this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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If only there was some means of replacing all that coal with a non-carbon intensive source of energy that isn't dependant on the weather...
Has anyone heard of such a technology?
Sarcasm aside, that Germany shut down their last two nuclear reactors so recently and carried through is astounding. The excuses are mind-boggling. They're old? Refurbishing is cheaper and faster than new built. They need re-certification? Then do it.
It's more efficient to use the money required for
And spend it on renewables than to do the above.
Also a big factor noone seems to care about: staff. The people who worked there have other jobs now. You can't just plop a reactor plant somewhere and expect it to make electricity you need highly specialised staff for that. We also did not invest into training new staff because why would we, with the stop for nuclear power being decided 10 years ago.
I watched this animated documentary from the states called The Simpsons that seems to state otherwise.
The renewables generate electricity mostly when there is sun/wind, so there is an oversupply at those times and a need to burn natural gas at other times.
The nuclear plants would generate electricity 24/7 with little waste.
Either way, now they are investing the money in digging up lignite, so it's worse than either renewables or nuclear.
Where do you get that from?
Yes congrats, we will need to build energy storages. Thats nothing new. Also calling the waste of nuclear plant little might be factually true if you only go by volume. If you go by "amount of pain in the ass to deal with" calling it little would be a very big understatement.
Duitsland zet vol in op kolen, maar vooral transport blijkt knelpunt - https://nos.nl/l/2438762
Germany to reactivate coal power plants as Russia curbs gas flow - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/germany-reactivate-coal-power-plants-russia-curbs-gas-flow
The eviction of Lützerath: the village being destroyed for a coalmine – a photo essay - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/24/eviction-lutzerath-village-destroyed-coalmine-a-photo-essay
Ok, so where are the energy storages currently being built? This is not exactly a problem that's cheap or trivial to solve.
Can't comment on the first one.
The guardian article says that Germany reactivated coal plants to act as an emergency if the gas would not be enough. It's important to known that gas is not primarly used to make electricity, gas plants are only used when there are peaks in consumption that can not be fulfilled by any other means. Reactivating plants as an emergency backup is not the same as investing in coal power. I am not clear on whether they were even necessary, afaik the gas reserves never went into a critically low level.
Lüzerath is a whole other story. That deal had been made long ago, RWE agreed to stop mining coal earlier if they were allowed to mine the area with that village on top of it. It became a symbol, and people claimed the coal was necessary to maintain stability in the electricity network. Which was proven wrong it was mostly sold to other countries to be burned in their plants.
For all our faults Germany is steadily leaving both fossile and nuclear power behind.
You mean just like nuclear plants are very expensive and non-trivial to build?
Well you don't deal with the waste from burning coal at all, so why not do the same for nuclear?