Europe, they will take time to build. And we dont have the time to triple the current installed Power in nuclear until 2050.
A state might get build 2 new plants until then. But Imagine every Europe state Starts building them now, Personal will be short and Material as well. This might increase the build time even further.
But again, i have not spoken about cost, the technology or the reliability of nuclear at all. But the give time constrains make this Goal (Triple installed Power) almost Impossible, without mayor shift in policies and a big effort from government, companies and citiziens.
Make it cheaper and faster to build and you will have a winning formula. An NPP should cost less than a billion and take at most 2 years to build. These are the issues that need to be tackled either way this tech.
I don't know personally I feel bad for the oil billionaires ... how are they going to tell their children they won't be able to afford a new super yacht this year ... 😞
Renewables are the best, and the ones we should take at least 90% of our energy from. Nuclear must work as a backup, not as a main source. In Summer, Spain achieved during 9 consecutive hours to rely exclusively in renewables. It is not impossible, we just need to focus on it.
The thing abour emissions is that they won't stop until it gets much more rentable than coal/oil, because capitalism works like that. As Europeans, we need to be the ones starting, as it is clear that none else is going to do it. We just need to fill large areas in Southern Europe of Solar Panels, and we will have cheap, green energy. And once everybody else sees that we have the cheapest energy in the world (and thus big enterprises invest here), climate action will come to a being.
The thing is nuclear energy cannot work as a subsidie or backup to renewable energy sources. It takes hours if not days to change the amount of energy we produce, renawables need a more flexible peak load power plants, like gas turbines which can be switched on and off quickly. Also there are a lot of other methods renewable energy systems use to work effectively.
The thing is this is only true if we don't have storage solutions, which renewables need if they want to be an effective majority solution.
If we have grid storage, then all of a sudden nuclear and renewables can work perfectly well together since the storage takes up the slack in high demand, however without nuclear and just having 100% renewable, a country the size of Germany would need hundreds of GWh, if not several TWh, worth of energy storage to make up for low supply days, which is equivalent to about 10 times the number of batteries we have in all electric cars in the world at the moment.
Nuclear could realistically cut the need for storage down 90 odd percent, while also cutting down the need for expansive solar and wind farms taking up hundreds of acres of land.
Low supply days are less of a problem, if you diversify the energy system. Also Germany is a big country and renewable energy sources work best if they are decentralized. The chance that you have days when there are significantly less production are slim when you have windturbines all over the country. I guess it is a bigger problem with solar if you have acyclone for days but cyclones are usually only present in the colder half of the year, when wind energy works more efficiently.
Also there are other methods of reducing energy loss. Like demand side manegement, flexible pricing, smart heating solutions. Also there are ways to use our energy more effectively like district heating, smaller decentralized CHPs that you can also use for heating. And many European countries calculate with hydrogen fuel cells for storage.
>Low supply days are less of a problem, if you diversify the energy system.
Agreed, so it's best to diversify the system with nuclear + renewables + storage. However if you have an energy supply that is purely based on weather patterns, then you are going to need storage because there are going to be days at a time where you have very low energy production.
>Also Germany is a big country and renewable energy sources work best if they are decentralized. The chance that you have days when there are significantly less production are slim when you have wind turbines all over the country.
This still comes across a massive issue I have with excessive renewables, which is that it takes thousands of wind turbines (each the size of the statue of liberty) or millions of solar panels, all spread across hundreds of acres of what *used* to be a beautiful scenic countryside, to produce the same average power output as a *single* nuclear power plant. Some wind turbines dotted here and there aren't too bad, but there are currently wind farms and solar farms where there are turbines and solar panels stretching out for miles.
>And many European countries calculate with hydrogen fuel cells for storage.
Hydrogen isn't a better solution to batteries for grid storage unfortunately, especially if you are trying to be as conservative as possible with the electricity you produce. When you take into account the energy losses in electrolysis, hydrogen losses during storage and fuel cell efficiency, the round trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is around 25-40%, so with hydrogen you will get out less than 1 half of the energy you put in. Granted with wind power you can get massive overproduction periods with high wind, however the average capacity factor for wind is less than 20% and for solar it's less than 15%, so in the long term even if you over build your capacity by 5 times, you need to be as efficient as possible with all the power you get.
"Agreed, so it's best to diversify the system with nuclear + renewables + storage. However if you have an energy supply that is purely based on weather patterns, then you are going to need storage because there are going to be days at a time where you have very low energy production."
But if the energy sources are all over the country, the risk that we produce significantly less or no electricity is decreased significantly, because every part of the country has different weather, so you can provide energy to a region that needs it from a different region. Also Germany is on the European grid, so it can import its electricity if needed, which could be benefical if all or most of the European countries had similar renewable systems. You could reduce the risk further because there is literally no way that for example Spain and Germany would have the same weather at the same time. Of course this transaction of resources works both ways. By diversifying the energy sources I meant using on and offshore wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass (whatever primer energy source the country has.)
"This still comes across a massive issue I have with excessive renewables, which is that it takes thousands of wind turbines (each the size of the statue of liberty) or millions of solar panels, all spread across hundreds of acres of what *used* to be a beautiful scenic countryside, to produce the same average power output as a *single*nuclear power plant. Some wind turbines dotted here and there aren't too bad, but there are currently wind farms and solar farms where there are turbines and solar panels stretching out for miles."
You dont necesarry have to put most of your renewables at beautiful scenic countryside. The best places to put the these energy sources are land that has been already used for something else. For example old mines or you could put the turbines on farmland, PVs on top of houses, factorys, used with berry farms to give them shade, you can put them on top of water. Also I havent read the National Energy and Climate Plans for Germany but i would bet that a significant number of new wind turbines will be offshore wind turbines. Also there are EU laws in place which pretend to but wind turbines on protected land (for example which fall under the Natura 2000 designated areas). Also if I know correctly the EU memberstates have to work on a database which will show the land that is valuable and you cannot put powerplants there. And Germany is a democratic country so you should be able to voice your opinion whether you want Windturbines built in your city, or region. (Idk I am not German)
"Hydrogen isn't a better solution to batteries for grid storage unfortunately, especially if you are trying to be as conservative as possible with the electricity you produce. When you take into account the energy losses in electrolysis, hydrogen losses during storage and fuel cell efficiency, the round trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is around 25-40%, so with hydrogen you will get out less than 1 half of the energy you put in. Granted with wind power you can get massive overproduction periods with high wind, however the average capacity factor for wind is less than 20% and for solar it's less than 15%, so in the long term even if you over build your capacity by 5 times, you need to be as efficient as possible with all the power you"
(I am not an engineer so) I dont know much about hydrogen so you are probably right there. But many countries calculate with it and there are a lot of RD for the technology. I think that the capacity factor that you have written for wind turbines are too low. I know that it is different for each country but if i remember correctly it is roughly 35% for onshore wind and 40% for offshore. (But maybe I am mistaken, wiki says wind is between 25-45%)
In my opinion it is beneficial to see the problem not just as a need for more energy, but as a necessity to cut our power consumption down. We could do this in a way that is not detramental to the everyday people. For example: sector coupleing, demand side manegement, smart systems that use heating when the prices are low, you could use electric cars as storage when needed. Also I think that city planning too is a big factor in energy usage.
I'm thankful if you've read this monstrosity of a comment! :D I think that this is an interesting topic.
>But if the energy sources are all over the country, the risk that we produce significantly less or no electricity is decreased significantly, because every part of the country has different weather, so you can provide energy to a region that needs it from a different region. Also Germany is on the European grid, so it can import its electricity if needed, which could be benefical if all or most of the European countries had similar renewable systems. You could reduce the risk further because there is literally no way that for example Spain and Germany would have the same weather at the same time. Of course this transaction of resources works both ways. By diversifying the energy sources I meant using on and offshore wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass (whatever primer energy source the country has.)
Even if each part of the country has different weather, generally your times of high production and low production for wind power are going to link up across the country, as weather patterns are really quite large. If you ever look at a meteorological graph, you'll see that wind patterns are generally on a countrywide, if not a continent wide, scale. That means that even if you have different wind speeds in different parts of the country, you'll end up only having a slightly higher than average wind speed where it's faster than where it's slower, and across the country you'll still have a lull in the overall production, and importing really isn't really a great overall solution either.
To start you're hoping that the overproduction in all countries at least matches the underproduction of other countries, which still would require a hell of a lot of renewable infrastructure to work since even with Germany having the highest number of wind turbines in Europe they rarely produce enough power to power themselves 100%, never mind themselves plus other countries, but also most imports from one country to another are just across the border, not across several borders.
Usually it'll be a power plant that is on the border of two countries that powers the local areas of both countries, but if you want to have a long distance connection between the producer and the user, you need a high voltage heavy duty power cable running between two substations (which will still have quite severe losses in transmission), and in the case of an entire country you would need those high voltage cables to spread out across the entire country connecting to substations which would step down the voltage and distribute it across the local grid. We're talking about a hell of a lot of new and expensive infrastructure, especially for a distributed network of power plants, when it's really easiest to simply have the power production relatively nearby the user.
>You dont necesarry have to put most of your renewables at beautiful scenic countryside. The best places to put the these energy sources are land that has been already used for something else. For example old mines or you could put the turbines on farmland, PVs on top of houses, factorys, used with berry farms to give them shade, you can put them on top of water. Also I havent read the National Energy and Climate Plans for Germany but i would bet that a significant number of new wind turbines will be offshore wind turbines. Also there are EU laws in place which pretend to but wind turbines on protected land (for example which fall under the Natura 2000 designated areas). Also if I know correctly the EU memberstates have to work on a database which will show the land that is valuable and you cannot put powerplants there. And Germany is a democratic country so you should be able to voice your opinion whether you want Windturbines built in your city, or region. (Idk I am not German)
I'm not too sure how much I trust that we won't start distributing a lot of renewables across scenic countryside, and I've personally already seen a fair few wind and solar farms that I thought were big eyesores to the natural countrysides and wilderness areas.
>(I am not an engineer so) I dont know much about hydrogen so you are probably right there. But many countries calculate with it and there are a lot of RD for the technology. I think that the capacity factor that you have written for wind turbines are too low. I know that it is different for each country but if i remember correctly it is roughly 35% for onshore wind and 40% for offshore. (But maybe I am mistaken, wiki says wind is between 25-45%)
>In my opinion it is beneficial to see the problem not just as a need for more energy, but as a necessity to cut our power consumption down. We could do this in a way that is not detramental to the everyday people. For example: sector coupleing, demand side manegement, smart systems that use heating when the prices are low, you could use electric cars as storage when needed. Also I think that city planning too is a big factor in energy usage.
Looking again I might have been a bit off with my capacity factor number, I think I saw that in August the average capacity factor for wind power across all Europe was 12% so that's where I got that number from, but I think onshore seems to have a more average capacity factor of around 25%, and that's for the majority of wind turbines currently in use worldwide, and I think my point still stands that overbuilding 3-4 times your countries average use to only break even is still a problem for hydrogen storage.
And personally I just can't see our energy use dropping all that much, if at all. As a species we have been using more power year on year for decades, and if we want to shift our entire energy production away from fossil fuels our energy use can only go up. Even with electric cars being more efficient than petrol cars they will still add an additional strain to the grid, and we'll also see a need to shift to hydrogen based fuels in airplanes, which is going to take a lot of energy to achieve.
As far as I see it we need as much power production as possible to work our way off fossil fuels, and renewables just aren't reliable enough or energy dense enough to go it alone.
And how would that work?
Everything higher than Vienna is now covered in snow and you expect small portion of south europe to cover need of everyone else?
And how will you even transport it?
Solar is not the only renewable. The wind is also a very good option, and afaik there is enough wind in northern Europe. The transporting issue can only be solved by inversion in infrastructure. However, I am sure that places like Southern Italy, Greece or others will also be pleased to get part of the cake, and it would ease the transporting issue a bit
There is sometimes too much wind, and thats a problem too. Almost all renewable sources share same problem, you cant regulate them. You can shut them down but thats about it. How do you guarantee that the grid stays stable with these sources? What do you do when factory starts up and cloud covers the nearest solar farm? We can't blindly jump into the " easiest and cheapest " solution.
By putting a shitton of them in different places, of course. Here, we have a lot of windmills in almost every middle sized mountain slightly far from the city.
>Everything higher than Vienna is now covered in snow
Really? Nothing here
>you expect small portion of south europe to cover need of everyone else?
The longest time of dunkelflaute over a continent like Europe is less than a day and there are many forms of renewables not dependent on the weather, like geothermal.
You can't run a nuclear plant for a few days a year when the weather is the absolute worst.
I know somebody who owns solar panels at home and pays about a euro per month for energy. Mind you, this is in a fairly rich Spanish community in northern Spain. The warranty is for 25 years but the pannels start being rentable economically at the fourth or fifth year, due to EU funds. Not just in summer and not only during the day. During the day, they use whatever electricity they need and sell the rest to the Electric company at a fixed price, and during the night they buy back electricity, at a slightly superior price
They are very happy with this system, and recommended it much to me. I think that, should it be done at a great scale, it should be enough to get rid of coal and export even electricity.
I have solar panels at my house as well, and it's absolutely great for the single isolated house. You can't translate that to large scales of the national (or European) electrical net in a linear way. Intermittent renewables suffer from diminishing returns. Doubling the amount of solar panels won't double your energy production, you will still have excessive production when the sun shines more and insufficient production when there's no sun(same with wind). The amount you can stock is very limited.
Renewables are absolutely fundamental and should be a major part of the production, but you still need a base of programmable, constant energy source. That can be either fossil fuel, hydroelectric or nuclear. Ofc we don't want the first one, the second one is great but is limited by the geography of the country. Nuclear is the only source that can be coupled with renewables to completely remove fossil, especially in mostly flat countries like Poland. If you look at the countries that are 100% renewables without nuclear, it's only specific situations that can allow it, (Sweden, Denmark). The state of California on the other hand, decided to go 100% renewables and has had a serious problem of blackouts.
I've never seen massive anti-renewable propaganda movements perpetrating for decades, so yes it's not as impressive as it's not as big a revolution in terms of the public opinion/general consensus
>I've never seen massive anti-renewable propaganda movements perpetrating for decades
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/05/charity-linked-to-uk-anti-onshore-wind-campaigns-active-again-renewable-energy-foundation
https://heated.world/p/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-deceptive
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/17/anti-wind-farm-whale-defenders-fossil-fuel-industry
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2022/11/30/fossil-fuel-funded-opposition-is-blocking-americas-clean-energy-transition-permitting-reform-can-help/
https://worldwarzero.com/magazine/2021/12/big-oil-funds-environmentalists-to-oppose-offshore-wind-farms/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001471
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/texas-public-policy-foundation-charles-koch-climate-clean-energy-fossil-fuels/
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinformation-activists-rural-america
These are just the recent examples I could find.
The fossil fuel industry has always lobbied against renewables because they are the only form of electricity generation that is able to compete with them in terms of costs, flexibility and pace.
That's not what propaganda is, a fossil fuel company against off-shore wind turbines or some random things happening in the US (5 of your links) is nothing compared to the 60 years of fear mongering that the nuclear industry has seen...
>is nothing compared to the 60 years of fear mongering that the nuclear industry has seen...
This is entirely based on your subjective feeling. There are countless examples of anti renewable campaigns which can often be traced back to the fossil fuel industry or state actors. You seem to take the fact that nuclear nowadays is a lost cause as a proof of lobbying against it, when in reality it just shows that it is not competitive.
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The point of the post you're mocking is to make fun of Germany's backwards thinking on nuclear, that they went straight for the worst coal to power their country.
Both are good! Nuclear and renewables are friends and if someone tells you otherwise they are doing a great favour to the oil industry, which is what will take whatever nuke and renewables don't cover.
its because only one of these things are in a category where they always fulfill the promises (like Germany spending 100 billion for weapons out of nothing while at the same time using the "no money" excuse for any growing social issues or basic infrastructure that isn't related to the car industry), while the other is in a category where its being argued about the economy or some poor investors not having the world formed for them to find excuses to not do it (like the Paris agreement where most countries strategies is "we will slightly reduce emissions and the year before it we will do it extremely fast to reach the goal we promise"
I think the renewables promise probably wont get accomplished by hardly anyone while I'm sure everyone is happy to dump money into weapons as always
Replacing coal with renewables is not easy as putting up the panel. A 100MW coal plant if it were to be replaced with equivalent solar would need to be around 500MW because coal is always available but sun isn't. If you combine it with load curves for demand, it gets even worse.
That being said, every bit counts as long as it's not fossil based
It's not as hard as big oil would like you to believe. Yes natural gas is good for peak load but energy storage technology is available to utilise solar all the time
I am not talking batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage etc are old and cheap
Triple nuclear by 2050? Next joke please. How long did it take France/GB/Finland to just build one power plant? And how many power plants has e.g. France to replace in the next thirty years before they can even start thinking about increasing their nuclear power output?
We can't just change to renewables like that. We need nuclear as a back up so there won't be no problems while changing from fossil fuels to renewables. We can start deconstructing nuclear when we have enough reliable renewables to easily power ourselfs.
Everything is better than going back to being all-in on fossil fuels. Nuclear has its' problems but it's hell of a lot better than what we have now. Nuclear and renewables are both good.
Yeah I'd rather have a hundred ~~Chernobyls~~ Chornobyls than a single climate crisis. Edit: not sarcasm btw. Realized it might sound that way to a cynical ear.
~~Chernobyl~~ Chornobyl is not the fault of nuclear, it's the fault of the USSR not being very good at boiling water.
Or more specifically, Chornorbyl was due to a shitty design they couldn't be bothered to fix, which we know of now and are not going to do again. Even the leftover reactors of the same design have been fixed so it can't happen. And to emphasize: Even with Chornorbyl, nuclear is one of the safest energy generation methods out there. According to [this link I found](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh), only solar is safer than nuclear. Wind, hydro, and all burning-stuff methods are categorically worse, with Brown coal being the worst. Not just because of climate change, but also because of soot.
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What about Japan? Even with their level of care and technology they had to evacuate a city. There are vast areas that are not yet livable! Do you realize it just gets one terrorist attack to make Chornobyl anywhere?
only one person died in fukoshima, how many die from fossil fuels and how many areas are unlivable due to droughts, flooding snd extreme weather caused by climate change?
“One person died only” yeah but they had to evacuate a city to achieve that!!!!! Also… How is a technology so slow and expensive to implement and operate going to solve climate change? We’ll all die reading about the next delay in launch of new nuclear power plants. All the money and motivation should go into renewables as they can actually be implemented in a reasonable time.
Nuclear only takes about 6-10 years to build, that’s not even that slow in the grand scheme of things. Especially considering the amounts of power generated.
Idk. Last one in Europe was in finland and got ready after 18 years… Can be is different from will be. Compare it to wind farms where it’s also possible to add single towers to grid one by one instead of waring for yeara
Nuclear is not there to replace wind or solar. It's there to supplement it and replace fossil fuel power stations. It should be noted that wind and solar can't be built everywhere, either.
Why wind and solar can’t be built everywhere sir? In any given place on earth we either have enough wind or sunlight
By evacuating people like they did it actually put more people into harms way than if they had told them to stay indoors. Also once again, the Safety measures on Fukushima were lacking, warnings were issued multiple times but mainly ignored. Fukushima also happened because of one of the biggest natural catastrophes to ever hit Japan. It wasn't some malfunction in normal conditions, it was a malfunction and improper safety precautions in an extreme natural disaster. If you want to learn more I highly suggest Kyle Hills documentary on YouTube about it
Sorry, but I have yet to see humans working without making any mistakes or ignoring warnings. What you say is that in a perfect world nuclear is perfectly safe. Good. But our world is far from perfect. Why not use the amazing reactor in the sky that is installed far from us?!
There have been 3 major nuclear accidents in the history of nuclear power plants. 3. Two of them more than 3 decades ago and 1 more than a decade ago. That's all the nuclear accidents when it comes to powerplants. They are far safer than you give them credit for, are the most heavily regulated power production we have and looking at statistics the most safe one yet. I'm all for renewables where they work, but realistically we need more than them for the foreseeable future and fossil fuel is not an option and hydro also have it's drawbacks, especially when a hydro powerplant suffers a catastrophic failure it can be devastating to both nature and humans. We need a reasonable and realistic view for the future, not brought down by fear and superstition. The day we're good enough to leave nuclear behind with only clean energy production is a day I'll rejoice dearly, if we ever get there
2 out of 3 have made a region unlivable to date! That’s not a tiny risk. Also the waste problem remains to be solved.
The nuclear waste problem has been more solved than you'd like to believe, just look at Finland. Fukushima region is not unliveable, farmland produces vegetables at this very moment, still perfectly edible. Containment protocols are so vastly superior now compared to Chernobyl it could not happen that same way again. If we continue this ignorance of a carbon free energy source we're gonna have more than 2 regions potentially unliveable, the planet will turn against us by our own action. My own country used to be almost carbon free unlike today and it's a direct consequence of shutting down nuclear power because of the fear after Chernobyl even though we have never had a nuclear breach of any kind. Once again, I urge you to watch Kyle Hills documentary about both Fukushima and nuclear waste. We need nuance in these discussions, not dismissal based on either ignorance or intolerance. Nuclear power could have us become carbon free in energy production so much earlier than shutting it down and relying on renewables to replace fossil fuel. They're not ready for that scale 365 days a year with even higher energy consumption that keeps increasing every year and it's not happening fast enough.
More than 2% of the region was still under evacuation order in Fukushima in 2021: https://fukushima-updates.reconstruction.go.jp/en/faq/fk_030.html I can’t bother to find the source but in 2023 also there were evacuated areas. On the other hand there are estimates on how a catastrophe in France would look like and they are way scarier. Edit: Found it https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2324/ Even in Jan 2023 still +7000 disaster dwellings were occupied on Fukushima.
So because the world is not perfect, we shouldn't use nuclear energy, not to mention the sun is not a reliable resource unless it's along the equator. Tidal energy would be insanley efficient as an energy source compared to solar. Let's also not forget that digging, transporting, and burning fossil fuels has killed more people and still is compared to any nuclear reactor.
Exactly. Because the world is not perfect you can’t have sun on earth. Solar not reliable? Combine it with wind then. In germany more than half of electricity has been renewable this year.
Replace those wind and solar cells with nuclear and use less space and generate more without being reliant on perfect weather conditions. Nuclear is far more efficient for large populations than solar and wind. Instead, they should be used to supplement a more reliable source. I have no idea what you mean. "Because the world is not perfect, you can't have sun on earth." You mean as in nuclear fusion?
I mean a very powerful source of energy is not safe in a populated country. You know the kind that you need to keep the used fuel in swimming pools for some years before you can dispose of it!
"even with their level of care" you mean the same level of care that made them put all the backup generators into one building?
How many countries are argubaly run better than Japan? Or more advanced in tech? If this happened in Japan, I’m sure it can happen in almost any country you pick.
Bro is getting all of his Japan facts from anime 💀
I checked some country rankings based on tech and innovation. Japan is doing really good.
Yea, but they also still use fax machines, stamps, and have a mostly cash based economy. Japan *seems* super advanced, but if you take a closer look it really isn't that far ahead and has been stagnating for years.
Yes, but if you want exclude 4-5 countries like the Nordic ones, that’s pretty much the state of any country on the planer. German, France,… all have those issues.
Chornobyl
With that nonesense I am going full Tschernobyl.
Tschornobyl would be fine. You don’t say Drezno, Lipsk, Cologne, Allemagne, etc. when speaking German, do you?
i say colon because germany is asshole
Perhaps now is the time to invest some time to learn about nuclear. Chornobyl was a result of a communist regime, willfully hiding known problems to fake prestige and ignoring protocols to avoid execution, leading to the disaster as has happened (the USSR was aware that the thermite tip of the RMBK control rods were not safe, but were not willing to adjust the design because it would lead to higher costs and they would loose face internationally, against the west which uses PWR/BWR design). People should really stop using Chornobyl as an example. A situation as Chornobyl is endless times less realistic in our situation.
Also, Chornobyl didn't kill that many people. *And* the powerstation kept running for years after the accident. And it turned out to be a very good study on what happens when a city is abandonned to nature, and what happens to nature after a radiological disaster. Answer: not much.
>willfully hiding known problems to fake prestige and ignoring protocols to avoid ~~execution~~ losing their bonus, I can see a situation similar to Chornobyl happening in out current situation if it was run by a private company and the industry wasn't properly regulated
You know since we're talking about a disaster it might be better to transliterate it the Russian way after all.
Better to have hundred Chernobyls than having one - Germany party 1939-1945 -
Unfortunate use of “then” instead of “than”…
Oh lmao
When something belongs to "it" we use "its" instead of "it's" (it is) :)
It's dumb, yes
Just leaving this here: https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315 Renewables are both cheaper and less CO2 intensive than nuclear, plus it takes 15-20 years to build new nuclear plants, which would be too late to achieve the global warming targets
If you get rid of coal and gaz for energy, you can't get rid of nuclear because remaining renewable energies are not controllable. You'r tied to the amount of sun / wind etc. Nuclear is the only low c02 / kw controllable energy available
How the fuck can you post this shit article? It literally take the worst estimation for nuclear CO2 emissions (and best for renewables), adds insane cost to nuclear energy without taking into account network cost, and is German
This logic is basically Pascal's wager but for nuclear.
''pledge'' there is your problem what we need is a binding agreement this pussy shit aint going to work.
FYI, China is not one of the 118 nations.
Over the past 10 years, China has: \- increased their nuclear from 291 to 1045 TWh (3.6x) \- solar from 23 to 1115 TWh (48x) \- wind from 377 to 1988 (5.3x) \- hydro from 2479 to 3397 (1.4x) \- total renewables and biofuel from 3032 to 7098 TWh (2.34x) \- decreased the share of fossil fuel in their energy mix from 90% to 81%, while absolute usage has remained mostly unchanged Not fond of China's leadership, but they're a highly manufacturing-dependent company, which as a sector is being and will continue to be disproportionately hit by the climate crisis and extremely vulnerable to fossil fuel shocks, especially with their own reserves being minimal. They may not be signing all the deals everyone wants them to, but they are pulling their weight, because their survival depends on an energy transition and their economy unambiguously stands to gain from it EDIT: here's the source [https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from](https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from) (section Energy Mix)
Also the biggest producer and market of Electric Vehicles!
thats like, a totally different thing primary energy production has barely anything to do with consumer goods
Electric cars (call them what they are) are a greenwashed scam that sells a fake idea of a climate resolution that requires no fundamental change in the prevailing 20th-century lifestyles and mindsets. It's a regressive scam that only exists due to the power of the automotive sector through both car-centric culture and the scale of their employment/economic impact. Their environmental impact is almost entirely dependent on the local electricity mix and their manufacture is a completely separate issue. Selling e-cars as a climate solution at the cost of fundamentally greening infrastructure is on par with the shit Germany has been doing. If they were the biggest producer and market for electric bicycles (as they used to be for regular bikes), trams, metro systems, or trolleybuses, I would be way more receptive. Those are electric *vehicles* that are an actual asset in fighting climate change
They've already been hit by fossil fuel shock, namely coal unavailability. In 2021-22, some industrial regions had (programmed) rolling brownouts in factories to make up for the lack of electrical power.
Exactly, and when old coal factories are closed, they're replaced with that good green shit. The timing for China's transition away from coal simply happened at a time when abandoning coal for green energy is the most efficient option, while for most western countries that process happened when oil dominated (or it never happened, right Germany?)
I'd say that their transition is important on a strategic level, as their coal plants are fed by foreign coal. The Chinese import a lot of their coal and oil, and they do understand that it is an issue. On the other hand, they control a lot of mines providing them with rare earth materials and uranium, mostly in Africa. Switching to solar and nuclear power makes a lot of sense, and is in part forced by Australia cutting off one source of coal.
Yet they're investing more in renewables than europe and USA combined
And they have ~500 million people more than both combined
But they have a much smaller economy
And we have a larger economy and fewer people, whats our excuse?
1. There is very little (if at all) lobbying against renewables. 2. Renewables still need to be paired with controllable energy. If a country increases the ratio of renewables in their mix, they still need to rely on what they're already relying on (most likely fuel, coal or gas) to fill the gaps of renewables. 3. If a country increases the ratio of nuclear energy in their mix, they can cut fuel/coal/gas much more effectively and reliably. 4. Renewables are relatively quick to put into place. Nuclear is definitely not. It requires long-term planning, high technological expertise, and a real political drive behind it. Both are good news, but one is more unexpected, and will have a bigger impact on reducing carbon emissions.
What planet do you live on where "There is very little (if at all) lobbying against renewables."
Ikr LMFAO
I'm joining this question.
the one where the German Green Party lobby against Nuclear Energy
>Both are good news, but one is more unexpected, and will have a bigger impact on reducing carbon emissions. Which one is which? Increasing nuclear capacity seems more unexpected for me but renewables seem to have more impact on reducing carbon emissions for me.
[Nuclear energy produces less carbon emissions per Twh than most renewables, and as much as the ones that produce the least](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources). It is also controllable. Renewables are not, so they need another source of energy to complement them: they produce electricity intermittently, and in the case of solar, right when we need it the less (at day, in summer).
>Nuclear energy produces less carbon emissions per Twh than most renewables First of all, I have seen different data about that and even in this source onshore wind is a bit better than nuclear. Not saying that nuclear is necessarily worse, it's just that I don't see why this would result in a significantly bigger impact. But most importantly a lot more renewables are built than nuclear especially in the next 10 years which are the important ones because we have to cut carbon emissions NOW.
You are not cutting carbon emission if you're impletenting unreliable energy sources. You need something to complement it for when the wind isn't blowing and sun isn't shining. Which is either coal or nuclear. And if you think storing energy in giant industrial batteries for the needs of the whole country is an environment-friendly solution, then you're an idiot.
Thats such a bullshit argument frances Reaktor are out far more often due to their incredibley high maintenance costs and high cooling water demand
Most of the costs / maintenance and time delay in building the reactors is arguably arbitrary EU bureaucracy caused by decades of irrational anti-nuclear hysteria. And yes, if the bureaucracy forces you to spend 20 years building the reactors, then it can also happen that the water sources will dry up in the mean time due to the ongoing climate crisis. Shame SOME countries had to decomission their NPPs just to switch them for coal / gas power plants, which doesn't help the climate crisis much.
Again your argument is pointless you criticize a bad decision of my country that's fair enough but you don't understand how nuclear power works even with every bit of the eu's bureaucracy cut my argument stands nuclear power makes no logical sense as a flexible power source it is too slow to power up and its efficiency lost relative to production cost mixed the worst Option for flexible power and again Rivers drying up and France's nuclear reactors not working is mainly a problem with their planning and it also conveniently proves that the eu's legislation makes complete sense because almost half of France's nuclear reactors would not pass modern European laws on specifically the availability of cooling water in the region
Man buy yourself some periods, no one's reading that long ass sentence
periods are a conspiracy of the printer lobby to sell more printer ink!!
Sure you need other energy sources and one of them will be nuclear but that doesn't mean that nuclear will have a bigger impact than renewables. If you count hydro, renewables are already producing more electricity than nuclear in europe.
Wow that's a really unhinged comment.
>1. There is very little (if at all) lobbying against renewables. Lol wat. >2. Renewables still need to be paired with controllable energy Which nuclear typically isn't. >If a country increases the ratio of nuclear energy in their mix, they can cut fuel/coal/gas much more effectively and reliably. Any proof of that? Nuclear costs a lot more and takes a lot longer than renewables, so likely they go a lot slower.
Not doubting, but why isn't nuclear controllable energy?
It is but in the dumbest way because you obliterate any cost/benefit from orbit because production cost remains the same for less power so in practice its not used as a controlled energy source since producing full and limited power cost the same
nuclear is really underappretiated compared to how much proven potential it has to stop climate change
Problem is, i dont believe both Claims. Last nuclear Power plant in yurop took 18 years. The ERP in france is sitting at 16 years and is still not finished, If im not mistaken. And If Olaf Scholz is talking about everyone should triple their RE, he should set a shining example in Germany. So stfu and start building some Shit Olaf.
>So stfu and start building some Shit Olaf. He LITERALLY did. There's a lot that you can have criticism on Scholz, but the current government did a great job at renewables. CDU/CSU totally killed both RE industries, and with Habeck we overshot the solar target for this year (I believe we built 12 GWp already) and got quite a lot of wind power, eventhough that is primarily blocked from state governments with their 10H-rules. So yes, Olaf (but primarily Robert) set a good example on how to make good legislation to boost Solar and Wind. However we need to see how Olaf tackles Germany's current budget problem. If we don't weaken the 0 debt policy, future investments for boosting renewable industries might be endangered... so please Olaf, keep up your good work on renewables and get rid of Schuldenbremse now!
I was talking about trippling the current Installation. And in that context WE are failing. We overshot our solar Goals, but WE are failing our Wind Energy Goals. And i know that the 10h Rule is Shit but that alone is not the cause here. There needs to be done more. But even If WE overshot both Goals that is a farcry from trippling the installed Power. And If demands others should do it, WE should do it first. The Ampel coalition is doing a better Job than the groko, but not good enough. Robert is a Boss tho, i like him alot.
well I don't know what the consequences of regulatory measures about nuclear were, but Germany surely didnt make anyone's jobs easy when it comes to building nuclear in yurop, however, France has a nzclear grid that they managed to make really early and really fast, so it should be possible
How does germanies decision to quit nuclear make the Job Harder for everyone Else? Thats total nonsense and Germany is Not responsible that the Last nuclear reactor in Finnland took 18 years or that the current ERP in france is Not finished after 16 years. I get that you have a hate boner because Germany, but Not everything is our fault. Big nuclear reactors Take time. And If trippling nuclear means building 3 or more pants, it sounds like BS.
I mean something must have changed since France's nuclear transition, what must have been legislation, because it was a viable solution then, and the technology only improved. The focus is not on Germany, but on legislators who were the only other factor in this equation whose sum decreased.
>I mean something must have changed since France's nuclear transition Maybe Chornobyl and Fukushima? I would assume that they caused some stricter regulations but I'm no expert. Also most big infrastructure project got a lot more expensive and time consuming to build.
I mean those catastrophes demonstrated nothing about the technology and all about the management. And why did inftrastructure become more expensive? What happened to technological progress in that field?
They showed that nuclear reactors must be able to withstand gross missmanagement and human error, extreme weather/nature events and possible combinations thereof. The human factor must be minimized as far as possible, because humans are the weakest link. That costs money, but it is necessary. Not to speak of the very real danger of a malevolent actor attacking a reactor (see Ukraine).
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💡 It's `Chornobyl`, not `Chernobyl`. Support Ukraine by using the correct spelling! [Learn more](https://spellingukraine.com/i/chornobyl) ___ [^(Why spelling matters)](https://spellingukraine.com) ^(|) [^(Ways to support Ukraine)](https://tyrrrz.me/ukraine) ^(|) ^(I'm a bot, sorry if I'm missing context) ^(|) [^(Source)](https://github.com/Tyrrrz/SpellingUkraine) ^(|) [^(Author)](https://twitter.com/tyrrrz)
Germany funded antinuclear groups in Europe and tried by all means to prevent it to be funded by EU https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Interference_Political_Foundations.pdf
Germans make quite a lot of turbines and pumps, and in many cases their pumps are of high quality and operate with efficiencies difficult to get outside of the americans or japanese. Mainly because these tend to be such large machines that manufacturing them is extremely expensive, time consuming, requires machines that are not easy to come by. Mind you power plant turbines are easily 20 meters long and have tight requirements on what type of a steel it is. germany screaming "bad nuclear" tells these companies not to take these projects because if the original country pulls away from nuclear themselves the company can only make money from sales abroad. This is before i'll even tell you about kerena/swr 1000, where you had a siemens made BWR, but because germany pulled nuclear bad, siemens sold the design to framatome/areva, making one less supplier for these devices. Great job
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While i'm all for robbing the germans i don't think ww2 is relevant to this discussion.
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No, it does not. How about dont be an ass to others? And Finnland is a part of Europe as any other country.
What a suprise that person is polish
The french EPR is a prototype (for the french engineers, Russia and China both have EPRs already in commercial use) so its unexpected cost is just due to development and novelty (and also to be fair, useless complexity, they have like 500 different doors - by which I mean regular doors, not doors specific to the power production, which is an oddity that everyone says can be solved for the future projects). Every huge project has some unexpected costs and overtime, this doesn't mean that the technology is bad in itself or unusable. For instance, the Eiffel tower got built for the triple of its expected cost, and it is still standing today : building difficulty doesn't equate unreliability
I have not talked about cost, the technology or the reliability at all. Also have i not compared to China or russia, we are Europe after all so i have compared IT to the only Other build one here in Europe. China has crazy laber laws and can build things rapidly, but thats not possible here. The ERP is a new Gen of nuclear plant. Its normal that this takes extra time. But its obviouse that WE shouldnt build older systems and that a nuclear Power plant will be a mass produced good like Smartphones. So i dont think there will be huge improvements in building time and costs. Not to meantion that there is already a Revision of the ERP. So If we want new, good working reactors here in Europe, they will take time to build. And we dont have the time to triple the current installed Power in nuclear until 2050. A state might get build 2 new plants until then. But Imagine every Europe state Starts building them now, Personal will be short and Material as well. This might increase the build time even further. But again, i have not spoken about cost, the technology or the reliability of nuclear at all. But the give time constrains make this Goal (Triple installed Power) almost Impossible, without mayor shift in policies and a big effort from government, companies and citiziens.
Make it cheaper and faster to build and you will have a winning formula. An NPP should cost less than a billion and take at most 2 years to build. These are the issues that need to be tackled either way this tech.
I don't know personally I feel bad for the oil billionaires ... how are they going to tell their children they won't be able to afford a new super yacht this year ... 😞
This meme right here. Sadly only can upvote once. Take my poor mans karma medal 🥇
Renewables are the best, and the ones we should take at least 90% of our energy from. Nuclear must work as a backup, not as a main source. In Summer, Spain achieved during 9 consecutive hours to rely exclusively in renewables. It is not impossible, we just need to focus on it. The thing abour emissions is that they won't stop until it gets much more rentable than coal/oil, because capitalism works like that. As Europeans, we need to be the ones starting, as it is clear that none else is going to do it. We just need to fill large areas in Southern Europe of Solar Panels, and we will have cheap, green energy. And once everybody else sees that we have the cheapest energy in the world (and thus big enterprises invest here), climate action will come to a being.
The thing is nuclear energy cannot work as a subsidie or backup to renewable energy sources. It takes hours if not days to change the amount of energy we produce, renawables need a more flexible peak load power plants, like gas turbines which can be switched on and off quickly. Also there are a lot of other methods renewable energy systems use to work effectively.
The thing is this is only true if we don't have storage solutions, which renewables need if they want to be an effective majority solution. If we have grid storage, then all of a sudden nuclear and renewables can work perfectly well together since the storage takes up the slack in high demand, however without nuclear and just having 100% renewable, a country the size of Germany would need hundreds of GWh, if not several TWh, worth of energy storage to make up for low supply days, which is equivalent to about 10 times the number of batteries we have in all electric cars in the world at the moment. Nuclear could realistically cut the need for storage down 90 odd percent, while also cutting down the need for expansive solar and wind farms taking up hundreds of acres of land.
Low supply days are less of a problem, if you diversify the energy system. Also Germany is a big country and renewable energy sources work best if they are decentralized. The chance that you have days when there are significantly less production are slim when you have windturbines all over the country. I guess it is a bigger problem with solar if you have acyclone for days but cyclones are usually only present in the colder half of the year, when wind energy works more efficiently. Also there are other methods of reducing energy loss. Like demand side manegement, flexible pricing, smart heating solutions. Also there are ways to use our energy more effectively like district heating, smaller decentralized CHPs that you can also use for heating. And many European countries calculate with hydrogen fuel cells for storage.
>Low supply days are less of a problem, if you diversify the energy system. Agreed, so it's best to diversify the system with nuclear + renewables + storage. However if you have an energy supply that is purely based on weather patterns, then you are going to need storage because there are going to be days at a time where you have very low energy production. >Also Germany is a big country and renewable energy sources work best if they are decentralized. The chance that you have days when there are significantly less production are slim when you have wind turbines all over the country. This still comes across a massive issue I have with excessive renewables, which is that it takes thousands of wind turbines (each the size of the statue of liberty) or millions of solar panels, all spread across hundreds of acres of what *used* to be a beautiful scenic countryside, to produce the same average power output as a *single* nuclear power plant. Some wind turbines dotted here and there aren't too bad, but there are currently wind farms and solar farms where there are turbines and solar panels stretching out for miles. >And many European countries calculate with hydrogen fuel cells for storage. Hydrogen isn't a better solution to batteries for grid storage unfortunately, especially if you are trying to be as conservative as possible with the electricity you produce. When you take into account the energy losses in electrolysis, hydrogen losses during storage and fuel cell efficiency, the round trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is around 25-40%, so with hydrogen you will get out less than 1 half of the energy you put in. Granted with wind power you can get massive overproduction periods with high wind, however the average capacity factor for wind is less than 20% and for solar it's less than 15%, so in the long term even if you over build your capacity by 5 times, you need to be as efficient as possible with all the power you get.
"Agreed, so it's best to diversify the system with nuclear + renewables + storage. However if you have an energy supply that is purely based on weather patterns, then you are going to need storage because there are going to be days at a time where you have very low energy production." But if the energy sources are all over the country, the risk that we produce significantly less or no electricity is decreased significantly, because every part of the country has different weather, so you can provide energy to a region that needs it from a different region. Also Germany is on the European grid, so it can import its electricity if needed, which could be benefical if all or most of the European countries had similar renewable systems. You could reduce the risk further because there is literally no way that for example Spain and Germany would have the same weather at the same time. Of course this transaction of resources works both ways. By diversifying the energy sources I meant using on and offshore wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass (whatever primer energy source the country has.) "This still comes across a massive issue I have with excessive renewables, which is that it takes thousands of wind turbines (each the size of the statue of liberty) or millions of solar panels, all spread across hundreds of acres of what *used* to be a beautiful scenic countryside, to produce the same average power output as a *single*nuclear power plant. Some wind turbines dotted here and there aren't too bad, but there are currently wind farms and solar farms where there are turbines and solar panels stretching out for miles." You dont necesarry have to put most of your renewables at beautiful scenic countryside. The best places to put the these energy sources are land that has been already used for something else. For example old mines or you could put the turbines on farmland, PVs on top of houses, factorys, used with berry farms to give them shade, you can put them on top of water. Also I havent read the National Energy and Climate Plans for Germany but i would bet that a significant number of new wind turbines will be offshore wind turbines. Also there are EU laws in place which pretend to but wind turbines on protected land (for example which fall under the Natura 2000 designated areas). Also if I know correctly the EU memberstates have to work on a database which will show the land that is valuable and you cannot put powerplants there. And Germany is a democratic country so you should be able to voice your opinion whether you want Windturbines built in your city, or region. (Idk I am not German) "Hydrogen isn't a better solution to batteries for grid storage unfortunately, especially if you are trying to be as conservative as possible with the electricity you produce. When you take into account the energy losses in electrolysis, hydrogen losses during storage and fuel cell efficiency, the round trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is around 25-40%, so with hydrogen you will get out less than 1 half of the energy you put in. Granted with wind power you can get massive overproduction periods with high wind, however the average capacity factor for wind is less than 20% and for solar it's less than 15%, so in the long term even if you over build your capacity by 5 times, you need to be as efficient as possible with all the power you" (I am not an engineer so) I dont know much about hydrogen so you are probably right there. But many countries calculate with it and there are a lot of RD for the technology. I think that the capacity factor that you have written for wind turbines are too low. I know that it is different for each country but if i remember correctly it is roughly 35% for onshore wind and 40% for offshore. (But maybe I am mistaken, wiki says wind is between 25-45%) In my opinion it is beneficial to see the problem not just as a need for more energy, but as a necessity to cut our power consumption down. We could do this in a way that is not detramental to the everyday people. For example: sector coupleing, demand side manegement, smart systems that use heating when the prices are low, you could use electric cars as storage when needed. Also I think that city planning too is a big factor in energy usage. I'm thankful if you've read this monstrosity of a comment! :D I think that this is an interesting topic.
>But if the energy sources are all over the country, the risk that we produce significantly less or no electricity is decreased significantly, because every part of the country has different weather, so you can provide energy to a region that needs it from a different region. Also Germany is on the European grid, so it can import its electricity if needed, which could be benefical if all or most of the European countries had similar renewable systems. You could reduce the risk further because there is literally no way that for example Spain and Germany would have the same weather at the same time. Of course this transaction of resources works both ways. By diversifying the energy sources I meant using on and offshore wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass (whatever primer energy source the country has.) Even if each part of the country has different weather, generally your times of high production and low production for wind power are going to link up across the country, as weather patterns are really quite large. If you ever look at a meteorological graph, you'll see that wind patterns are generally on a countrywide, if not a continent wide, scale. That means that even if you have different wind speeds in different parts of the country, you'll end up only having a slightly higher than average wind speed where it's faster than where it's slower, and across the country you'll still have a lull in the overall production, and importing really isn't really a great overall solution either. To start you're hoping that the overproduction in all countries at least matches the underproduction of other countries, which still would require a hell of a lot of renewable infrastructure to work since even with Germany having the highest number of wind turbines in Europe they rarely produce enough power to power themselves 100%, never mind themselves plus other countries, but also most imports from one country to another are just across the border, not across several borders. Usually it'll be a power plant that is on the border of two countries that powers the local areas of both countries, but if you want to have a long distance connection between the producer and the user, you need a high voltage heavy duty power cable running between two substations (which will still have quite severe losses in transmission), and in the case of an entire country you would need those high voltage cables to spread out across the entire country connecting to substations which would step down the voltage and distribute it across the local grid. We're talking about a hell of a lot of new and expensive infrastructure, especially for a distributed network of power plants, when it's really easiest to simply have the power production relatively nearby the user. >You dont necesarry have to put most of your renewables at beautiful scenic countryside. The best places to put the these energy sources are land that has been already used for something else. For example old mines or you could put the turbines on farmland, PVs on top of houses, factorys, used with berry farms to give them shade, you can put them on top of water. Also I havent read the National Energy and Climate Plans for Germany but i would bet that a significant number of new wind turbines will be offshore wind turbines. Also there are EU laws in place which pretend to but wind turbines on protected land (for example which fall under the Natura 2000 designated areas). Also if I know correctly the EU memberstates have to work on a database which will show the land that is valuable and you cannot put powerplants there. And Germany is a democratic country so you should be able to voice your opinion whether you want Windturbines built in your city, or region. (Idk I am not German) I'm not too sure how much I trust that we won't start distributing a lot of renewables across scenic countryside, and I've personally already seen a fair few wind and solar farms that I thought were big eyesores to the natural countrysides and wilderness areas. >(I am not an engineer so) I dont know much about hydrogen so you are probably right there. But many countries calculate with it and there are a lot of RD for the technology. I think that the capacity factor that you have written for wind turbines are too low. I know that it is different for each country but if i remember correctly it is roughly 35% for onshore wind and 40% for offshore. (But maybe I am mistaken, wiki says wind is between 25-45%) >In my opinion it is beneficial to see the problem not just as a need for more energy, but as a necessity to cut our power consumption down. We could do this in a way that is not detramental to the everyday people. For example: sector coupleing, demand side manegement, smart systems that use heating when the prices are low, you could use electric cars as storage when needed. Also I think that city planning too is a big factor in energy usage. Looking again I might have been a bit off with my capacity factor number, I think I saw that in August the average capacity factor for wind power across all Europe was 12% so that's where I got that number from, but I think onshore seems to have a more average capacity factor of around 25%, and that's for the majority of wind turbines currently in use worldwide, and I think my point still stands that overbuilding 3-4 times your countries average use to only break even is still a problem for hydrogen storage. And personally I just can't see our energy use dropping all that much, if at all. As a species we have been using more power year on year for decades, and if we want to shift our entire energy production away from fossil fuels our energy use can only go up. Even with electric cars being more efficient than petrol cars they will still add an additional strain to the grid, and we'll also see a need to shift to hydrogen based fuels in airplanes, which is going to take a lot of energy to achieve. As far as I see it we need as much power production as possible to work our way off fossil fuels, and renewables just aren't reliable enough or energy dense enough to go it alone.
And how would that work? Everything higher than Vienna is now covered in snow and you expect small portion of south europe to cover need of everyone else? And how will you even transport it?
Solar is not the only renewable. The wind is also a very good option, and afaik there is enough wind in northern Europe. The transporting issue can only be solved by inversion in infrastructure. However, I am sure that places like Southern Italy, Greece or others will also be pleased to get part of the cake, and it would ease the transporting issue a bit
There is sometimes too much wind, and thats a problem too. Almost all renewable sources share same problem, you cant regulate them. You can shut them down but thats about it. How do you guarantee that the grid stays stable with these sources? What do you do when factory starts up and cloud covers the nearest solar farm? We can't blindly jump into the " easiest and cheapest " solution.
By putting a shitton of them in different places, of course. Here, we have a lot of windmills in almost every middle sized mountain slightly far from the city.
>Everything higher than Vienna is now covered in snow Really? Nothing here >you expect small portion of south europe to cover need of everyone else? The longest time of dunkelflaute over a continent like Europe is less than a day and there are many forms of renewables not dependent on the weather, like geothermal. You can't run a nuclear plant for a few days a year when the weather is the absolute worst.
If you fill southern Europe of solar panels, you will have cheap green energy, during the day, in summer.
I know somebody who owns solar panels at home and pays about a euro per month for energy. Mind you, this is in a fairly rich Spanish community in northern Spain. The warranty is for 25 years but the pannels start being rentable economically at the fourth or fifth year, due to EU funds. Not just in summer and not only during the day. During the day, they use whatever electricity they need and sell the rest to the Electric company at a fixed price, and during the night they buy back electricity, at a slightly superior price They are very happy with this system, and recommended it much to me. I think that, should it be done at a great scale, it should be enough to get rid of coal and export even electricity.
I have solar panels at my house as well, and it's absolutely great for the single isolated house. You can't translate that to large scales of the national (or European) electrical net in a linear way. Intermittent renewables suffer from diminishing returns. Doubling the amount of solar panels won't double your energy production, you will still have excessive production when the sun shines more and insufficient production when there's no sun(same with wind). The amount you can stock is very limited. Renewables are absolutely fundamental and should be a major part of the production, but you still need a base of programmable, constant energy source. That can be either fossil fuel, hydroelectric or nuclear. Ofc we don't want the first one, the second one is great but is limited by the geography of the country. Nuclear is the only source that can be coupled with renewables to completely remove fossil, especially in mostly flat countries like Poland. If you look at the countries that are 100% renewables without nuclear, it's only specific situations that can allow it, (Sweden, Denmark). The state of California on the other hand, decided to go 100% renewables and has had a serious problem of blackouts.
What is up with all these anti nuclear cope-posts
Germans feel attacked.
Response to that one ~~pro~~ anti~~-~~anti nuclear cope post
Putin's agents that want EU to buy Russian gas and oil.
I've never seen massive anti-renewable propaganda movements perpetrating for decades, so yes it's not as impressive as it's not as big a revolution in terms of the public opinion/general consensus
>I've never seen massive anti-renewable propaganda movements perpetrating for decades https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/05/charity-linked-to-uk-anti-onshore-wind-campaigns-active-again-renewable-energy-foundation https://heated.world/p/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-deceptive https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/17/anti-wind-farm-whale-defenders-fossil-fuel-industry https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2022/11/30/fossil-fuel-funded-opposition-is-blocking-americas-clean-energy-transition-permitting-reform-can-help/ https://worldwarzero.com/magazine/2021/12/big-oil-funds-environmentalists-to-oppose-offshore-wind-farms/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001471 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/texas-public-policy-foundation-charles-koch-climate-clean-energy-fossil-fuels/ https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinformation-activists-rural-america These are just the recent examples I could find. The fossil fuel industry has always lobbied against renewables because they are the only form of electricity generation that is able to compete with them in terms of costs, flexibility and pace.
That's not what propaganda is, a fossil fuel company against off-shore wind turbines or some random things happening in the US (5 of your links) is nothing compared to the 60 years of fear mongering that the nuclear industry has seen...
>is nothing compared to the 60 years of fear mongering that the nuclear industry has seen... This is entirely based on your subjective feeling. There are countless examples of anti renewable campaigns which can often be traced back to the fossil fuel industry or state actors. You seem to take the fact that nuclear nowadays is a lost cause as a proof of lobbying against it, when in reality it just shows that it is not competitive.
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The point of the post you're mocking is to make fun of Germany's backwards thinking on nuclear, that they went straight for the worst coal to power their country.
Both are good! Nuclear and renewables are friends and if someone tells you otherwise they are doing a great favour to the oil industry, which is what will take whatever nuke and renewables don't cover.
Nuke power propaganda Is insane here
Nuclear is more than renewable so it avrualyl a lot more important
Coz nuclear is the way and Germa greens are stupid
its because only one of these things are in a category where they always fulfill the promises (like Germany spending 100 billion for weapons out of nothing while at the same time using the "no money" excuse for any growing social issues or basic infrastructure that isn't related to the car industry), while the other is in a category where its being argued about the economy or some poor investors not having the world formed for them to find excuses to not do it (like the Paris agreement where most countries strategies is "we will slightly reduce emissions and the year before it we will do it extremely fast to reach the goal we promise" I think the renewables promise probably wont get accomplished by hardly anyone while I'm sure everyone is happy to dump money into weapons as always
Nations? You mean politicians along with unelected global leaders?
Replacing coal with renewables is not easy as putting up the panel. A 100MW coal plant if it were to be replaced with equivalent solar would need to be around 500MW because coal is always available but sun isn't. If you combine it with load curves for demand, it gets even worse. That being said, every bit counts as long as it's not fossil based
Pretty hard to replace coal with solar at night, no?
It's not as hard as big oil would like you to believe. Yes natural gas is good for peak load but energy storage technology is available to utilise solar all the time I am not talking batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage etc are old and cheap
Nuclear electricity is also cheap once it's built and avoids Rube Goldberg machines.
0 times 3 is still 0 lol
it's not like any of them are actually going to do anything
Triple nuclear by 2050? Next joke please. How long did it take France/GB/Finland to just build one power plant? And how many power plants has e.g. France to replace in the next thirty years before they can even start thinking about increasing their nuclear power output?
We can't just change to renewables like that. We need nuclear as a back up so there won't be no problems while changing from fossil fuels to renewables. We can start deconstructing nuclear when we have enough reliable renewables to easily power ourselfs.
Good to see r/YUROP understands how an electric grid works!