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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting to note how everyone talks about the dependency on gas in Germany, while nobody mentions France. If we look at the two graphs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/En...

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/abm6r4/germanys_en...

We can see that both Germany and France use about the same percentage of gas in their energy mix. Making this discussion a reason to revive nuclear is quite dishonest.

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Germany's dependency on gas is more related to heating in the winter. It's relevant for electricity, but more as an in between solution after the phase out of nuclear and coal. But without gas, almost all of the population is screwed in the winter. France uses electricity for heating also, but considering they imported more electricity this year than they exported, they will also likely be in a world of hurt in the winter.

For me, that's the strange thing about all of the narratives being pushed with the crisis, especially noticeable with nuclear -- any decision made 15-20 years ago would be somehow problematic right now, so wishing things were done differently leads to nowhere.

What I wish this would lead to is a massive push to ditch fossil fuels, and those who think renewables are the solution should do that, the same with nuclear. I can freeze and suffer for some time, as long as there's a plan to improve things.

What's clear is that things will change forever pretty soon.

France has less dependence on russian gas , it doesn't have germany's large industry that is also dependent on russian gas, their nuclear will be there in the future, they have 4 LNG terminals and they are quite sunnier. I believe france's nuclear is currently offline that's why the higher gas usage.

The gas use has been similar for the last 10 years. Now you're correct in absolute numbers Germany uses more gas, it has more citizens, more energy intensive industry etc. and yes they are less dependent on Russian gas (most of their gas seems to come from Norway [1], although the second biggest source is Russia). I actually agree making Germany dependent Russian gas was a terrible idea. Germany actually had a unique opportunity in the late 90s early 00s, they could have really pushed for a transition to a mostly renewable energy production, but instead strong lobbying won out. And the lobbyists were the fossil and nuclear sectors (i.e. the large energy corporations). One thing one can see again and again is that the nuclear lobby is never arguing against fossil energy, but only against renewables. The reasons are simply that they largely have common interests, highly centralised energy production, with strongly subsidised plant construction, which guarantee long term profits. Renewables are actually disruptive, because they allow for very distributed energy production putting into the hands of small investors and relatively small construction industry. They threaten the large profits of the old model.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ueipzd/country_of_o...

Yeah, the drought in Europe has dried up or made too warm the rivers used to cool French nuclear plants.

It is a large assumption that "their nuclear will be there in the future" with so many plants being down for unplanned maintenance as cracks were detected in important parts. It is not clear when and if the full capacity of their current plants will be available again and currently France is still struggling with building the Flammaville reactor. Being late many years and way over budget, it doesn't look like France will be able to even maintain their current nuclear capacity going forward. And they are late in a good renewable strategy.

Considering that France has been increasing the amount of nuclear in their mix, I think it's worth discussing nuclear for Germany and renewable for France.

France seems to be unintentionally decreasing nuclear in their mix because of unreliability.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/paris-faces-a...

But they haven't, did you look at the graph (here is another one for electricity only https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_Electricity_prod...)? The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s. Also France at the moment has turned off between 40 and 100% (I read about 40%, but saw 100% on TV some weeks ago) of their nuclear power plants, due to heat and maintance. Guess who is picking up the shortfall at the moment, German renewables and coal.

> The portion of nuclear has remained constant since the late 90s.

That just reflects the failure of French state to continue to invest. The socialist and green party based on general anti-nuclear sentiment stopped much of the investment.

Are you joking? In the last 24 years there was only 4 years with a socialist president. The greens had seats only 3 times of the last 6 six national assemblies since 1986 and that was 7,3 and 4 so they are not a very influential party in France. And saying that the the socialists in France are antinuclear is also quite off. While Hollande was quite critical (also due to massive cost overruns and shady security practices reading the Wikipedia article on nuclear power in France is quite eyeopening) they have traditionally been decidedly pro nuclear.

No, there hasn't been much change because nuclear is so expensive. Projects have been going massively over budget (e.g. The EPR at Flammanville $15 billion instead of planned $4, planned to start operating in 2013 still not online.) [1].

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...

> A 1998 "Inquiry commission on Superphenix and fast neutrons reactor sector" [3] reported that "decision to close Superphénix was included in Jospin's program ... in the agreement between Socialist Party and Green Party". Also the same report says "despite many difficulties, the technical results are meaningful". In the explanation of vote at the end of the report, commission members says "give up on Superphenix has been a big error" and "Superphenix has to die because is a symbol".

But I guess its fair that it was both sides of the political spectrum.

You're mixing electricity production vs energy.

We don't use oil for electricity production at all in France for example, we do for individual heating though.

Most of the gas you see for France is for industrial heating: making cement, fusing glass, etc. Which was not accounted for in your graph for Germany.

If you look at Germany's gas use, you'll see that it is sky-high, about x4 France's; because of industrial heat, and also mainly because of their humongous organic chemistry gas plant complexes.

Here is Ludwigshafen's BASF site, 2 train yards, 6 sq km of pipes, Factorio-style spaghetti architecture:

https://goo.gl/maps/itgDo7A727rq1DLG8

In goes gas and oil, out goes plastics, precursors, pharmaceuticals, rubber, fertilizers, etc. The streets are named EthylStraße, AmmoniakStraße, SulfatStraße, .. you get the idea

Btw in Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, they announced 'warm halls' for the next winter. Halls where the poor can go so as not to freeze.

All this to say: with France's nuclear maintenance done this summer, we'll just have to pop some ohm heaters for those of us using gas heating.

You're comparing total energy for France to only electricity production for Germany.

The graph for France includes heating, cars, etc... You can see the electricity production here: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/france#what-source...

But as of April, only 17% of France's gas imports came from Russia:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/04/27/h...

Yes, but that is unrelated to the argument that is being made; that Germany's dependence on Russian gas is because they are quitting nuclear. France who went largely "all-in" on nuclear is using the same percentage of gas, they just get it from somewhere else. You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this, this is the politics of where to get the gas from (and I agree getting it from Russia was a mistake). Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia (Norway is second with 20%), so it's not _that_ different to France (essentially the two main suppliers are reversed between the two countries).

> You can't make an argument pro or contra nuclear from this

Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.

> Note also, Germany gets about 32% of its gas from Russia

Now, after Russia cut deliveries. It was 55% before the war [1], and would have gone even higher with Nord Stream 2 about to come online.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/how-reliant-is...

> Sure you can: Germany and France are not in the same place, so the economics of getting gas from source X are not the same, so when weighing gas vs nuclear they were not looking at the same options. For Germany, cheap gas meant Russian gas. If that had been ruled out on security grounds, other energy sources, including nuclear, would have been more competitive vs more expensive gas from Norway etc.

Nuclear was never an option to substitude for gas. Apart from the fact that Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry, the applications for both in electricity generation are very different, gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload. That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany.

> Germany uses most of its gas for heating and industry

That's a choice, again based on economics. There's no fundamental reason preventing electricity from replacing gas as an energy source for heating and industrial processes.

> gas is for peakers, nuclear is baseload.

Again, that's a choice based on economics. Spare nuclear (or oil or other) capacity can serve the same purpose.

> That can be seen by looking at the fact that France is using the same percentage of gas in their electricity generation as Germany

Why are you fixating on France? Try Sweden:

https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

2020 electricity production (2021 statistics are not out yet):

Gas turbines and others: 13 GWh. Nuclear: 47262 GWh.

20.1% of France's uranium come from Kazakhstan.

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/01/24/l-in...

Germany still has gas STREET LIGHTS.

They pay millions of euros every year just for the gas in those :D

France unforunatly stopped investing in nuclear in the 1990s, from 1970-2000 their total nuclear power production went up, but then if flatlined. That is why they have problmes now.

They had next generation plants ready to be rolled out, but because of the politics at the time never produced them in large numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

Blaming it on politics is quite inventive. The EPR at Falammanville is 4 times over budget and 9 years overdue and still not online. The EPRs were Frances next generation reactors. The cost of electricity with that reactor is projected to be twice higher than older reactors. Let's not even talk about the fact that at the moment >50% of French reactors are down, because they encountered issues in maintance (interestingly it's sold to the French public as we are preparing them for the winter when gas will be tight).

That France is still building PWRs is one of the main problems.

If you fail in one project or product, the answer is not 'therefore lets not build more nuclear and instead build gas or import coal power'.

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