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throw0101c

If nuclear was kept around, would its capacity allow for fossil fuels to be reduced more?

Going by this chart:

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

* Also: https://www.iea.org/countries/germany

* Also also: https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions#what-are-the...

Nuclear was previously providing 22 GW (2022) to 20 GW (2010) of capacity, down to 12.1 GW (2011), then 8 (2019): currently (2023) lignite can output 18.6 GW of capacity, and hard coal is providing 18.9 GW.

For output (per first link), at its peak nuclear provided ~150 TWh, while coal (lignite+hard) provided 120 TWh in 2023.

So AFAICT, coal capacity could have been cut in half (perhaps even not running that often) if existing nuclear was kept around. (New nuclear did not have to be constructed, just keep around the current stuff longer until (a) fossils are retired, and (b) more renwwables are built out).

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I was recently arguing with a German who thought burning coal was completely fine as long as you were burning less than you used to. He didn’t see the reason for nuclear at all.

Meanwhile we had significant protests over the ever expanding surface mines feeding those coal plants.

What do they think about paying much higher electricity bills than in most other EU countries?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

This wouldn't change with nuclear energy because the price is bound to the most energy source.

There is a reason the energy companies still keep coal power plants. Without the price and profit would go down.

Aside effects of the Ukraine war, it feels like the bill people actually pay has not risen too much in recent years. Germans famously do not have air conditioning in their homes and most switched all the lights to LEDs, leading to substantial bill reductions in many cases. Electricity for cars or for heating can be obtained at about 25% lower prices and modern houses are, in general, quite energy efficient. So I'd say that the high energy prices are hindering the construction of new factories/keeping the old ones (which can turn out to have bad effects soon), but everyday life is not too much bothered by them.

While that covers only the second half of 2023, the prices since then have come down significantly.

Germany was never cheap, it was and is still in the top 5. What you also need to consider in those charts, what is the average salary. While it is comparable to Italy, take a closer look to Hungary how expansive it is there.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1267500/eu-monthly-whole...

Yes, but I pay 34Cents for electricity in Germany, and my friend in Netherlands pays 24-26Cents. That's a huge deal.

> what is the average salary

Norway, Finland, Netherlands are still much cheaper and they are rich.

I can get from 25 cent/kWh (Elektrizität Berlin) to 39 cent/kWh (N-Ergie). It is what you choose.

> Norway, Finland, Netherlands are still much cheaper and they are rich.

Norway has the terrain for building hydroelectric power plants.

And Finland has nuclear energy, which covers 33% of its energy needs. And so could Germany.

That's almost certainly just a benefit of brexit, if we were still in the EU we'd be paying the highest, without any competition.

Which company would you trust to build and operate an nuclear power plant without putting profit over security?

Any of them? Coal is far more dangerous to human health and life than nuclear.

Pick your quasi-legitimate source, but they all agree that coal is ~10X more deadly than nuclear.

> Coal-fired energy chains are estimated to cause 12 times more deaths per gigawatt-ampere-year than nuclear energy chains, and coal is estimated to cause 820% more deaths per terawatt-hour of electricity produced than nuclear

Who said the choice is between coal and nuclear?

I prefer solutions that don't emit poisonous substances into the atmosphere nor make areas dangerous for thousands of years in case of accidents.

> […] nor make areas dangerous for thousands of years in case of accidents.

After ~250 years spent nuclear fuel is only dangerous if you (a) eat it, or (b) grind it up and snort it like cocaine.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx0p6QLMpg4

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t2tYQsK94

The long-lived stuff throws off mostly alpha particles (blocked by a sheet of paper) or beta particles (thin aluminium). The first few years (6-10) of spent fuel throws off the riskiest particles (gamma), and so the fuel sits in cooling pools for that period.

The co-founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, Geraldine Thomas, has no problem with nuclear power: "Look at the science – smoking and obesity are more harmful than radiation":

* https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/26/obesity-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Thomas

> Who said the choice is between coal and nuclear?

If an existing nuclear plant was shuttered while a coal plant was still running, that was the choice.

It doesn't really matter as long as they can deliver what you ordered. Which you have to check regardless. So it's the skill of the buyer that decides the result.

We have seen how that worked out in aviation with Boeing.

Build: Siemens, AEG.

Operate: PreussenElektra, EnBW, Vattenfall, RWE, EWN.

Or was that a rhetorical question for a solution with a zero catastrophic failure rate (in Germany)?

Zero is impossible but Siemens, AEG, Vattenfall are examples of companies that value profit over security.

Siemens can't even built proper WEC, what's the nuclear equivalent of blade breakage on wind turbine?

Have there been catastrophic failures of fission reactors in Germany built by Siemens?

Are you familiar with functional safety classification and how this affects the development of systems? Would you draw conclusions from the failure rate of Siemens vacuum cleaners to the company's capability of building fission reactors?

I would just like to find out more, do you have any sources I can look up to learn more about the "risk" topic?

Don't those functional safety classifications exist for WECs?

Now add the long history of Siemens briberies and the trust in that company goes to zero.

> Which company would you trust to build and operate an nuclear power plant without putting profit over security?

Whomever runs the nuclear power plants in Ontario, Canada, where I live:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Canada#O...

* https://www.ieso.ca/Learn/Ontario-Electricity-Grid/Supply-Mi...

* https://ieso.ca/power-data § "Supply" tab

I live and work <50km from a nuclear power station.

Even if they had wanted to, it would not have been possible, as the required fuel rods could not simply be ordered. The operators were therefore also against continued operation

Other EU member countries are running their own NPPs just fine. Sounds like a problem with lack of motivation.

Nope, it is "problem" of past decisions. The past decision were, that 2022 should be the end date. All companies planed for that. You simply cannot change such decisions in an empty market. BTW the fuel is mostly coming from Kazakhstan. Does that ring a bell?

So buy it elsewhere? All I hear are excuses and why the current situation is someone else's fault, either previous governments or other countries because they wouldn't just shut up and die so Germany can have cheaper energy. Which they use to overproduce stuff and dump it in the rest of the EU, while calling everyone else lazy. Here's a hint, if your economy doesn't work unless you have the lowest energy prices in history, it's broken and needs to change.

Scary Kazatomprom as a fuel source is an invented problem.

Nuclear fuel market is global with many producers. Fuel price is a tiny fraction of the nuclear electricity cost. Agree to a long-term contract at double today's price and there will be a line of companies running to sign it.

Cameco (and others) put some of their nuclear mining into conservation because there was not enough buyers. Uranium is one of the most abundant elements, the only reason for the shortage of fuel is the politicians reluctance to make nuclear a pillar of the energy production.

> BTW the fuel is mostly coming from Kazakhstan. Does that ring a bell?

Then switch to Niger or Namibia (where France partly gets theirs from), or Canada, or Australia.

You certainly don't mean France

It seems hard to evaluate that in isolation. They’ve been planning on shuttering their nuclear plants for the last 20 years or so, right? Would they have invested as much in renewables if that wasn’t the plan?

The plan was to talk about renewables while buying Russian gas, since solar can't possibly cover the consumption.

It's not a coincidence that the German prime minister from the era when they decided to phase out nuclear now works for Gazprom and Rosneft. He literally said the West caused Russia to invade Georgia in 2008 (what a fucking moron).

In normal countries this is called treason. In Germany it's "developing trade relations".

> It's not a coincidence that the German prime minister from the era when they decided to phase out nuclear now works for Gazprom and Rosneft.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder

> In normal countries this is called treason. In Germany it's "developing trade relations".

You must not forget that Gerhard Schröder won the 2002 election by promising that Germany won't join the USA in invading the Iraq, a promise that many German citizens venerate him for. For basically everyone in Germany it was obvious that Putin is a criminal, but the mood in German society at that time was that the Iraq invasion of George W. Bush was to be considered a genocide. So, having a choice between continuing being aligned with a nation/president who wants Germans to join a genocide vs seeking alignment with a criminal, Schröder's politics of seeking rapprochement with Russia/Putin was rather well-regarded in the German society.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Area+Germany+*+1+kW%2Fm...

Germany alone, using PV alone, has the potential to supply the entire planet's electricity demand 3.5 times over, even when using medium efficiency cells and also accounting for their capacity factor.

Meeting just Germany's own domestic demand purely with PV would take 0.8% of the land area: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28514.6e9+kWh%2F1+y...

This is about a tenth of the land area that's already been built on: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/lan_lcv_ovw/d...

Also, this ignores the ample German wind resources that currently supplies a bit over twice as much as their PV, with all renewables collectively being 52% of Germany's gross electricity production: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

Of course, the people doing this might have simply not believed that any of this was possible, and had some villainous scheme in mind that accidentally went wrong in a way that gave everyone else substantial benefits — I've still not seen "The Mouse That Roared", but I'm aware of the plot and have that in mind.

On the other hand nuclear was just 6% of the energy mix in its last year.

On the other hand Germany is aiming to building out 13 GW of solar in just 2024 (capacity factors non-withstanding).

> On the other hand nuclear was just 6% of the energy mix in its last year.

And coal is 25-30% currently.

If nuclear was higher, how much lower could have coal have been? How much lower could have emissions be without coal?

Nuclear is a legacy technology which is on the way out. German society didn't want to be stuck with it and footing a tremendous bill for subsidizing and later dismantling the technology in the end. Pretty much all industrialized countries with the exception of China is going in the same direction.

> Nuclear is a legacy technology which is on the way out.

Don't tell that to Ontario-Canada

> Demand for electricity across Canada is forecast to double in the next 25 years, and all the signs from Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government indicate that nuclear energy will supply the biggest portion of the province's additional power needs.

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-power...

and Poland:

> In December 2021, BWXT Canada signed an agreement, valued at up to $1 billion, to build key components in Ontario to support the deployment of Small Modular Reactors in Poland.

* https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1004711/ontario-lands-maj...

> German society didn't want to be stuck with it and footing a tremendous bill for subsidizing and later dismantling the technology in the end.

Ontario is not dismantling but refurbishing:

* https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-comple...

The bill is such that nuclear is the second-cheapest source of power in Ontario (Table 2):

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...

> Nuclear is a legacy technology which is on the way out.

What do you mean by "legacy technology"?

> German society didn't want to be stuck with it and footing a tremendous bill for subsidizing and later dismantling the technology in the end.

Renewables have received 120 billion in subsidies last year.

Germany probably paid much more dearly for the closure of plants that could have operated for another decades.

> Pretty much all industrialized countries with the exception of China is going in the same direction.

Or they do wishful thinking on renewables. It depends on the point of view in the end.

120bn EUR would be more than Germany spends on electricity generation in total (considering that Germany generates a bit less than 600bn kwh p.a. in electricity and wholesale electricity prices were €95.18/MWh in 2023)

Yes, forgive me, I'm talking worldwide.

"A 2020 report by IRENA9 tracked some $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020, and found that around 70% went to fossil fuels. Only 20% went to renewable power generation, 6% to biofuels and just over 3% to nuclear. “This overwhelming imbalance of subsidies between fossil fuels and clean energy is a drag on us achieving the Paris climate goals,” says Taylor, who wrote the report. The balance of these numbers varies from year to year, because fossil-fuel subsidies swing around depending largely on the price of oil, he adds."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02847-2#:~:text=A...

Among other things, it is important to note that more than half of that money comes from the EU.

Thank you! Sounds plausible.

China also spends a lot on subsidies for their solar industry (at least this is often mentioned).

> If nuclear was kept around, would its capacity allow for fossil fuels to be reduced more?

No. Germany is not even using its full potential for electrical energy at the moment.

> Nuclear was previously providing 22 GW (2022) to 20 GW (2010) of power, down to 12.1 GW (2011), then 8 (2019): currently (2023) lignite is outputing 18.6 GW of power, and hard coal is providing 18.9 GW.

Those numbers are irrelevant, they are not telling the usage. You can't freely replace one energy-source with some other. You need to look at the application and which energy-form it can use. And in Germany, the big historical problem is that the conversion to electrical applications was slow.

> Those numbers are irrelevant, they are not telling the usage.

Edit post to note capacity versus output:

* nuclear was providing 150 TWh at its peak (~2004)

* coal is currently providing 120 TWh

So nuclear could have covered all the output of coal, and then some.

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

Again: "cannot replace"! Coal is providing a very different form of energy, used with very different applications. Directly comparing the numbers, is comparing apples and bananas. Your case has no foundation.

> Coal is providing a very different form of energy, used with very different applications.

What are those? Nuclear and renewables uses are indeed very different. Nuclear and coal for base load -- not so much. At least this is what I heard for decades. I would be interested to read a refutation.

Base load is more of a fairy tail. For the applications I'm talking about, I explained them in a sibling comment.

> Base load is more of a fairy tail.

So the >9 GW of power provided 24/7 by nuclear on the "Supply" tab is a figment of imagination?

* https://ieso.ca/power-data

The importance of the base load is a fairy tale, not the numbers. Nuclear plants idling are a burden for the grid. Without them, you can manage it far more flexible, it seems.

> Coal is providing a very different form of energy, used with very different applications.

As an EE, I do not understand "different form of energy". How are the electrons and EM fields different between nuclear and coal generation?

As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, we got rid of all of our coal in 2014 and have lots of nuclear:

* https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal

Really? You've never learned about chemical processes, heat, conversions of energy? Isn't this something you would learn in school?

Well, ok, then here is an ELI5: If you have a stove, running with coal, then you can't use electricity to fuel it. You need to buy a new stove, which is able to run with electricity. And if some of those stoves are very expensive stoves, running in an industrial complex or a chemical plant, then you need to invest a very high amount of money to replace the parts of the complex or plant.

> As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, we got rid of all of our coal in 2014 and have lots of nuclear:

Is that the same Canada who sold their uranium-mining or nuclear rod-productions to Russia?

> Really? You've never learned about chemical processes, heat, conversions of energy? Isn't this something you would learn in school?

[Edit: in another comment in this sub-thread.]

> Is that the same Canada who sold their uranium-mining or nuclear rod-productions to Russia?

No, this one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McArthur_River_uranium_mine

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar_Lake_mine

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_River,_Ontario#Economy

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Canada

Grid energy sources vary in how dispatchable and dependable they are. Fossil fuel plants are generally quite dispatchable and dependable, in the sense that you can spin up or shut down the generator (there are different types of fossil fuel power plants actually, the some of the worst ones environmentally are called “peaker plants,” they only turn on when there is very high demand, so they tend not to be very efficient).

Renewables obviously have some dependability problems (the sun might not be shining one day, the wind might not be blowing). These can be dealt with, but it isn’t free, it should be seen as an engineering opportunity.

I did an EE degree, but was more interested in digital and electronics stuff. But they talked enough about the grid a bit in my intro classes before everyone specialized… I’m confused that somebody would respond “as an EE” and ignore the grid. Everyone knew we were hiding a lot behind the circle with the little sin wave on it.

> I’m confused that somebody would respond “as an EE” and ignore the grid.

This thread is generally talking about electricity, and give that most 'traditional' methods of generation involve boiling water to make steam, there's nothing special about coal or atoms generating the heat.

Dispatchability is an important element of the grid, but that is also possible with nuclear: one can keep the reactor thermally running, but have mechanisms to divert the generated steam away from the turbines and quench it. Given the up-front capex (and low marginal cost of megawatts) of nuclear this is not economically ideal, but it is not technically impossible.

That’s fair. Looking at the other comments in the thread, I think I gave your comment an unfairly pessimistic read and the other comment an unreasonably optimistic one.

Are you using coal for the peaks? You can replace coal with nuclear for base load, can't you?

Coal is used for chemical processes, heating (locally and remote) and also generating electrical energy (also locally and remote). From those, only remote electricity can easily be replaced, remote heating might be replaceable, but would take some investments and not sure if this wouldn't be more expensive and quite inefficient. Anything locally working can't be replaced easily, and forget chemical processes.

And yes, coal is also used to compensate for fluctuations, but those are only very little numbers. AFAIK the harm from having nuclear plants idling around is far bigger.

> Coal is used for chemical processes, heating (locally and remote) and also generating electrical energy (also locally and remote).

What do you mean by "chemical processes"? What about burning coal is different than burning natural/methane gas for these "chemical processes"?

How is the heat from coal different than the heat from gas or nuclear? Is not water boiled to generate steam in all cases?

If coal seems to be special/different, and not replaceable by other generation forms, why is the plan to get rid of it?

* https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/coal-phase-out-ge...

* https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-shut-down-seven...

Gosh, is this the level of your understanding? Not everything in the energy-sector is about burning down something and getting electricity from the heat.

Coal is using in chemical processes for smelting, producing steel and other metals, creating concrete and other chemical compounds.

> If coal seems to be special/different, and not replaceable by other generation forms, why is the plan to get rid of it?

Because the plans are about replacing whole processes, fabrics, plants, devices, products... It's not as simple as just switching a cable or making a new contract with a new provider. You basically have to build a new house, and that's time-consuming and expensive.

> Coal is using in chemical processes for smelting, producing steel and other metals, creating concrete and other chemical compounds.

Canada has lots of steel/metal production, and yet Ontario and Quebec (two largest local production centres), have managed to either not have coal in the first place or get rid of it.

Ontario gave a timeline to retire coal, and there's no reason why Germany could not have done the same:

* https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal

This would have reduced emissions and improve air quality.

Use of coke in smelting is not energy production and therefore outside of scope for the coal sourced energy discussion. Energy for smelting seems like base load to me since you can't just turn off a smelter randomly and instead they run for years at a time.

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