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FreezingRobot t1_it2lwzv wrote

Here's an idea, Germany: Turn your nuclear power plants back on. They're one of these countries who's going through an "Eww nuclear is scary" phase, and now they're out there with their pants down because they didn't plan ahead.

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EasterBunnyArt t1_it2vgs7 wrote

But I love my willie blowing in the freezing wind….

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Tulol t1_it3sbf2 wrote

Flap your willie for renewable energy.

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EasterBunnyArt t1_it3wy3t wrote

Challenge accepted. Since I live in the US I shall need to find a remote and wooded area to perform this maneuver. Don’t want to get a record for indecent exposure. Not like the average person will see it without a microscope in this weather. 😀

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foundafreeusername t1_it48rdt wrote

I wish once in my life I arrive to a discussion here and people use actual data instead of hearsay.

Germanys nuclear phaseout looks like this:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?time=2000..latest&country=~DEU

They roughly halved coal usage since the nuclear phaseout began and replaced both with renewables.

For comparison here is the us:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?time=2000..latest&country=~USA

They also roughly halved coal usage ... and replaced it with gas.

Notice the difference?

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4i6ag wrote

yea they did better than USA, but they can do better than themselves by making that purple(nuclear) on the right side as big as the grey(coal)... also the nuclear would bite into the gas as well. By now if done right, it'd be entirely solar, wind, & nuclear.

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strangefolk t1_it3a4ev wrote

They threw it all into solar/wind in a place with little sun and wind. And those don't provide baseload power anyway. Fashionable energy policy makes brown-outs.

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Mecha-Jesus t1_it42ei7 wrote

Actually, Germany gets a ton of wind on the North Sea coast which is why they’ve been prioritizing offshore wind development. It’s also very sunny in both the coastal region and in the south.

And even with its relative lack of extremely sunny areas or onshore wind potential, solar and wind sources already meet 50% of Germany’s electricity needs, up from only 15% just 7 years ago.

Germany should absolutely do what they can to shut the coal plants and reopen their nuclear plants. But it’s not like Germany’s solar/wind development is only a “fashionable” fad. And at the rate new solar and wind projects are being developed, it’s expected that solar and wind will provide 100% of Germany’s electricity needs within 15 years.

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Snuffy1717 t1_it48h7f wrote

Haven't they also had days in recent years where 100% of their energy was generated by green / renewable energy?

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4hus1 wrote

they haven't stopped buying coal-generated energy from poland yet, so no

maybe some city did it or something.

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SAugsburger t1_it45n4u wrote

At the very least keep the existing plants running beyond April. I don't seriously think that the issue in Ukraine is going to be resolved by then.

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4hnlh wrote

yea no shit.

Germany consumes more coal than anyone else in Europe... turns off their nuclear for publicity stunt, has to buy coal burning energy from poland.. like what are you even doing lmao

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egnirceravog t1_it3bklf wrote

> Turn your nuclear power plants back on

those reactors need fuel, just look at france

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rex30303 t1_it3s3j4 wrote

You don WANT those plants running change my mind.

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Socky_McPuppet t1_it41p5k wrote

Change it yourself. The facts are not hard to find. And you can ask for help with the big words.

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rex30303 t1_it41u1j wrote

No what i mean they arent in great shape.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it2zq50 wrote

As is tradition on Reddit there can't be any article about Germany and energy without some completely uninformed person pointing out that nuclear power is the answer.

Germany is going full renewables which isn't really compatible with nuclear power for simple economic reasons.

The current energy crisis in Europe has nothing to do with a lack of nuclear power, except for France where nuclear power is actually the reason for their energy crisis.

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Senyu t1_it30ao9 wrote

Find me a cleaner baseload power source. Not to knock alternatives as the whole solution requires a diverse energry portfolio, but it seems silly to think renewables can supplement 100% of our needs 24hrs a day everyday.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it339v7 wrote

> but it seems silly to think renewables can supplement 100% of our needs 24hrs a day everyday.

Nobody said that this is the goal.

The thing about nuclear power that is that it's very expensive to build a power plant. But once you've built it the fuel and running cost is quite low, but only if you actually use the power plant on high load most of the time.

Now let's assume you've build enough wind, solar and hydro power plants that you need nothing else for about 80-90% of the time. What would you use for the remaining 10-20% of dark and windless days? Certainly not nuclear power because it's way too expensive to build a nuclear power plant and then only use it sometimes. That's what I meant by saying that renewables and nuclear power are not compatible for economic reasons.

What you want are power plants that are cheap to build, so it's okay when you only run them once in a while. And when you only need them 10% of the time it's okay if the fuel is a bit more expensive. And the answer here is natural gas which perfectly complements renewables (you just don't want to be too dependent on a single, evil country for your gas source). On days with a large surplus of renewable power you can even run electrolysis to create clean hydrogen which you then store and you in those same gas power plants later on. And exactly that's Germany's plan which requires no nuclear, no coal and eventually less and less natural gas from the ground.

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Kirov123 t1_it38d99 wrote

Pretty sure nuclear is moving towards clustered mini reactors which can operate fine with low demand and start up/shut down much faster than many currently operating reactors. By having many smaller reactors they can easily scale up/down generation to meet grid demand.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it3agz9 wrote

The power demand scaling is not as much as factor as the cost. Also call me again when those "clustered mini reactors" actually exist in mass production.

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it46pt7 wrote

Pity there aren’t any operating prototypes for small commercial nuclear reactors yet 😂 But yeah of course, just wait for the the prototypes to be built and tested and improved and THEN start building more nuclear power, that’ll solve all our problems… in fifteen years when the first of them come online

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Senyu t1_it3mxv2 wrote

Or you could stand up a nuclear plant that can reliably provide surplus base load power whenever it's needed. Not only is it helpful in the event issues occur to renewables (disasters, maintenance, poor weather conditions) but it also can remove the need for natural gas. It's also a smaller footprint in space consumed compared fields of solar & wind, and ecological damage of dams is just a given. Nuclear is the cleanest source of energy available to our species, it ensures guranteed power for a long time (provided it's following all regulations, looking at you Fukishima) and if we to stop being so hesistant towards it we'd already have some up and going. Nuclear and renewables not being compatible isn't an economic decision, it's a choice to have a more limited energy portfolio.

The futher nuclear tech matures (despite all the pushback over the decades to its development & implementation) the more sensible it will be to implement alongside our other energy options simply for its reliability.

Maybe it won't happen until we can finally mass produce mini reactors, but when such a time comes there should be serious evaluation to the benefits of adopting it for all countries capable of running the plant (capable workers for employment).

Edit: also, just sell any extra nuclear power when it isn't needed.

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hoodoo-operator t1_it3bzc4 wrote

>Germany is going full renewables which isn't really compatible with nuclear power for simple economic reasons.

And in the meantime they shut down already built, currently running nuclear plants, which means they need to run old coal plants to makeup the lost power.

If you have a perfectly functional carbon free powerplant running right now, it seems dumb to shut it down and run coal instead while you're waiting to build out your renewables.

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rex30303 t1_it3sjp2 wrote

You mean shut down those which were planed to shut down for quite a while and are in an according state where the companys running them are like na mate shit idea.

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mmarollo t1_it1zuy9 wrote

German leaders literally caused the worldwide renaissance for coal.

There's nothing anyone can do anyhow. Asia pays lip service to the Western climate cult, but they don't believe any of it. Which is why they're building thousands of new coal plants in the next 20 years.

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Ghune t1_it2h314 wrote

Yes, and I'm surprised they don't warn against a worldwide renaissance for nuclear power...

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dew2459 t1_it31oh2 wrote

You think that's a joke, but unfortunately it isn't.

Germany has been doing pretty much that for years. They are currently fighting hard (thankfully a losing battle so far) against counting nuclear power as "green" in the EU regulations. It is mind-numbing how flat-earther so many Germans are on nuclear power.

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MarTimator t1_it3g7ht wrote

The boars here still got Chernobyl in them, its not that far fetched. Its stupid because besides human error, nuclear is pretty safe, yet more expensive. The conservatives made the nuclear exit happen because they wanted to take the topic off the Greens after Fukushima „Look we doing u a good, nucular bad“ and the conservatives (governing mostly with SPD, workers party basically) are also why we’re in deep shit with Russian gas and lacking power lines to the south. And not to mention why Germany has crap internet. Thanks vegetable man. Not to mention the I think 1k solar plants that are operational but not providing power due to lack of certification due to lack of certificators

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dew2459 t1_it46ozr wrote

>Not to mention the I think 1k solar plants that are operational but not providing power due to lack of certification due to lack of certificators

That seems very German. I worked for a large German company. We (non-Germans) joked "Success has nothing to do with results, success is whether the process has been followed exactly."

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MarTimator t1_it46ur5 wrote

Yep, some jokers even spent like 180k for a heated bridge, because…

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MOXschmelling t1_it4km85 wrote

Fellow German countrymen I speak to are not thrilled by a potential MCA. In fact and compared to other nuclear power plants in Europe the German ones are not in that bad of a shape.

However, being aware of the risks of storing and transporting the nuclear waste - we did not even find an apropriate permanent storage site in our country - it is not recommended to accumulate more and more of it. In my opinion this is the greater risk. Nuclear energy itself is clean and relatively safe if properly operated.

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4ioep wrote

chernobyl could happen every 10 years and nuclear would still cause less deaths per watt than coal does. so not much of an excuse on their part. uninhabitable area is a good excuse if that were the case though.

​

LMAO at their 1k solar plants due to no certification.. my god

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Amtsschreiber t1_it2zz7m wrote

> German leaders literally caused the worldwide renaissance for coal.

Germany is quickly moving away from coal, what's your point?

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4j4uq wrote

not him but they could be using half the coal of what they are using right now, just by not having turned off a few nplants..

also apparently they have 1k solar power plants that are not operational because they lack certifications and there aren't enough certificators lmao

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Petaris t1_it3oya7 wrote

Asia is not filled with stupid people. Its not that they don't believe it, its just that money always wins. Its cheaper and they, like lots of other countries before them, figure they can just leave the problem for the future.

Don't confuse greed and unconcern for stupidity.

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PolyDipsoManiac t1_it2eiiv wrote

They believe it in China, as soon as there are environmental impacts.

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mmarollo t1_it2frk2 wrote

There are already huge impacts and it doesn't slow them down. As they get wealthier they build cleaner coal plants with fewer particulate emissions -- the stuff that is actual pollution and nobody wants.

China's cities have the dirtiest air on the planet, but rapid growth is far more important to them than theoretical climate change. They will gradually improve air quality. Los Angeles was like this 60 years ago. Not any more.

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PolyDipsoManiac t1_it2fweo wrote

That’s a funny way to look at it. China installs far more renewable capacity every year than anyone else.

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[deleted] t1_it2iliu wrote

[removed]

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it477tk wrote

China also is building more nuclear than every other country, but still only spending a tiny amount on it compared to the incredibly cheap, easy to build, easy to install forms of renewable energy

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mrp3anut t1_it4ct33 wrote

Im not really sure what your point is? China is not making eco friendly decisions in the same way western powers are. Yes they are covering some of their increasing energy needs with various forms of renewable energy. That doesn’t change the fact that in an era where the rest of the world is trying to sunset coal power plants completely and source that energy from more eco friendly means the Chinese are building brand new coal plants that will be pumping out smog for the next 20-30 years.

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it4djzl wrote

Ohhhh that’s funny because China installing 1000 GW of renewable in 2021, and 8.5 GW of new coal really doesn’t match up with any of your points 🤔 it’s almost like you’re full of shit

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Snoo93079 t1_it2kk7k wrote

China is installing renewables (which is good) BECAUSE they have shit air quality.

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4jhhz wrote

they install more of everything than everyone else. 25% of the planet is there.

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nyaaaa t1_it2zuiw wrote

Except that nothing much is changing with coal.

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it47bis wrote

Apart from large numbers of coal plants closing in every developed nation, coal mines closing in most nations etc etc. but no of course nothing is changing

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nyaaaa t1_it68ui9 wrote

Dunno maybe check a global prod/use chart and show us any significant change

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DonManuel t1_it23ia8 wrote

> German leaders literally caused the worldwide renaissance for coal.

Except those who claimed that bullshit actually did it silently.

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C1-10PTHX1138 t1_it20yk9 wrote

What can we do?

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dominantspecies t1_it27jjj wrote

Literally nothing. Nothing is going to change because the top 1% don’t give a flying fuck about the climate and it would make the slightly less money to do anything. Nothing will change and things will just get worse and worse . If you are over 50 you will probdbly be dead before it gets completely miserable

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Cmdr_Redbeard t1_it282l7 wrote

Yea man, I plan to die in the food wars saving my nephew or somthing.

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dominantspecies t1_it286kd wrote

I don’t know if you are being sarcastic or what but do you see hope for real change?

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Snoo93079 t1_it2kakp wrote

Hasn't Germany been moving away from nuclear due to public sentiment? It sounds like their people have made a difference, but not in a good way. But I suggest it demonstrates you're wrong about being completely fatalist.

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hoodoo-operator t1_it3bmu9 wrote

yup, they voted to shut down the nuclear plants, which means they have to replace them with coal in the meantime, at least until more renewables get built out.

​

In the US coal is basically dead, the "coal renaissance" basically seems like a china/germany problem.

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danielravennest t1_it364up wrote

> it would make them slightly less money to do anything.

Not correct. Solar and wind are now the cheapest energy sources, which is why they are rapidly growing. Hydropower first came into use in 1882, so it had a big head start, but not for long.

So assuming the usual profit motive, the 1% can make more money investing in renewables, which is exactly what is happening.

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geekynerdynerd t1_it387oc wrote

Tbh it's kinda dumb that hydro isn't more popular. It's the only renewable that can provide both base load and on-demand power. In areas where it's possible it should be a no brainer.

It might have it's own ecological issues, but that's true of literally every form of power production.

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hoodoo-operator t1_it3bj5f wrote

In areas where it's possible it's used a lot, the problem is that most areas aren't great places for building big dams.

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Key_Confidence_2111 t1_it39cyj wrote

You are missing the obvious that gas and oil are spending a lot of money to slow the swap, no matter how much cheaper wind and solar is the people making the decisions are more likely to personally profit from fossil fuels

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danielravennest t1_it3hqb4 wrote

Coal is already down 57% in the US as a power source. New US Power Plants are around 70% renewables these days.

Oil will take longer. Electric only reached 10% of new vehicle sales this year, and it takes about 20 years to replace the total vehicle fleet. So that means perhaps 1% of the vehicle fleet is electric so far.

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C1-10PTHX1138 t1_it281vs wrote

If it’s just one percent why don’t we just eat them.

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RGBedreenlue t1_it36lwg wrote

Nothing will change if the people think that nothing can be done. This world is built and maintained by the 99%.

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ph30nix01 t1_it262x2 wrote

I'm gonna say this nicely

Hey conservatives get off your mama's(earth) breast milk!(fossil fuels)

Need to make this a slogan like their "don't tread on me" thing.

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fantafunta t1_it3gt86 wrote

Eh ¯\(ツ)/¯ . won't last long anyway. Our species I mean

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Eislemike t1_it24dm6 wrote

Holy crap. What a stunning lack of awareness of how we got here. My opinion of Germany…… I shouldn’t describe what’s happened to it over the past 5 years. I’d get reported.

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flapper_mcflapsnack t1_it2wm2j wrote

This is the internet. Pretending you can’t say what you want to say is a very silly thing to do. Expecting people to agree with you may also be very silly, depending on what you say and how you say it.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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Eislemike t1_it2wtf3 wrote

I called out a Nano shill yesterday for costing people untold wealth over the past 5 years and he threatened to go to admin. I’d rather not be shadowbanned or whatever. Funny you think we have free speech on the internet still.

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YNot1989 t1_it3c4qc wrote

And Germany was leading the charge when they started mining brown coal again.

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WarmAppleCobbler t1_it3je0z wrote

We’re already fucked as it is. Even if every carbon polluting plant magically shut down RIGHT NOW, WE. ARE STILL. FUCKED.

We do not need a SINGLE new coal plant. Renewable energy is finally affordable to produce so we need to be producing it.

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ZombieDr_Richtofe t1_it3k3jl wrote

Coal will be used until nuclear power plants go up.

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Diamondhands_Rex t1_it3pjbf wrote

Cant be an enlightenment when we know better than to use coal again

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PoorPDOP86 t1_it4c99i wrote

What, they don't want their own coal to get too expensive?

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Altruistic-Type-5934 t1_it4ocgq wrote

German leaders are killing off the German industry and are plummeting their workers into poverty because of the stupidest energy politics in the world.

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webauteur t1_it5w8hg wrote

Ya, die Kohle ist gut!

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kehaarcab t1_it6kyea wrote

But… but… why close fully functional nuclear power plants, if coal is so bad? Russian gas wasn’t such a great option, was it? Or as Greenpeace called it, ”ProWindGas Vegan Plus” - some greenwashing combined with unhealthy worship of old school communism is not the right way to build a stable foundation for the future.

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Youth-in-AsiaS-247 t1_it2t2hs wrote

If we just allow genetic engineering, or evolve to having gills or wings and light bones, we’ll be just fine. Maybe sit under a magnifying glass for warmth and cook with that this winter.

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mattjouff t1_it32ien wrote

Artificial scarcity exhibit A

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Drewafx t1_it3uvyy wrote

if we have the tech to clean up exhaust at the power plant and make it green
then the problem should be minimal i think

nobody knows how to clean up early design of nuclear reactor waste
so they're shutting it down in case of disaster i guess

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AlphaTangoFoxtrt t1_it3fqvb wrote

Maybe you shouldn't have shut down your Nuclear plants?

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it47mvy wrote

Yeah haha they shouldn’t have shut down plants at end of life with increasing dangers from wear and tear of components with no contracts to obtain new parts for maintenance.

Just keep running the plants with no spare parts that’s a good plan to kill people

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TheYokedYeti t1_it23aiv wrote

Wtf I would rather have oil. Coal is the dirtiest of energy sources

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