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Power EU

Germany Sticks To Nuclear Power Deadline But Leaves Loophole (reuters.com) 192

Posted by BeauHD from the latest-developments dept.
Beeftopia writes: Germany will keep two of its three reactors operational through the end of 2022, despite a pledge to shut them all down by December 31. A likely winter gas shortage prompted the change. "German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement on Monday the move did not mean Berlin was reneging on its long-standing promise to exit nuclear energy by the end of 2022," reports Reuters. Habeck went on to say, "It remains very improbable that we will have crisis situations and extreme scenarios" requiring further use of nuclear.

"Germany is part of a European system hit by a decline in Russian gas deliveries, the French nuclear power squeeze and a drought that has curbed hydroelectric production and cooling water supplies to thermal power stations as well as hampering barge deliveries of coal," Reuters says. A problem with the planned use case for the reactors is that nuclear plants are not designed to be variable backup energy generators, but rather continuous first-line generators.
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Germany Sticks To Nuclear Power Deadline But Leaves Loophole More

Germany Sticks To Nuclear Power Deadline But Leaves Loophole

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  • Trump called it, and they laughed. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    https://youtu.be/FfJv9QYrlwg [youtu.be]

    • Ronald Reagan called it in 1982, and they laughed.
      https://www.nytimes.com/1982/0... [nytimes.com]

    • The stopped clock was actually right? Guess when you spout enough bullshit, even a cheesy cartoon show can predict the future [insider.com].

  • We'll see how reality treats the plan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @09:17PM (#62858578)

    My guess is that in reality Germany is going to have to lean a lot harder on these nuclear reactors than they are saying... how can they say with a straight face they don't think there will be power emergencies when Russia has totally shut them off from gas even earlier than they thought?

    My further guess is these reactors are going to be going a lot longer than the end of 2023...

    • The reactors are being fazed-out because of widespread public opposition to nuclear power. The government know's they will be necessary but it figures there will be less of a backlash to scraping the nuclear exit plan when the crisis is upon Germany rather then before.

      • Re:We'll see how reality treats the plan (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @10:18PM (#62858688)

        Widespread public opposition to nuclear energy vs widespread public opposition to being really cold... decisions, decisions.

        Barring some magical change, not only Germany, but broader northern (at least) Europe will really need the excess nuclear power this year due to the limited hydropower available beyond the natural gas situation. I would be very curious what pan-European grid planning is happening for winter.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The situation is far more complex than that.

          Firstly, most Germans use gas for heating, not electricity. They can't easily switch their central heating systems to electricity in time for winter. In fact retrofitting heat pumps is pretty expensive in buildings designed for gas.

          They can obviously buy resistive electric heaters, but they cost a lot more to run than gas central heating even with the Russian supply cut off.

          All keeping those nuclear plants online does is reduce the price of gas and electricity a b

          • Firstly, most Germans use gas for heating, not electricity.

            Gas is in a shortage. The Germans have 30GW of electric generational capacity from gas. That's a lot of gas that can be used for heating instead, if you find another way to keep the lights on.

            I'm not sure why you persist with this talking point. You get corrected by multiple people on every story about this topic. Heating homes (or rather keeping the gas dependent energy economy going) is the exclusive reason for extending the life of the coal and nuke plants. The singular reason they are doing this is to a

            • The Germans have 30GW of electric generational capacity from gas. That's a lot of gas that can be used for heating instead,

              Yes, let's redirect the Russian gas from the power plants to the homes. Oh, wait...

          • Imagine a chilly German walking down to the local OBI, picking up an electric heater and using it to keep themselves from freezing for the next few months

            See, it is not all that hard, in fact anybody looking for some profits would probably note the local brands and buy some stock

            The lengths that you go to create catch-22 scenarios is just ridiculous

        • Water power in Germany is about 2% of the total ...

      • Re:We'll see how reality treats the plan (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @10:41PM (#62858734)

        widespread public opposition to nuclear power.

        The opposition is not so widespread.

        German politics, like American politics, is dysfunctional, but in the opposite way.

        In America's first-past-the-post plurality system, small parties are mostly ignored by the two-party duopoly.

        Germany's proportional system leads to coalition governments where small parties are kingmakers with disproportionate power. The Greens were able to impose denuclearization despite getting only 15% of the vote.

        • Re:We'll see how reality treats the plan (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @11:50PM (#62858836) Journal
          That decision was made back in 2000 to limit the life of plants to 32 years to make the Greens happy as you said. Merkel didn't like the agreement (she was in the opposition then) but when she became Chancellor and was about to loose a important local election to the Greens following panic from the Fukushima disaster, she decided to hasten the shutdown instead. Yes all politics are dirty!

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MacMann ( 7518492 )

        https://www.engineeringnews.co... [engineeringnews.co.za]

        67% of people support keeping nuclear power plants running for another 5 years. 27% oppose. But then in most any poll there's about 20% that oppose anything because they are stupid, want to mess with the poll, don't understand the question, and so on. This is still a significant opposition but give it a bit of time and it will be more like 80% support and the 20% will be the people that read the question wrong and thought no means yes.

        Further in the poll is 41% support bu

        • Those are from this year with skyrocketing energy prices and fears of shortages, polls from the time when the decision was made consistently showed over 60% support. https://www.welt.de/newsticker... [www.welt.de]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          But then in most any poll there's about 20% that oppose anything because they are stupid, want to mess with the poll, don't understand the question, and so on.

          And there's about 20% that will assent to anything because that's what "their tribe" apparently thinks it wants, and they are too insecure to say a word against, especially when they don't understand the question.

          Unfortunately, the 20% stupid on both sides of the issue apparently hold a lot of sway over what does or doesn't actually happen, reaso

        • In the BREXIT poll 25% were stupid and wanted to mess with the poll and voted: pro BREXIT

        • You get your news about Germany from South African editorials that cite World Nuclear News as a source for information about... an online poll?

          ha! That's so stupid, I can only spare one "ha" laughing at you.

      • Yeah that's the most generous interpretation possible.

        Because otherwise, keeping two plants operational but not generating energy is the dumbest fucking option possible because it costs shitloads of money and produces no electricity, while they keep burning coal in parallel.

        • You know: to sell the electricity, you need a market to buy it.
          Dumbass ...

          • Not sure why this ad hominem but the European energy market is fairly advanced and prices are high. There would be no trouble selling the electricity.

    • My guess is that in reality Germany is going to have to lean a lot harder on these nuclear reactors than they are saying... how can they say with a straight face they don't think there will be power emergencies when Russia has totally shut them off from gas even earlier than they thought?

      Probably going to need much more resistive heat to make up for (no) gas, so yeah I agree. Happy to be watching from afar.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      The how is easy to answer: denial.

      The course of energy politics has been criticized from within Germany for a long time, and possibilities like these have been predicted ever since, calling for some kind of contingency plan. But criticism was usually (fallaciously) dismissed as some kind of racism against Russians and pointing fingers at the USA like only being critical because you want to shill for US fossil fuels instead, which doesn't even make sense if you're critical of imported fuels in general.

      And

      • 'Scientist: My findings are useless, if taken out of context.
        "Journalist": Scientists say their findings are useless"'.

        Possibly the best SIG... ever.

    • how can they say with a straight face they don't think there will be power emergencies when Russia has totally shut them off from gas even earlier than they thought?

      Because they already put plans in place with the assumption that the gas would get shut-off completely. Germany won't freeze this coming winter. Their economy won't do well, but they aren't going to freeze.

      That said I do agree with you, I highly suspect the reactors will be extended to 2024. Infrastructure takes a while to change.

    • My guess is that in reality Germany is going to have to lean a lot harder on these nuclear reactors than they are saying... how can they say with a straight face they don't think there will be power emergencies when Russia has totally shut them off from gas even earlier than they thought?
      Because nuclear power plants produce electricity
      And Gas is (amoung other things) used for household heating

      Both have nothing to do with each other.

      And your "straight face" pun? What is that about?

      Either Germany will need th

      • 20% of German electricity is produced with natural gas. Replacing that with coal or nuclear frees up all of that gas for home heating. The two certainly have something to do with each other.

      • I guess the thought is that every household is going to retrofit with electric heating or space heaters during an ongoing international supply chain shortage. Turning electricity to gas would make a lot more sense, using more nuclear power.

        My further guess is these reactors are going to be going a lot longer than the end of 2023...
        And for what reason would/could that be the case?

        It's what most countries do, especially when not willing to build new plants. Is there a single nuclear plant in the US that isn't past its design lifespan? Ah, found a source with some detail. 1/5 of US power is generated from Nuclear - only one plant has been built

  • Carbon footprint. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bored ( 40072 )

    I saw a nice little graph the other day of german energy production, and it's basically summarized as 500B+ spent on renewables, and they have effectively the same proportion of carbon emitting energy sources as they did 20 years ago.

    Wind+Solar have been a failure, and despite the cries of "batteries" will continue to be that way for at least the next decade or two. Then after overbuilding wind+solar 5x+ and batteries plus a few days of storage the result will likely be the most expensive energy on the plan

    • Re:Carbon footprint. (Score:5, Informative)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @11:44PM (#62858826)

      I saw a nice little graph the other day of german energy production, and it's basically summarized as 500B+ spent on renewables, and they have effectively the same proportion of carbon emitting energy sources as they did 20 years ago.

      Just for curiosity I checked and that doesn't look correct [wikipedia.org].

      Despite total energy capacity increasing they're actually generating less total power from carbon emitting sources.

      Wind+Solar have been a failure, and despite the cries of "batteries" will continue to be that way for at least the next decade or two. Then after overbuilding wind+solar 5x+ and batteries plus a few days of storage the result will likely be the most expensive energy on the planet and the least reliable.

      Repeat after me, no one has proven that wind+solar are grid scale technologies.

      I was skeptical too, but as of 2018 Germany was getting 23% of it's power from wind+solar.

      I don't know the limits where you start hitting issues with reliability... but that sounds like grid scale tech to me.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by vyvepe ( 809573 )

        I was skeptical too, but as of 2018 Germany was getting 23% of it's power from wind+solar.

        I don't know the limits where you start hitting issues with reliability... but that sounds like grid scale tech to me.

        That is easy to achieve when they can offload the generation to fossil fuels when wind is not blowing and sun is not shining. Moreover the price of offloading is not being paid by the renewable generation sources. Therefore LCOE of renewables looks great. But System LCOE is pitiful at high renewables penetration (above 40% for wind or above 20% for solar). That is the territory where it starts to be worse than nuclear. See System LCOE by Falko Ueckerdt, Lion Hirth, Gunnar Luderer, Ottmar Edenhofer.

      • Getting 23% *sometimes. Is not a solution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by steveha ( 103154 )

      I am in favor of nuclear power. You can even build it near me as long as it's a modern safe design. So I agree with you on that.

      But I think you are underestimating the potential of batteries to smooth out the grid in the face of renewables. There are several technologies that have the potential to work at large scale:

      * liquid metal batteries [ambri.com]
      * flow batteries [wikipedia.org]
      * lithium iron phosphate batteries [wikipedia.org] (e.g. Tesla Megapack [tesla.com])
      * distributed "virtual power plant" [electrek.co] systems (home-scale batteries linked through software and

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Uecker ( 1842596 )

      Sorry, this is far from the truth. Germany now produces 50% of its electricity from renewables and substantially reduced coal use. In 2000 in produced 38 TWh from renewables, in 2021 it was 234 TWh. In 2000 it produced 148 TWh + 143 TWh + 72 TWh (= 354TWh) from lignite and coal gas and in 2021 110 TWh and 55 TWh and 90 TWh (=255TWh), respectively. So this is a substantial reduction in fossil fuels with a corresponding reduction in CO2 emissions (gas use is fluctuating a bit depending on price, in 2010 it w

    • and they have effectively the same proportion of carbon emitting energy sources as they did 20 years ago.
      That is wrong.
      Germany reduced CO2 output in the electricity sector by far over 50%.
      And atm we produce > 50% of our electricity with renewables.

      Are you sure you are not living in an alternative universe?

      The rest of your post makes no sense anyway. What is wrong if in a democracy people decide against somethings, vote a government into power to make the change, and the change is done?

      Seems you do not be

    • There is nothing wrong with carbon sources backing up renewable sources. Wind/solar with OCGT backup is the most economical way to produce electricity. That's why its preferred for new build-outs.

  • The sooner nuclear plants open the less gas burned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @10:34PM (#62858724)

    It sounds like Germany is still planning on burning natural gas for electricity until some "emergency" comes, and then they will start the nuclear power plants so they can have enough natural gas for heating through the winter. What a stupid move.

    It would seem to me that the "greens" decided that they need to actually see the natural gas get burned at a rate that will not last the winter before they allow the nuclear power plants to start. But they have to have nuclear engineers and technicians at the sites to be able to start these plants up regardless because those plants will be in a "warm shutdown" in this period. This is going to cost them as much money as if the plant was running full power but they get no power out of the plant.

    Maybe I'm missing something important but that appears to be the case.

    Then there's France that is still operating their nuclear power plant at low capacity factors because of a series of poor engineering decisions. One is that they use cooling water from a river rather than a more common cooling pool and tower. They dump the water back in the river which can raise the water temperature to where it could kill fish. If they had a cooling tower and just used the river to make up for water lost to evaporation then they would not need to reduce power when the weather was warm, and possibly even not during droughts. I don't know how much water is boiled off but if they just dug out some artificial lakes to store up some excess water for dry periods then they might not need to reduce power then either.

    One big issue that lowers their capacity factor is France using nuclear power to load follow. They bring down the power output of nuclear power reactors at night, rotating which is reducing power to minimize issues of xenon buildup and fuel burning too quickly any any given plant. They could run more wires to their neighbors so they are getting better capacity factor out of their nuclear power plants, which will lower their costs, and replace oil and coal fired power in neighboring nations, lowering CO2 emissions.

    I have to wonder if part of what France is doing has to do with nuclear power not considered "green" and so could not count towards a nations lower CO2 emissions goals. I believe that changed. It could simply be that it was cheaper to reduce power than sell the electricity at a discount. Maybe there was not enough wires to ship that amount of power. Maybe France could have got a Tesla Gigabattery to manage this better.

    There's a lot of bad choices here, and they've had a long time to fix them. It's only starting to happen now that there's an energy shortage that could threaten lives, as opposed to be a bit expensive or a bit inconvenient.

    From the looks of it the problem is the "greens", ignoramuses and morons that fear nuclear power than global warming or energy shortages. They want to see an actual energy shortage first and then they will allow the nuclear power plants to restart. I expect these morons will lose power in the next election.

    • Then there's France that is still operating their nuclear power plant at low capacity factors because of a series of poor engineering decisions.

      Thankfully though even though they have that Death-Star sized reactor design flaw, France can and will run all its reactors through the winter, so they are not in the same dire straights other countries are... and France is also planning on new nuclear reactors ASAP.

    • It sounds like Germany is still planning on burning natural gas for electricity until some "emergency" comes, and then they will start the nuclear power plants so they can have enough natural gas for heating through the winter. What a stupid move.

      Implying you can decide today to flip a switch rather than needing to do planning?

      What you see as a "stupid move" the people who you are calling stupid only seeing an uninformed idiot rambling. You can't just magically go to a decommissioned nuclear plant and pull on the rip cord to start it up. Heck until a month ago there was a question if they could even get fuel to keep the ones running going for another 12 months. There's a reason they have also extended the running licenses of several coal power stat

      • What I see as a stupid move is making all the preparations to run a nuclear power plant but not actually producing power with it until some predetermined shortage of natural gas is reached. They already know that there is a natural gas shortage. The are taking on the expense of getting the nuclear power plant prepared to produce power on short notice but then not immediately producing power. They are putting in all the expense of getting the nuclear power plant ready to produce power but won't go through

    • German gas storage is like 85% full. Any gas that is imported now would have to be burned as there is nowhere to store it. I hope they are building more gas storage, but I don't see that in any of the articles here or even in newspapers. Apparently there isn't enough storage for a whole winter's worth of gas so imports have to come in during the cold months.

  • These reactors will go down and stay down. The operators have just pointed out that bringing up a nuke takes several weeks and that they have no procedure and cannot now create one to do it within a week. Hence they will not do it as they cannot assure reactor safety. No surprise, really, just some no-clue politico shooting off his mouth before asking the actual experts.

    Protip: If you bring up a nuke (or change power output significantly) you have to be very careful and slow and stay within pre-determined s

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