Now they found they're dependent on Russian gas.
Then, Germany always depended on fossil fuels. Nuclear power was never more than 30% of the electricity mix, not counting heating and transportation. And except coal, the fossil fuels are all imported. The only energy source we can grow domestically are renewables.
So yes, we depend on gas import, as this is the cleanest fossil fuel available. Currently most of it is coming from Russia, a trade which is beneficial to both countries. But there would be other sources if needed, the US is applying considerable pressure to Germany, so we buy gas from the US instead.
All of that need to be replaced by something else, and the only thing that's quick enough to replace it was fossil fuel. Germany is also not exactly the ideal place for solar power generation.
It's still leave people scratching over why you guys ditched nuclear energy. The newer version of nuclear reactors are safer than fossil when you factor in pollution, and EU itself has expertise (from France).
The French nuclear industry is centralized and state-owned/run. Not everyone wants finds that model attractive.
They always were, maybe you don't recall the shortage in 2009 when Gazprom shut off the gas to Ukraine, which happened 2 years before 3/11 [0].
I jokingly asked if that's why they still kept their wood burning furnaces in the building I lived and why they made it a priority we knew how to keep the backofen going throughout the Winter months and while I got slight a chuckle I knew it didn't go over too well.
0: https://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/international/russia_u...
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-france-nuclear-reactors-macron...
Except for China and India that is. China has 12 under construction, India has seven under construction.
I have no idea what you're talking about. The 12 reactors under construction in China are equal to 19% of France's entire nuclear base. And those are just what China has under construction over the next four to five years.
In the 20 years it will take France to expand Flamanville, China will have deployed new nuclear capacity greater than the total installed nuclear base in France.
They're not 12 nuclear power plants, they're reactors.
China is adding 35-40x the new nuclear power generation vs France over 20 years. It doesn't make much sense to only sample 4-5 years for such a ratio given how long it takes to build nuclear. If we only sample out to 2024-2025, France may be at zero on that scale given the endless delays in their construction. Not to mention, if we pick up the sampling after France is done their present construction, China's advantage jumps to infinite, since France won't be building anything.
You're also moving goalposts repeatedly in these comments.
First you said nobody can build nuclear today. I point out that, in fact, China and India are building nuclear just fine.
Then you say that what China is building doesn't compare to what France is doing. Then I point out that, in fact, China's 12 new reactors are considerable in output, so much so that they're equal to 1/5 of France's entire nuclear base. The output of those 12 reactors is far larger than anything France is building currently, many times over.
Then you move the goalpost again, to a matter of ratios, which I didn't dispute in the first place because it had nothing to do with what you originally claimed.
Your ratio premise requires that China stop building new nuclear power, when their plans are the opposite, they're going to keep building, whereas France is not. For China it's an ongoing process of adding.
The thing is: France is not building enough nuclear power plants to sustain their current nuclear production levels. Finland is struggling to finish the one under construction (vast cost overruns), the UK has a single plant in production with guaranteed prices way higher than market (they want to keep nuclear capability for military reasons I guess). In the US, two half finished plants got abandoned for cost reasons.
Yes, China (and some others) still have ongoing nuclear power plant construction, but compared to the country size, their efforts are also miniscule. To get to the same level of nuclear production, China would need about 1000 plants. They are very far from that and their expansion in renewables is much larger than in nuclear.
Renewables were still expensive then.
Oil prices were heading over $100/barrel - with no reason to believe they would drop.
There was a lot of hope around the new generation of automatically safe reactors.
Hinkley was supposed to be the first in a chain of new reactors, with later reactors having decreasing costs due to economies of scale and learning.
Time passed, delays accumulated, the situation changed, and I guess they just refused to adapt to the new circumstances, because they'd already spend so much money?
They don't need to build anymore, they just import it.
I lived 30km away from Alsace, and despite us having a significant amount of solar on all of our buildings, as did most of the local community/neighborhood, it was well understood that a significant amount of Baden-Wuttenberg's energy (the 'greenest-centric' Stat of Germany) needs were just bought from France.
I don't have the figures in front of me, but I was there in 2012-13 during the transition, and I lived in an old 7 bedroom old Chateau style home that had its top floor being renovated, which was exposed to the cold winter.
We lived on the bottom floor and mainly relied on wood heat from the backofen in the center of the home to heat the rest, and when we didn't/forget to keep it goin I could literately see my breath while I laid in bed as I lived the furthest away from the source, and as someone born and raised in SoCal it was incredibly terrifying at first.
Before I wised up and figured out the heating method I often made my bed before having a shower and going to bed and I stuck a 2L glassflasch with hot water from those instant water heater kettle's. But it wasn't long before I summoned the inner pyro in me I had suppressed since my early teens.
That is highly unusual for Germany - and most probably you'd be eligible for major reductions in rent paid until the landlord fixes this (depends on the actual temperatures attainable with the heat source).
Anyway, nuclear wouldn't help here: Only a tiny fraction of housing in Germany heats with electricity. It's mostly gas, central heating from power plants (with hot water pipes laid into the neighborhoods), or geothermal.
I laughed. In temperate New Zealand we have some truly crap housing and this is seen in many houses during our mild winters.
Germany is a net electricity exporter, we don't "depend" on French nuclear energy. But of course, Germany is part of an Eurpean grid, so depending on the load distribution and the weather, there is a lot of inporting on exporting, because eletricity is traded across long distances. While often there is a significant amount of elektricity going to Germany, that is usually just transiting to other countries. And at other times Germany is exporting to France (which then often is transiting to the UK).
I was there for my Biodynamic farming apprenticeship, and that was just what it was. It was fine, and I spent quite a bit of time there I enjoyed my time there and it taught me a lot how to cope with issues with older homes and it helped me learn to do repairs where needed.
> Germany is part of an Eurpean grid, so depending on the load distribution and the weather, there is a lot of inporting on exporting, because eletricity is traded across long distances.
I figured, but I was there not long after the phasing out period and solar was still being deployed, so much so I actually got to work on a few builds.
> Please stop spreading myths. Germany was an energy exporter for most of the last years and even to France in the last 5 years
Look at the years I listed, I was there 8 years ago not long after Fukushima. Was that still the case back then?
And while the oldest plants were switched off after Fukushima, Germany didn't just "switch off" the nuclear production. The nuclear contribution to the electricity production gradually declined from 19% of all electricity in 2011 to 12% in 2020 so far. The next years should bring a steeper decline though, as more plants get phased out.
Of course there are some antagonistic nations like Russia that would gladly take advantage of a one sided deal but most countries in the EU are not like that.
Please stop spreading myths. Germany was an energy exporter for most of the last years and even to France in the last 5 years [1]. And it's not that we just export in summer and import in winter [2].
[2] https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange.htm?source=de_ce&year=... [2]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Whee! Fractals for free!
Germany had a plan to get out of nuclear energy already in 2002
When Angela Merkel came into power, she rolled a part of it back. Allowing for some of the plants to run longer.
After Fukushima, this was rolled back again.
All this neither having the dates right nor making a logical Russian gas connection. It's just a pure hate on Germany bs argument which appears all the time nuclear is the topic.
But why shutdown nuclear? Yes the decision might be made in 2002, and exacerbated in 2011. The question is still not answered.
Why shutdown nuclear? Why do you have to ask me that question when you've been ready to form such a strong opinion in the first place? Did you do no research? Didn't you at least look at the wikipedia article? Something about waste, not needing it, being expensive tech from the last century? Nothing of that came along in your research? No? The single thing that you got from your sources was: "something something Fukushima"? Didn't you at least question this at some point? Because I question your abilities to form an educated opinion here.
Summary: nuclear power is done here, deal with it instead of hanging on to the past.
I get that national grids do more than just power homes, but the article does mention the town's progressive energy policies. For example, the article mentions 'Plus energy' houses and building which feed the grid rather than draw from it. It's just not blind opposition and attempts are clearly made at reducing consumption.
Nuclear energy: 102£/MWh
Gas energy: 85£/MWh
Offshore wind energy: 57£/MWh
Onshore wind energy: 46£/MWh
Solar energy: 44£/MWh
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper...
To contrast that report, in France, a country that actually uses nuclear power at scale, onshore wind is more expensive than nuclear and solar is only marginally cheaper [0].
And the renewables you mention aren't comparable to nuclear. Nuclear can be ramped up and down largely at will and doesn't really care what time of day it is or what the weather is like. Renewables need batteries. How does the cost work out when you include the energy storage needed to be as reliable as nuclear?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
20 Hydro power
43.24 Solar farms
50 Nuclear (with state-covered insurance costs)
60 Onshore wind
61 Natural gas turbines without CO2 capture
100 Nuclear EPR
So nuclear is never cheaper than solar and only cheaper than wind if the state is covering the insurance cost! And your argument about nuclear ramping up and down at will only works, if you have enough Uranium available. Where do you buy your Uranium? How long will the Uranium reserves last? And where will you deposit the nuclear waste? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU
The price of solar doesn't include energy storage, so the two can't be easily compared.
> if the state is covering the insurance cost
Yes, though I'd be interested to know what those costs actually are.
> if you have enough Uranium available. Where do you buy your Uranium? How long will the Uranium reserves last?
Australia and Canada, both allied countries (to France/Germany), have megatons of the stuff [0]. Current reserves are enough to last about 90 years [0] but exploration is limited, more deposits likely exist.
Spent fuel rods can also be reprocessed [1].
> And where will you deposit the nuclear waste?
First, reprocess it [1]. When it's finally done for good, bury it deep in the ground [2].
Remember, nuclear isn't a new technology. It's been around for decades and solutions to these problems exist.
[0]: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
[1]: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
[2]: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
Countries try to find suitable places to put their nuclear waste for 60 years now and haven't managed to select a single one, yet. The process costs billions of dollars of tax payers money. And it is roughly as fast as the invention of nuclear fusion. The success is always only 30 years away in the future.
When you're riding a dead horse the best strategy is to get off.
No it's neither backwards, nor self-destructive and never was.
Self-destructive behaviour is if you create waste you can't get rid of. Like in the case of Germany.
Backwards thinking is when you hold onto an out of date technology democratic, western countries have dropped in favour of a new, cheaper and better technology [1].
And no, as a preemptive counter-argument because it will also appear here and will be wrong: not a single coal plant would have been shut earlier than the current plan [2] to shut them all down outlines because the reason never was power but jobs in regions which are already hit by unemployment.
By now (2019) renewable energy share rose to 42,6%[3] in Germany. So when Freiburg dropped nuclear and "developed as an environmental economics and solar research hub with a packed green CV", the only backwards and self-destructive thinking here is your comment.
[1]https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-germany-co... [3] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
I wonder where this comes from. Is Shellenbergers propaganda bs so influential? Or maybe those failed efforts by billionaires like Gates to get hilarious amounts of cash from the Government?
The reality is that many nuclear disasters have happened and not wanting to risk irreversibly destroying your land for many generations seems like a reasonable position to hold.