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Comment by jhgb | Hacker News Reader

> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse

That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead.

EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and explain to me how they're building more fossil fuel power plants over the years while building zero nuclear power plants.

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> Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead.

Uhh… Yes it does. The data shows that. An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

> The data shows that.

Many people are saying this.

> An increased reliance on renewables means a large increase in reliance on LNG.

What matters is whether increased reliance on renewables slows down the decarbonisation effort. If you have data which shows that, I'd be interested to see it.

In return, let me offer a study from last year which found: "in countries with a high GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production does associate with a small drop in CO2 emissions. But in comparative terms, this drop is smaller than that associated with investments in renewable energy. And in countries with a low GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production clearly associates with CO2 emissions that tend to be higher."

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/53376

Solar and wind mean you need batteries (can’t do off-peak without it). This means you still need peaker plants. Even if you accelerated battery technology drastically (which I’d say is already at max R&D speed mostly), you’re looking at some fundamental challenges getting the precious materials (total volume/cost and also energy required to do the mining). Finally, my understanding is that solar and wind can’t actually be used in some energy-intensive industrial processes because they can’t generate enough heat. This means those power needs are still powered by traditional fossil fuel power plants (and too expensive to use just for the industrial purpose so it’s actually part of the energy mix for good).

Solar and wind are important parts of the energy mix and.OF COURSE we need them. Nuclear is where the bulk of the focus needs to go though to actually decarbonize because it can handle literally every use case that fossil fuels do but cheaper, safer and less polluting.

> Solar and wind mean you need batteries (can’t do off-peak without it)

We do not have enough batteries in the world, and producing enough of them would take decades, and cost us trillions of dollars. Nuclear power plants are better and cheaper solution.

> The data shows that.

I just added a source that shows that data tells something completely different. In the past ten years, German renewable generation more than doubled (from annual ~100 TWh to ~250 TWh) while their natural gas consumption for electricity generation today is basically the same as back then (somewhere around 90 TWh annually from gas back then as well as today). Not sure how natural gas stagnation can be described as "large increased reliance".

Because your sources show energy production in Germany.

The Germans import a significant amount (~64%) of their energy from other countries, including France (nuclear) and Poland (coal), but also countries further afield like Norway and Russia.

Germans don't import 64% of electricity (in fact they're a net exporter almost every year). This article is about electricity generation in Germany and I'm commenting on electricity generation in Germany. The comment I was responding to was also about electricity generation in Germany. Not quite sure where you're trying to steer the discussion. To the fact that Germany, like many other countries, has yet to fully electrify transportation and heating, where most of these energy imports (gas and oil) are going? Sure, but almost everyone has to. Many, if not most, other developed countries don't fare much better so far.

> Almost 60 percent of the EU’s energy needs (excluding the UK) were met by net imports in 2018. Germany’s energy import dependency was still higher at 63.6 percent – a slight decrease compared to the previous year’s 64 percent.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependen...

You're confusing energy with electricity again. Please don't do that. Furthermore, it's also a number that is completely irrelevant for the climate perspective, since it doesn't matter if your imports are low if that means you're drilling massive amounts of gas yourself like the US or the UK -- the planet doesn't care if the fuel crossed the borders or not. And, as your own article notes, German decarbonization plans include the elimination of these imports anyway.

Unfortunately if we look at Germany, it means exactly that, as the electricity deficit from closing down these plants is largely offset by coal plants.

Completely wrong, as German statistics for power generation by source show. As nuclear power plants generate less and less electricity, so does German coal (with some inter-annual noise, of course, but the German trend is clear).

So what is the currently available and reasonable in cost grid scale solution? That is to provide needed power 24/7/365 for decades to come?

So far, probably what Zerrahn et al. suggested in 2018 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211...), namely overbuild renewable generation to achieve a Pareto-optimal mix of generation of storage. This doesn't prevent opportunistic uses such as demand-controlled charging of electric vehicles or demand-controlled hydrogen generation from the overgeneration which further increases the appeal of this option.

It sure does.

Actually... it probably does. Look at the respective increase in NatGas consumption as California closes things down. Renewables can only do so much.

I don't care about California. I was talking about Germany. This whole thread is about an article on Germany. There is no such trend in Germany, as data shows.

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