Germany gets informal EU go-ahead to support gas-fired power, sources say | Hacker News Reader

Germany gets informal EU go-ahead to support gas-fired power, sources say

reuters.com

16 pointsmpweiher83 comments

What a waste of resources. The nuclear plants were up and running. Could be running for decated with good maintanance. The most of the costs were already paid. And now:

Germany won the European Union's informal approval to pay billions of euros to gas powered plants to be able to stabilise the grid when unsteady renewable energy supplies fall short, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on Friday.

People in my country are upset when gas and coal barons get rich. But we are making them rich by our wrong decisions.

Gas turbines and nuclear do not fulfill the same role. Nuclear is base load, gas is peak load.

You can’t stabilize a grid with base load because you want to run base load plants at maximum capacity. Whereas peaker plants are quickly spun up and down to match up supply with demand.

To be clear, shutting down those nuclear plants is a bone-headed decision fueled by a false idea of greenness, but it has little to do with gas turbines. Nuclear replaces coal or hydro.

> Nuclear replaces coal or hydro.

There's not much hydro where I'm wrong, so I might be mistaken with this. But I always thought hydro was also pretty flexible, so it could serve as peak load? Like, you can even pump water up a dam if you have a surplus of electricity.

I am not sure about the speed, but the capacity is issue. It takes a lot of land to build a lot of hydro, damages ecosystems.

> Like, you can even pump water up a dam if you have a surplus of electricity.

only if you have two places where the water is stored, but pumped hydro is not the most common source of hydroelectric power in Europe.

I understand, but there is no need to stabilize when you have big nuclear base load. EU is just burning money left and right. The transition could be slower, more green and more cost effective and with less impact on industry if it just wasn`t driven by fake "green" ideology. And antinuclear fear mongering.

> but there is no need to stabilize when you have big nuclear base load

Of course there is. What you're stabilizing is varying consumer demand, not the (quite long-term) shutdown of power stations.

Varying consumer demand can easily be matched by nuclear power. They can run gradients as high as gas turbines, but it's not good to go really low quickly because frequent and rapid adjustments in a nuclear reactor's output can lead to increased wear and tear. France is doing a really good job of matching demand and supply with their fleet.

That argument is popular among the 100% renewables crowd in Germany. I mean, achieving 90-100% renewables creates a problem you wouldn't have if you were just running on nuclear power, and now they portray it as a problem of nuclear power. If you're arguing from a dogmatic point of view where renewables are the absolute main energy source and you occasionally need to supplement it, gas makes sense. It's stupid though.

You don't need to stabilize a grid that has sufficient CO₂ free base capacity.

Making an inherently and unfixably unreliable source your primary and then trying to fit everything around that is...unwise.

"You don't need to stabilize a grid that has sufficient CO₂ free base capacity."

Yes you do. Even if all your generation is dispatch able, demand will still vary a lot.

No. I mean, yes, you do need some stabilization, but the amount is trivial.

First, it is only the demand that varies, not both supply and demand. Second, variations in demand are very predictable, unlike variations in supply by renewables (those aren't completely unpredictable, but highly so). Third, the magnitude is just not nearly the same.

For example, the cost for grid stability measures in Germany increased by more than an order of magnitude between 2011 and 2020.

Nuclear is good for both base load and peak load: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40656218

The nuclear plants were aging out anyway and nuclear power is not suitable for use as a peaker like gas or batteries or pumped storage are.

(it's technically possible to use as a peaker by throwing away power, but costly enough that the idea is overwhelmingly stupid, so it is not suitable)

The only reason any country builds it is to provide economic support for the military industrial complex. The cost even when not using it as a peaker is truly staggering compared to alternatives.

Yeas, Slovakia has big military industrial complex.

Its first nuclear power plants were built by Atomstroyexport. Russian. Recently, Westinghouse is being contracted to build one. American. They're also talking to France.

Tell me, what do you think those three countries have in common?

But not their industrial complex, what is you reasoning? France is forcing Slovakia to build nuclear to support military industrial complex? A little bit of conspiracy here. The first was a soviet "gift".

The military industrial complexes and supply chains of those three countries are the relevant ones, not Slovakia's.

Russia, for example, built a lot of nuclear plants around the world as a way of exporting the supply chain and skills base they built up while building the world's largest stockpile of nukes.

> and nuclear power is not suitable for use as a peaker like gas or batteries or pumped storage are.

This is, of course, a lie. https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

--- start quote ---

The minimum requirements for the manoeuvrability capabilities of modern reactors are defined by the utilities requirements that are based on the requirements of the grid operators. For example, according to the current version of the European Utilities Requirements (EUR) the NPP must at least be capable of daily load cycling operation between 50% and 100 % of its rated power Pr, with a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% of Pr per minute.

--- end quote ---

As the chart on the same page (page 8) shows, a change from 800 MW to 1300 MW was routine operation for German reactors

Nuclear power is expensive because decades of fear mongering have made it so.

Today nuclear power is one of the safest, together with solar and wind [1]. If we were to make coal power as safe as nuclear (including externalities), I wonder how much the difference would be.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

I have no idea what link you're making between nuclear power and the military industrial complex. The vast majority of nations with nuclear power have no nuclear weapons program - Germany first and foremost, for obvious WWII-related reasons.

The nations that actually build it (not every country with nuclear power builds its own nuclear power stations) are split into countries that have it and countries that have, say, signed the NPT but have a geopolitical rival that makes them afraid enough to want to be able to build nukes in a hurry one day.

Iran is one - they have very legitimate fears about a very particular country. They don't have a legitimate economic reason to build nuclear power, which is why America got very angry at them. America knew why they were building a PWR and weren't buying the "exclusively for peaceful civilian purposes" excuse.

But they're not the only ones. Sweden is another. They even used to have a nuclear program, in fact.

Poland is also one. Well, Poland wasn't so afraid of any geopolitical rivals 3 years ago. It has recently become afraid for... reasons. It has only recently developed an interest in building nuclear power even though it didn't suddenly get any cheaper. What a coincidence.

As I said before: the cost is very very high. It is staggering, in fact. If you don't have a good non-economic reason to build it you don't.

So in most of the countries building nuclear power, civilian authorities are using civilian contractors to build civilian-run nuclear power using civilian scientists. They may be doing this with the intention of having the personnel, know-how, resources, and basic machines to be able to kick-start a nuclear weapons program if needed - fair enough. I'm still failing to see where the military-industrial complex is profiting from this arrangement.

> Poland is also one. Well, Poland wasn't so afraid of any geopolitical rivals 3 years ago. It has recently become afraid for... reasons. It has only recently developed an interest in building nuclear power even though it didn't suddenly get any cheaper. What a coincidence.

I wonder if any raw materials that Poland was using for power generation have become more expensive in recent years because of internal or external sources. Oh look, they're mining out their cheap coal, and Russia is cutting off access to cheap gas.

> As I said before: the cost is very very high. It is staggering, in fact. If you don't have a good non-economic reason to build it you don't.

Switzerland recently spent more on a complex underground pumped water energy storage system than South Korea spent on its most recent nuclear power plant - and the South Korean plant has more raw production capacity than the Swiss system has just storage capacity.

Nuclear power is only prohibitively expensive in countries which have lost (or never had) nuclear production know-how. SK proves that very well, and Japan is not far off. Of course, nuclear plants are highly capital intensive. But they are extremely long lasting. But high-capacity long-term energy storage is also extremely capital-intensive, and is required to have a secure energy grid with a high percentage of renewables. Renewables are only extremely cheap if you look at a relatively small percentage for variable peak production. And they are also requiring a massive overhaul of power grid management, which is another cost that is rarely discussed.

Decades of fear spread by the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the media have made any argument in favor of nuclear power a waste of time in Germany. It's really sad that the party which stands for climate protection and the environment is the main culprit for shutting down nuclear power in Germany, thereby keeping coal power running for now.

Looks as if all the anti nuclear attitudes was inspired by somebody with a load of gas and 2 big pipes...

German Greens lost big in elections last Sunday.

They should have repositioned to support nuclear, increase VAT, reduce waste, plant trees... there are so many battles they could have taken on!

I think they are so corrupted, they los their only reason to be.

To single out the only party in Germany that opposed NS2, that wanted to get away from Russian gas when 90% of Germans were against that, that wanted to supply Ukraine with weapons - all prior to the Ukraine invasion - and to pretend that they are in bed with Russians only shows how fucking clueless you are.

To be fair, the Greens were the only party to oppose Nord Stream 2. However, they did support (and where in power togehter with the SPD) the construction of Nord Stream 1, which was already part of the Energiewende plan, as cheap gas was (and still is) required for it.

On the other hand they were in government when the Nord Stream 1 agreement was made official and building began.

Sure, Russia that exports nuclear power plants and processes 50% of the world's uranium wants to get others' off of nuclear energy, when it's the energy source they have the tightest grip on.

How much money is in nuclear fuel vs gas? And how much power can russia enforce over countries addicted to its gas?

Well, we still don't even have a solution for nuclear waste. It's not like nuclear has no problems.

Of course there are solutions. Look at Finland.

Also, how many nuclear waste death do we have per year? How much do we pay for it's current storage? How does it change the climate? How much nuclear waste is there even? There is no nuclear waste problem. It's FUD.

Finland's Posiva long-term disposal plant are still doing trial runs after 40 years of work:

https://www.posiva.fi/en/index/news/pressreleasesstockexchan...

> Well, we still don't even have a solution for nuclear waste.

We do. The requirement for hugely complex disposal sites is mostly a political one. There's very little long-term hazardous waste that we need to take care of, and we already know how to store it for a very long time.

Only 0.2% of all waste is long term highly radioactive: https://international.andra.fr/sites/international/files/202...

>Decades of fear spread by the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the media have made any argument in favor of nuclear power a waste of time

Actually it's exclusively cost that made it a waste of time. The (quite valid) safety concerns are just a cherry on top of the staggering cost.

As it is sophisticated private insurers view it as too risky which is why the taxpayer has to step up to lavish the industry with free insurance against $800 billion Fukushima type events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industr...

Even before that the LCOE is 5x solar and wind. No, the reduced storage requirement doesn't bring 5x down to 1x. Not even close.

Ah yes, let's solely blame the party for the shut down the previous government ordered.

The shut down was decided on in 2000 under Schröder's Red-Green government. All following decision where just on how fast the shutdown had to happen.

Some numerical context: current installed capacity 34.8 GW (gas), about 39 GW (coal), 170 GW (solar and wind). Obviously the installed capacity for renewables is only half of the story, the output depends both on the respective input and on the capacity of the grid to accept electricity. And since the gas power plants serve as peaker plants even now, they're running only at 15% load.

https://gas.info/gas-im-energiemix/strom-aus-gas/versorgungs...

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...

As a transitional fuel source, gas turbines seem like a good choice. I still find their decision to decommission nuclear odd but having done so and with no appetite to reverse a gas fall back works fine. Easy to deploy, well understood tech and the least offensive of the carbon intense electricity sources.

They can sit on standby for ages and be up to load inside the window battery stacks would drain on. That's all you need and the battery can arbitrage and do FCAS outside of those times.

Germany has made many strategic errors in many domains over the last 20 years because of political and ideological priorities over pragmatism and long term thinking.

But all in all, at this point gas turbines make some sense, especially if they allow to speed up the phasing out of coal power, which is still 25+% of electricity in Germany.

We burn a lot of the gas that comes out of the ground off at the well.

Getting some energy out of that would be a net positive.

> because of political and ideological priorities over pragmatism

FWIW, depending on cheap Russian gas was very pragmatical and it worked well for the economy.

But not very strategic.

It wasn't, but also Germany's strategic options are limited. US, being its strategic ally, is also its economic rival, and will not hesitate using its advantage of having own energy source. Self-sufficiency solely on renewables is also not an option, at least short and middle term.

Germany had a reliable energy source with many sources of fuel.

And then turned it off for no good reason at all. (Lots of bad reasons).

They could start fracking... now their industry is going down, energy is going up and they cant even see US.

Leaving nuclear energy aside, European countries have massive reserves of shale gas. They decided not to exploit them and to be dependent on foreign powers instead. We read about Russia but now Germany imports from the US (shale gas!) and Qatar. The US have won the jackpot with the war in Ukraine: split Russia and Germany, and reaps the dollars as well.

Yep...

But I still don't understand how the people (and opposition politicians, businesses, etc.) don't get mad with the government about the nordstream issue.... the destruction caused a lot of damage to the german economy, ecologically it was a huge disaster, and somehow there is no blame game, no consequences, no nothing... some fingerpointing, some "we don't know", some "yeah maybe it was..", and quiet. It's like a local kebab store burned down, "we don't know exactly what happened, but we won't use too many resources to find out, because it's not worth it"... except that it's literally billions of damage in this case, and 'noone cares'.

I wouldn't be surprised if ALL German politicians were getting kickbacks for Russian gas. All politicians in power are very corrupt.

Germans have very weird relationship with russia. That we, east of germany and west of russia dont quite understand. They always think, that russia will be better this time. Quite naive. And dont want to anger it.

My feeling is that Germans just don't care about Eastern Europe somehow. Germans are generally comfortable knowing that the money they spend on Russian hydrocarbons will be used to attack and destabilise their "allies" to their East. As long as it doesn't directly impact them they don't care.

And what if it turns out that Germany is currently sending billions of euro to the country that blew it up? I don't think anyone in the government wants to answer this question

It doesn't even have to be a transitional fuel if we have cheap efuels.

Which is about as realistic as the idea of fueling these new gas power plants with (green) hydrogen.

The only problem with gas is that Germany does not have its own gas. After Russian supply stopped it has to buy it from Azerbaijan, which not only has its own trail of human and civil rights abuse as well as ongoing military aggression, but also is plausibly suspected in reselling the same Russian gas.

why they don't buy from norway?

A simple fast food meal in Norway costs $14. More expensive there..

Germany got about 43% of its natgas from Norway in 2023.

And 0% from Azerbaijan, as far as I can tell, though other EU countries did -- very little, although there may be plans for this to increase in the future.

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_g...

https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports

Nuclear can be a win-win. Build enough to reach peak use, and then use the extra capacity during low use hours for producing hydrogen for clean vehicle fuel. All at near zero CO2 emission.

Where is the gas comming from?

Still dreaming about restarting NordStream ...

I still wonder, how come noone cares who did it... or why the ones that do, don't get mad at the government. It was billions of damage, a huge ecological disaster, and everyone acts as if nothing has happened... there should be daily questioning of the politicians (by the journalists, etc.) about who did what, and what the reaction will be.

I think no one cares because basing your energy policy on buying gas from Russia is such an obviously stupid idea that no one wants to bring it up.

Russia is not your ally, Russia isn't even a reliable neutral party. Russia is explicitly the enemy of Europe and when Germans get that into their heads things will be a lot simpler.

Angela Merkel is more pragmatic than that.

She failed to come up with a workable energy policy and made Germany dependent on the thugs in Moscow as a result.

I mean... considering the rise of AfD, people do care.

Would you really not care if someone burned your car?

I don't think many people are voting for AfD because of gas pipes.

Nordstream isn't a case of someone burning down the German people's car. Its more like Russia persuaded the German people to pay for the chains and manacles which kept Germany captive. Sure you paid for them, but they were still your chains.

Its worth pointing out that Nordstream 2 never delivered any gas, and Nordstream 1 stopped delivering gas a year before the destruction, so its not like they were actually helping Germany's energy situation at all.

It should not have been built in the first place. That's where the billions were wasted. A strategical mistake.

bc the natural question after that would be "why do you care so much? Do you support russia? Do you want to pay money to the Russia's war machine?" And tbh these questions are somewhat valid. The NS blowing was a signal for germany to reorient it's dependency on other re-sources, be that from US liquified gas, or gas pipes from norway, or buy nuclear from france, or buy solar panels from china

It was the biggest terorist attack on german infrastructure ever. It was billions of investment and an ecological disaster.... why wouldn't I care? Why do you not care?

If someone burned your car today, would you care? I mean... do you wan't to support chinese spare parts manufacturers?

the biggest ecological disaster was building this pipe, blowing it just made it worse

What do you mean? For months there were many long detailed news articles and segments, government inquiries, international cooperation between the Baltic states, Denmark, and Sweden. They are still ongoing. Scientists are still monitoring how much gas dissolved in the waters as we write this.

Previously when it was built, the environmental lobby was raging mad that it got green-lit (and even the military leadership sort of opposed it by saying that "it affects our security") but the commercial interests and ruling parties allowed it to go through anyway.

I think it was a Russian operation, it makes most sense to me that they would try to deprive Europe of gas and make Europe war-weary to stop supporting Ukraine sooner. But at the same time I would not be very surprised that a small group of Ukrainian operatives (as rumoured) did it to deprive Russia of income from the gas line.

> I think it was a Russian operation,

But the russians have the valves, and the "just stop the sancions and we bring back the gas supply"... why would they destroy their own pipes.

And again.. it's what "you think"... is there proof?

> But at the same time I would not be very surprised that a small group of Ukrainian operatives (as rumoured) did it to deprive Russia of income from the gas line.

Ok, so you don't know who it was... but it might be a biggest terrorist attack on german infrastructure, and the "antiterrorist" action by germany is to send them more weapons?

> But the russians have the valves […]

Why spout this nonsense?

Gazprom were (are) contractually obliged to deliver gas through the pipe as long as they are able to do so. If they just shut if off Germany and Netherlands and USA could legally seize anything they needed to satisfy the contract from the company's international assets.

Only with a complete change in leadership of Russia - which doesn’t seem likely in the near term.

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