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.
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 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:
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.
Whataboutism.
Upd: I see you also do it elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599216.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
Cherry picking. Other countries build nuclear reactors just fine if they want. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36333904
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.
The French prototypes are now ready and tested. Why not use them?
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.
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…
> Successfully
Yet the amount of energy generated by burning coal has only increased.
*https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...
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-...
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.
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...
Germany's electricity production is 25% coal where as it is over 70% coal in Poland.
Do you have other ideas? At this rate we might solve the problem within a couple hours.
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.
- 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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.ans.org/news/article-3903/insights-from-the-thre...
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 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.
If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewables not happening.
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.
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.
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
Should be at zero before anyone even starts thinking about closing nuclear power plants.
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)
> 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.
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.
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…