Non-Germans might be shocked to find that most public/mandatory health insurers actually cover this. Even the language reflect this, since they're called "homeopathic pharmaceuticals".
Bet it someone with oil money. SA or Ruskies
> Most countries already have the infrastructure for strategic gas reserves. Some do. Some that you might think would, do not, UK for instance.
"The Rough storage facility in the North Sea, owned by British Gas owner Centrica, provided 70% of the UK gas storage capacity for more than 30 years before it shut in 2017 following a government decision not to subsidise the costly maintenance. ... The UK’s stores hold enough gas to meet the demand of four to five winter days, or just 1% of Europe’s total available storage. The Netherlands has capacity more than nine times the UK’s, while Germany’s is 16 times the size."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/24/how-uk-ener...
Also, this is a war, and the nuclear plants have already been built. (and we only have a year or so left on the climate change clock anyway).
The lithium constraint will be solved by using sodium or iron batteries, depending on application.
(a) you realistically need seasonal storage for when the wind/sun are both weak, so about 30 * 24 Wh/W, and
(b) you need around 2× the otherwise needed generation capacity to charge those batteries.
You would use batteries for example in a local small scale power plant, powering a small city district or a hospital or similar.
Most of the "concerns" people have are the result of propaganda and lobbying by the American Petroleum Institute. Most of the original flower power anti-nuclear groups were funded by oil.
Where does that come from? I'm pretty sure I wasn't funded by anyone when I protested against the building of the Torness station on a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).
Suddenly he became staunchly anti-nuclear and tried to create enough chaos to destroy the club. After failing to do so, he left to start a competing organization called Friends of the Earth that was anti-nuclear first environmentalism second. They went on to fund and facilitate protests and anti-nuclear action around the world.
It was later discovered he received half a million dollars (about $7m today) from the CEO of ARCO around the time all the trouble started.
The only problem is, that makes them non-renewable.
Renewables + gas = not renewable.
Renewables + batteries = not renewable (plus there's the whole child slavery thing that ideologues ignore)
Solar, wind, water, geothermal, biogas and battery storage together are more then enough to "keep the lights on" at all times. And in peaks we can already produce more renewable energy than we can use. It is "just" a matter of investing into storage and flexible consumption.
There is no way to run a modern economy with intermittent energy supply.
It's also economically unsound and technologically misguided, since nuclear power cannot replace the role gas has in the European grid.
"Much of anything" is a malevolent exaggeration. Germany is basically changing its entire stance on military spending, sending tons of weapons and other supplies to Ukraine, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and risking its economy by enacting strong sanctions and getting off imports from Russia eventually. For some people that is "not much of anything", but I suspect there is an agenda...
A refugee crisis isn't all that bad by the way. Politically it's a problem but economically a 2016 scale refugee crisis every year would be quite good for Germany. Germany needs huge amounts of people, especially people working in trades, to do the work necessary to switch heat pumps, install solar, build more housing etc. They have to come from somewhere and demographics means they have to come from a massive increase in immigration.
https://energytransition.org/2013/06/german-nuclear-plants-f...
Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia.
Unfortunately, many plants across the world have not had accurate risk assessments done, both for natural disasters and economic risks.
There are many options. Specifically, Germany can...
1) Continue with BAU, which is Germany paying the costs of closing the reactors and relying on Russian gas.
2) Restart them as quickly as possible. This would minimize the costs of relying on Russia for gas, but would increase the risks of reactor problems from natural disasters.
3) Harden them for natural disasters while restarting them as quickly as possible, which costs more.
4) Use the money spent to harden them on other sources of generation/storage/load shifting/etc, which I suspect costs more.
5) Some of the above based on the specifics in each case.
In addition, Germany would still be reliant on Russian gas for other industrial uses even if nuclear/renewables/coal/storage/etc were able to completely replace gas in the grid.
smells like $$$ and more delays. nuclear is already by far the safest method of power production, and emits far fewer radionuclides than coal, and those numbers are the old generation more dangerous pressurized water reactors.
water's lapping at our feet
Nuclear is less safe than grid solar, it slightly beats rooftop solar because standing on roofs is dangerous and most solar installs are new.
Hydroelectric vs nuclear is tricky because large dams save lives and by reducing flooding etc, and installing hydroelectric when building a dam is much safer than building the dam in the first place. Which makes calculating the deaths from hydroelectric power tricky. Low head dams on the other hand are dangerous, but are largely abandoned technology.
Yeah and making the solar panel, how green is that?
I would like to add that they should bring in bouncy castles around homes when installing solar panels, the kids can play on them and primarily will definitely save the installer from falling. You could also package them together, like "Daddy daddy let's install solar panels" and kids could play in different places in the neighborhood that installed them one after another.
And then you get a better image for the kids, plus you get to lower down the "people falling off roofs" statistic and make solar panel look even better.
I'm joking of course.
There are sometimes calculations where nuclear comes out on top of renewables. But these calculations are hugely more complicated for the nuclear side, and require nothing going wrong, or at least not much more than in the past, which is a dangerous assumption in my opinion. And with nuclear you lock yourself in.
A country needs to build up a large nuclear industry to make it profitable (or pay extra for imports), and to decommission plants or stop building them ahead of schedule increases the costs.
Depending from where you buy them, quiet green. Produced with 100% renewables, made in Germany with polysilicon made in Europe.
Why do you seem some emotional as if your identity is at stake here?
Not trying to defend the parent comment going off about bouncy castle, but I have a hard time believing that statement is true. This is the share of photovoltaic pannel production per region.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/668749/regional-distribu...
They also their own line of solar roof tiles in the pipeline.
there are a lot of reasons why dramatic expansion (of the kind needed to take the edge off climate change) of hydro power isn't feasible. for one most of the suitable sites are already used. and the environmental impact is substantial
The chart often used by pro nuclear sources comes from 2012, compares things to rooftop solar, etc. But more recent data is down as wind and solar deaths are extremely front loaded during construction.
PS: As to batteries etc. The fact nuclear power plants have hundreds of people drive to them every day is going to have associated traffic accidents over the lifetime of a power plant. Where you draw lines as associated deaths or not is somewhat subjective.
I don't see the major arguments against nuclear power being negated by either climate change or the war in Ukraine. So no, there is no mistake. Nuclear power isn't the right way forward for Germany.
Sorry, I don't get this. Of course your opposition on something can be based on ideology. That is the case if your opposition is more based on your history and tradition than on current facts.
I personally think that there are enough facts to say that nuclear is not really a great option, but I also think that the Green's opposition is based more on ideology (i.e. because they have been historically against it) than on facts. For me, that is evident when they talk more about nuclear risks in general than about financial considerations.
Most of the Germans who would vote against nuclear power have nothing to do with any combination of "Greens", "Socialists", "Hippies" or whatever other pejorative you can come up with. Individuals largely decide this on their own and the consensus was reached.
If you think Greens are opposed to nuclear power because "they always been against it", you just never heard them out and just assume that. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
There may indeed a counterargument in that right-wingers and Neonazis are pro-nuclear because they hate those who rationally say no to the risks.
You're right. We need to go one level deeper on that.
Germans hate nuclear power, because they were subject to well constructed propaganda, that very well exploited Chernobyl events.
This propaganda was result of political plays, but did not called to any political views by itself. Thus the current situation, where most Germans think it's reasonable stance, while living surrounded by harmless nuclear reactors everywhere in Europe and burying thousands of people dying due to coal pollution.
The fact is there are lots of legitimate concerns about the risks around nuclear technology, with and without nuclear weapons in the mix. Opposition to nuclear power is driven by a different tolerance of such risk and especially a lower trust in what some scientists say about the risks, after they had been wrong a few times. Not all scientists, because quite a few don't see nuclear power as a risk worth taking. To me, what you are doing is itself dishonest and ignorant, by broadly calling all of this "propaganda".
Let me tell you some facts: * Current number of nuclear plants in the world:440 (103 in EU) * Current number of high profile nuclear plant failures in the world: 2 * Direct victims of the nuclear plants failures: less,than 300(direct), less than 19k (indirect, non confirmed) * Coal victims:800k PER YEAR. This x40 as much. * Just for the comparison - wind power death tool is similar to nuclear plants.
Enshuldigung, aber, if anyone is on arbitrary side it's you(in my opinion). No hard feelings. My country had bias for the miners also, which pushed us for many shitty decisions.
You are simply lying and dishonest. Coal is not the only alternative to nuclear power. Nor can you stop climate change with the level of nuclear power (and thus risk thereof) we have right now. There would need to be a nuclear industry in virtually every country, including the less trustworthy ones.
You think the situation around nuclear weapons right now is contained? Wait until most of Asia and Africa have nuclear plants and can think about weaponization. Dirty bombs with stolen nuclear waste within a few decades are almost guaranteed.
Good thing, that decisions in Europe will stop Asia and Africa :) /s
> You are simply lying and dishonest.
Where exactly?
> Coal is not the only alternative to nuclear power.
What is? Assuming you need this in "virtually every country", and some of the richest (such as Germany) fail to implement alternatives, you expect "less thrustworthy" to somehow manage it?
> Dirty bombs with stolen nuclear waste within a few decades are almost guaranteed.
And again, how exactly blocking nuclear plants in Germany changes anything here?
In other words, the only thing that needs to happen is the German green party to admit a mistake in fighting nuclear power harder than fossile fuels...