Hacker News Reader

Comment by Garvi | Hacker News Reader

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants.

Statistics are a peculiar thing.

View on HN

Germany is second only to Russia in Europe for coal powered electricity. Followed by Poland.

No wonder this map usually has the worst air over those countries:

https://aqicn.org/map/europe/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

I see more yellow streaks in France and BE/NL than in Germany. Not sure what you mean about there being bad air in Germany

An averaging feature would be nice instead of having to compare hundreds of potential outliers manually, though

Generally when there's a high pressure system over Europe, the bad air stays trapped over Germany and Poland.

Even right now you can see that Germany is about 10pts higher than the rest of Europe, and Poland another 10pts on top of that. It's a shame that map doesn't have historic data as it would be easier to see.

We have much bigger coal share in Poland... and guess what we're doing to phase it out? We're building nuclear reactors.

wow, didn't know Poland is building nuclear

But… but…but the statistics… say 57%

1.5C is guaranteed within a decade.

People need to quit telling themselves silly narratives.

This is why Germany produces almost 10 times as much CO2 per kWh as France.

https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg

It's mind boggling.

It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0]. And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1].

So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.

[0] https://meta.eeb.org/2017/10/18/french-state-owned-company-c...

[1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/161954185.pdf

> It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0].

It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel.

> And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1].

Uranium is not a large contributor to nuclear energy cost anyway, so this is no argument against nuclear energy.

> So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.

I don't see how it is "complicated". Nuclear is clearly much better than Germany's coal+renewable. (Renewable-only was not an option since wind and solar are extremely volatile.)

It's complicated in the political sense. They are spelunking former colonies to meet green energy targets, while those same countries struggle to progress.

What are you talking about? Today less than 12% of French import of uranium are coming from Niger a former French colony. The main sources are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Australia.

> It's complicated in the political sense. They are spelunking former colonies to meet green energy targets, while those same countries struggle to progress.

It is wrong and a lie. Most uranium bought by (EDF) France lately come from Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and Ouzbekistan. Definitively not countries you can name as "Colonies".

Not only most of the bought fuel comes from other countries, including Canada, but 17% of their electro energy is generated by reprocessed nuclear fuel, also produced in France

Aside from supply chain inertia (and existing high demand for EVs) there's no practical obstacle stopping many mining operations moving to electric powered equipment, when such equipment becomes available.

At the same time France had to buy loads of electricity from Germany in the last year because several nuclear plants had to shut down due to a) maintenance problems and b) low rivers that could not provide sufficient cooling.

And sometimes it's the opposite https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country...

True France's infrastructure is not resilient enough on climate, they are also a bit in denial over that. Everyone have their weaknesses.

Ironically, I hear the ones that were shut down in Germany were some of the best maintained in the world and had very high "capacity factors" even when compared with other nuclear (fraction of time delivering power to the grid). It seems like the solution to poor maintenance is better maintenance? Some of the causes of recent poor French maintenance are analyzed here: https://player.fm/series/decouple/somethings-rotten-with-fre...

I assume you wouldn't seriously argue that rivers are the limiting factor to deployment of nuclear energy.

It's not that ironic.

Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it.

The ironic thing to me is that Germany is so anti-nuclear.

Being “anti nuclear” made a lot of sense until a madman decided to attack Ukraine.

And with the world economy stabilizing after that mad man’s actions it’s again making a lot of sense as nuclear continues to be far more expensive than other renewable alternatives.

It's cheaper to run your 30 year old, perfectly fine, perfectly safe, well-functioning nuclear plant than to build and run a new natural gas plant - which is what Germany decided to do.

> Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport enters the chat

This seems to assume that nuclear disposal is something clean.

What method of energy generation has a track record of "clean" disposal? Old solar panels usually end up in landfill.

On a per-kilowatt-hour basis nuclear waste is pretty damn clean. The end product is carefully encased in absurdly over-engineered containment vessels. Environmental leaks are rare to non-existent. The aim is to store it underground where it will pose far less of a risk to humanity than the raw ore did before it was dug up.

Not clean, but contained.

To save others from looking it up: Germany's footprint per kWh above is about the same as USA (but USA consumption is nearly twice as bad per capita vs Germany).

References: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...

Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy from its production and one big step towards a fully renewable and modern electricity grid.

Germany didn't replace nuclear energy at all. Germany is producing less electricity than when nuclear reactors were running.

And what conclusion do you draw from this, or rather, how is this relevant to this thread?

By bringing back coal, they killed thousands more of their own people people than if they stayed with nuclear.

Reminds me of my gf who picked cigarettes back up to help her quit vaping.

That this is a big pretend game to make the people responsible of the closing of nuclear power look not that bad in regard of the climate issue. Electricity generation should be increasing as we electrify transportation and heating. If this not what is happening then it means that globally the problem is just displaced. (Which doesn’t work at the planet scale)

Germany has more energy generation capacity installed than it had last year. I certainly wish there would be a push for even more renewable and storage capacity, though. The fact that Germany is generating less energy has nothing to do with the phase out of nuclear though.

Raw energy generation is the bad number if you don’t take into account capacity factor. To replace 1MW of nuclear generation with a capacity factor of 0.9 you need almost 5MW of wind at 0.2. The 21 GW of nuclear energy of 2009 have barely been replaced in 2023 when taking into account the capacity factor.

> more energy generation capacity installed than it had last year

Nameplate capacity of a new solar plant with a capacity factor of 15% (remember, a cloudy country north of the 50th latitude) is not comparable with nameplate capacity of a well maintained nuclear plant with around 90% capacity factor...

If you could leave nuclear, and "replace" lignite with wind and solar instead, you actually replaced nuclear with lignite.

>The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons).

No, it was made for bad reasons.

>Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy

_Existing_ nuclear reactors are the cheapest possible source of electricity. You already had to build them and will have to close them. Left is the cheapest part, of actually operating them.

Your comment is wrong and malicious and looking at the data proves you wrong.

Using lignite only slowed the reduction of coal, nuclear was almost completely replaced by renewables.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

Could you please explain how that chart proves your argument and how it makes the parent comment "malicious"?

This only shows that you could remove more coal keeping nuclear... https://i.imgur.com/4dH6osj.png

Not to mention all the previously closed plants.

Every MW of nuclear shut down while coal is still running is coal displacing nuclear.

Just selecting 2023 as a timeframe isn't good data.

You can see here [1] that on a time frame of 2000 to 2022 Germany is yet to replace reduction of nuclear generation (Kernkraft) with renewables. Construction of renewables in 2023 has only accelerated 50% relative to 2022 [2].

[1] https://www.tech-for-future.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/... [2] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....

> You can see here [1] that on a time frame of 2000 to 2022 Germany is yet to replace reduction of nuclear generation (Kernkraft) with renewables

Which is another misrepresentation of statistics given that we use less electricity today than 20 years ago.

See this page for "all varieties" of the same graphs. Generally coal is on a downward trajectory, except the blip for the Covid years.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

I'm not sure at which one of those graphs I should be looking at. The gross power consumption one seems to refute your own claim. The total gross electricity usage of Germany in 1990 was 551 Twh, 587 twh in 2003 and is currently around 550 Twh. Current expectations is that usage will grow to 650 Twh in 2030 and to 750+ Twh in 2050.

Charts are an irrelevant red herring. The argument is simple and indisputable: Germany's collective investments in renewables was not predicated on the closing of nuclear plants instead of coal plants. Had Germany not shut down nuclear, they could have shut down coal. It's that simple.

It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest).

There is absolutely no reason the (ex-west) German nuclear power plants could not have been life extended. They were extremely reliable and about 10GWe of modern PWRs were finished in the late 80s. They could have easily be extended to at least 2030 had there been the political will at not a huge amount of cost. The RoI with current/previous high energy prices would have probably been 100 fold.

> It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest).

I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.

How is energy storage a solved problem? All the battery storage in the world today would power half of Germany's minimum electrical load for minutes.

Germany has enough storage capacity for natural gas to last a couple of months. The same can be build for Hydrogen. Some of the existing infrastructure can even be reused.

Yes but you need 10s or 100s of GW of hydrogen electrolyzers, which are expensive, and they will only be running a small % of the the time (when there is excess renewables).

I'm not sure how much existing natural gas infrastructure can be reused given how much lighter hydrogen is and I assume it needs much tighter tolerances on all the equipment compared to natgas.

Yeah, true. But it turned from a "we don't have enough of element XY on Earth to build that" to a "it sounds kind of expensive" problem. As it turns out people did the math already and building the hydrogen infrastructure is probably not prohibitively expensive, in fact it might turn out to be reasonably cheap. There is a tradeoff between overbuilding renewables, improving the grid, making the demand side more dynamic, and storage.

Yes, but my point isn't so much it couldn't ever be done, it's that by the time you upgrade the grid massively, build the renewables, build the electrolyzers, build the hydrogen infrastructure and the infrastructure to convert it back to electricity, it's almost certainly way more expensive than already expensive nuclear to build.

The experts tend to disagree.

> for good reasons

Like what? Surely nuclear is much cheaper than coal if we take at least some of the externalities into account?

Carbon emissions are arguably not even the worst aspect of burning coal…

Renewable energy is unpredictable, thus you need a backup source of energy for when there's no wind, sunlight or rain. It's yet unfeasible to store large amounts of energy unfortunately so that means using either natural gas or coal, because you need to be able to rapidly increase/reduce/regulate the energy output. It's coal at the moment for Germany and that means more pollution and dirty politicians that don't care about the environment, just about votes. Actually nuclear power plants can nowadays also regulate their output fast enough, but they got rid of those.

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine coal was on its way out due to purely economical factors: coal plants are more expensive to operate than natural gas plants.

Of course recent months changed that since a lot of our gas used to come from Russia. If we went all-in on nuclear we could reactivate (East) German uranium mines that were closed shortly after reunification. But (traditional) nuclear also loses on economic factors, on top of being politically untenable.

Just to add: the German NPPs were not able to regulate output fast, b/c they were of an older generation.

it's possible to store huge amounts of energy with hydro, but at that point nuclear is not that bad in terms of price and nr of people killed by nuclear vs hydro accidents, so again Germany fkd up

Actually, the death toll from hydro is many orders of magnitude worse than nuclear. It's almost insulting to compare them. (And before anyone pipes up, you don't get to exclude Chinese hydro from the ledger, for the same reason we don't exclude Soviet Union nuclear.)

>Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution.

Only reason nuclear energy is not viable is the people pushing against it, which means less nuclear plants are being built and prices skyrocketing.

If people would have pushed for nuclear energy like they push for wind and solar, then we would have no coal or gas burning plants by now.

A few reasons why people might be pushing against nuclear:

  - high electricity generation costs
  - "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant"
  - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can?
  - Unsolved long-term waste storage location
  - Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society
  - We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the energy needs of a couple generations, even though there are more sustainable and cheaper alternatives

Those are mainly fake.

Some of them are emotional, sure. But what is fake about them?

" - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can?"

What does that even mean? There are no large earthquakes, let alone any tsunamis in Germany. And even if there were, most nuclear plants were not at the sea.

-nuclear is realiable and cheap after built -living next to nuclear vs next to coal plant/hydro dam isn't that bad -japan wasn't able to handle one plant, and almost none were killed(most deaths were from tsunami -Long term is solved: Sweden is building a special storage place. Combine with vitrification(solidification of waste) it's going to be ok -cost is still negligible compared to cost/problems we have now bc of pollution -France can reprocess 95% of nuclear fuel, actually 17% of their el energy is from reprocessed nuclear, the rest 5% should be stored for ~300 yrs to handle most dangerous radiation. Combined with vitrification, you get a safe way to store a solid form waste in a single controllable place instead of spreading it in the air(fossils) So yeah, most of the fears are driven by fossil propaganda

What Germany gained is more pollution, higher CO2 emissions and a lot of hopium that current energy fubar will somehow be resolved sometimes in the unspecified future using semi specified technology (there is no large scale energy storage solution available for renewables and it will stay like this for some years to come). Shutting down nuclear was a political decision, fueled by pure ideology (and some Russian help because natural gas exports).

What entire EU gained is getting to support often unstable electricity grid in Germany. So we all gained a lot by the looks of it.

Yep. We all gained primarily a lower living standard without reducing any CO2 consumption globally at all _and_ without improving the environment locally. Looks like a good policy to continue with, doesn't it?

The European electricity market is working quite well, imports and exports are expected to happen. Countries prefer to import electricity when it is cheaper than producing it themselves. Germany has more than enough capacity installed to handle its energy needs (even if a lot of this is still fossil). Germany does not have an "often unstable electricity grid", not at all. That information is simply wrong.

In other words, shutting down nuclear plants means a) replacing the energy generation with coal (mostly lignite), or b) importing energy from other countries, which generate it from coal (mostly lignite) like Poland.

Importing will likely be "cheap", because we all agree to collectively pretend that externalities like CO2 emissions or catastrophic pollution from coal plants are not a thing.

Can't see how any of these options are good.

Oh no no. Germany loves importing nuclear electricity from France, Czech Republic and others too. Makes the government feel good about having quit nuclear, because somehow when it comes from across the border it's not so bad anymore.

NIMBY has a strong tradition in Germany.

Many of your comments are misleading and are often renewable energy propaganda.

"In 2023, Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output”. This comment was from Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology. EU Fact check rates this as mostly true.

The claim that germany has sufficient capacity for its energy needs is just wrong.

That is true, but it is also not the goal to achieve 100% secured power output, nor is it necessary. The calculations that determine the necessary electricity production to cover Germany's needs at all times are more complicated than just looking at the installed secured power output and involve factors, such as the likelihood of unavailable renewable energy production. And even if the worst case happens, there are solid strategies in place to avoid a blackout, including backup power plants and coordination with high energy consumers to reduce or shut down their consumption.

And all of this still ignores the fact, that there is a highly connected international electricity market, that large scale storage solutions are being prepared, and that the grid is becoming more decentralized.

this is all well and good but seems to ignore the central problem - energy security is a national priority. Hand waving away the problem by pointing to energy markets or a decentralised grid does not address the fundamental issue.

You are right, the goal is not 100% secured energy supply but we have multiple problems at the same time - energy security and climate change to name just two.

The grid in Europe is so stable that you can literally use it to synchronise a clock by counting the oscillations.

Error over time: 0

Total frequency error over time is not a good measure of stability because the frequency is actively adjusted to control this. The grid could fail every day and still have 0 frequency error over time if they ran it faster when it was working to compensate.

Zoom out one more time and you see that the world gained a solution to climate change that is actually competitive economically.

Competitive even without a strong government regulation to enforce people paying for externalities, and even working against the entrenched intests of fossil fuels.

A solution which is rolling out at a truly astonishing rate.

What happens in Germany is irrelevant compared with what has happened globally due, in large part, to Germany.

This is a misinterpretation of what happened and this comment is just weird.

Coal has been added after nuclear was stopped but what you said is not happening at all. Look at the actual data instead of random Internet comments and populist articles by biased journalists:

https://imgur.com/9GLhuSs

Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

While lignite was in fact re-added, Germany only slowed the reduction of overall coal power and did not stop or reverse it as constantly proclaimed by commenters who care more about politics than engineering.

So Germany displaced nuclear mostly by renewable energy - WHILE ONLY SLOWING THE REDUCTION OF COAL when they added lignite. So still less coal than before, just not as fast as before.

Coal use is at a historic low in Germany, thus it is not possible that nuclear plants were replaced with coal. Statistics are reflecting reality, your facts are actually just guesses and opinions.

They absolutely were counterfactually. If nuclear power hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.

They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Nuclear and coal are getting continuously replaced by renewables. Coal end date is set to either 2030 or 2038 (I forget).

The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.

> They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before.

They were counterfactually. This means that if nuclear hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.

> The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.

No, people should complain about Germany. Nuclear power can replace coal. Which is why France produces much less CO2 than Germany:

https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg

People should complain about emissions and the lack of emission reduction. If Germany is producing a lot more than France, and this concerns you, you should complain even more bitterly about Poland because their emissions are 1) 2x as bad as Germany 2) in contrast go Germany they are not going down since the country is dreaming of nuclear energy.

Renewables can and do replace coal, as they obviously did in Germany. It does not really matter if you are ideologically aligned with another energy source, for whatever reason.

> If Germany is producing a lot more than France, and this concerns you, you should complain even more bitterly about Poland

Whataboutism.

Upd: I see you also do it elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599216.

People should complain about emissions and emission reduction. Are emissions too high in Germany? Yes. Are they going down? Yes. Does it have a set date to remove coal from electricity production? Yes. So good things and a bright future, yet a lot of complaints.

In case of Poland neither is the case. I have yet to see an article complaining about Poland, despite it being neither good, nor it having a bright future. Why is that?

We do complain about Poland. But this is a thread about Germany.

> Does it have a set date to remove coal from electricity production? Yes.

The date is simply ridiculous. 2030 or so AFAIK? We expect much more effort from such a developed country.

I am very interested in this topic and I assure you that nobody complains about Poland. I've seen even praise for their decision to prolong this situation and build nuclear plants. On the other hand, a country very much in deserve of praise like Germany is a constant target of criticism by various nuclear lobby groups, astroturfers and the like. You can see the effect even here on HN, it's a very common topic that "Germany replaced nuclear with coal", which is just simply false.

I do praise Poland for building nuclear plants. This is the only existing solution to the climate catastrophe. Also, it's one of the the most safe energy sources.

This is not "simply false". This is effectively true, even though it might not be the intention. There are many similar discussions about it on HN. See for example this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35819870.

So Germany uses less coal continuously and plans to stop using it 2030. You say: terrible and too slow.

Poland uses a lot more coal, has no real plan to reduce it, and wants to continue at the same level for the next 15 years or so. You say: awesome job.

You can't be serious.

I said I praised Poland for building nuclear plants. I didn't say they did everything perfectly.

There is no difference between building plants and producing the vast majority of your electricity from coal for the next 15 years. The latter is the consequence of the former.

You seem to imply that building nuclear takes forever. This is wrong.

There is no need to imply when we have data. Building nuclear takes forever.

Yes, because of government regulations that force safety to a much, much higher standards than those for coal.

So at least we agree it takes forever and is thus harmful when it comes to emissions.

Harmful are stupid regulations helping coal, and also people who don't get that damage from coal is so strong that even ancient nuclear reactors are safer, including Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Whataboutism.

Nuclear's long build times help coal plants stay open and are thus bad for emissions. Here [1] an article about Poland deciding to build nuclear plants FOUR YEARS AGO. During that time they did not displace a single molecule of co2 from their worst in Europe electricity production. The construction didn't even begin yet, and when it does it will again take years in the best case. If it takes as much as it did in other European countries recently, we are talking about 20 years easily.

Those that praise this strategy are either naive, misinformed, or funded by the nuclear lobby.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-18/poland-mo...

> Here [1] an article about Poland deciding to build nuclear plants FOUR YEARS AGO.

Cherry picking. Other countries build nuclear reactors just fine if they want. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36333904

Except we were talking specifically about Poland for which you said you support what they do. Now that you know the facts do you still support prolonging the use of so much coal? In 4 years they've done nothing, and won't do anything for at least a decade. Germany's coal exit 2030 you called too slow. Will you reconsider?

France started building a prototype replacement in Flamanville for those reactors and with a bit of luck it might be finished this year. After 20 years of development.

Poland must change the regulation, not give up on fighting climate change. Even trying and failing is better than not trying at all, as you suggest.

The French prototypes are now ready and tested. Why not use them?

Which regulation?

They gave up on climate change when they decided to invest in nuclear energy. They prioritized nuclear power over removal of coal. If the whole world takes this viewpoint we will decarbonize in a few centuries.

The French plants were designed to run for 30 years, their replacement was supposed to be the EPR and the construction on Flamanville started almost 20 years ago. The program has been a colossal failure.

The problem is you don't know anything.

Removal of coal? Show me any reliable, scalable, affordable method.

You can build both nuclear and solar and wind at the same time.

Poland will stick to coal because of local economic interests, it has nothing to do with nuclear.

> They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before.

Well.. there is no reason why there shouldn’t be zero coal use before anyone starts shutting sown nuclear power plants. For one thing the issues with nuclear waste storage are a joke compared to the radiation and other pollution continuously emitted by burning coal…

If your resources are infinite you can. But they are not so you can't.

Grids in Europe are interconnected. So you can build nuclear and and import wind/solar from the surrounding countries which would effectively be the same.

Or you can build solar and wind, which is what Germany is doing to replace coal. Successfully. Don't really see your point.

Solar and wind alone can’t provide 100%. Not yet anyway..

> Successfully

Yet the amount of energy generated by burning coal has only increased.

*https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

The data on that link says:

2019: 114.0 + 57.4

2020: 91.7 + 42.8

2021: 110.1 + 54.6

2022: 116.2 + 64.4

When the first wave of decomissions came in 2011, the number was

2011: 150 + 112 [1]

Straight question, to see if you can answer it: is it going up or down? Furthermore, even in the data you are posting, it's going down every year except last. And it went up last year because France's nuclear energy failed and needed to be supported [2].

About 100%: perhaps, but the proof is in the pudding. Historically, the naysayers have been incorrect for decades. Here [3], an advertisement from the German nuclear lobby from the 90s, that makes a case for young people: don't be against nuclear, we need it, renewables can NEVER account for more than 4% of our total production.

Fortunately nobody listened to them.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/156695/umfrag...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

[3] https://twitter.com/wolfibey/status/1370115862523416577

Cannot answer the question.

afaik poland agreed to build a nuclear plant

> The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe

I don't have the numbers with me so I cannot check this right now, but I believe your comment to be incorrect. Germany must have more CO2 emissions than Poland from Coal alone since Germany is the largest user of energy from coal burning in Europe.

Sorry, no. Check the data.

I looked up some data on this now, and Germany is ahead of Poland in CO2 emissions from Coal: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1014423/co2-emissions-fr...

There is also a page on the German Wikipedia showing CO2 emissions from Gas, Coal and Oil burning and again Germany is significantly above Poland: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_gr%C3%B6%C3%9Ften_Ko...

Those are absolute numbers. Germany's population is more than twice that of Poland.

Germany's electricity production is 25% coal where as it is over 70% coal in Poland.

Sure, but we are not talking about per capita co2 emissions but the worst emitter, and that is Germany and not Poland. The world does not care about per capita anything, it cares about absolutes.

So I guess the problem might be solved if Germany dissolves into 16 smaller countries, this will surely reduce its emissions drastically. I haven't thought of that brilliant angle of tackling the climate crisis, just reduce the size of countries.

Do you have other ideas? At this rate we might solve the problem within a couple hours.

Honestly I'm not sure what argument you are trying to make.

What's wrong in building nuclear power plants?

And before teaching lessons to Eastern European countries, remember that the West had 50 years after the WWII to build up the economy and infrastructure. It would be only fair to let Eastern European countries to develop for the same period, without demanding them pay the costs of higher energy prices.

What's wrong in terms of emissions is that they take forever to plan and build. During which time, Poland will continue to produce its electricity almost exclusively from coal. These are real emissions that can't be made up for once the nuclear plants are finished. The alternative is to replace a lot of the coal really fast with renewables. Further more, it's cheaper so you can replace a lot more than with nuclear.

There was a very good article on HN about how nuclear reactors only seem to have gotten harder to plan and execute in Western countries since the 1980s due to ever-increasing regulations. Building a nuclear reactor doesn't have to take decades.

But regulations are what makes nuclear energy supposedly safe. Faster build times aren't worth it if we risk nuclear meltdowns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-risk_bias

It's easy to posit yourself as taking the "necessary risks", but you haven't demonstrated that:

- nuclear energy is the only way to fend off the climate crisis

- unsafe nuclear energy is the only way for nuclear energy to fend off the climate crisis

- the risk of unsafe nuclear energy is lower than the risk of the climate crisis

Until you do that I will prefer the lower risk option.

> - nuclear energy is the only way to fend off the climate crisis

This is the only practically infinite source of CO2-free energy not relying on weather, geographical position or large area. See also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987

> - unsafe nuclear energy

It is safer than almost all other sources (taking into account Chernobyl and Fukushima): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant#/media/Fil...

> - the risk of unsafe nuclear energy is lower than the risk of the climate crisis

The climate catastrophe is considered obviously very dangerous by all scientific organizations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change

> This is the only practically infinite source of CO2-free energy not relying on weather, geographical position or large area.

Okay? You haven't shown that an energy source not relying on weather, geographical position or large area is necessary to solve the climate crisis. Don't just throw around more attributes.

> It is safer than almost all other sources (taking into account Chernobyl and Fukushima)

Is it a physical fact of life they are safer (as in, you can't to do anything wrong) or is it our regulations that make them so safe? The regulations you want to remove?

> The climate catastrophe is considered obviously very dangerous by all scientific organizations

Okay, did I say anything else?

> You haven't shown that an energy source not relying on weather, geographical position or large area is necessary to solve the climate crisis.

Are you serious? Germamy can't abandon coal until 2030 because of that.

> or is it our regulations that make them so safe?

Did you read my comment? Even Chernobyl's regulation were sufficient to be safe, according to my link. I suggest to stop producing more regulations and build on latest working model.

> Are you serious? Germamy can't abandon coal until 2030 because of that.

Can you show me that renewables couldn't hit the same targets with enough investment?

> Did you read my comment? Even Chernobyl's regulation were sufficient to be safe, according to my link. I suggest to stop producing more regulations and build on latest working model.

I don't think you understand correctly. First off Chernobyl is in no way an argument in your favor, as it shows that nuclear energy isn't even safe with regulations. Yet you want to remove even more regulations which would increase dangers. Remember, GP wrote:

> There was a very good article on HN about how nuclear reactors only seem to have gotten harder to plan and execute in Western countries since the 1980s due to ever-increasing regulations. Building a nuclear reactor doesn't have to take decades.

Based on what you've said you either want to roll back to 1980s regulations, or before that. Both are unsafe.

> Can you show me that renewables couldn't hit the same targets with enough investment?

First, they couldn't until now. They might be able to at some point, but do you want to take that risk? We already have a safe solution.

> First off Chernobyl is in no way an argument in your favor, as it shows that nuclear energy isn't even safe with regulations.

Actually it does show that even Chernobyl's regulations were sufficient to be safer than almost any other energy source today.

> Yet you want to remove even more regulations

Where did I say that?

> Based on what you've said you either want to roll back to 1980s regulations, or before that

Where did I say that? I would appreciate a quote.

> Both are unsafe.

Compared to what? My link proofs the opposite.

That's a favorite of mine because at the same time those same regulations are cited as the reason why the plants are incredibly safe.

The changing regulations over time add to the complexity.

Here is an article [1] by the American Nuclear Society detailing all the improvements that happened since the incident at Three Mile Island happened. It does not list these as negative, but positive, since they improve safety. So the industry thinks safe is correct, but then some like to pretend that removing these would make things only cheaper, never less safe. It cannot be true.

[1] https://www.ans.org/news/article-3903/insights-from-the-thre...

Electricity generation is decreasing year over year in Germany since 2015… but the fact is that it should be increasing to electrify heating and transportation. What is really happening is that industries are moving out of Germany to help pretend that the country CO2 emissions are better as no one really count imported CO2 in finished product.

Perhaps, but it was until now not electrifying heating and transportation, so reduction is obviously a positive thing. Nothing beats emissions of a kWh you saved. The question might be, was there something sacrificed to do that, e.g. did economy suffer? This would be bad, but it's not the case, the GDP is still going up. The savings are related to energy efficiency and this will reap benefits basically forever.

There is no saving (or marginally) it’s just heavy industries and energy consuming process leaving Germany (BASF for instance). Overall just a displacement of the problem. We don’t care about GDP, what matters is global CO2 emission. In 2023 13.4% of new cars are electric in Germany but electricity production is the lowest in 15 years, go figure.

Sorry, but this is total nonsense. I realize it's not in the spirit of HN, but it's obvious you did not check any data at all.

Ok energy-charts.info is providing all info regarding installed power and electricity generation for Germany.

For heavy industries leaving Germany: * https://cen.acs.org/business/finance/BASF-cutting-back-main-... * https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/24/basf-cut-jo... * https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2022-10-20/germanys-glas... * https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-industry-europe-ener...

Here you can see that industrial part of the GDP is shrinking: * https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/manufacturing-value-add...

What are your sources?

BASF is a drop in the bucket and it left not because of high electricity prices like you claimed, but high natural gas prices which they directly use for production. e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/basf-could-cut-outpu...

> BASF is already reducing production of ammonia, which relies heavily on natural gas, and sourcing some it its ammonia needs from outside Europe, where gas prices are lower.

Heavy industries in general will take a while to electrify (globally), you can read on the challenges of that e.g. here https://www.iea.org/articles/the-challenge-of-reaching-zero-...

So again, sorry, but you are off.

Basic fact you don’t seem to grasp is that electricity price in Europe are directly dependent on gas price as the price is governed by the price of the last capacity called which in Europe are gas driven… Chemical plants but not only as the articles mentioned but glass ceramic etc are using large amount of electricity. The current decrease in electricity usage(that’s not only happening in Germany but throughout all Western Europe) is caused by industrial process moving out of Europe.

You seem to be hopping from one vaguely connected argument to another. I am aware that gas price sets the electricity price when deployed, but it has nothing to do with BASF, they were hit hard by specifically gas prices because they use gas. I already posted the link(s). And furthermore, that BASF went to China in 2023 did not affect electricity use in 2020, nor is BASF responsible for 50TWh of electricity per year. There is no grand scale industry movement out of Germany.

The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables. German invesments in the early 2000s were one of the steps towards renewables being viable.

If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewables not happening.

> The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables.

Investment in renewable energy is not a value in itself. France has much lower CO2 emissions because they invested in nuclear energy which can replace both coal and renewable energy.

> If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewables not happening.

But an expansion of nuclear could have happened, replacing coal. Wind and solar themselves are highly volatile and require an additional stable energy source like coal or nuclear.

As Germany went into renewables, France doubled down on nuclear, creating the EPR program and starting to build Flamanville 3 as a prototype that would lead to development of replacements for their current plants.

20 years later Flamanville 3 is still not finished and the EPR has been a disaster overall. Their current plants are starting to fail, they are producing less and less every year and had to rely on neighbors to supply electricity for them last year.

So there is quite a real and possible alternate timeline where Germany invests in nuclear instead of renewables and now it's still producing more than half of its electricity from coal because the nuclear plants are not finished and at huge cost.

I'm taking the current reality in a heartbeat.

> But an expansion of nuclear could have happened

Very unlikely. Nuclear (in the West) hasn't been expanded in the last 30 years, partially due to overblown safety concerns but also due to cost issues. There has been no hugely successful nuclear build, all that tried took almost as long as the renewable industry has existed in any real sense and cost absurd amounts of money. Looking at other large german projects during that timeframe, it's unlikely there would have been more than one plant opening. The hope of nuclear advocates is that by increasing economies of scale in production and reducing it on the individual plant level the economics of NPP will work out in future. I'm highly doubtful but hope they're successful.

> Wind and solar themselves are highly volatile and require an additional stable energy source like coal or nuclear.

For wind and solar to make sense, you need complimentary power sources. Wind and solar do have very complimentary characteristics (night/day as well as winter/summer), but not perfectly. This means "base load" power sources which should run as much as possible like (lignite and somewhat black) coal or especially nuclear work very badly (economically), due to the high cost of the plant and low utilization factor. B

In a fully renewable grid, most of the day power will solely come from wind and solar, probably with batteries filling the gaps during morning and evening and some form of long term storage like P2G/Hydrogen/... will cover dunkelflauten (time spans without solar nor wind) during winter. There should be overproduction during most of the time.

In an almost fully nuclear grid, solar might be used during summer to cover ACs or similar things, but storage is still required to avoid needing build enough NPPs to supply peak power usage. France uses large amounts of hydrostorage on the alps and the european power grid to reduce the NPP overcapacity needed during the day.

This is in contrast to gas, most forms of hydroelectricity, batteries or (hopefully) P2G/Hydrogen, whose costs primarily scale with the amount of energy, not power.

Building an grid almost only based on nuclear and wind/solar without some form of flexible generation is economically nonsensical. Both can be used in the same grid to some amount, but don't complement each other well.

EDIT: https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the... explains the duck curve and the issues for base load power sources because of it nicely

> Coal use

Should be at zero before anyone even starts thinking about closing nuclear power plants.

Strong disagree. That would imply that Germany should be criticized more than the US, but this cannot be. The US did not close its nuclear plants, but is still at 60% fossil fuels.

I don't think this is a coincidence because when Diablo Canyon was extended, the first thing that happened is that they asked for a billion dollars so they are able to even run. Nuclear is an expensive distraction and a hog of resources (time and money)

Is it that more expensive if you take into account all the externalities from burning coal? Increased cancer risk due to high radiation, other pollution etc. CO2 is just the cherry on top..

> That would imply that Germany should be criticized more than the US, but this cannot be.

This is tangential and there is also no need to resort to whataboutism for no reason.

There's no whataboutism, I wasn't saying Germany might be bad, but look at someone else. I'm asking a question about the logical conclusion of what you're saying: the most important thing is to keep nuclear plants alive before coal is removed. Sure, but it can't be right. Many countries are doing that, e.g. the US, and failing to decarbonize as quickly as Germany. So it's illogical and irrational.

Furthermore there can't be whataboutism because Germany is a leader in fossil fuel reduction this century. So there's nothing "bad" to accept and to do whataboutism about.

> Sure, but it can't be right.

I don’t follow. I mean you might be right. But using US as an example hardly make sense because they didn’t really try to ‘decarbonize’ that hard..

> because Germany is a leader in fossil fuel reduction this century

Germany was emitting ~500 grams per kWh back in 2000 and 385 in 2022. That not that spectator at all considering they weren’t at all trying to change this until the mid 2010s.

EU wide CO2 emissions have continuously decreased from around 520 grams to less than 250 in the same period.

So not only Germany wasn’t a leader throughout 90%+ of this century, they it was much worse than average…

It was emitting 500 grams per kWh 5 years ago when coal was a lot lower than 2000. Did not really check the numbers, but it can't be correct.

And also by buying electricity from Sweden, which causes my bills to explode. (Because we've also shuttered half of our nuclear facilities.) So when Germany buys enough, we start our oil powerplants to cover :)

That last part of the sentence is not true. Coal usage is down overall since they started closing nuclear plants over a decade ago. There are a few new gas plants though. There was a shift from gas to coal last year for cost reasons.

And coal is scheduled to be decommissioned completely. We'll see if Germany can stick to the schedule of doing that by 2035. But that's the official plan so far.

Some more stats (in german): https://www.pv-magazine.de/2023/07/03/atomausstieg-anteil-de...

Oh, we also started importing nuclear electricity from France at scale to bridge the gap. So, it’s not as bad as you put it. Nuclear waste is now somebody else’s problem…

You might not be serious, but, for others' benefit, nuclear waste is not a problem. One just has to not be a complete moron about it. And, most of the spent nuclear fuel will be reusable in the future.

France have been importing electricity all winter due to woes with their nuclear plants.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

Yes, winter 2022.

And exporting during winter 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, ... 199...

France is now exporting like it was doing before winter 2022.

An exception doesn't make a rule.

those didn't appear out of the thin air, but because of underfunding driven by the greens. Problems were fixed, and now, just like in the past, France is exporting energy

The total amount of electricity generation is decreasing which is a sign that energy transition is not taking place in Germany (it's just displacement). In 2019 the first half of year Germany produced 264000GWh vs 224000GWh in 2023. In fact total electricity production is decreasing since 2015 when it was over 273000GWh. You can increase your renewable share if you are producing less. If you look carefully you will see that nuclear generation was just not replaced.

Given the lower amount of energy generated by coal compared to when the nuclear plants were still running, it would be more accurate to say that they were replaced by solar and wind power since they are the only forms of energy creation that increased their output since nuclear was shut down.

No, we didn't. Germany constantly reduced the am amount of coal in the mix. Admittedly starting at a way to high level, but it was constantly reduced. One can argue that the reduction could have been faster, but that are the mistakes of the past. Germany is now aggressively expanding renewables and as the article shows, successfully so.

The 57.7% figure seems to be a bit misleading in this context. I searched for statistical data on how much idle coal power is held on standby and not included in these statistics, for example, but I didn't find any. Does anyone know where to get full raw data?

Are you disagreeing with the numbers cited in some way?

No.

Do you have a source for that?

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-extends-run-...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/europe/germany-nuclear-phase-...

A source for a piece of popular news that was covered by every single media out there and is only a quick google search away?

https://www.google.com/search?q=germnay+nuclear+lignite

I swear, sometimes HN users can be so pedantic, they'll demand source that the earth is round or that the water is wet.

I used to be afraid that ChatGPT would make our jobs redundant, but seeing how people can't find basic info by themselves and need to ask humans to spoon feed them, I think I can breathe easily that our jobs are safe.

> I swear, sometimes HN users can be so pedantic, they'll ask for the source that the earth is round or that the water is wet.

Without a citation, any statement of ostensible fact is just unfounded rumor.

The poster can't know what is ostensible to you and what isn't, and nor does everyone here have the time to post sources for absolutely every single statement they make as if they're writing a university research paper.

As a reader, if you're unsure of something, use common sense and in the age of powerful internet search engines and LLM chat bots at your fingertips, it's up to you to quickly check for yourself, and only ask the poster for sources when you were unable to find the corect information by yourself, otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time.

Source?

Touché!

Why does OP need to provide a source? Why you don't look for the info yourself? It is common knowledge in Europe that Germany shut down its nuclear plant (15/04/23 the last one), and they compensated with a lot of coal this winter.

Just that those things have no relation to each other. Coal is used to replace gas, not nuclear plants. And AFAIK in mid of April there is no winter any more anyway.

The question is valid, as there is a huge amount of misinformation going around those topics.

> have no relation to each other.

How? Surely you wouldn’t need to burn as much coal if nuclear plants were still running?

Nuclear plants in Germany only deliver electricity, and only where the grid is connected. But coal is used also used for heat and chemical processes, and outside the grid. No source of electricity can cover that yet in a short timeframe. And even if we are just talking about electricity in grid-connected locations, with the high cost of nuclear plants, it makes more sense to just buy it from others, and wait until new renewables sources were added to the grid, and long term build other replacements for heat and the chemical processes.

isn’t coal more expensive if you take all the negative externalities into account? Specifically increased rates of cancer and other diseases caused by pollution on top of CO2 emission?

Maybe, but that's irrelevant today, the original plans were crushed by reality, and now we must accept the mess and move on. Germany could have been in a better situation, if politicians did a better job a decade or two ago. But complaining today about the mess from yesterday, because of the fails from 12 years ago is pointless.

Germany hasn't learned a thing. https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2023/07/berlin-verkehr-...

All that most Germans want to do, is to drive in their SUVs and park everywhere. That is what they vote for. Meanwhile they vote against nuclear (I'm scared) and wind (Verschanden meine Landschaft)

"This winter" the nuclear plants were still running. So...

Most were already shut down.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fu...

... or, if you prefer that, straight from the German government statistical office itself: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...

That was December last year, the last plants were closed this year, the comeback of coal was minimal an mostly caused by the need of France to import electricity, since their nuclear plants failed.

> the comeback of coal was minimal

As the moment of writing, Germany is producing 12% of its electricity with coal.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

Not really. Coal was just a temporary replacement, and mostly not for nuclear plants.

Coal is 30% currently: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06... and I don't see this going away soon.

The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal. In 1990, nuclear power plants were producing 153TWh in Germany. Today, coal+nuclear together is producing about as much.

> Coal is 30% currently: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06... and I don't see this going away soon.

5 years ago it was significant higher. And in 5 years it will significant lower again. Germany is in a process of change.

> The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal.

Which is wrong. Nuclear can't replace gas, which coal is replacing. And Nuclear plants have no fuel anymore and lacking up-to-date certification. There was zero chance to continue running since 2019, even if we ignore all the other problems.

Temporary or not, coal is being burned to produce electricity in Germany

> and mostly not for nuclear plants.

electricity is fungible.

It doesn't matter what electricity the coal is intending to replace, as long as _any_ coal is being turned into electricity, that's coal that could not have been burned if a nuclear plant was generating that electricity instead

> electricity is fungible.

Which is irrelevant. Electricity is not the main purpose of coal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com