Why is Germany using more natural gas now than in 2010? Did they replace coal by gas?
Would it have been possible to replace coal with nuclear instead, and keep gas at 2015 levels?
Would it have been possible to replace coal with nuclear instead, and keep gas at 2015 levels?
It's unlikely that coal could have been replaced with new nuclear. It would have probably been an EPR from back then Framatome and Siemens. Construction of the EPR in Olkiluoto started in 2005 and just finished recently.
Keeping old nuclear reactors running and shutting down coal plants instead would have been possible though, but didn't have backing in the population.
I no longer believe in coincidence.
Also, the EU commission declared in February 2022 natural gas as a sustainable energy source, and the EU parliament confirmed this in July 2022. Sounds a bit bizarre, but the dates are correct.
The reactor itself takes a long time to ramp up and down, but it heats a molten salt battery. The battery can burst-power the turbines at well-above the reactor output; they can be sized to handle peak demand + overnight loads.
It's hard to find current numbers, but capital investment for combined cycle natural gas plants seems to be about a tenth of modern reactor projects in western countries.
The plant designs I’m describing are new, but marching to commercialization. They are not in wide-scale production yet.
They are optimized for a world where solar and wind have taken over most of the production.