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
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
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 see it here too… did you read the comments on that post? Those turbines were to be dismantled in one way or another due to their age, and the permit to mine coal in that place was given 15 years ago.
Yeah, I know, it still is a bad look, and unnecessary destruction
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
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
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.
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
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.
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).
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.