The Secret Behind Germany’s Record Renewables Buildout | As most countries struggle to install clean energy fast enough, Germany tackled the industry’s toughest problem: slow permitting.
The Secret Behind Germany’s Record Renewables Buildout | As most countries struggle to install clean energy fast enough, Germany tackled the industry’s toughest problem: slow permitting.
As most countries struggle to install clean energy fast enough, Germany tackled the industry’s toughest problem: slow permitting.
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What "desperation because you dismantled all your other stable power sources before having an alternative because oh nooo nukular scary" does to a mf
Always the same bullshit. No, Germany got out of nuclear because it's simply not economically viable. You can delude yourself all you want, that shit is not coming back.
Not economically viable to build new, yes. But to run existing ones until they need major renovations?
Like they already built the damn things. It would be wasteful to just shut them down, especially if replaced with coal and gas.
Or could you provide me with some sources on why running existing nuclear plants is too expensive?
Most of our plants were already fairly old and major overhauls would've been necessary.
In 2000 we had plans for a nuclear exit already, intending to phase them out until 2015. In 2010 the government decided to keep some running. IIRC they did that in part so they could shut down coal plants instead.
Then Fukushima happened and we went full panic mode, deciding to shut all of them down ASAP. Then the Ukraine war got reignited and the timeline got slightly stretched out a little again for practical reasons.
The last three reactors got shut down last April, about eight years later than the 2000 plan intended.
Then we agree, nice. I don't know the costs of those repairs so I'll take your word for it.
Germany got out of nuclear because it’s simply not economically viable.
Factually incorrect. Germany began the process of shuttering all their nuclear plants as a knee-jerk response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011..
" The nuclear disaster in Fukushima on 11 March 2011 was the cause for the vote in the German Bundestag - and the subsequent decision to phase out nuclear power. "
They had no renewables replacement plan in place when they made this decision- they mostly just bought power from the euro grid as a stop gap (and france's nuclear reactors, lmfao) until they built their own gas plants.
They replaced it with natural gas fired combined cycle plants that - conveniently! - were fuelled with Russian gas. Gas that they were desperately dependent on, and gas that instantly disappeared when flows were cut off in 2022 due to Ukraine's invasion. Extremely short sighted decision at best, actively stupid and likely sponsored by Russia at worst.
I am glad they are building out renewable capacity, but it's only under duress and explicitly in reaction to a huge energy and economic crisis of their own making by being stupidly shortsighted.
It's a bit more complicated. We were already planning to get out of nuclear because our plants were aging and new ones weren't economical. Then the government decided to freeze those plans for the time being. (IIRC one reason was that they wanted to close some of our terrible coal power plants first.) Then Fukushima happened and the Greens got everyone to panic.
We could've gone with a measured response but a combination of the Greens believing that nuclear power is infinitely bad and plenty of old people still having vivid memories of fallout-related health warnings from Chernobyl was enough to drive most of the country into an antinuclear frenzy. It's almost a miracle they didn't force all of the plants to scram immediately.
Yeah, the conservatives really fucked that one up, like everything they touch. But that doesn't change the fact that it was the right decision. The end of nuclear had already been decided years before and then the CDU government went back on that. Then after Fukushima they reversed the reversal. And of course they had also slowed down the build-out of renewables before which landed us in the mess where fossil fuel usage went up. But that was just bad policy not an argument to keep the outdated and ever more creaky nuclear reactors running.
So even if we assume it is not economically viable... I would rather not have another few billion tons of CO2 just to save some money.
It's not economically viable because renewables are drastically cheaper and also far quicker to build out. So if you want to cut CO2, renewables are the way to go.
Okay and did you add all the extra cost to make that work? Like when talking about nuclear we do not just look at the reactor itself. For example you need lots of storage and distribution to make renewables work.
Then renewables are still a lot cheaper.
Ah, thanks for that detailed reply, let me try: Nuclear is still a lot cheaper.
Here's a source. What's yours?
This is the report where you got that picture from. On page 44 are the assumptions for storage costs: 100 to 400 MWh of storage, assuming they are charged and discharged 315 times per year (so eg. 31'500 MWh storage output per year for 100 MWh capacity). Those do not need to be 100% cycles, but given that a year has hardly more days than 315 and some days even see no production, they need to be cycled pretty much every day the sun is shining. Anyway, what is my point? We need more than a few hours of storage to make it work. But the more storage you have, the less you actually use it, making it disproportionaly more expensive. Note what they say:
Lithium-ion batteries remain the most cost competitive short-term (i.e., 2 – 4-hour) storage technology
We need more than 2 or 4 hours. A single night is already far longer than that. The shorter the storage duration, the cheaper it is. Of course this skewes the numbers. It is like calculating the storage cost of nuclear waste for only 2 years. Of course it looks better.
But you know what? It's working for us mfs.
The biggest problem I see about nuclear apart from it being extremely slow to build even if permitting is not holding things up is that it's just relying on another non-renewable resource.
All resources are non renewable on a long enough time scale, but nuclear would be enough for hundreds of years with no active carbon emissions. It's not perfect but it's a very important part of having a balanced energy supply.
I'm gonna go out on a Limb here, but:
The day Solar Power stops being renewable, we have a lot bigger problems
