Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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All this debate and nobody brings up that, thanks to climate change, cooling nuclear power plants will become a roll of the dice? Same as it already happened in France?
Droughts are really, really bad for nuclear power. Solar and wind don't give a shit.
Doesn't even matter much which technology is better on any other point. If you cannot run it, it's worthless. Especially at times with increased power demand for example due to AC usage spiking thanks to the same heat that just poofed your cooling solution into oblivion.
Thank you. The nuclear fanboyism is crazy here and on reddit. Looking back, almost all nuclear power planta in Germany had to shut down over the last summers, because the cooling water Was either not enough or too hot. That technology has run it's course and every potential investment is better routed towards renewable, battery capacity or green hydrogen.
In addition, the european pricing for power is defined by the most expensive source - and nuclear as well as coal are power sources that are getting more expensive, raising the cost for users. Supporting both sources for energy is madness.
And yes, tearing down windfarms for coal is fucking stupid, as is hoping that russia will keep selling us gas. Europe needs it's own power infrastructure and has enough potential for it.
I also wonder about the nuclear fanboyism. Is it because techbros? Is it astroturfing? Or do really so many people fall for the various websites of the nuclear industry you find online? I don't know what it is, but it is suspicious. There seem to be many more (vocal) fans of nuclear reactors than fans for renewable energy sources.
People really believe them this time when the
! LOBBY !
tells them everything's safe now, some people just can't get behind the idea that nothing can make this technology safe, there will always be one edge-case where the stars align and we have another meltdown.
I already know how the lobby is telling the people the wrong price per Kw/h ignoring any other costs involved, so i can get the idea how they handle security concerns.
Fuck them
So what about nuclear waste? I am opposed to nuclear energy because of all the reasons you pointed out, but also because we collectively decided to dump the waste somewhere underground where they will go on radiating for a few eternities more. Do you know if this bullshit or if that's a true concern?
We get nuclear fuel from the ground and then bury it in the same ground. Nothing changes. Or are you one of those who believe that nuclear fuel is made out of thin air? There are literally no problems with nuclear waste. Even if you forget that coal power plants pump much more radioactive shit straight into the air you breathe.
U.S. commercial reactors have generated about 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel since the 1950s. If all of it were able to be stacked together, it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards. Nuclear waste is solid, it's not that difficult to store it. We get more nuclear waste leaked into our nature from coal plants.
As a reference, here is the room that Switzerland stores their nuclear waste.
Yes, that too.
So, nuclear waste is undeniably a problem,but the reality is that most of it is low-level and not that difficult to dispose of.
Other industries have much worse by-products that are more costly and challenging to dispose of. Many mineral extraction chains produce far more toxic hazardous waste than nuclear power does. Heavy industry deals with chemicals significantly more toxic and dangerous to humans.
It's easy to be scared and to drum up fear of nuclear waste due to its longevity. That fear shouldn't be dismissed, we do need secure facilities for high-level nuclear waste—but that type accounts for about 3% of all nuclear waste and is currently being safely disposed of in deep-level purpose-built facilities.
A far greater risk of exposure and contamination exists from any number of ongoing industrial processes—a single processing plant failure (on almost any production chain) is liable to release more toxic material into the environment and result in a greater impact on human and animal life than any risk from nuclear waste.
Sorry, but that is just false. The only european country, that is on the track to build and operate such a facility is Finland. Their facility will be finished in a hundred years and only contain the waste of a single Nuclear power plant of a country of 5 million people. Also it is sheduled to cost around a billion Euro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
In Germany there is the plan to designate a spot to build a facility by 2040, but it is entirely uncertain, as the most likely feasible geological formations for that are in Bavaria. The state that is a strong proponent of nucelar power, but rejects to store any of its waste. It is NIMBYism by the pro nuclear faction par excellence. So we dont know, if by 2040 we will just have found a spot for a facility and can begin the planning process for it.
All storage facilities in Germany that were supposed to be long term, have been subject to deterioation, unsafe handling of nuclear waste and water entry with the potential to leak nuclear waste into the groundwater.
In central Europe, where 200 Million people are living in one of the most densely populated regions of the globe the issue of storing the radioactive waste is neither solved politically, nor technologically, nor is the funding secured with certainty.
It is still very much hypothetical, if, when and how the radioactive waste, that is waiting in "intermediate" storage facilities since 50 years will actually end up in a feasible permanent storage. Proponents of nuclear energy and in this case you specifically distort the facts tremendously, by saying the issue of storage is solved or even close to being solved
Also it is absurd, to claim to know the costs and challenges would be less than for other industrial wastes, because the fucking technology doesn't exist in any larger scale implementation
Okay, so, I appreciate the discussion, but I have to address your comment as it is plainly disingenuous.
Finland is, indeed, the only country with an currently operational deep-level storage facility. But several other such facilities are in active development across the globe. These are long-term storage facilities and their design and installation naturally takes time. Nuclear is still young, but the solutions are being worked on—the only thing hindering it is people like you who attempt to sabotage the industry and then claim it isn't up to scratch.
You claim "the facility will be finished in a hundred years and only contain the waste of a single Nuclear (sic) power plant". This is a carefully-worded lie. The facility will begin storing nuclear waste this year and continue to store waste from all five of Finland's nuclear reactors for the entire length of their life cycles, which is indeed about 100 years.
The cost is a difficult one and can only be assessed in the context of all ongoing costs to produce nuclear power. However, the International Energy Agency's ongoing assessment of the Levellised Costs Of Electricity—which takes into account all cost inputs for power generation of any type, from mineral extraction to ongoing maintenance, to waste storage—shows that nuclear is the low-carbon technology with the lowest costs overall.
The reason that Germany doesn't have concrete plans for long-term nuclear waste storage is due to years of undermining attacks on the technology from fossil fuel lobbies and oddly similar 'Green Party' voices. To say that a technology cannot work or isn't viable because the opponents of said technology have successfully sabotaged it is incredibly disingenuous and deeply malicious.
You cannot claim that the issues of any sector of energy generation are "solved politically", nor can you claim that their "funding is secured with certainty". Again, to claim a technology isn't viable because you don't want it to be and you're helping to undermine its development isn't a good argument. Nuclear power technology continues to advance at a rapid rate and will continue to do so providing it receives the necessary support and funding. The same goes for any emergent technology.
Your entire comment is full of the things you claim that the proponents of nuclear energy put forward. You are skewing the facts in an attempt to favour a sensationalist argument that convinces those less educated in the technology that it is scary and dangerous—which extensive research demonstrates to be untrue.
The reality is that renewable energy is unpredictable and best suited to flexible generation. Please do not misunderstand me, I fully support the development of all renewable technologies. However, when we wean ourselves of fossil fuels, we will need new baseload power plants. Nuclear is currently the best option to provide stable baseload generation.
Do you have a source for this?
Because grids already deal with changing demand and if the generation is geographically distributed this issue could probably be solved with less storage than electrc cars are using. See this paper
I know this is odd but thank you for this discussion, I'm learning a lot of things from knowledgeable people here and not just propaganda or parrots.
I've seen another video article instead that basically says sure nuclear is good on paper if:
The article and the video are in Italian, so I'm afraid at best you can only translate the written article to your language of choice
https://www.corriere.it/dataroom-milena-gabanelli/ritorno-nucleare-pulito-sicuro-cosa-vuol-dire/f9d58b1c-b200-11ed-8c7f-0f02d700e67e-va.shtml
Great post and nice to see those 4th gen plants mentioned including the current project development state. Those plants were always a top comment as 'the solution' in discussions on Reddit. Just build 4th gen or molten salt or fusion - energy problems solved with just a few keystrokes.
Posts explaining the problems or the current state of those projects often ended up in flames.
Not to mention that building new plants can take a decade and costs a fortune - if you invest that money into renewables and power storages you have working power much faster.
Also OPs graphic is a real problem but it only goes until last year where we just got rid of Merkel. Her party was actively working on making it as hard as possible to work wind turbines while investing into gas from russia so with the new government the speed should finally pick up again
Of course shutting down existing nuclear reactors is a bad idea (which also happened because of Merkel) but that decision was made so long ago that the companies running those plants prepared for them to shut down for a decade and have stopped hiring people, the ones working there are on retirement contracts and they didn't invest into future proofing the plants anymore so they were kind of falling apart
Almost like we should've invested in nuclear power when it was first discovered instead of being blinded by oil propaganda saying it was extremely dangerous despite oil causing more deaths than any nuclear event in history combined, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Besides, all that Russian propaganda of „German energy policies bad“ has done nothing but spreading discord and allowing France to fuel their economy with ukrainan blood because „French energy policies are so based!!1“. Their nuclear power plants are already failing left and right due to low water levels and they want to build more as if this situation won’t get worse year by year. What’s the point of emission free power plants when they just stand around for lack of cooling water? All the while their gas imports from Russia explode to new heights, fueling Putin‘s war machine.
Wut? Your delusion is incredible!
Sure, because wind and solar are totally immune to the climate.
Getting enough wind and solar to supply the electric consumption is a roll of dice EVERY DAY.
I'm not saying that drought and heatwave don't have a negative impact on nuclear but it would be dishonest to say that runs and solar are a more reliable solution in this regard.
So you think the weather is always the same in all of Europe? Because it doesn't matter, if it is cloudy or snowy in one part of the continent, if other regions have sunshine and wind at the same time. On such a scale, wheatger is not that much of a deal. Especially if you have storage mediums and other sources like gas.
Honest questions:
What's the difference in water usage between nuclear and, Germany's favored energy source, coal?
Hope much is drought a concern for Europe?
It is not our favorite energy source anymore, the plan is to get rid of themynot build more of them. Yes, there was an increase last year, but that was related to the gas situation with russia.
Northrine Westphalia just dumped the minium required distance for wind turbines, so we will see a huge boost of them (hopefully)
Drought is not as much a problem in Germany as it is on the southern states like France and Spain, but groundwater is going down. Everywhere. And like OP said, France had to limit the output of their reactors due to water shortages.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-13/france-cuts-nuclear-output-as-heat-triggers-water-restrictions
Wind and solar has to be the main focus as long as nuclear power is reliant on clean and sufficient water.
Of you want to know more, there is a separate wiki article just related to the European drought of 2023.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_European_drought
I have no idea and coal sucks and is the result of intense lobbying and corrupt politicians being bought for pennies on the dollar for the last 25 years.
The point isn't the water usage of nuclear power, since most of it is evaporated and returned to the cycle, so I'd be surprised if it's worse than coal in terms of actual consumption. However you need water in large quantities and the correct temperatures to be able to use it for cooling on nuclear.
If there is no water or not enough water of sufficient temperatures, then you can't cool the plant. It's simple as that.
Droughts overall are horrible for Europe just as much as anywhere else. We're losing tons of valuable topsoil, forrests are dying contributing to the continual errosion. All this could lead to salination and eventual death of farmland. Crop yields are unpredictable. No country on this planet can exist for any prolonged period of time with droughts, unless it can import everything it can't produce itself from elsewhere.
Water usage is generally a huge issue in Germany. Farmers take out far, far more than they're allotted already and there's almost no oversight. Large cities like Frankfurt am Main are pulling in water from surrounding areas, leaving them dry. And this isn't even touching on the basically free use of water for our industries at large. It's a really bad situation.
The only point where renewables would "rely" on water beyond their construction processes is either water generated power itself or energy storage (which comes down to the same).
Coal power plants have about 45% energy efficency. Liginte about 30-35%, Nuclear plants also about 30-35%. All the other energy ends up using water to cool it away.
So a 1 GW nuclear plant is putting about 2 GW of heat into the water. A lignite plant the same. A 1 GW coal power plant is only putting about 1.25 GW of heat into water.
But again the problem is the false comparison being made here. The alternative to nuclear isnt coal. the alternative is renewables in conjunction with storage technologies and smarter grid management with demand sheduling.
Edit: wow nuclear shills now downvoting basic physics.