It's nice to see Germany start working towards energy independence. I think it's a crucial factor for both national security and a faster migration to more environmentally friendly energy sources.
Nuclear canceled by the Green Party and pre-March went all in on Russian oil and gas.
That Russia would finance the Greens doesn't automatically what the Greens advocate for wrong, or that the Greens are actually traitors, what it does is twofold - start a process whereby the Greens can over time be corrupted (via the money spout), and indicate that whatever the Greens are doing there may be unintended side effects which would be of benefit to Russia.
Wrong and baseless. It is possible to simultaneously reduce nuclear and fossil components in the energy balance and this is exactly what is happening.
> why wouldn't they covertly finance anti-nuclear if they overtly finance pro-fossil?
Greens in Germany are established political party with clear anti-Putin positioning. Financing of political parties in Germany is transparent and has sufficient oversight, so there’s neither possibility nor any sense to covertly finance them.
> Greens are pro-environment, but don't offer substitute energy sources
Where did you get that from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome
And more recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
Jane Fonda is a sexy grandma who still got it, she stopped the war in Vietnam and got us in shape. With our powers combined, we are Captain Planet? We were elected to lead not to read!
Here is an additional thought: if you dedicate an entire party completely and totally to solving one problem, what happens to them if the problem actually gets solved?
Seems like a single issue politician is exclusively incentivized to shift blame in order to get re-elected rather than, you know, do anything constructive.
France is something like 70%+ nuclear powered, they got it all sorted for the rest of the century. Not much for the greenie weenies to do.
(it's also been in the news recently as it was right in the middle of the Russian assault on Kyiv!)
The French nuclear mix is currently 58% : https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ... because a large number of reactors are offline: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1549986/macron-france...
There are two problems with nuclear power:
- a "black swan" low probability risk of something really bad happening, despite everyone saying it can't happen, and poisoning the surrounding area
- it's expensive, takes a long time to build, and can develop expensive problems. Many of the French reactors are approaching the end of their 50 year design life.
That said, it was definitely a mistake for Germany to close plants without a specific safety risk.
Black swan events are nothing to make light of. I mean technically there's also a "black swan" risk of a meteor destroying the earth or monkeys flying out of my butt.
I guess they aren't that good at that whole engineering thing anymore and just can't handle this as well as the French. ;)
Yes.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-get-75--of-power-from-ren...
Their reactor in Bugey is like 200km from the one you're shutting down early.
Man.. it would sure be funny if France elected some eccentric far right character for additional excitement.
Yes why not? They take the risk, we pay them for.
>eccentric far right character for additional excitement.
Is the far right not happy making money?
> Is the far right not happy making money?
You know Mr Putin could have just stayed on the throne collecting hundreds of billions a year doing nothing. Nord Stream 2 was weeks away from being flipped on, this was boom times for Russia.
You know how small Switzerland is? One accident and whole Switzerland could be polluted at once.
>You know Mr Putin could have just stayed
Not sure how that has anything todo with a far right french politician.
>Nord Stream 2 was weeks away from being flipped on
And would have been probably flipped off, after what happened.
Well precisely. And Bugey is so close might as well be in Switzerland, heh. Atoms don't know about our imaginary lines.
> And would have been probably flipped off, after what happened.
I'm saying instead of collecting riches he opted to invade. It is a bummer but sometimes people are not rational actors, even in Europe it turns out.
> Not sure how that has anything todo with a far right french politician.
Generally far right movements have an affinity with Russia/Putin. You don't need to believe some unproven (or in some cases proven) theory about them being bankrolled by him.
Le Pen happens to have known ties but you can disregard this completely if you prefer. What I think you would find very interesting and somewhat alarming is the attitudes and political winds currently blowing even in your civilized neighbor France. Ask a French person first hand to lay it out.
It is relevant to your interests, especially now that you depend on them for energy. I know, fortress Switzerland, not used to this, but it is an important lesson to learn right now. Please don't repeat the mistakes of Germans.
200km less...that's massive for Switzerland
>Generally far right movements have an affinity with Russia/Putin.
Sorry but that's just a wannabe attempt...let's stop here, not worth my time, for example in Germany it was the left.
Hydro while interesting it is awful for the environment.
Because Switzerland is dependent on like everything? The same could be said about steel, food, chips, chemicals, minerals, fertilizer, oils, gas...just about everything, yes we produce stuff but nearly nothing from the ground up, with the exception of Alp-Cheese and Buendnerfleisch ;)
>Hydro while interesting it is awful for the environment.
Switzerland then must have terrible environmental problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Switzerland
high share of hydroelectricity (59.6%)
Swiss are generally quite smart but have emotions just like everybody else, even if it may not seem so upon first encounter. From what I recall they already buy LNG mainly from US so at least this part is not so bad re current situation.
Just like the fake "Whale conservation" group fighting wind power off Nantucket is a front.
If you want to criticize something as large as the Environmental movement, and you can't even find one real example to cite then maybe that means something.
If you can't criticize them, don't bring up people that are larping as them for their own ends.
* Greenpeace Germany has a gas division. They've now split it off and officially only own 5 shares (while being headquartered in the exact same building, by the exact same Greenpeace members): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
* Companies like Total have made use of their enormous war chest to take control of multiple organisations that push wind & solar power (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/22/fossil-f...), knowing full well it cannot cover all of our energy needs and knowing they will be here to sell natural gas, continuing the use of fossil fuels.
* Anti nuclear organizations are very often bankrolled by large oil lobbies (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f..., https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear), once again, pushing to get nuclear replaced with natural gas.
Some, like this example, go a little further and try to mix in hydrogen or biogas to reduce carbon output, or offset the carbon in some way, but even when they didn't, it was still greener than the alternatives on the market and a profitable business advancing their professed agenda.
I wish nuclear fans would apply their ridiculously high standards for what they consider green energy to nuclear as well rather than just sabotage any attempt at advancing renewable energy with snide gotcha arguments.
But know that your mindless antinuclearism is going to be our downfall. Our only options for baseload generation as it stands are nuclear and gas. And by protesting nuclear, you are giving oil companies a large avenue to keep fucking us all over. Rejecting nuclear at all costs right now in an attempt to get some renewable only future is madness. It is only leading us further down the hole of global warming. The only sabotage happening here is organisations like greenpeace literally committing acts of terrorism against nuclear plants. No-one wants to go nuclear+gas.
Your mention of hydrogen makes you even more of a useful idiot for oil companies. Hydrogen does NOT work. We get 27% efficiency when it comes to storing it and using it as power. P2G2P is 50% at best. And while STEPs are a great solution for storage, we've used most of it. Unless you're looking to drown Bavaria to make a big lake.
Build a ton of nuclear plants. Move as many countries as possible away from gas and coal. Once that's done, I'm more than happy for all of us to think of alternatives for nuclear.
I think we shouldn't use words like "dumb" at all because we are all trying to bring about the most sensible, safe and productive energy future for our nations. These nations have different circumstances and demands and some are more influenced by corrupt individuals than others.
With regard to the Greens, what exactly is dumb? It can't be the move away from nuclear because first of all, that was decided by Merkel's CDU long ago and second, it is economically the only sensible thing to do in 2022. It's what the MARKET dictates. Capitalism at work because no one will pay for the cost of building and running a nuclear plant while renewables are already working and massively cheaper to build, run and INSURE.
I'm not even talking about technology, safety or waste disposal at all. There is no reason to even go there because today NO energy provider in their right mind will build new nuclear plants today (and they won't matter anyway because building one takes 10+ years). The decision is a result of cost and not technological misunderstanding or ignorance.
Most days, Germany already produces and consumes >50% of renewable energy and it will only accelerate: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
On the other hand, France's electricity briefly cost more than >€2900/MWh yesterday (as opposed to €101/MWh in Germany) due to their reliance on few but old nuclear plants with high safety standards which go offline quite often. France's electricity shortly was the most expensive of all time in the world yesterday.
https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/tw656a/zwischen_8_und_9...
Anyone who actually supports new nuclear power plants today shamefully displays their utter ignorance of the modern energy market. It is COST that is prohibitive first and foremost. It will always be a LOSS operation. The market dictates the use of distributed renewable energy, which also prevents nearly all other issues associated with nuclear. Nice side effect.
In fact, Germany's real big issues are bureaucracy and NIMBYs but thanks to the current crisis those will hopefully be solved within the next years.
Yes, obviously.
German chocolate manufacturer Ritter Sport has decided to continue working in Russia. According to Ritter Sport, about 7% of its business is in the Russian market.
Money makes the world go around. You got in bed with Russia for cheap energy, which you enjoyed for a decade or two, and it cost you an increase in your defense spending and some dead Ukrainians.
Lets hope that's all it will cost you. Of course you had no choice, it is the invisible hand.
To some extent you can't even substitute with gas from other sources because of lack of (connections to) LNG terminals.
.. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another.
(Germany has oddly lagged in deploying renewables, though. Possibly due to lack of offshore sites, meaning that wind farms have to be deployed against the efforts of NIMBYs)
Which is not to say there's not also NIMBYism. There is in fact a ton of opposition to buildup of renewables from both conservative-leaning citizens and left/green-leaning advocacy groups.
The statistical risks from nuclear actually causing a disaster are absolutely tiny in comparison, especially considering the upsides, but the Germans and Austrians want to be EU's nuclear doomers for shits and giggles just because Chernobyl and Fukushima happened, even though so many nuclear plants worldwide have run for decades without issue.
But sucking on the sweeet teat of Putin's gas for decades and burning it was the "greener" alternative for them instead.
We don't stop flying after planes get into an accident. We evaluate and improve our designs and controls
But with nuclear with go with knee-jerk reaction for some reason
That reason is propaganda. The anti-nuclear people use anything they can to whip people up into an irrational frenzy whenever anything happens, and it has worked pretty well.
The last German government before Merkel came to power, was a coalition between the Green party and the Social-Democrats (SPD), this government decided to phase-out nuclear power in Germany in favor of renewable energy by limiting the running time of existing nuclear power plants.
The next German government was a coalition between conservative CDU under Merkel and SPD, and the nuclear phase-out remained untouched.
But when Merkel won the federal elections a second time and was able to form a coalition with the Liberal-Democrats (FDP) replacing of the SPD as a coalition partner, who had voted in favor of the nuclear phase-out, they decided to cancel the nuclear phase-out.
This happened in the autumn of 2010 and was a controversial decision for the public opinion. When Fukushima happened half year later it was widely seen as a confirmation of the inherent risks of nuclear energy and thus the Green party’s energy politics, not because Germany is especially prone to Tsunamis, but because it showed that it's impossible to rule out and plan for every possible dangerous situation in advance, and that even a high-tech country like Japan, on a comparable technical level to Germany, was not able to stop the meltdowns.
Elections in federal states shortly after Fukushima resulted in a landslide loss for Merkel's CDU and big wins for the Green party, the CDU losing one of its stronghold states [1] it had before held constantly for 58 years.
As far as I remember Merkel foresaw the public reaction and almost immediately after Fukushima voiced out in favor of reversing the cancelation of the nuclear phase-out, but could only get a solid backing in her party, after the losses in the federal state elections.
[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/-fukushima-strahlt-bis-baden-wu...
It's not actually sparsely populated at all.
Top men:
Who has been in power for the last 20 years exactly that could have built renewable power instead of quadrupling down on Russian gas? It wasn't the Green party.
We use LPG gas (from a tank buried at the bottom of the garden) feeding a gas boiler to heat our house.
I'm all for energy independence, and would love to switch to a more environmentally-friendly energy source, but I'm deeply concerned about how much this will cost me, and even if I did have the money, based on reports in local media, getting a heating engineer in would take many months.
Half a continent wants to switch energy supply "now" and the world was already suffering a serious supply chain crisis. Changing quickly may simply not be possible, never mind affordable.
In the US, there is nothing unusual about a 1,000 gallon tank that you might fill twice a year.
In the US, natural gas normally refers to methane (CH4) heating, attached to a city methane heating grid. I pay a monthly bill per cubic foot of methane burned. Currently my water heater and furnace are methane. I live near Kansas City.
How often tanks are refilled depends upon your particular usage pattern and the time of year. Refills can occur on demand, on an automatic basis determined by looking at your past usage patterns or as in my case triggered by an IoT connected meter which notifies my propane supplier when my tanks fall below a pre-determined level. Depending on the time of year it can be 3 months or 6 months between fills.
Not sure if it was an actual blocker, or just a statement that there was no plan to install infrastructure.
Yup, dug into the ground when the house was built, and refilled basically once every two years ever since.
Given I used to be a lab chemist, it's oddly fascinating watching the tanker drive up and then the best part of 1000kg of propane is pumped into a tank under part of your garden...
We were told "no naked flames within 3m of the tank" - we BBQ at the other end of the garden :)
The energy sector get almost as much subsidies as the total funding of the Germany military, 1.5% vs 2% of BNP.
It would be interesting to know how much more tax money is needed for an independent and environmentally friendly energy grid if they just continue as they done in the past.
It bubbled over with Fukushima, the a roiling and boiling mid-life crisis for an entire subculture. Consequences or the Russia variable provided little resistance to the Zeitgeist - the biggest "I told you so" in decades. There was no planning to be done.