Hacker News Reader

Comment by brazzy | Hacker News Reader

The other way round, actually. France recently had massive problems because they had to switch off multiple nuclear plants for unexpected maintenance issues, and bought lots of power from Germany

View on HN

1 event does not make a rule. French nuclear reactors were turned off for maintenance, yes, but over the past 30 years, it is clearly Germany depending on French power

That's kinda the point of an interconnected electricity grid, it allows you to import the cheapest energy available. I don't get the argument here. Sometimes it's renewable, sometimes it's gas, sometimes it's coal, sometimes it's hydro, sometimes it's nuclear...?

The argument here is that a country that keeps talking about green energy, ecology and renewables for decades is now using much less ecological methods of power generation than nuclear, and they keep badmouthing nuclear too.

Germany abandoning nuclear has been decades in the making, it does not come as a surprise. If we look at the whole picture without focusing on one particular energy source, then we can see that they have reduced their CO2 emissions over the years. Not by much, but it's expected to improve when they close down their coal plants.

Germany is a net electricity exporter: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Infografiken/stromaustausch...

Unplanned shutdowns are a increasing occurrence in France because of aging reactors and overheating/freezing rivers

Doesn't matter at all. Germany is exporting tons of underpriced (or even negatively priced) electricity in peak season - when everybody has more than enough of their own, so people are using it only to mine Bitcoin and other non essential usecases - and then there would be a blackout off-season if it wasn't for neighboring nuclear power plants, gas and coal. Very weird for a country that has its mouth full with greenness and renewability.

>overheating rivers

Is this really what German press is reporting? What a gross lie. The "overheating" is neither due to the reactor (simply it getting hot naturally) nor actively threatening to the reactor: they are just stopped to avoid making the situation slightly worse. Temperature difference at the output of a nuclear plant is barely a degree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com