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Comment by ianpurton | Hacker News Reader

A large percentage of homes in Germany use gas for heating and Germany imports a lot of that gas.

Coupled with Germany being the biggest emitter of CO2 in Europe, nuclear looks like a way to kill two birds with one stone.

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Germany consumes the equivalent of 3300 PJ of natural gas per year, mostly for heating. This is an average heating power of 105 GW. Probably less than that in summer, and a lot more in winter. Considering how expensive nuclear power is, I don't see that kind of capacity being added anywhere in Europe. Renewables might have a better chance against fossil fuel in the near future.

JFC, The entire land area of Germany devoted to wind turbines would not produce that right now.

Germany heats with Russian gas, or nuclear, or does not.

No...Germany heats with Gas or coal. Electrical heating is negligible (not even 3%)[1] as was nuclear in it's current status. It's no no-topic at this point. You don't need it. It causes more problems to keep it running than continuing to shut it down.

Also...there is no scenario and never was to build ONLY wind turbines...there are many scenarios which consider ALL of the renewable sources and you don't even need "the entire land of Germany" for it...[2]

[1] https://www.bmwi-energiewende.de/EWD/Redaktion/Newsletter/20...

[2] https://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/EE/Navigation/DE/Service...

Do you have a spare nuclear power plant? Because Germany does not. The three still running have been run down over the last 10 years (as shut down was plannend long term), those will not be run any longer. If you want to kill two bird with one stone, you better have a stone. Without one, you are screwed.

I don't have a spare plant no.

So if nuclear is the answer, Germany will need to see what it takes to reverse a long term shut down or build new.

Or stop buying Russian energy and start buying French energy

I think that Sweden burns garbage to warm houses. Maybe exploring it could be useful.

Afaik, all European nations burn some of their garbage. Here is a list of German incinerators: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/37.... I think, the heat is barely used for warming houses, but then, most people don't want to have an incinerator in their neighborhood.

The European power grid is very much already a thing and France exported 9.5 TWh of power to Germany last year (and imported 3.7TWh): https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=....

I think the cards a pretty much on the table at this point. What's left is various industry groups trying to get a bigger share of the to be invested money. Some think that the war won't last long enough for the next winter and as Russia 'has always delivered', it won't be an issue anyways. Also, there are still coal back-up plants. It wouldn't be nice but people will not die because of this.

Since it was a political decision to shut them down, it's hard for me as an outside observer to judge a statement that they've been "run down". Is there an independent assessment of the safety of the existing power plants, free from political influence?

They should immediately bend some of their manufacturing assets toward the goal of electrification. We need all heating to be electrified in the next 20-50 years anyway. No time like the present to start working on this effort.

Where is the electricity going to come from? Especially if they are closing nuclear and coal-fired power plants. They are building some renewables, but prices for electricity were high this year because wind speeds were low.

Renewables and nuclear. That new sources of energy should be carbon free goes without saying. New coal is obviously a non-starter.

That being said, they are already well on their way with this process. Check out the decline in fossil fuel electric generation over the past half decade!

https://www.eia.gov/international/data/country/DEU/electrici...

Does Germany mostly use forced air or boilers for heat? Forced air is easier to switch to electric heat pumps, AFAICT.

Nearly every Building uses Boilers for heating

Yes then we produce electricity with Russian gas :)

Except that you can't use nuclear for heating - not unless you exchange all gas heaters with electric heaters. Which we are trying to get rid off, as they are the most inefficient form of heating.

False, an electric heater is 100% efficient (it's a pure resistive load). But these days we can do better, and you would say that we can't to better than 100% efficiency, but indeed we can with heat pumps, that are 300% efficient or more. Because they use electricity to move heat from one place (the exterior) to another (the interior), and they can transport more heat than the one they consume in the process.

Also, you can use nuclear also for direct heating, without passing trough electricity: city near the power plant can use the waste heat from cooling the reactor as city heating, that is with pipes that bring hot water in the homes for heating the radiators or making domestic hot water. Of course that is doable only for a city very near to the reactor, since transporting the heat have losses. But it was common in old soviet cities to use that form of heating.

Electrical heaters' efficiency is literally 100%.

Do you mean the conversion into electrical energy is "the most inefficient"?

Given a choice between efficiently burning carbon or inefficiently using a zero-carbon energy source, the inefficient solution seems far superior.

A heat pump is efficient.

With today's absurd gas prices, in Romania, even a resistive heater using hydropower costs less than a gas-powered heater.

If you use heat pumps, that goes even cheaper (by the CoP of the heat pump).

You can switch power or gas suppliers at any time.

There are even some district heating systems using nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#District_heat...

I see this incorrect fact a lot and I think people confuse energy density with energy efficiency.

Every joule of electricity will give you more joules of heat than will gas.

The issue is moving and storing around a joule of electricity is much harder than a joule of gas.

> A large percentage of homes in Germany use gas for heating and Germany imports a lot of that gas.

I'd wager that's the case of most european countries. It's certainly the case for france: in 2020 nat gas was 40% of heating, then wood at 30, electricity at 15 (including heat pumps), and then oil.

France consumes nearly as much energy in nat gas (in Wh) as it produces electricity, and that's with very little nat gas going towards electricity unlike some of its neighbours.

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