The Great German Energy Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The Great German Energy Experiment

technologyreview.com

243 pointspdelgallego203 comments

Great article - upvoted. That it's inconceivable that the US or UK government could think about spending such an amount (~5% of GDP!) on a long-term science and engineering project speaks volumes about why the Germans are where they are, and why we're where we are, economically speaking.

From an engineering point of view I think it's foolish to turn off the nuke plants, but public opinion is what it is, and this causes the regulatory requirements to prevent nuclear from being economically viable.

The article does a good job of covering the risks, but personally I'd bet on the Germans here - even if the 'Energiewende' doesn't pay off per se, the rewards from the science and engineering knowhow will be huge. The only comparable project I can think of is the Apollo Program, though a quick google suggests that was never more than 1% of GDP, and the returns from the science on that were massive and lasted for decades. Likewise, CERN, which was about as blue-sky as things get, gave us the World Wide Web: completely tangential to its stated purpose, but what kind of rate of return did that give us?

So here's a question for the peanut gallery: has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run?

(On a side note, I really want to have a stickybeak around a 30MW AC/DC converter!)

> So here's a question for the peanut gallery: has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run?

Does the superconducting super collider fulfill your criterias (let's forget for a minute that it is about destroying particles in new and exciting ways) ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

Interesting, thanks. A reference from that page - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/crisis-... - suggests:

One thing that killed the SSC was an undeserved reputation for over-spending. There was even nonsense in the press about spending on potted plants for the corridors of the administration building. Projected costs did increase, but the main reason was that, year by year, Congress never supplied sufficient funds to keep to the planned rate of spending. This stretched out the time and hence the cost to complete the project. Even so, the SSC met all technical challenges, and could have been completed for about what has been spent on the LHC, and completed a decade earlier.

Leading one to believe that it was actually a good project that was stiffed by a congress in search of tax cuts. Who knows whether that's true, of course.

I don't think it's reasonable to count incidental benefits from projects, such as the WWW from CERN. The same basic problem of sharing information between scientists would still have existed without CERN, and who's to say it or something even better, with fewer of HTTP/HTML's limitations wouldn't have been developed if TBL had been working on a different project?

The space race argument is another old sore, it turns out many of the discoveries ascribed to it were actually developed independently, but then were used by NASA who ended up getting the credit. Teflon is often cited, but was actually discovered in 1938 and patented in 1945.

Yes a lot of great technologies were developed for Apollo and used in other areas, but many or perhaps all of them would have been developed eventually anyway.

I don't think it's reasonable to discount all the subproducts from such an investment just because many would have been developed eventually anyway.

In this vein, it's just as easy to discount the people who did the inventions/discoveries because someone else would have eventually made the discovery/invention anyway.

Of course that the main project has to be sound, and cannot be justified only due to the subproducts, but "would have happened anyway" is not a solid argument to discount the subproducts, mainly because you cannot know if it would, nor when it would.

Consider the invention of the airplane. The Wrights certainly invented it, but if you take a good look at what the other experimenters were doing, it's a pretty good bet that others would have gotten the pieces together in probably another 5 years.

(The Wrights succeeded arguably because they had the first directed research & development program, while the others basically just bumbled about trying things in a seat-of-the-pants manner. None of them, for example, seem to have done any calculation of how much wing area was needed or how much power was required.)

On the other hand, consider how vaccination was invented or any other "accidental" discovery/invention.

I'm aware that there are inventions that even happen at almost exactly the same time, especially when the research on the subject is ripe enough.

But when chance is a factor or the subject is not researched enough (or at all) then the confidence of an hypothesized invention happening in a close timeframe to the actual invention diminishes greatly.

Governments are quite often rather inefficient, but they are really large. For example, rockets could not have been developed by private enterprise, because it took something like thirty years (and substantial investment) to build somewhat reliable rockets. [1]

A bit more abstract: businesses are good at small incremental development steps, since most of the steps need to have a market. In contrast a government can invest in projects which are both very long term and very expensive, because they have a reliable revenues (taxes).

[1]much longer version of the argument: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0...

"has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run"

Having been on large EU funded projects (all part of the ESPRIT II program), I honestly can't believe that they provided good value for money. Now there might have been a lot of indirect benefits, but I'm not aware of the results of the projects I worked on being directly used by anyone.

Also the US Space Shuttle had a cost 1000-fold cost overrun, if measured by cost to orbit per unit of mass.

The economics are easy. Money on war 'invests' your resources into other countries (no return, negative return likely), vs. money on innovation and infrastructure in your own country (positive return, long-term; potential for making other things more efficient, more cost-efficient become higher).

Sorry, but that's nonsense, you cannot underestimate the impact of military technologies like jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue... The whole of the modern world is based on military tech. Plus you gainfully employ lots of people (e.g. teaching trades to people who haven't done well in mainstream education) and as a free bonus you get the defence of the realm.

You are comparing the benefits of war to the wrong base. The civilians wouldn't have just burned all the riches (like war literally does to some extent), but would have used it to develop new products, too.

Nowadays the military actually uses consumer electronics.

You need to separate contexts of war and innovation. An example, this innovation could come through a budget for space exploration, or other means of transportation. The world is based on science tech. Yes, a lot was discovered in science through military budgets, but it's not exclusive to being put into the military - which I think can easily be argued has huge wastes of resources just by looking at industrial complex structures.

>jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue

Don't forget computers: Turing's work relies heavily on his experiences working at Bletchley Park, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and the calculational needs of the Manhattan Project drove a lot of early computer development.

Yes, but Konrad Zuse was driven to do his early computers by the tedium of doing arithmetic by hand in his engineering bureau. So we would have gotten computers anyway.

Yes and no. It is true that Zuse's early work, starting in 1936, was done on his own and (I will grant) motivated by non-military calculations. But that early work was on a purely mechanical computer, like the analytical engine and the difference engine of Charles Babbage -- and no mechanical designs were ever realized (except much later as part of the "retrocomputing" movement when their computing capabilities were no longer needed). By the time Zuse started incorporating electrical relays into his designs, in 1939, he was a member of the German military. It looks like he might have left the German military before the end of the Nazi era, but that matters little because the whole of German society was organized around military needs and military goals.

More importantly, the argument that "we would have gotten X anyways" can be applied to almost any technological development. Speed of development is important, however, even if all you care about is whether humans reach a certain level of development eventually (because the longer it takes to reach that level, the greater the chance that one of many potential catastrophes causes humans to die out or to lose the ability to invent the radically new technologies).

Some large scale projects that come to mind include Panama Canal, USA Highway system, Alaskan pipeline although you could argue they did destroy some things.

Theere's a basic role of government that's widely agreed upon - that it keeps us from hurting one another and clarity on the use of roads and telecommunications channels and the like. And I realise that opinions diverge above that, but I'll put mine.

Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient, and seems like a bad place to look for inspiration in engineering. When governments set up things like NASA they become political institutions themselves. It's easy for them to grow into organisations that seek self-preservation and always more money to support the glamour of their leadership.

When government gets involved in a field, you get a cross-polination between field-experts and government people. Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving.

Given all these problems, I don't think we should be attracted to the idea of governments taxing us to spend the money on difficult-to-quantify never-never projects. They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

> They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

Or, if you agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing: Tax carbon usage, and, since you don't like the government spending money, just distribute the proceeds equally among the population. This works out to a net impact, modulo transactions costs, on the average carbon-emitting person of zero, but rewards and punishes the outliers.

A lot of the reason why there is no natural incentive to develop new sources of energy is that the government works hand in hand with energy companies to prevent it for example, via drilling rights, subsidized prices making it uneconomical to research better sources because the companies can guarantee their profits.

What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing?

Then my comment doesn't apply.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion.

If you actually want to have a high carbon-future, you might even opt for a negative tax, i.e. subsidy. The `proceeds' that get divided equally would turn into costs. If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them. But with a tax that's too high you would get less CO_2 emissions than your society would agree on as optimal. With a tax that's too low, you'd get more total emissions than people would agree on. At the moment our situation is essentially equivalent to a tax/redistribution of zero.

> Then my comment doesn't apply.

You're still going to tax me....

> The level of the tax should be chosen so

In other words, "lump it".

> If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

You're not going to let me.

> For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them.

That can't be true if the result is lower CO2 emissions.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to compensate small scale CO2 sequestration. (It would be too costly to do so, but the result is the same - your scheme can't treat all CO2 the same even though your reason for taxing CO2 says that it is.)

Under this model, how would we end up with something like the Interstate Highway system?

Hopefully we wouldn't have! I'd rather have had more intact city cores and fewer drivers.

Probably my major objection to the system, urban freeways, didn't have to be part of the system, and Eisenhower apparently personally did not want them to be, see http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.htm#question23a Having destructive elements added to a giant plan usually seems to come with selling it though.

The German energy plan described in the article I'd bet involves a lot of tradeoffs to get support from various players. It sounds way riskier than say just more massively taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing energy R&D. But presumably those aren't politically feasible.

Another political infeasibility (I'd guess) that surely has been suggested elsewhere: Germans should instead get a large % of solar energy (or derived revenues) produced in southern Europe to pay for bailouts. This would also mean solar panels deployed more effectively, and local Greek, etc, labor employed for installation.

I also think government dilutes the effectiveness of the experts it employs, but at the same time the private sector is amazingly, exceedingly incapable of seeing benefit from anything but immediate profits. Investing in highly risky pilot programs which have high costs and uncertain benefits is something the private sector, except perhaps a few optimistic billionaires, would never do. If we had never supported difficult-to-quantify never-never projects, we wouldn't be finding exoplanets, we would have never discovered that asteroids are clumps of unfathomably abundant resources, we would have never gotten to the Moon, and Europeans would never have explored the New World, because the benefits at the time seemed dubious and the funding came from governments.

I am optimistic just because I have a high amount of trust for German government. They are a lot more cautious and less bandwagon-hopping and more capable of pulling stuff like this off whereas for most other industrialized governments the Energiewende would just be a dramatic stage show created by former-execs-turned-bureaucrats to put taxpayer dollars into contractor's pockets without any concern for actual results.

I think you're overlooking the age of exploration, funded mostly by private interests, and things like the first transatlantic cable.

Ah, but maybe he's not overlooking, for one example, the broadband monopoly or (essentially non-competitive) duopoly that exists in contemporary American society.

Compare what we've got with countries where the government owns the physical medium and leases it to a variety of bit-carriers--it's tough to argue against that kind of observable evidence.

There are plenty of cases where government stewardship of the playing field--with private companies competing on that playing field--works out for the great benefit of the citizenry.

"Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient" [citation needed]

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Oh, it was all opinion.

That's fine.

In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector (ever seen the waste and mismanagement going on in these huge megacorps? it's insane!), and by definition can be _more_ cost-effective than the private sector because there is no need to turn a profit. Private businesses have, built in, a bit of skimming off the top for the owners (and there's nothing wrong with that, of course--that's part of why people start businesses), and government-run services by definition do not. They're not profit-seeking services. They're public services.

(You may disagree on what ought to be a public service, but once we're all on the same page that the government ought to do some things, it's just a matter of hashing out what those ought to be...)

Also...wait... NASA has grown into an organization that works for the glory of its leadership? what? sorry...again...what?

During the 20th century there were many attempts at government-directed economies, some very large. In every instance they underperformed free market economies.

We tried it. It doesn't work as well.

I didn't say anything about a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, either.

... Hey, I discovered a great site the other day:

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

You said "In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector." Directly refuting you is not a strawman.

I'm sorry, maybe you can explain it like I'm five.

What does the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the public or private sector have to do with a centrally-planned economy?

Or, let me be charitable (because I think I know what you were getting at...) and instead put it to you this way:

Let's say government-financed or government-run health care is more efficient or more cost-effective than privately-run health care, because there's no privately-run insurance company that exists to extract a bit of dosh from every doctor-patient transaction.

(And safe money's on government-financed/run health care buying better health care for its citizens, dollar for dollar and measuring on a variety of health outcomes. I've seen a lot of arguments from theory that "more free markets, less regulation" would do as good a job, or better, but I haven't seen evidence of that, just arguments from theory.)

Does this mean that a country that adopts a single-payer or government-run health care system for its citizens has _also_ adopted a centrally planned--or in your words, "government-directed"--economy?

I think we are getting hung up on different usages of the word "efficient."

Government can be efficient at delivering a well-defined service, or meeting a well-defined goal. For example Medicare is a pretty efficient program, and we did make it to the Moon with NASA.

Efficiency can also refer to the allocation of capital toward innovations with the greatest expected payoff or outcome. This is where freely operating private markets outperformed government planning by a large margin during the 20th century.

I thought we were discussing this usage of "efficient" since cturner referred to "picking winners".

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Citation provided: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#American_exa...

Being German and having voted Green most of my life (until the pirate party came along), I still watch those energy subsidies with suspicion. I am just not certain the money is spent in an efficient way here. As for the jobs in the green energy sector, apparently China already (or still) is cheaper than Germany in producing solar power cells. So much for that investment.

"apparently China already (or still) is cheaper than Germany in producing solar power cells"

Yeah, but that's because China can violate any worker rights under the Sun, and pollute as much as it wishes in the process (and producing solar cells pollutes quite a bit).

What's the problem?

You close the nukes so everyone with an "Atomkraft Nein Danke" sticker on their VW votes for you.

You give huge feed in tarrif subsidy to anyone who owns a house to put panels on their roof - so the countryside votes for you.

You continue to subsidize coal so the Ruhr votes for you. But burn the coal in Poland and ship the power back - so there is no acid rain to worry about.

A perfect (if expensive) solution for everyone (unless you live east of Poland)

Other countries ripping the technology off is part of the plan, as far as I understood it.

We can talk them into using less fossil fuels (probably won't work), or use incentives (which would again cost money), or we can create a by then cheap technology for getting Co2-free energy which will be stolen by everyone.

Comparing costs from climate change adaption and avoidance shows that avoidance is far cheaper - and in both cases the developed countries will have to carry the majority. (Just imagine the situation if half of Asia and Africa's harvests fail.)

The investment here is not just an economic one, it goes much further.

The problem is that this money is spent not on how to make usable "green" energy but how to be more efficient in consuming gov's subsidies to "green" technologies.

You are equating spending towards merely manufacturing PV arrays and wind plants with spending on R&D, that is not the same thing. Apollo isn't even a remotely comparable program because that was the creation of new technologies. The comparable program here would be the interstate highway system, perhaps.

Not ~5%GDP.

"the country will spend somewhere between $125 billion and "$250 billion on infrastructure expansion and subsidies in the next eight years—between 3.5 and 7 percent of Germany's 2011 GDP"

The sentence is a bit confusing but I think they mean this:

~5% of 2011 GDP / 8 years = ~0.6% 2011GDP per year.

I don't like this. Instead of heavily subsidizing some technologies, they should tax externalities (i.e. pollution) and let the markets do the rest. It's annoying having to pay 15% more energy bills because somebody has decided that wind and solar are the hot thing of the moment.

Bad, really bad. Same way of thinking that brought us to the debt crisi in Europe.

> they should tax externalities (i.e. pollution)

Because that is a really difficult problem to solve. It's easier to tax CO2 emissions, but how do you tax nuclear waste? And by how much?

Difficult question and even more so when you take a look at the Asse II desaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II

Taxing external effects like pollution does nothing to ensure the taxes drive benefit toward the technology (renewables) the taxes were created to spur.

If you go looking for technology breakthrough by tax, you'll find nothing unless a particular technology breakthrough is able to be produced in said time and place. Which is why the approach doesn't inherently work, nothing guarantees a meaningful tech breakthrough is waiting in the wings, it might take 50 years for all you know.

On the negative effect side, by attaching the new pollution taxes, you're removing private capital that could have been put toward innovation.

Then to top it off, deciding how to measure and tax pollution and what should be or should not be defined as pollution, is rife with incredible disagreement (and that is not going to change). The games politicians start playing when you open that can of worms....

It's not in any way inherently a better way to go.

Europe also brought us the air travel tax, which does target externalities and seems close to sparking a trade war because it covers all flights in the EU, not all EU-based airlines. It's difficult to do.

To everybody who thinks energy right now is too expensive.

A couple of friends and I built a bike generator station for five bikes. We are using DC-Motors as dynamos and lead batterys for buffering the output.

Five bikers in total can generate between 220W to 250W for an extended time. Let assume they bike at 200W for five hours. They then will have generated one kilowatthour of electricity, which costs 25ct. I'm pretty sure they will be happy with their five cent per person when they get off the bikes after five hours.

Energy is dirt cheap.

Bike generators are powered by people. People biking require time. What is the labor or opportunity cost of having all of these people sustaining 250W per hour or essentially a .25kW-hour? Just a thought but that doesn't sound cheap.

That's exactly what jsilence is saying. Energy from the grid is so incredibly cheap that you're using it without a second thought on things you would never consider doing without a grid. It could go up hundredfold before becoming expensive.

Also, kWh/hour is just a kilowatt.

Here is an explanation of power and energy term confusion from wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour#Confusion_of_kilo...

Ironic that you should link to that page, given that your grandparent post contains the phrase "250W per hour or essentially a .25kW-hour".

It is actually totally different.

In the past the governments and the companies gave a shit about public opinion. Government money was used to research and build the nuclear industry. The electricity companies were huge monopolies. Currently we have four huge electricity producers which nicely divide the market into four regions. Competition? Zero. Government support? Max. That brought us huge coal power plants whic brought a lot of environmental problems and a fleet of very expensive nuclear power plants.

Keep in mind that Germany is a relatively small country with little resources (mainly coal) and more than 80 million people.

Several decades ago the green movement was started to be a lobby against this block of politics and industry.

They stopped the expansion of nuclear power and the build up of even more powerful monopolies. They also stopped much of the coal power plants from polluting the country.

The voters brought the green party into power. First they were in regional parliaments, then in the Bundestag and eventually they were even part of the Bundesregierung (Schroeder/Fischer). The latest coup was that they lead the government in one of the Bundesländer where actually is one of the hearts of the German industry.

This happened because the voter placed them there. Over time also the conservative, right wing party, the CDU and its sister CSU, learned to support environmental policies. Part of their conservative ideology is the love to the country and to preserve its nature ('Wertkondervative'). Chancellor Merkel herself has a Dr. in Quantum Chemistry and she was responsible some years ago for the ministry which is concerned with environment and reactor safety. She is an expert on these topics.

What the voter now wants is to put more market, more competition into the energy landscape with a preference for renewable energy. You can see who is the opposition: the four huge electicity producers.

But now you can see the results. Renewable energy is up from 6% in 2000 to now over 20% share in electricity production.

But more important half of the new energy projects is privately owned or locally owned. We are bringing democracy and the local market to the energy system.

Before the grid was tightly controlled and only the big companies had access to it.

Now everyone can demand that his energy will be fed into the grid.

We tax energy use very high. This gives an added incentive to use less electricity and investing in modern technology pays back - if it uses less energy.

The 'Energiewende' is not a government project. It's the opposite. It took several decades of hard work of many citizens, a new party, ... to actually get the governments to support it.

It means lots of research, new industries, new companies, ... some will survive, some won't.

Much of the investment into new energy infrastructure is necessary anyway - because some of the infrastrucute is getting old - we direct more investments into renewable energy, than we had done in the past.

    > You can see who is the opposition: the four
    > huge electicity producers.

And responsible-budget people. Germany is running in defecit beyond it's European treaty obligations. A factor contributing to the bottom line is expensive energy and expensive energy projects.

Reasonably budgeted? More like recently decreasingly subsidized.

Germany is making an investment towards a more diverse, ecologically sustainable energy market. That's expensive in the short run, simple as that. The four big players don't like it - and they particularly don't like that decades of a very controllable market are drawing to a close.

You should see the desperate advertisements they run, trying to appear "green" and reasonable, lately. Very entertaining.

Also - if you're going to talk deficit, don't forget that Germany had to pay a couple of extra bills since 2008.

Almost every country in the EU has deficit beyond the allowed regulations for a huge different number of reasons. Energy is a factor that is so small, if it even is one, that it can be safely ignored.

Renewable energy bills are paid for by consumers in their eletricity bills, as was made clear in the article.

It doesn't. Since 2011 Germany is under the EU deficit limit.

Which is an artificial limit anyway.

The budget deficit this year is extremely low - around 0.9%.

Just some quick answers.

* It is difficult, no doubt. But it is also difficult to find a way to efficienlty store solar and wind power. It is difficult is not a good excuse not to do it.

* It does not help innovation. Not true. It does. Taxes will lower the margins of the businesses with externalities and capital holders will look for more efficient technologies. Less cost and/or more profit are the only way you incentivate innovation.

* Energy is cheap. That doesn't mean it couldn't be cheaper. I mean, I prefer to spend my money on what I like, not on energy bills. And again, cheapER, bettER, are the real incentive to innovation.

* Politics. Don't know, don't care. If I had to go with politics, I'd say that solar and wind are mainly politics: it helps with votes and reputation, but only that (at least now).

* Nuclear. There is research also there. There has been progress for decades. Why that research is not as good as the one for solar and wind power I don't understand.

Politics. Don't know, don't care.

Fair enough - but not caring about this will leave you unable to fix serious problems, and incurably unhappy with the state of the world. Every problem, every issue, every project of non-trivial size is critically dependent upon politics of some stripe or other. History is riddled with excellent ideas that failed because they didn't consider politics (and for that matter, terrible ideas that succeeded because they did).

I agree with you that the public revulsion over nuclear power is unwarranted - but that battle is lost. No reasoned argument can hope to win over emotive shots of Chernobyl and Fukushima. We have to look forward.

Engineering is about achieving goals within constraints. Good engineering takes political constraints into account as well as technical and budgetary ones.

Addendum

Whoever is downvoting this guy, STOP. You might disagree with him, but he is promoting a debate in a civilised manner, and that's how we move forward.

You are right. But we still need to keep in mind that what's happening makes no sense. We need to know what the real, un-politic, solution is, otherwise we don't even know how and where to compromise. More public spending is not ground for compromises. We are gambling with our future packing debt on debt with silly ideas (like this one that throwing money at pig farmers to raise wind towers is going to save our energy-hungry asses). That's not going to happen and we will pay for this bad decision making in the future.

Said taxes can just as easily destroy the capital holders you claim will go looking for other investments. It's a fluid pool, you can't suck a billion out of the private economy without impacting all other private capital.

And that is all premised on getting the taxes right. If you miss in the guess work, you'll cause massive damage and dislocation of capital. The US has done that on numerous occasions (eg ethanol 1970s).

Energy is politics. There's really no other industry on the entire planet that is more defined by politics due to its importance and nature (from land for solar to drilling in Nigeria, to tar sands in Canada, to windmills killing birds and on and on).

If you don't know and don't care about politics when it comes to energy, then you're going to get nowhere.

The article has a heavily biased view. Some points it gets wrong:

>"If you close eight nuclear plants, which were carbon-free, overnight, you will increase carbon emissions,"

Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions. You need to look at the whole picture.

>Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners

The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don't have air conditioners (in general)

Look at who is cited - People from large companies loosing their monopoly and Sinn, a conservative "expert".

>Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners

The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don#t have air conditioners (in general)

These scenarios do happen. They're not always as straight-forward as the one suggested (low production/high demand). A few weeks ago there was a sunny/windy holiday in Belgium (May 28th). Due to overproduction and low demand they had to avert a national blackout by paying France to sink the surplus energy. In Belgium, renewables account for 7% of energy. That weekend it was 3 times as much.

I don't know about Belgium. Maybe air conditioners there are more common? In Germany, it is said that cold winters are more dangerous for the energy balance, as the cold also increases energy demand and the photovoltaik-cells aren't as useful as in a hot (and sunny) summer.

Please read again. Energy demand was lower because it was a holiday, nothing to do with air conditioners.

Thanks. I didnt get that fully, because i saw that reply as phrased as a critic to my statement, whereas it supports my point (which was, that high demand/low availabality because of the summer is unlikely in that scenario). Or not, but it is not a real critic on my statement.

Of course such scenarios happen, especially the situation you described.

It was an addendum, not a rebuttal ;)

PV cells are actually more efficient at lower temperatures. The lost production comes entirely from decreases in the amount of sunlight.

I had no idea too much electricity could be a problem? I was trying to read more about this effect but google has no answers for me.

Also, surely the obvious thing to do would be turn off some of the turbines in that situation?

- It's not just wind (turbines) but also solar.

- You don't have centralized access to all the facilities. E.g. small and medium-scale solar falls under the control of the owner AFAIK. Large scale wind also has other parties involved that don't want to miss out on income.

- Control of energy production on a national or regional scale follows prediction models, not only for demand but also price of resources such as gas and weather forecasts for renewables. So for a holiday they would shutdown a number of "classic" facilities to follow a day-ahead schedule. This probably increased the dependency on renewables for that day.

The big question "why didn't they shutdown wind farms": I don't know but I plan to find out.

As per the 2003 E.U. directive on renewable energy, renewables have priority access to the rid to offload their production. This is makes sense because it ensures full utilization of the assets and helps reduce their costs.

EDIT: grammar

Both the 2003 directive [0] and the 2009 directive [1] state that member states may give priority - with notion of exceptions for security. Maybe priority was indeed the factor, but it's not mandated on a European level.

[0] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...

The 2003 Directive you quote (2003/30) is for biofuels, whereas 2003/54 deals with renewable electricity. Both refer to 2001/77, which details the condition of access to the grid for renewables. The language is relatiely clear Art. 7 - 1, if we distinguish between "access to the grid" meaning in the first part "right to connect" and "right to output" in the second part.

> Without prejudice to the maintenance of the reliability > and safety of the grid, Member States shall take the necessary > measures to ensure that transmission system operators and > distribution system operators in their territory guarantee the > transmission and distribution of electricity produced from > renewable energy sources. They may also provide for priority > access to the grid system of electricity produced from renew-able energy sources. > When dispatching generating installations, > transmission system operators shall give priority to > generating > installations using renewable energy sources insofar as the > operation of the national electricity system permits.

However, it is superseded by 2009/28, which states in Art. 16 - 2 (a):

> Member States shall ensure that transmission system operators and distribution system operators in their territory guarantee the transmission and distribution of electricity produced from renewable energy sources

I believe the confusion stems from the distinction between right to connect to the grid and right to offload power to the grid. It seems clear the latter is indeed mandated at the E.U. level.

The problem is mainly economic. Wind and solar can produce with essentially zero marginal costs. (The cost of producing an additional kWh is negligible, if one is not accounting for upfront investments.) And therefore they can sell at any price (and generate additional revenue). This forces conventional power plants to shut down and there is possibly not enough reserve capacity if renewables fluctuate. (For engineering it is a problem which can be easily solved with an resistor ;)

> Nuclear plants are not carbon free. Getting the uranium, transporting the nuclear waste, transporting the people who run the plant costs a lot of carbon emissions.

But shutting them down when you already paid all the costs is clearly stupid.

And he didn't say carbon free. He said "increase carbon emissions" (he probably meant carbon dioxide emissions), and it clearly will increase them.

Shutting down was driven by fear, not by cost.

He said carbon free. I cited that sentence.

Also a working nuclear "you already paid for"-plant costs money and produces carbon emissions.

Once you build the plant, any emissions from running it are absolutely minuscule. Gasoline maybe from the employees driving to work, maybe a bit from maintenance.

Drilling for the uranium is a whole chunk, according to http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.99.... But sure, less than coal (but still, more than wind).

edit: added link.

No wind uses more. You need to mine for the raw materials used to build the wind turbine.

For the equivalent amount of energy wind turbines use hundreds of times as much raw materials as nuclear - even including building the nuclear power plant, not just the uranium.

Do you have a citation for that? The only source for that I found is http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/comparativeco2.html, which is most probably biased. Most other sources seem to rank wind better - but not sun (maybe you are mixing those two up?).

http://www.vattenfall.co.uk/en/kentish-flats.htm

500 tons of materials for 1MW (actual) wind turbine.

That would imply a 1GW reactor should be less than 500,000 metric tons in order to use less materials, and while I can't find figures for the weight of a nuclear reactor, they certainly are not that large!

A proposed thorium reactor: http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.p...

500 tons, for 100MW - meaning 100 times as much material is used for a wind turbine compared to thorium. Uranium uses larger buildings, but still much less than wind.

This is an overly simplistic argument:

1) are the raw materials the same raw materials? (Iron is easier to get than tungsten for instance). Are the materials used in either type of generation actually hard to find or in danger of becoming scarce?

2) How much extra energy is spent on processing the raw materials to the finished product? The vast majority of weight in a turbine is the tower, which is relatively simple to build compared to the thousands of miles of piping welded together in a nuke plant. Even if weight of resources/watt of generation was a good measure, you are not factoring the weight of a) fuel to create energy consumed in manufacture, and b) weight of wasted resources in the refining and manufacture processes.

3) How reusable is the material base? How much of a nuke plant can be used to create the next plant? Presumably a wind down can have it's turbine or airfoils replaced independently of the tower structure itself, reducing tco. (and total resource consumption).

4) Your analysis is not including weight of energy production fuel put in, nor the weight of all resources needed for dealing with post energy production waste (not insignificant in nuclear waste storage).

Most of a nuclear plant is concrete (the containment building) and iron (the reactor body). And both those materials are easy to get. The pipes are minor in comparison (in terms of materials, not in terms of construction). There isn't much if any tungsten used in a reactor, it's all ordinary iron, copper, concrete, etc.

In contrast a wind turbine uses hard to get neodymium rare earth magnets.

Nuclear plants don't require exotic materials.

It's about the same for nuclear plants and wind turbines - you make a mold and pour the concrete. You might have thousands of miles of pipe, but you also produce a thousand times as much energy.

Not much waste in either during manufacturing - any extra metals are reused, and the concrete is poured in place. So it's about the same for turbines/nuclear plants.

> weight of resources/watt of generation was a good measure

It's an approximation of how much resources are needed (mining, energy, etc). We are worried about CO2, but mining also causes pollution, and uses energy.

In a turbine it's the tower and blades both that need to be replaced due to material fatigue. The generator can be reused. The tower is wasted (it's poured concrete). The blades can be melted down, but they are light, and it's not a lot of metal - making them is the hard part.

We've never reused a nuclear plant (that I know of), so it's hard to say what would happen there.

They last a lot longer than wind turbines though, in the range of a 100 years vs 20.

Most likely the nuclear core would be removed, and the building reused for the next power plant. The building itself doesn't wear out, but they might redo the control equipment (pipes, wires, all very recyclable stuff).

The weight of the fuel is tiny - less than 100 tons of fuel for a 1GW reactor, and it lasts around 10 years. That's equivalent to a couple of bolts on a wind turbine (which produces 1/1000 of the energy).

Waste is troublesome, but doesn't use a lot of materials. It's about one semi trailer load - every 10 years, for a plant that produces 1000 times as much as a turbine (which also fits on a semi).

> Nuclear plants don't require exotic materials.

Yeah, I bought 1 kilo of Uranium in the supermarket last week. Was pretty cheap.

It's absolutely absurd to calculate the emissions based on the weight of the material.

I wasn't. It's a calculation of resources used in construction, not emissions which is a different issue.

I was saying that wind might have no emissions, but you still use lots and lots of resources in building it, so you have to include those when analyzing environmental impact.

> The summer in Germany isn't that hot. Middle europe, not california. Accordingly, we don't have air conditioners (in general)

Germans are always saying this. It was 90F in Berlin yesterday. That is air conditioner weather, period.

The part about most people not having them is true, though. This US expat is hooking his up this week, despite power costing twice here what it does in California.

Climate differs wildly throughout Germany. Berlin tends to get hot days, but those are of a moderate number. The upper Rhine valley where I come from has a warmer climate, but less extreme summer heat (lots of forest area around). The coastal area is generally cooler during the summer.

So yes, we do get hot days, but it's still rare that people have air conditioning in their flats. Modern office buildings have air conditioning though and most shops as well. Still, when the temperature difference is lower you still need less energy to power them. Another point is that it's a rare occurrence to have no sun (hence no solar power) and massive heat.

Fahrenheit? What is this, the nineteenth century?

(90F = 32 degrees Celsius)

Do you have a normal German house, with shutters and thick stone walls? Normally they're good for at least a week when it gets hot - only open up at night and during the day close the shutters and don't open the windows. And heat waves that last longer than a week are very rare. All of Europe lives like this, even in the southern countries. There are some places where this doesn't work though, like the flat directly underneath the roof..

> That is air conditioner weather, period.

Whine whine whine

Nuclear plants are not carbon free.

No, but of course solar power isn't carbon free either by the same logic. The problem is that in the short term the power that those nuclear plants were providing is being made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment.

>made up for by coal plants, which are much worse for the environment

This is exactly the point the article is missing. According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous.

Keep in mind that the plan is to shutdown all nuclear plants, substitute them with green energy and use coal only as long as needed in between the change.

According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous.

Yes, and the German public is flat-out wrong.

We have not a single working endlager for the waste the nuclear plants are producing. Historically, there have been several large accidents, Tschernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile, and several more smaller ones which would almost been fatal.

I know that people on HN obviously like technology, and noticed that many people who like technology like nuclear plants. Maybe because they see them as great technology and are able to believe in that.

But given the facts, no, the german public is not wrong. They are undisputably right. The Super-GAUs prove that.

> several more smaller ones which would almost been fatal.

As opposed to the air pollution from coal burning, and accidents installing solar and air; which are fatal every year.

>Historically, there have been several large accidents, Tschernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile, and several more smaller ones which would almost been fatal.

So what? Those accidents are miniscule in comparison to the everyday operation of a coal plant. The damage caused by the worst nuclear accidents in human history is still less than the every day operation of a coal plant. Hell, we've lost more people to coal mine cave ins than we have to nuclear accidents.

>But given the facts, no, the german public is not wrong. They are undisputably right.

No, they're not. You're insane. The German public thinks nuclear power is more dangerous than coal power, and they're just wrong. It's not even an argument.

1. No modern coal-plant leads to waste areas of uninhabitable land. Nuclear Plants do.

2. We do coal mines way longer. Even if the number is right, that "we've lost more people to coal mine cave ins than we have to nuclear accidents", (which is hard to agree with, cause it is statistically a hard problem to count the ones still dying from cancer years later because of Tschernobyl for example), that number would be meaningless.

3. Coal power is highly disputed in Germany. It is only accepted as a transition-help while heading to green energy. And yes, i think that's a good thing - and no, i'm not insane.

About 6,000 people die from coal mining every year in China alone. By contrast, 6,000 is the median estimate of the total number of people who would die from cancer from Chernobyl. Now, Greenpeace managed to come to an estimate of almost 100,000 by making certain unusual assumptions, but if you make those same assumptions when looking at the pollution that comes out of the stacks of coal power plants you would find at least vaguely comparable numbers of deaths from coal plants every year.

While claims of up to 2 Million deaths related to Chernobyl[1] are probably not credible, the 6,000 figure is bullshit as well:

The estimates on radioation related deaths of infants is of the same order, and there are Russian claims that 90% of liquidators (at least 747,000 people according to the German Gesellschaft für Strahlenschutz) are invalid.

[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/50890761/Nuclear-s-Endless-Nightma...

Chernobyl: a monumental cock-up by incompetent morons in charge of a badly designed and badly built scrapheap. With so much cocked up, a disaster was surely inevitable.

Fukushima: a series of cock-ups magnified by one of the world's most destructive tsunamis. This nuclear plant should never have been built where it was, and its old technology should have been decommissioned years ago. Yet the death toll due to the accident is still, what, five?

Three Mile Island: injured fewer people than a single typical high speed road accident.

There was also a call to ban the ICE between Munich and Frankfurt following the 2500 people that died when a Japanese train was hit by the Tsunami.

Just because there hasn't been a Tsunami in Bavaria YET doesn't mean we should take the chance.

> 1. No modern coal-plant leads to waste areas of uninhabitable land. Nuclear Plants do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash

Over 71 million tons of the stuff per year (According to wikipedia sources) in the US alone that has to be stored somewhere. Mostly* in landfill sites or ash ponds which renders them "waste areas of uninhabitable land", and this is part of normal operating procedures, not when something goes catastrophically wrong.

* Recycling accounts for 43% according to wikipedia sources.

onli's response is spot-on. He is definitely not insane. I agree with his views.

> The damage caused by the worst nuclear accidents in human history is still less than the every day operation of a coal plant.

Citation needed.

Coal and nuclear power are both dangerous, just in different ways. And there are incidents that don't get much international coverage, but still have a lasting impact. For example there has been a small fire at a German nuclear plant in 1986. Officials say no radioactivity was released. But still, 20 years after the event, cases of childhood leukemia are three times more prevalent in the surrounding area than normal. How many children died because of this small accident? How many other adverse effects exist that we can't see or link to nuclear power? http://www.oh-strahlen.org/docs/ableukkome.pdf [PDF]

You are really lumping things together here.

What do the USSR nuclear accidents say about German or US or Japanese reactors? Look at how many nuclear accidents USSR Navy ships had compared to US Navy ships.

I can see an argument to 'close the old ways, we do it better now'. But 'close all of them, because I don't know the difference between them and I'm afraid of anything with the world nuclear in it' is just fear mongering and it's a shame that Germany fell for it.

Neither the three mile plant nor Fukushima nor the accidents in german plants were located in the USSR. And Tschernobyl was in the neighbourhood (even if it weren't a technical comparable plant, it would still be an in my eyes understandable factor).

And how many people were killed by those two accidents ..........

I disagree. The current generation of nuclear plants needs to be shut down as the technology is irredeemably flawed (nuclear waste, no disaster-proof emergency shutdown).

Accidents have happened, will happen again and carry a cost that's hard to accurately quantify (death toll among the hundreds of thousands of Chernobyl liquidators is approaching 10% according to their Union and still on the rise; a new sarcophagus is being built right now, and I won't even guess at the cost to public health).

Thorium reactors can help with some of the issues, but are decades away from being viable in Germany. Investing in a smarter European grid seems to me the most rational choice.

And to all these people talking about the environmental cost of coal plants - there are two things you should take into account: They are intended as a short to medium term solution, and only about 45% of the total C02 emission of Germany is due to energy production.

I agree that current nuclear plants should be phased out. Unfortunately it is very unlikely that people can be convinced that other forms of nuclear power exist and should be developed, because the word "nuclear" will probably be forever tainted.

45% sounds very high; did you mean 4.5%?

Funnily (or sadly?) enough, coal plants emit more radiation per year into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants.

That's excluding all the other pollutants they send out, from mercury to lead to carbon, which are far worse.

That is a disputed fact (when taking into account the radioactive waste and thinking about what "into the atmosphere" means, at least that is what I remember from the reports about the last study concerning this), on one hand, but even if it were right: It's less than the radiation generated in the event of a disaster and not bundled into a pile of radioactive waste you can't place nowhere.

Edit: For the downvoters: http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410 - It IS disputed, I didn't say what is right. Stay fair.

It's not very convincing.

For instance:

"What it really means is that radiation emissions to the environment from an operating nuclear power plant actually are lower than the radioactivity emitted from a coal plant through fly ash residues. That’s because the reactor vessel, fuel rods, and any radioactive waste on site are well shielded, whereas fly ash, with small amounts of deadly radioactive substances, simply is emitted into the environment."

The author appears to be saying, well, if you ran an un-shielded nuclear reactor and threw all the pollution in the air on purpose instead of containing it, then coal ash emits less radiation into the atmosphere. Well, okay, fair enough, but in practice we don't purposely take nuclear waste and fertilize our crops with it, and I don't think anyone's arguing for that.

In practice, we certainly dont (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PzJdv4K9pOY/TNpvMuWL58I/AAAAAAAAA6...) store the waste in a way so we know for sure it will not be used to fertilize the crops of future generations.

Can somebody explain to me the part of the article where it says you have to convert AC to DC to travel long distances (for far offshore wind power)? I understood it to be the exact opposite, that AC could go long distances without major loss and DC needed a new station every few blocks.

You don't 'need' to convert it, but HVDC transmission is emerging as more efficient and cost-effective than conventional HVAC transmission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

From what I gather from the Wikipedia page, it's due to the transmission cables being underwater and hence having a much larger capacitance, which is a larger loss than normal DC loss. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that.)

So, while AC is still more beneficial for transmission via cables in air/ground, DC appears to have less overall loss for underwater transmission.

DC is always more efficent to transfer. But it was difficult to efficiently convert to high voltage and back so you only did it when necessary.

The reason underwater links (eg France-UK) were commonly DC is that they linked countries whose grid wasn't synchronised - the same reason long distance grids in the US are DC

By virtue of their tight bundling, all composite multi-core cables have high capacitances. However, onshore AC transmission is typically run on overhead lines, with large line spacings and thus capacitance isn't as much of a problem.

I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand, sure it is a very difficult problem but unless we find a fundamentally new energy source or nuclear fusion becomes viable the path Germany is on is without alternative. It's better to work on the problem now, developing knowledge that helps our economy and makes us a worldwide leader than holding it off unless we are near collapse due to oil prices or worse have to engage in a war about resources, especially since the latter is something Germany must not engage in.

>I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand, sure it is a very difficult problem but unless we find a fundamentally new energy source or nuclear fusion becomes viable the path Germany is on is without alternative.

There's one obvious alternative: Build and run nuclear power plants. We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries, and the overall environmental impact is better than that of renewables.

> We have enough uranium to supply our energy needs for centuries

That's incredibly short sighted. And not just the measure of 'centuries' (even if that were true, it's still arguably just postpone the problem). Energy demand is going up, sharply, as more countries join our standard of living. We will, definitely, need technologies that are as clean as possible to meet the demand, eventually. No amount of pollution that is avoidable is acceptable at the scale we are going to witness. Which brings us to

> the overall environmental impact is better than that of renewables

I've stopped buying this argument and I'm sick of seeing it again and again - it's complete and utter Bullshit. The only way we have come up in terms of "dealing" with the highly toxic waste that nuclear energy produces (letting alone the often brushed over but equally horrifying ecological cost of mining the fuel) is to store it away "somewhere". The kicker is: We have not figured out that "somewhere". In Germany, there is exactly one site that is being developed for this. We literally ship the containers there and they sit in a holding facility above the salt mine because we have not even figured out how to get the fuel from the shipment containers into the storage containers. Oh, and the storage containers haven't been fully developed either. This is a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

Years and years of politics playing nice with (and pushing money into) the nuclear industry have produced no results that a reasonable person could support. What the government had done was basically doubling down on what is often - in this thread as well - requested: To let the market figure it out. Oh they have figured it out alright. Just not the part about it also being reasonable. Or even sane.

And this is only for the waste that was produced so far. The technology and storage capacity for centuries of waste simply doesn't exist. At all.

Story time: They actually did have the "solving" of this in mostly private hands for a long time - a semi-government agency (under strong, yet curiously absent oversight) conducted "experiments" on how to store the waste in a different salt mine [1]. They "experimented" with things like whether they roll or "throw down" barrels into caves. When they "noticed" that they had a problem with huge amounts of radioactive water rising up everywhere, they "solved" it by pumping it down into a deeper cavity. That whole agency was abolished and replaced and put under proper (and horrified) oversight when the extent of the disaster came to light in a huge scandal.

They have been "working on" trying to clean up this mess since nineteen frigging ninety five. They haven't even figured out how to drill into the closed off cavities to get the improperly stored fuel out of there, for crying out loud! All while cancer rates are going off around the site.

So yeah, great environmental impact. Go sell your snake oil somewhere else.

Very few things piss me off as much as nuclear defenders selling their technology as reasonable. Zero Carbon Emissions, Woo! Give me a break.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II - the German version is a lot more in-depth: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schachtanlage_Asse - the English version seems to brush over much of the issues.

The nuclear plants are not the only source of highly toxic nuclear waste -- medicine, science and industry have also a fine share, and they are often dealing with much more dangerous isotopes that are in the nuclear waste.

The storage problem comes fact any attempt of reason immediately sinks in an overall panic; and the by-design scaleable long-run solution is pretty simple -- to put them from where we have mined them. Oklo reactors proved such storage can last billions of years.

Absolutely agreed - but we can "solve" energy differently. Not so much for other applications. So nuclear waste in energy is completely avoidable.

Not sure I understand your second paragraph.

> but we can "solve" energy differently

Really? How? Just about every other technology is net negative on energy, so how do you plan to solve energy?

Oh, ok then. I thought this was a business discussion - cost input vs. benefit output. Instead, it seems like we're arguing for what would give us the perfect energy perpetuum mobile.

> I thought this was a business discussion - cost input vs. benefit output

It's not. It's a physics discussion: Energy produced vs pollution created.

Hmm, this is slowly turning into word-twisting.

Obviously, "pollution created" is a negative benefit output and "energy produced" is a positive one.

I guess the actual problem in our discussion is that you have a profoundly different understanding of pollution since my cutoff is pretty much at "any nuclear waste".

> since my cutoff is pretty much at "any nuclear waste"

Really? So I guess there is not much point in talking to you further. (Although I guess other people are also reading these threads.)

It might help your case if you explained why, but I'm betting it's irrational fear, not anything you could explain.

Me, I prefer to measure my pollution in terms of damage caused, not fear. There is a pollution action day in my city right now because of people like you, and I'm not happy about it. I want them to shut down all hydrocarbon electric plants (save the hydrocarbons for cars), and switch everything to nuclear.

Nah, fear isn't really the issue here, I would say that I have a rather calculated understanding of why I find radioactive waste so problematic (and since you asked, you'll have to endulge the full explanation).

For me, it comes down to what kind of pollution we are talking about and radioactive pollution is particularly nasty to me as it represents a chaotic pollution that is just exceptionally hard to deal with.

Let's say the simplest, non-chaotic, kind of pollution is "dirt on your shoe" - you know where it came from (that thing you just stepped in), you know where it is (you see it on your shoe), what it does (hardly anything, except look bad) and how to get it out (wash it off).

With radioactive pollution, knowing where the pollution is coming from can already be a tough job - if you have a known leak, sure, that's where it's coming from. But often, you have to use a Geiger counter to detect it in the first place and often times, you then still have to figure out where the actual source is.

Where it went is mostly a statistical science, which is only comforting if your arm chair is not close to the accident in question. If it is, it's highly distressing.

Next up, it's still completely up for graps what it does - for humans, it can be anything from a challenged immune system to instant death, depending on the dose. (Although the latter is reserved for those rare occurances where you happen to hang out with the direct fallout of an exploding atom bomb, I believe.) Most of the time, in an accident, you only determine how bad it was after the fact. At minimum, it always carries a risk of mucking with your DNA or giving you a higher chance of cancer down the road (we have differed on how "horrifying" this prospect is, before).

How to get it out is where it gets even worse - most of the time, you scrap together everything that you determined to be affected in step two and put it in sealed containers, which isn't helpful if that thing is 'most of your own cells' (although the people around you will differ on that opinion). Your most likely prospect in terms of any kind of unusual exposure is to die slightly earlier and a lot shittier than you had anticipated.

In conclusion, I would say that it's more of a "we simply don't fully understand what we unleash, so let's develop what we do understand" concern. Not a "omg, a castor drove through Italy, I'm gonna get cancer tomorrow" fear.

> There is a pollution action day in my city right now because of people like you, and I'm not happy about it. I want them to shut down all hydrocarbon electric plants (save the hydrocarbons for cars), and switch everything to nuclear.

That almost made me LOL - Why is it "because of people like [me]"? Maybe it's time for me to get off your lawn?

> and since you asked, you'll have to endulge the full explanation

That's fine.

And I read your explanation, and while it is coherent, I don't agree with it, and I find it to be fear based, not science based.

Of all pollutions radiation is by far the easiest to detect and track (which is why people hate it so much - it's very easy to find). Other types of pollution are much harder to track, so less is made known about them, and they get less attention - but they cause more damage!

And that's in a nutshell my position: Other pollution is worse. I accept that there will always be some pollution, and I seek the best.

I like that we can find radiation so easily: It means we can clean it when necessary. Other pollutions can't be found so easily, so no one is told when they get exposed to it. Since they are never told, they never worry - but it still causes damage!

I do my best to keep track of other pollutions, I subscribe to air quality alerts. If radiation was released in amounts that cause the exact same damage as the bad air, you could bet people would be screaming. Yet, non-radiation pollutions (mostly) get a pass unless they get really bad.

I tell people that the air quality is bad today and I get mocked, or more often just indifference. Do people not care? I should tell people there is lots of radiation in the air instead..... :)

> At minimum, it always carries a risk of mucking with your DNA or giving you a higher chance of cancer down the road (we have differed on how "horrifying" this prospect is, before).

You misunderstood me. Cancer is bad - my point was that nuclear power is less likely to cause cancer in both, the general public, and the miners. So nuclear power is not horrifying - it's a blessing since it causes less cancer.

Pollution from other energy sources also causes cancer, and causes more of it than nuclear power. Nuclear power gets the headlines, sure, but the day to day poison is everything else.

> Why is it "because of people like [me]"?

When I said "people like" I meant "people opposed to nuclear power", which you are (seem to be), and therefor you are like them.

> Maybe it's time for me to get off your lawn?

If it was just you then fine. But it's a lot more people than just you, and most of them have an even worse fear/knowledge ratio than you, and are impossible to argue with.

> Other types of pollution are much harder to track

I was trying to explain to you why I find radioactive pollution unacceptable, replying by telling me that there are worse types of pollution does not really add to the discussion.

You seem hell-bent on making this discussion into one about choosing the lesser evil. But the article is about the exact opposite - it's about getting out of that cycle and investing in a true alternative.

> Pollution from other energy sources also causes cancer, and causes more of it than nuclear power. Nuclear power gets the headlines, sure, but the day to day poison is everything else.

I find wind turbines to cause very little cancer.

> When I said "people like" I meant "people opposed to nuclear power", which you are (seem to be), and therefor you are like them.

No, I understand that, but why do you want them off your lawn? By their opposition to nuclear they automatically made the air worse and cause pollution action days? Strikes me as a tad simplistic.

I was trying to imply that conceptually there is no difference between 1kg and 10000kg of nuclear waste if the only that we do about it is to sit and cry that it would kill as all -- this way it certainly will finally end up smuggled and dumped on a random landfill. And it is just impossible to make humanity stop using any radioactive material.

There are many good and realistic ideas how to use nuclear material way better than now and how to inactive and store it in a perfectly safe way, but this science is marginally supported (compared with "green" competitor) and decision makers are intimidated to avoid its implementation.

> Energy demand is going up ... no amount of pollution that is avoidable is acceptable

Exactly. And renewables produce HUGE amounts of pollution compared to nuclear. It's not even close. Nuclear wins the pollution battle by such a large amount that's it's not even a race. Everything else is a joke.

Do you know how much waste nuclear produces? Very very little - it's tiny. The entire waste from a person's lifetime of energy use could fit in a teacup. Do you know how much waste every other energy source produces? Huge, huge, staggeringly large amounts.

> letting alone the often brushed over but equally horrifying ecological cost of mining the fuel

Horrifying? Really? You have no idea what you are talking about. Do you realize how little uranium you need? Compared to just mining iron, (never mind coal, or oil, or natural gas) the amount is a rounding error globally. Everything you do has consequences, the idea is to pick the best one.

We don't have to solve the storage problem. What we will eventually do is burn the waste, and gain energy from it. You burn the nuclear all the way down to iron and lead. We can't do it today, no, but if people would stop running screaming from nuclear we could. The technology is known, we just need the engineering.

> renewables produce HUGE amounts of pollution compared to nuclear. It's not even close.

There is hardly anything as destructively polluting as nuclear waste. It's not a even race indeed.

And yes, I know how "little" waste nuclear produces, they drive it around on rails every couple of years.

> We don't have to solve the storage problem. What we will eventually do is burn the waste, and gain energy from it.

Sure, I'd totally bet on that. When do you think that will happen?

> Horrifying? Really?

Yes. Really.[1]

> Do you realize how little uranium you need?

Again, yes.

> Compared to just mining iron, (never mind coal, or oil, or natural gas) the amount is a rounding error globally.

Ah great, relativism, always enjoy that coming up.

> Everything you do has consequences, the idea is to pick the best one.

Yup, and I'd rather NOT pick the one were we put money into a dead-end technology that has the potential of devastating pollution at worst and hardly solvable storage problems at best and instead invest that money in technology that will actually be of use in the future and for the rest of mankind.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Health_risks_of_...

> There is hardly anything as destructively polluting as nuclear waste.

Oh really? Fly ash is much worse, since it's also radioactive, and there is a LOT more of it. The pollution sent up smoke stacks is also much worse since it's actively spread to people, and there is a lot of it.

In contrast nuclear waste is very small, and stays far away from anyone.

> they drive it around on rails every couple of years.

A pollution source that can be shipped on rails? And you only need to do it every few years? Does it get more ideal?

> When do you think that will happen?

Not for a long long time. Doesn't matter, in the meantime we'll just stick the nuclear waste somewhere where there are no people.

> Yes. Really.[1]

Did you actually read that link yourself? I did - it sounds very low risk to me. Why would you link to something that supports my position?

> Ah great, relativism, always enjoy that coming up.

I'm glad you enjoy that since that's exactly what we are talking about: "Relatively speaking, since none are perfect, which energy source is best?"

> Yup, and I'd rather NOT pick the one were we put money into a dead-end technology that has the potential of devastating pollution at worst and hardly solvable storage problems at best and instead invest that money in technology that will actually be of use in the future and for the rest of mankind.

And I'd rather not spend money on technology that doesn't work, probably can not work, and definitely is terrible while we wait. Instead of the "potential of devastating pollution" you have devastating pollution right now - and you just want to ignore that? I'll take potential over actual any day.

Renewables will be of no use in the future since they can not ever produce enough energy. It doesn't matter how badly you want them to, they just can't do it. It's a dead-end technology. Nuclear power is not a dead end technology - it's the cleanest power we have, and more engineering can make it even cleaner.

> Fly ash is much worse, since it's also radioactive

My apologies, I was indeed talking about radioactive waste in general being hard to top in terms of pollution. It goes without saying that I'm not terribly happy with how this country is getting into coal lately. So yes, fly ash is definitely a concern as well. I just happen to think waste from nuclear fuel is easier to "not produce" right now.

> A pollution source that can be shipped on rails? And you only need to do it every few years? Does it get more ideal?

Yes, they ship it around and it radiates. Remember - in the US, they recently had to scrap plans for that one site because it meant the fuel had to travel there a long way. I was also off a little - it's pretty much an every year event, but I guess that's still not a threshold trigger for you.

Still, again, the real problem here is that nobody really knows where to ship this to and what to do with it once it's there. And how safe it will be the next couple hundred thousand years.

> Not for a long long time. Doesn't matter, in the meantime we'll just stick the nuclear waste somewhere where there are no people.

See - I'm just not really satisfied with that answer and I guess I don't see how anybody can be. Sorry.

> Why would you link to something that supports my position?

You were asking me to qualify 'horrifying' - seems like we have a different measure there. I find any radiation exposure leading to death by lung cancer horrifying.

> I'm glad you enjoy that since that's exactly what we are talking about: "Relatively speaking, since none are perfect, which energy source is best?"

Nope, sorry, that's not the same. Comparing two things is one thing - Relativism is something else entirely. That branch discussion was about discussing how extracting fuel from the earth is polluting. You qualified that by saying: Hey, there are a lot of things that are polluting, like iron/coal/oil/gas. Yes - I understand that - but that's not adding to the discussion.

It is inherently a better idea to not use fuel in the first place. No matter which one, you have to keep digging it up to keep it going and that's bad. It's also the crucial difference between renewable and fossil sources of energy. No matter how "little" fuel you need: on the long scale, it will fail with 100% certainty, eventually.

> And I'd rather not spend money on technology that doesn't work, probably can not work, and definitely is terrible while we wait.

Now I'm not even sure we read the same article anymore. That's not really a defensible statement in light of how widely used this technology already is. Or are you still hung up on solar?

> Nuclear power is not a dead end technology - it's the cleanest power we have, and more engineering can make it even cleaner.

Dead-end in terms of: "What technological progress does this provide on the side?". Sure, making it "cleaner" may be one form of progress, but I think "green" energy simply has more potential for innovation and collateral technological benefit for everybody.

U.S. citizen here. The storage site is on hold (not scrapped) only because of fear-mongering folks like yourself. There is no technological reason to fear the rail shipment of nuclear waste. It is not difficult to engineer enclosures that will withstand the most energetic possible train wreck. And obviously they are well shielded for radiation.

> There is no technological reason to fear the rail shipment of nuclear waste. It is not difficult to engineer enclosures that will withstand the most energetic possible train wreck.

Actually, it is difficult and there is considerable dissent over whether the currently used technology is safe enough or as safe as advertised. [1][2]

> And obviously they are well shielded for radiation.

They are shielded, but how well is another that is up for debate. I'm kind of hardlining it saying that any radiation is a problem - the containers are certainly not 100% shielded. Not finding any amount of radiation acceptable is where I seem to be losing most of the people who understand themselves to be pragmatic supporters of nuclear energy in this discussion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_(Kerntechnik)#Kritik_an_...

> Not finding any amount of radiation acceptable is where I seem to be losing most of the people who understand themselves to be pragmatic supporters of nuclear energy in this discussion.

Because background radiation means we are always exposed to it. So setting a no tolerance policy doesn't make sense.

People go to these http://resources.yesican-science.ca/trek/radiation/final/ear... places for a vacation, to enjoy the warmth!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Good to know that you're willing to go that far to try to make a point in an argument.

Once again: Adding radiation when there are other options is what bothers me.

> radioactive waste in general being hard to top in terms of pollution

What? It's extremely easy to top radioactive waste. Every single pollution tops radioactive waste since radioactive waste sits in a storage cask, and the other types of pollution go in the air I breathe. Your position makes no sense.

> I just happen to think waste from nuclear fuel is easier to "not produce" right now.

So instead you want more fly ash? Picking "don't make electricity" is not an option.

> what to do with it once it's there

Don't do anything with it, just leave it there. When technology improves, use it for fuel.

> I find any radiation exposure leading to death by lung cancer horrifying.

And I guess coal dust doesn't bother you? Or ozone leading to lung cancer? Or particulate matter (PM2.5)? It has to be radiation I guess.

> It is inherently a better idea to not use fuel in the first place ... you have to keep digging it up to keep it going ... crucial difference between renewable and fossil sources of energy

Not exactly. Renewable fuels are not actually renewable since you need to build the machine to get that energy, and that building material is not free. Nor is the land area free - I prefer to use land for other things, not cover the earth in energy harvesting machines.

You need to include everything when looking at an energy source, not just the "fuel".

> No matter how "little" fuel you need: on the long scale, it will fail with 100% certainty, eventually.

I think an energy source that will last more than 1000 years is good enough. And consider that we use barely 5% of the energy in uranium, and using that measure we have enough for more than 1000 years.

Use all the energy in uranium and it'll last 20,000 years. Then we can start using thorium, and we have even more of that than we do uranium. By that time we can start mining asteroids.

> how widely used this technology already is

Maybe I missed something but what technology are you talking about?

> Every single pollution tops radioactive waste since radioactive waste sits in a storage cask

Of course, preferably, every type of pollution should sit in a storage cask. I was under the impression that we were discussing the potential of pollution of different pollutants. If we compare storage casks, we get to actually compare how dangerous they are. In that comparison, radioactive waste should win the battle for what is most dangerous.

> So instead you want more fly ash? Picking "don't make electricity" is not an option.

Fly Ash is mostly produced by coal plants. Where did I say I support those? Capturing fly ash in other processes is comparatively simple when you do it right - although writing that may just spin into another discussion of why you think it's actually the other way round and it's radiation that is more easily contained and managed.

> Don't do anything with it, just leave it there. When technology improves, use it for fuel.

No, that's the point - it's not even "there", it's in holding facilities right now, because we still haven't decided what this "there" actually is.

Also - if you ask me to grant you that we will develop this improved technology - why is it different for alternative, renewable sources of energy?

> And I guess coal dust doesn't bother you? Or ozone leading to lung cancer? Or particulate matter (PM2.5)? It has to be radiation I guess.

Well, that's again putting words in my mouth. Pollution bothers me - there. Radioactive pollution bothers me most. That's all there is to it. I should be allowed to not be OK with multiple types of pollution, right?

> Not exactly. Renewable fuels are not actually renewable since you need to build the machine to get that energy, and that building material is not free. Nor is the land area free - I prefer to use land for other things, not cover the earth in energy harvesting machines.

Note that I wrote "renewable source", not "renewable fuel". Once you've built a wind turbine, it kind of keeps going (save for repairs along the way). You don't have to rebuild it at the rate that you have to go back to the mine to dig up more fuel. Which you have to do for energy from fossil fuels - for which you also have to build the facilities.

> Use all the energy in uranium and it'll last 20,000 years. Then we can start using thorium, and we have even more of that than we do uranium. By that time we can start mining asteroids.

Not sure how to respond to that other than that it sounds very old fashioned and boring and I'm still not convinced it will hold pace. Not to mention that it is in no way a justification, just an excuse to use the fuel. Renewable sources of energy are also just "lying around" ready to be "mined" by us. And they are, to me, universally less concerning in terms of environmental impact when compared to nuclear energy.

> Maybe I missed something but what technology are you talking about?

The article talks about 17% usage of renewable energy sources in Germany for 2010 - most of it in wind, followed by hydro and your dreaded solar at a distant third place. In any case - I would think that's substantial enough to render your original assertion moot.

> discussing the potential of pollution

No, the actually of pollution, not the potential.

> coal plants. Where did I say I support those?

You didn't - except that by blocking nuclear power you end up with it by default, so you have to accept that you are implicitly supporting it.

> why is it different for alternative, renewable sources of energy?

Because there aren't any. Sun and wind can do a portion, and I'm glad for it (except photovoltaics).

But what about the rest? There is no renewable source of energy than can do the rest of the job, so we need something, and it's either natural gas, coal, or nuclear.

> Pollution bothers me - there. Radioactive pollution bothers me most.

But why?! Yes, I know the potential is worse. But the actually is better! Why do you look at the potential instead of the actuality?

> sounds very old fashioned and boring

???

> Renewable sources of energy are also just "lying around" ready to be "mined" by us.

But there is not enough of it. Not unless we cover the earth with energy collectors, and I don't want that. I assume you don't either.

> most of it in wind, followed by hydro and your dreaded solar at a distant third place. In any case - I would think that's substantial enough to render your original assertion moot.

It's not moot though. Hydro is maxed out. Wind could probably take a larger share - but then what? What about the final 70%?

> so you have to accept that you are implicitly supporting it.

Nope, I don't have to do that. You don't just get to claim I'm in a catch 22.

Actually, this appears to be what the article echoes as well: Everybody is telling Germany they can't do it, but they just do it anyways.

> But what about the rest?

Increase in efficiency of what is existing, smarter use of the energy that we have. That should get us quite a long way.

> Yes, I know the potential is worse. But the actually is better!

Which is why I don't think we have to increase 'potential' to make sure that the 'actually' stays that way.

> Not unless we cover the earth with energy collectors, and I don't want that. I assume you don't either.

No, totally terrible plan - creating all those jobs and encouraging all that innovation. I've already said it before in this thread - I'm very much OK with setting up as many collectors as it takes.

> but then what? What about the final 70%?

In the short term, Germany is gunning for 35% - once we are there, we will reassess. I don't claim to be able to predict the future like you apparently do, but I sure know which path sounds better. To me, at least.

> The entire waste from a person's lifetime of energy use could fit in a teacup.

Sir, I have no other words for you, but you are a fucking stupid idiot.

I invite you to come here and have a look into Asse. Maybe you even want to move in, because it is so ... uhm ... "empty" down there?

Q: What do you call dangerously radioactive nuclear waste?

A: A fantastic source of energy.

Nuclear technology is extremely risky and prohibitively expensive even if we ignore the cost of accidents and waste disposal covered largely by governments because not a single company controlled by sane people would ever build a nuclear power plant otherwise.

That being said it is not at all clear whether there is enough uranium for a couple or even one century, especially given the massive increase in demand that we will see in the next couple of years.

Even if we assume it is cheap and will last for centuries it is still not a long term solution, which is what Germany is aiming for.

Fortunately other nuclear fuels exists, such as Thorium. They are also less dangerous and more plentiful, therefore we should invest in them. You shouldn't equate nuclear technology with the kind of fission reactors that were developed during the cold war with the twin goal of generating energy and supplying material for nuclear bombs.

> I find the criticism torwards the Energiewende quite hard to understand

It's not that complicated. Making a solar panel costs more energy than it produces for decades. So all Germany is doing is making China foot the CO2 bill.

China makes the solar panel with all the associated CO2 costs, Germany installs it and claims no CO2.

Globally they are doing nothing useful, except maybe pushing the costs down.

I especially find shutting down the nuclear plants stupid. The one and only technology that actually would work, and they are spurning it.

That's false on a number of levels.

A) It's not just solar.

B) A lot of the manufacturing actually happens in Germany. It's just that recently, China is spinning up the competition. Market at work.

C) "costs more energy than it produces for decades". Even if that were true, it would still be a better deal. You provide no source for proof because there is none - Particularly considering technological progress, this will soon be even more laughable.

D) It's not about frigging CO2. That's part of the deal, but reducing it to that is dangerously close to obfuscation.

E) "except maybe pushing the cost down" - there is a gold mine of discovery and realization being brushed away with crushing ignorance there. "pushing the cost down" is quite the magic thing in the history of mankind, you know?

F) "The one and only technology" - Yeah right. Tell you what, there is an article linked at the top which talks about the actual, one and only technology. It's already working and being implemented.

A: Yes, and wind. Wind has a reasonably good energy ROI, but it's not possible to collect enough energy from it without covering the country in turbines, and people don't want that. Offshore is interesting, but the costs (financial and energy invested in building them) are much higher.

B: Market at work, sure, but the end result is the same: They are claiming low CO2 by simply sending the CO2 to China.

C: It is true - look it up if you like. It takes about 20 years to return the energy (forget about the money). And when you have: "the skies are often gray and his roofs aren't all optimally oriented" then those solar cells will never return their energy investment (they will degrade before they are able to do that). Germany is spending money to increase CO2 emissions - brilliant plan: waste money, increase CO2.

> Particularly considering technological progress, this will soon be even more laughable.

You make me laugh. People have been researching solar for decades, and it's always: "soon". I've seen those graphs on how the cost of hydrocarbon fuel is going up, and eventually will go higher than the cost of solar. I'm sure you've seen them too.

Looks great right? You know what they forget? The biggest expense in making solar cells is energy - that exact same hydrocarbon energy who's price increase is being celebrated. When that price goes up the cost of making a solar cell also goes up.

D: Maybe, but that's how it's being sold. And it doesn't help that most renewables are net negative on energy.

E: The research on solar is basically finished. You can't gain any more energy from it that is already being done. The only thing left is reducing the cost. Those super special solar cells that you read about? They use hard to find elements, and we simply don't have enough of those elements on earth to create enough solar cells! Crushing ignorance indeed - you know nothing about me, or how much I know about the field of solar. I know nothing about you either, but you certainly don't sound like you know much about it except for the breathless prognostications from science rags.

Photovoltaic: It's dead. It's pointless, it takes more energy to make them than they produce for a huge time. Solar thermal? Now we are talking, but no one hardly builds them since you need HUGE areas (instead of small incremental installations). You also need an excellent power grid, (but that could be done).

F: No it's not working, it's just costing them money, and increasing CO2 emissions for the rest of the world. Nuclear is it - everything else is just little "feel good" incremental bits. Maybe solar thermal.

Your claim about 20 years required to return the energy to produce a solar panel is false. Googling a bit after "energy returned on energy invested" (EROI) indicates that there aren't really any reliable ways to measure this number. Wikipedia quotes 1.5 for the US, which seems ridiculously low.

This study (http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/10/1796/pdf) from 2011 indicates an average EROI for solar panels of 6.5, and this does not take into consideration that this number appears to be rapidly increasing for newer and cheaper panels. See article from the Oil Drum at (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3910).

A conservative EROI of 6.5 would indicate that it takes about 4.5 years to earn back the energy to produce a panel, assuming static energy output and panel lifetime of 30 years. In short, the data I can find indicates that you are wrong.

You are misreading that number. It's not years, it's how much energy is returned compared to invested. i.e. 6.5 times as much energy returned as invested over the entire life of the device.

For comparison hydrocarbon fuels have numbers in the 30 range, and nuclear is 60 and up (depending on how long the plant lasts). So 6.5 is quite poor. And they list no numbers on expected lifespan - lifespan is the number one thing that controls the EROI on solar.

Also, these numbers usually use very sunny areas and ideal angles to calculate the return. In Germany the results will be much worse.

Thats an overly useless calculation. The whole point of this exercise is: not all energy is created equal. You can waste many many millions of kWh of Norways free power and then ship the panel to Germany where it will replace energy generated through coal or nuclear. It might not make up for the energy you wasted back in Norway, but that was never the point to begin with.

> Norways free power

Mind explaining what you are talking about?

I mean if you have free power, then yes converting it into something else even inefficiently is good. But what free power?

I know there are some geothermal plants in Iceland that capture otherwise wasted power and use it to refine aluminium, but I've never heard of countries with free power.

Norway generates 99 percent of its power through hydroelectricity. Its power is free in that there's no CO2 involved and no fossil fuels. Of course its not free; there's more to electricity than just generating it, but the prices seem cheap enough that the per capital consumption is three times that of other European states.

Norway happens to be a large producer of solar panels, too, so this example is pretty spot on.

Well if that's the case then more power (pun accidental) to them.

But can't they build a power grid and ship the electricity directly to someone instead of bundling it in the form of a solar cell?

No, because, as has been pointed out to you in another branch of this discussion, it is actually economically reasonable to build a solar cell that will yield more power than you put into building it.

Seriously dude, get over your obsession about solar panels and accept the fact that you simply didn't have your facts straight.

You sure I'm reading that number wrong? EROI=6.5, expected panel lifetime 30 years => 30/6.5=4.6 years to earn back the energy required to create the panel. Expected panel lifetime of 20 years gives a payback time of 3 years.

For instance, panel lifetime of 20 years and EROI of 1 would give your number, 20 years, to pay back the energy required to produce one panel. Regardless, your original claim of 20 years to get back the original energy investment is greatly exaggerated.

Sorry, I misunderstood what you wrote.

If the EROI is indeed 6.5 then yes you are correct.

But last time I looked at EROI they always cherry picked the best results. (Bright sun, perfect angle, clean new panels, etc.) They also usually ignored installation costs (inverter, wires, framework). Additionally as the cells age they produce less energy.

In more typical installations the number I remember was 20 years after including everything. Although it you told me it was really 10 years I wouldn't argue much.

Under 5 years seems unlikely to me. I'll tell you how I know:

Market forces. With a ROI (not EROI - but obviously they are strongly related) of under 5 years you will have people installing the panels as an investment, with no subsidies needed. Yet you don't see that happening, and I suspect it's because the ROI is worse than 5 years.

This is a bit of a backward argument of course, but the fact that you need subsidies to get people to install solar panels tell me the ROI is not good enough.

I would support subsidies only for one purpose: To initially stimulate the market, in order that scale would reduce prices long term. But subsidies long term are wrong.

I agree with you that if you only get an EROI of 6.5, that's in itself just barely worth it. But to be fair, things are changing really fast. The United States has just added import taxes on Chinese solar panels, to prop up the US solar industry, from 30 to 250 percent depending on the manufacturer. This seems to me a really obvious sign that solar cells are getting a _lot_ cheaper. This might or might not change the energy question, but the economic viability of solar cells is getting better. Can't find the source on this, but I read somewhere that the newest Chinese solar panels are clearly economically viable even without subsidies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/u-s-solar-tariffs-o...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18112983

Modern solar cells produce the energy that was needed to make them in about three to five years, that’s well below their lifetime.

Where can I buy some? They would make a great investment if I could actually do that.

If it really only took 3 to 5 years you would expect everyone to install them - you don't often see such great ROI's.

A) I live in that country and I can tell you that we're quite OK with it.

B) Still don't like your oversimplification in terms of CO2 - and we "send around CO2" all the time. I simply don't think it matters.

C) Again, solar power isn't far enough ahead right now, most of the money is in wind development. Oh, and then there are, you know, a lot of other renewable energy sources that you ignore as you're a little to taken with how well you think you can bash solar.

D) Well, that's certainly a reason to buy into the argument, then, I guess.

E) Oh look, solar again. I sure hope the person you were replying to was rather directly indicating that it's not the only thing to talk about or this would make you seem quite overzealous by now.

F) Again, it's an investment and a sound one at that, based on the history of how technology develops in that area. A walking where the ball will be, not where it is right now (coal and, indeed, nuclear) kind of situation.

I'm curious, though - what's your assessment on how much further nuclear energy has gotten in dealing with its toxic waste problem in the half a century it has been around?

I think you touch on a rather important point. Germany has to make these technologies work, because the alternative is having to rely on gas from Poland and Russia and nuclear energy from France, oil also from Russia and coal from somewhere not nice either. I'm not a big fan in government spending on less efficient technologies, except that in this case I believe the wars and uncomfortable partnerships that can be avoided this way will make it pay for itself.

I guess the problem with a long article, even an interesting long article like the one submitted here, is that it is hard to read to the end. Near the end of the submitted article is this paragraph:

"A second problem is that even when it comes to alternative energy sources, Germany doesn't reward carbon dioxide reduction. Rather, its policy establishes well-defined subsidies for specific technologies: a kilowatt-hour of solar power is rewarded more than power from offshore wind, which in turn earns more than power from onshore wind. Even though solar subsidies have been reduced to rates far lower than the ones Leurs locked in, solar power still pays the highest rates. If reducing emissions were the focus, however, more money would be directed toward reducing energy use. 'If you could choose the optimal instruments, focusing on those areas first where you can achieve your goals most inexpensively, you would focus not so much on renewables but much more on efficiency,' says Pittel, the energy economist from Munich."

This ignores the advice of Amory Lovins

http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins

(Amory Lovins profile page at Rocky Mountain Institute website)

http://www.ted.com/speakers/amory_lovins.html

(TED profile)

http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_a_50_year_plan_for_ene...

(TED Talk video "A 40-year plan for energy")

and generally the advice of any thoughtful scholar on how to improve worldwide energy efficiency. The German Energiewende plan is a remarkable example of intentionally wrong policy choices that waste the money of German taxpayers and utility rate-payers and delay innovation. It's a good thing that other countries have differing policies that better encourage innovation, especially innovation to reduce energy consumption.

AFTER EDIT:

Another subthread here talks about the economics of importing energy versus producing it domestically. An astute HN participant mentioned the principle of comparative advantage. For onlookers who may not have seen a good reference on comparative advantage, I suggest "Ricardo's Difficult Idea,"

http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/ricardo.html

by an economist who has been awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics, an essay that explains why trading for resources is generally much, much better than trying to produce all resources within national borders.

There are some other good explanations of the principle of comparative advantage easily found via an online search:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...

http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/cadv_e.htm

http://iang.org/free_banking/david.html

Great quote in there

"If a problem can't be solved, enlarge it"

Eisenhover.

Edit: Oh and buying the book for sure. Good stuf thanks.

This isn't a decision grounded in economics, obviously. This is about minimizing side-effects from energy production. The sun blasts roughly 10,000 times our electricity needs at us each year. (And that's just what directly impacts the surface.) I'd say we have some wiggle room in which it makes sense to focus on being cleaner rather than more efficient.

We should worry about efficiency if we have serious scarcity issues, but I don't think we really have a scarcity problem at the moment. (We could definitely get there surprisingly quickly, but I think the cleanliness risk is serious and immediate, and we shouldn't focus on hypotheticals.)

This 10,000 times figure is meaningless because it is theoretical; in reality that energy comes in diffuse rays which make it very difficult to capture anywhere near the amount of electricity that is actually needed. Hence the need to turn on coal power plants, which are harmful to the environment (very unwise to have turned off those nuclear plants IMO). Therefore, we SHOULD worry about efficiency, to avoid such things as much as possible.

We haven't turned off nuclear plants (yet). Those which are currently off have either reached EOL (1 or 2 IIRC) or are down for scheduled maintenance or because of unexpected failure of critical components.(pretty much all the rest)

But yes, we actually had some days where we were running without nuclear power. And I don't think it's unwise to turn them off. Few people are actually aware but in 1977 we had a catastrophic failure with a similar characteristic as the Fukushima accident: Block A of the Grundremmingen [1] nuclear plant suffered a power failure followed by a catastrophic loss of main coolant. The block had to be given up since it was not economic to repair and refit it. So while it may be true that a safe reactor can be built, I'm absolutely certain that humans can never safely operate it. We just make too many errors.

[1] Close to Ulm and Augsburg, smack in the middle of Stuttgart and Munich. No more Octoberfest if that blows up.

You and the article are missing several things, Germany is already one of the most energy efficient industrial country in the world and the regulations are drastically forcing companies and people to save energy. Houses which are built nowadays are nearly passive house and this by law. Also, the German bank for development is giving everybody around 100k€ loan at about 1% to improve the energy efficiency of old and new houses.

Germans are extremely serious about energy use and savings and they know how to do an energy balance. I wish this level of engineering would cross the border to France a bit more often.

We do have quite a couple of taxes and regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency, so the subsidies for renewable energies are a more of a complement for those. We have tax breaks for cars that use less fuel, we do have extra tax for fuel consumption, we do have support for energy efficient housing, ... All in all we're doing pretty fine on that side. Primary energy usage in Germany has been dropping since the eighties and is now close to what we consumed in 1970 (309 mio toe in 1970 vs 319 mio toe in 2010) while the USA have been rising pretty steadily with a small drop-off since 2008 (1627 mio toe in 1970 vs 2285 mio toe in 2010). [1] There's a limit where the ROI in reducing energy consumption is lower than the ROI in producing renewable energy and after that we're still going to need energy, so I think while reduction should be the first priority, we still need to invest into second and third priorities pretty much right now. And that's what we're doing.

The different subsidies are explained by the fact that the subsidies are intended to support the uptake of those technologies. Solar energy just needed more of a push to achieve critical mass and so does offshore wind. Now that solar panels are cheaper and more efficient, the subsidies get lower and lower each year. There are still a plethora of problems surrounding this approach, but I must admit that I don't see how other approaches would have less problems.

[1] see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Staaten_mit_dem_h%C3...

Crazy. The United States have only four times the population of Germany, how can they spend 7.5 time as much energy?

There certainly a couple of contributing factor to that:

Geographical factors:

* larger distances. In Germany you can barely travel 1000km in one direction without leaving the country. This implies higher population density which keeps energy consumption for travels and transports at a lower level.

* milder climate: We don't need as much heating as the people in Alaska do and less air conditioning than California or Florida

Man-made/political factors:

* higher energy costs. We pay roughly 2USD per liter fuel. That implies that people are actually trying to buy fuel efficient cars. We don't drive pickups - in fact, I couldn't really afford the fuel cost if I would. Same is true for all sorts of energy.

* better insulation on houses. The standard american house seems to be the wood-frame-kind that's cheaper and quicker to build but is not expected to last for centuries. Here, houses are expected to last for ages. The one I currently live in dates back to somewhere around 1900, the one I'll move to was built in the late 1850s. This is quite common for Berlin actually. That implies thick, well insulated stone or brick walls.

There's certainly more things that affect energy usage, but the important point is that there are some factors that can be influenced while others can't. The Canadians for example will always have a higher need for primary energy since it's pretty cold there on average. The more interesting point is whether the consumption rises or falls and how we produce that energy.

I liked the article but think that it's missing the point: very soon there will be no other choice of what direction to take. We are saying "It's risky! Let's just sit back and watch." as if the status quo can go on as our energy consumption and populations both continue to grow. There will be mistakes made along the way, but mark my words, the Germans are going to be eating our lunch faster than you can say Energiewende.

I'm living in Germany and to support this 'Energiewende', I'm only buying green electricity. It is more expensive but I'm happy to pay more if I can boost the industry around it and also help our environment. Many young people think like this.

> [They] decided to build a polysilicon plant in Tennessee, partly because energy costs in Germany were so high.

This makes USA look like a 3rd world country being used as a haven for environmentally harmful industry installations.

Not really. Undeveloped countries tend not to have cheap abundant electricity and are generally less politically stable than the U.S. (both of those things are part of a desirable context for billion dollar investments).

I suppose if you decide that U.S. environmental standards are useless you might have a point.

One of the things that always surprises me when talking about lulls from wind and solar power, is that the assumption always is that we _have_ to provide continuous power. Would it not be possible to have industrial facilities that run in bursts when the energy is available (or more likely cheap), and then turn off again? Sure, this is not as easy as the old way to do things, but seriously, this is not impossible, nature essentially works in this way. Prime candidates would include extremely energy intensive industrial processes with short runtimes.

It is not possible because those industries that consume massive amounts of energy are typically those that operate under the assumption that machines are never and in some cases cannot be turned of.

It seems inevitable that we will have to change some of our fundamental ways of working if we want to get rid of our reliance on fossil fuels. Before the industrial revolution the world didn't have 24/7 assembly lines, it's only since coal/oil/gas that we've been able to work in this way. I guess that's the point, it is a large paradigm shift, comparable to the introduction of the steam engine. We can't expect the world to remain unchanged.

The unfortunate thing with solar panels means that we'd all be at work when the sun shines and get our days off when it's cloudy :)

The problem with many large industrial processes is that they cannot be run that way. Think a steamcracker for example: Shutdown takes days, starting up as well. It's so (energy) hungry that its cost-efficient to leave all parts in the chain running if one fails and just burn the resulting light oil. (Makes for a spectacular flame on the skyline). Aluminum processing falls in the same category.

There are other processes where this is possible (steel smelting via electric power for example) and where this is already done. Those plants usually run at night and consume large amounts of the base load. The issue with solar/wind-energy is that the availability may fluctuate within very short time frames - sometimes minutes - so that you cannot use this.

In a smaller scale this works the other way round. There are some small-scale fuel-powered plants that can be used to heat/cool a house or a block as well as produce electricity and those power up when electrical power is needed and store the heat for when it's needed (it's somewhat easier to store heat). This can be used to cut off some of the load spikes.

I know very little about heavy industrial processes, but probably in many cases there are alternative processes that are not optimal in the case of continuous power, but with fluctuating power supplies they might become viable.

A possible alternative would be running some process which produces some valuable output, which can be stockpiled. What I'm thinking about is that rather than trying to store energy, one could rather make e.g. PET bottles (probably a stupid idea). Then if there is too many PET bottles, they are burned for energy, but otherwise they are slowly consumed.

What about making a small piece of some ridiculously grand project, slowly, little by little. For instance, building a train tunnel across the Atlantic with robots that only run when power is available? The bad points with that is that it will only be useful when ready, but perhaps a similar kind of mining operation? Dig a little deeper every time energy is cheap enough.

Surely most industrial operation would not work, because the startup costs are large, making the returns convex in the size of investment. But maybe there are concave operations? Many human operated tasks are. It is easy to make a good meal for 4 people, but much more difficult for 40. With robotics at least, one would think that operations with similar properties would be available.

This is not an 'experiment'. But please go on telling us that it is impossible, we'll get it done it even quicker. For an engineer, there is no better motivation.

Stephan Reimelt, CEO of GE Energy Germany: "Germany is forcing itself toward innovation. What this generates is a large industrial laboratory at a size which has never been done before. We will have to try a lot of different technologies to get there."

It has been done before, at far greater scale. WW1 and WW2. Some of the best innovations or inventions are derived out of a person or a nation having their back to the wall. Hence the famous saying: "necessity, who is the mother of invention" (dating back a mere 2400 years or so, and it's probably older as a known premise).

I would anticipate very impressive industrial breakthroughs in renewable energy coming from the German experiment.

I also wonder how much benefit is to be had by not paying other countries for your energy compared to paying yourself...

In the case of the US, a shockingly massive benefit. We import between $350b and $500b per year worth of petroleum products (depending on the price of oil).

There is, however, the rule of comparative advantage, which means that it is better to import energy than to produce the same amount domestically, if the import is cheaper. How that is balanced against the benefit for domestic producers, I wouldn't know...

Only if the calculation includes the vast benefits of domestic energy production, properly sourced, and not just the basic price of energy.

Such as keeping First Solar and SunPower in business (FSLR has lost 95% of its value).

The jobs created through installation, maintainence, R&D, manufacturing, and so on.

For example: let's say your import cost is $250 billion, but your domestic cost is $300 billion. I'd argue that you're radically better off spending the $300 billion domestically, than losing the jobs likely involved and exporting $250 billion off shore to benefit some other nation/s. There's no doubt some inflection point on that benefit, but I think it's a wide margin.

For solar, sure, but domestic oil and coal production can have far-reaching environmental consequences that aren't easy to calculate.

That doesn't make economic sense. That $250B isn't being vaporized: it's going to foreign consumers who are going to spend some fraction of it buying imported goods. Your goods are likely to be more competitive if an extra $50B worth of energy costs weren't spent making them. This is basic comparative advantage stuff.

Actually the $250Bn never existed - you printed the dollars and gave the Saudis pieces of paper for the oil.

They essentially loaned you the oil - and if they ask fro the money back you can just democratize them.

There's also a geopolitical advantage to producing it at home. Doing so provides less reason to interfere in the internal politics of foreign producer states.

How much (in $) refined product do we then export? Crude is not gasoline or plastic.

Some misc data on that:

"America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion."

"Fuel exports, worth an estimated $88 billion in 2011 ..."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-1...

From what I could find, we export around $30x billion worth of plastic per year, and import around $12 to $15 billion worth of plastics.

The only way the amount of petroleum we import matter is compared to how much we would have to spend to get the same energy with out importing anything. If the cost of stopping importing oil was that we had to spend $1000b a year on synthesizing oil from corn (for example), then the amount we spend on foreign oil is actually a good deal.

It does matter quite a lot to the oil market price. Third world farmers pay the same price for oil as the "I'd rather drive the SUV" suburbanites.

"just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners"

I hope the rest of the article wasn't researched as "good" as this.

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