Germany To Keep 2 of Its 3 Nuclear Plants Running Into April (apnews.com) 188
Germany's government plans to keep two of the country's three remaining nuclear power plants running until mid-April to help prevent a potential winter energy shortage, the economy and energy minister said Tuesday. The Associated Press reports: The announcement by Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck means the government has officially, albeit temporarily, reversed Germany's long-held plan to shut shut down its nuclear plants by the end of the year. Habeck said the decision to keep operating the two plants in southern Germany -- Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim north of Stuttgart -- into next year a "necessary" step to avoid potential power grid shortages in the region.
Officials still plan to close down Germany's third remaining nuclear plant, Emsland in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, at the end of the year as planned. Habeck said officials announced the decision Tuesday in light of stress test data from France's nuclear providers that indicated grid shortages could be more severe than expected this winter. Like other European countries, Germany is scrambling to ensure the lights stay on and homes stay warm this winter despite the reduction in natural gas flows from Russia amid the war in Ukraine. "The situation in France is not good and has developed much worse than was actually forecasted in the last few weeks," Habeck said. "As the minister responsible for energy security I have to say: Unless this development is reversed, we will leave Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim on the grid in the first quarter of 2023."
Officials still plan to close down Germany's third remaining nuclear plant, Emsland in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, at the end of the year as planned. Habeck said officials announced the decision Tuesday in light of stress test data from France's nuclear providers that indicated grid shortages could be more severe than expected this winter. Like other European countries, Germany is scrambling to ensure the lights stay on and homes stay warm this winter despite the reduction in natural gas flows from Russia amid the war in Ukraine. "The situation in France is not good and has developed much worse than was actually forecasted in the last few weeks," Habeck said. "As the minister responsible for energy security I have to say: Unless this development is reversed, we will leave Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim on the grid in the first quarter of 2023."
Not really (Score:2, Interesting)
They are kept in reserve. That means they produce minimal energy and can be ramped up to something like 30% of maximum capacity for a total of around 2% of the electricity Germany consumes. The whole thing is stupid.
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Yes, this doesn't look like a significant change from what they said earlier.
Again, possibly the dumbest fucking thing to keep expensive plants idling and not operating at full chooch.
Forcing the Greens to tackle global warming (Score:5, Informative)
It is obvious to all but the blinkered Greens that we have to use nuclear to help combat global warming.
THEN the anti-nuclear whiners can start again.
Nuclear power is both safe and planet friendly (Score:5, Informative)
Looking at this logically Germany should refuel its existing plants and recommission its shuttered plants. This should be done for numerous reasons.
Russia can't be relied upon as an energy partner
The war in Ukraine is ongoing as Russia is doubling down.
The whole gas economy is bad as it relies on fossil fuels
Generating power with coal is bad as it relies on fossil fuels
The plants already exist, they don't need to be built, the carbon from the concrete and steel is already in the atmosphere, keeping the plants running claws back this debt.
Also getting to zero emissions is the goal, don't make it harder than it needs to be, be pragmatic.
Nuclear isn't all sweetness and light, but neither are power lines, solar and wind farms. Solar generates significant waste, wind farms decimates certain types of birdlife and they're intermittent.
You might want the world to be powered by a warm inner glow but you only need a touch of winter for things to change
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Too expensive to keep nuclear going, especially as the plants age and operating them safely becomes more difficult. The path to cheap, clean energy is renewables. Germany just needs time to install more of them.
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Yeah, because insufficient supply is less expensive than operating already existing infrastructure, right? Ask Texas and California how that worked out for them.
Germany doesn't have time, which is why they are extending the operational timeline of these plants.
Re:Nuclear power is both safe and planet friendly (Score:5, Insightful)
MacMann, is this your new account?
MacKay has been discussed at length here on Slashdot. The bottom line is that renewables are fine without massive amounts of storage. A bit of demand shaping, as already happens, and some small scale distributed storage does help.
Thing is, even if you are right, we don't have any choice. Nuclear in Europe takes a couple of decades to build, if you can convince the energy companies to do it at all. The cost is eye watering, easily 6-8x that of offshore wind.
So your choice is offshore wind available in under a couple of years and very cheap, or throw money at nuclear for 20 years and get some expensive power at the end of it. Offshore wind capacity factor is reaching 60% now, so with some over-building of capacity you can cover your needs 24/365 and most of the time electricity is really cheap.
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A bit paranoid and no I'm not MacMann. I've had an account here for a long time.
Initially we're talking about plants that already exist that simply need new fuel and certifications. That's cheaper than building anything.
And the offshore wind only generates part of the time. Storage is very, very expensive and do you think people will switch off computers and stop work when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn't shining. Sorry you need to work on Sunday as it's cloudy on Friday? Industry needs consistent a
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"In the United Kingdom, low wind speeds are responsible for the majority of low generation events. Across the UK's offshore wind farm locations, low wind speed events occurred on average of 7% of the time in the 18-year period between 2000 and 2017 as compared to the incidence of high speed events of 0.3%. Low wind speed events were therefore responsible for 96% of all low generation events." from a paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com] Well written paper. Some things are good, UK high dema
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Some data on existing wind farms: https://energynumbers.info/uk-... [energynumbers.info]
The IEA also states 40-50%: https://www.iea.org/reports/of... [iea.org]
The offshore wind farm opportunities that were sold at auction last month in the UK are based on an expected capacity factor of 60%, due to taller turbines. The higher up you get, the more consistent the wind is.
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Great.
Now can we wish all of that North Sea offshore wind into existence in the next month? No? Then I guess there's still a place for operational, existing, nuclear reactors.
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I'm not arguing against keeping these reactors running, just saying that they are a stop-gap and nuclear can't be our solution to climate change.
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The bottom line is that renewables are fine without massive amounts of storage.
How do you know this? Have you done the required modeling? If not what is the source of your information? Previously when asked you trotted out quotes from a know nothing CEO with no formal education in the field. Is this still where you are getting your information?
A bit of demand shaping, as already happens, and some small scale distributed storage does help.
How much does it help? Is it enough? How do you know?
Thing is, even if you are right, we don't have any choice.
Do you have a credible path to renewable only energy production in 20 years time? If so what is it..?
Coal use is still on the rise and production is struggling to keep up with current demand.
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Coal use is still on the rise and production is struggling to keep up with current demand.
In China, perhaps in Africa too - not in Europe, and I doubt in the USA either.
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Reality is, sad fact is it may be, it it’s a poor illogical argument used to cover up the fact the word “nuclear” is just real darn scary to some
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When new nuclear plants cost 10x as much as nee renewables: of course it is costs.
thought reigning in CO2 emissions is the biggest risk to humanity and a problem we all need to cooperate and sacrifice to solve. ...
No, no one needs to sacrifice. You only need to switch from cO2 emitting energy sources to non CO2 emitting energy sources. What is the sacrifice in this? No idea
the fact the word âoenuclearâ is just real darn scary to some folks
You are an idiot. It is not "the word nuclear".
It is the
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Nuclear has had decades of R&D and it's getting even more expensive.
The fundamental nature of nuclear is flawed. The risks involved in controlling the reaction are too great for it ever to be competitive. Those risks also prevent it being deployed in many countries. It just can't solve the problems the world faces.
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Obviously the standards for nuclear safety are higher, because the risks are too. If a wind turbine fails catastrophically, the maximum damage it can do is fairly limited. If a nuclear plant fails catastrophically, as they have been shown to do on occasion, the damage is almost unlimited. If they hadn't sacrificed hundreds of miners to prevent a further explosion at Chernobyl, it would have been the largest nuclear bomb in history. Millions dead from the fallout. Massive climate change. It turned into a doo
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The law just accounts for the safety issues we have seen over the years. Clearly before 2011 what the Japanese were doing wasn't enough.
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Every day between 1975 and 2011 was an opportunity to improve the safety at those reactors.
What ultimately doomed Fukushima was unforeseen design flaws that nobody had recommended they fix. The recommendations were all about the sea defence, and never considered what happens if the plant gets flooded and the emergency cooling system cannot be monitored.
Re:Nuclear power is both safe and planet friendly (Score:4, Informative)
The cost is eye watering, easily 6-8x that of offshore wind.
The same was true of solar PV but with years of R&D it's now cheaper.
For some reason, people seem to be able to ignore the huge R&D budget for nuclear power. This year, for example, the DOE's budget for the Office of Nuclear Power is 1.65 billion dollars.
Don't try to tell me that nuclear power would be cheap like solar if only we had the R&D that solar had; the R&D funding for nuclear well exceeds the solar R&D budget.
The more people talk about its disadvantages the more people look into it advantages. So, keep screaming about how nuclear power is a bad idea, it's going to help in getting people to talk about it.
Yes, nuclear power has advantages and problems. The advocates don't want to talk about the problems; the opponents don't want to hear about solutions.
But, right now one of the serious problems is that nuclear power is extremely expensive. Yes, advocates tell us that next-generation nuclear power plants can be designed to be cheaper... but they have been promising that for seventy years, and I'm getting skeptical.
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This year, for example, the DOE's budget for the Office of Nuclear Power is 1.65 billion dollars.
Don't try to tell me that nuclear power would be cheap like solar if only we had the R&D that solar had; the R&D funding for nuclear well exceeds the solar R&D budget.
1.65 billion dollars is literally a rounding error compared to the trillion and change spent yearly on production in the US alone.
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And how much money does the DOE spent for renewables? That was the question. Not: rounding error compared to the trillion and change spent yearly on production in the US alone Production of what? Weapons?
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For some reason, people seem to be able to ignore the huge R&D budget for nuclear power. This year, for example, the DOE's budget for the Office of Nuclear Power is 1.65 billion dollars.
Spending money on development isn't helpful if there's no licenses to do actual development. That budget includes R&D on keeping existing nuclear power reactors running, and given that something like 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear and less than 3% comes from solar there's a lot of room for that money to be spent on keeping decades old nuclear power plants running.
Yes, nuclear power has advantages and problems. The advocates don't want to talk about the problems; the opponents don't want to hear about solutions.
The opponents to nuclear power are opposing human civilization. They hate humanity and in many ways they hate themselves. They p
problems [Re:Nuclear power is both safe and pl...] (Score:2)
Nothing you said in any way addressed what I said.
Nuclear power has advantages and problems. The advocates don't want to talk about the problems; the opponents don't want to hear about solutions. You are one of the advocates, who don't want to admit that nuclear has problems. Real problems. That won't be solved by pretending that they don't exist.
Going back to the actual topic of discussion, however, you had said of solar PV that "with years of R&D it's now cheaper," with the implication that similarl
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Well it's harder to sabotage a large number of turbines. They could attack the cables I guess.
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Most people who say that you can do it all with solar and wind just can't add up. All I ask is that you read a little bit so you understand what you're saying.
You actually CAN do it all with solar and wind....you just can't do it cheap as the rare earths became a severely limiting factor before you get there.
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you just can't do it cheap as the rare earths became a severely limiting factor before you get there.
Rare is only part of the Name which was given them 200 years ago
They are not rare at all.
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We could always start shipping nuclear waste into space.
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We could always start shipping nuclear waste into space.
Queue Space 1999 music...
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France is a net importer primarily due to the fact that they have found corrosion in a number of plants. This means they have been taken offline for repairs. Because the have a large number of a single plant design the issue impacts them all. The simple fact is that France has far lower CO2 emissions than Germany and power costs are lower. If nuclear was more expensive than wind and solar this wouldn't be the case. Download the analysis from
https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system
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One reason power costs for households are lower in France because they are artificially kept low in France (which is one reason EDF is loss making) and artificially kept high in Germany (to encourage power saving). Market prices - at the moment - are far higher than in Germany. But yes, life time extension for nuclear plants makes sense and this is cheap. But new nuclear is far to expensive to be a reasonable solution for climate change. Also old plants that need investments sometimes will get too expensiv
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Re:Nuclear power is both safe and planet friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
And they just proved this again: yesterday both the Nordstream 1 pipeline (which used to be operational and the main way for gas delivery from Russia to Germany but has been closed down for about a month) and the under-construction Nordstream 2 pipeline next to it were blown apart in an obvious act of sabotage. [bbc.com].
Now the Swedish authorities are investigating this together with the defense forces and NATO intelligence, so obviously no-one besides Ukraine has directly blamed Russia yet, but one does not need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this is straight out of the Kremlins playbook. Now why would Russia blow out their own pipelines? There are numerous reasons: first off, Poland is currently getting a lot of replacement gas via another pipeline through the Baltic sea going from Norway to Poland. If Russia is aiming to try and blow this one too, blowing their own (inoperational) pipelines first works as both a practice run and a plausible deniability factor: if they manage to blow up the Norwegian pipe as well (which I doubt, NATO has already (in co-operation with both Finland and Sweden) stepped up defensive measures around the pipeline) they can claim that it can't be them because they too have suffered from this. Secondly, this is great as a propaganda tool for both external and internal purposes: externally they're already blaming the west/the US/NATO/CIA on this in an attempt to sow chaos among the western allies and population. Internally they're going to use this as 'proof' that they're indeed in a war against the whole west and try to ramp up theyr (dismal) recruitment attempts.
Additionally Putin is probably getting a lot of internal pressure from the oligarchs to end the war and resume trade seeing there've been several high profile Russian oligarchs recently that have mysteriously fallen out of windows or been found dead. By destroying the pipe he ensures that even if he's thrown out of power gas trading with Europe cannot and will not resume, so he's trying to make sure they're locked into this total war approach.
So yes, there will definitely not be any more Russian gas sold to Europe/Germany, most likely not even after the war ends because the unreliability of Russia is now finally clear to everyone, even to Germany that's trusted them way too much after the collapse of the soviet Union. There's a very good reason why we here in Finland have imported basically next to no Russian gas throughout the whole millenium and have instead focused on building more nuclear power, with the new Olkiluoto 3 reactor [wikipedia.org] being undergoing test use currently and once it's up and running fully by the end of the year or start of the next, it'll make the Olkiluoto nuclear plant the largest in the Nordics. As for waste disposal, we're currently the first country in the world that has an active deep geological repository [wikipedia.org] for nuclear waste that will be able to store it in stable bedrock for tens of thousands of years at basically no risk of leakage because the storing requires no power and we have no earthquakes,
Resuming and increasing their nuclear power generation is also the only sensible way forwards for Germany, and even though it'll take the German political circles a while to admit their mistakes and come to this conclusion, I trust that they will do so eventually.
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And they just proved this again: yesterday both the Nordstream 1 pipeline (which used to be operational and the main way for gas delivery from Russia to Germany but has been closed down for about a month) and the under-construction Nordstream 2 pipeline next to it were blown apart in an obvious act of sabotage. [bbc.com].
Now the Swedish authorities are investigating this together with the defense forces and NATO intelligence, so obviously no-one besides Ukraine has directly blamed Russia yet, but one does not need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this is straight out of the Kremlins playbook. Now why would Russia blow out their own pipelines?
I think you missed the most obvious one (or at least the right framing for it).
Russia had two big pieces of Natural Gas leverage, Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2.
Germany axed Nordstream 2 at the start of the war... meaning Russia was down to Nordstream 1 as energy leverage.
Then, after spending a while playing games with the turbines they turned off Nordstream 1, which was another dumb move on Putin's part because the whole point of a card like that is it's most effective either as a threat, or if you need to
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So why is Putin blowing up his own pipelines?
It is not his, or Russia's pipeline. It is Europes pipeline.
If he was it (likely he was): it is already an act of war against Europe/NATO (NATO is a bit more tricky, as an aggression is defined as an attack on the territory, and not simply on offshore property).
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Resuming and increasing their nuclear power generation is also the only sensible way forwards for Germany
A) Nukes priduce electricity, they do not really replace gas heated furnaces - for that you need to switch the gas heating to heat pumps etc. And: the heat pump does not care if the power comes from a renewable or a nuke. In other words: building a new nuke, which might take 20 years from now: solves nothing.
B) only sensible way you think to push something down the throat of a population that do not want
More or less. Sadly, it isn't cost-effective. (Score:2)
Nuclear power is both safe and planet friendly ...
Well, let's just say "resonably and sufficiently safe given the right conditions". And given that it's "planet-friendly" too, yes.
However, it isn't cost-effective. It's too expensive and to complex to maintain.
Which is why Germans have been decommissioning their nuclear fission stuff for decades now. Because they actually can do math, as they did with Kalkar (most advanced reactor project in the history of man), as they did with Wackersdorf replenishing plan
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Unless you have some solid-state thingie that can transfer radiation into current could we please finally drop this sixties techno-romantic pipe-dream of "nuclear will solve this".
What do you believe photovoltaic cells do if not convert radiation into electrical current?
alphavoltaics etc. [Re:More or less. Sadly, it...] (Score:2)
So, please, everybody, for the love of the heavens almighty: Unless you have some solid-state thingie that can transfer radiation into current ....
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citation... [nasa.gov]
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So you are declaring that technology that doesn't even exist yet (fusion) will fall to the same deficiencies as wildly different technology (fission) because they both have the word "nuclear" in their titles?
Then you conflate local environmental heating with global temperature rise while also confusing the issue with radioactive wastes (hint: bitching about long-lived half-life materials is easily recognizeable scaremongering to anyone that knows anything about this - the stuff that lasts 50,000 years isn't
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There's nothing safe about these old pieces of shit. It's called a bathtub curve and Germany's ancient tractor population is well into the point where they should be shutdown anyway for safety grounds.
Hell one of these three plants has had 2 unplanned shutdowns for repairs this year alone.
Recommissioning old shit is dangerous. Build new ones if you want. But the only reason nuclear is safe, or will stay safe is if you use it responsibly.
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Yes they are, even old nuclear plants run very reliably when maintained. These plants are being deliberately run into the ground with minimal maintence. Nuclear plants can have lifetimes to 60 or even 80 years safely with suitable upgrades.
The emissions and generation costs from lifetime extension nuclear plants is incredibly low https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system
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Looking at this logically Germany should refuel its existing plants and recommission its shuttered plants.
That is not really possible.
For that you need to change the nuclear exit laws, and for that you need a majourity in the parliament: which you would not get.
Have they watched any news recently? (Score:2)
A new twist on the phrase (Score:2)
exactly as I predicted three weeks ago. (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
The straightforward fact would be to use full honesty/transparency and say:
We promised to shut them down by [i.e. on or before] December 31. But now, that deadline is rescinded and we don't know when we will be able to shut them down.
But that's not how politicians and bureaucrats operate... if they actually believed they would keep within the original deadline, they would simply say: "We promised to shut them down by December 31. We will still meet that deadline but will nee
Tick-tock, Tick-tock (Score:2)
Three Things To Think Of (Score:2)
1 - Continuing to operate existing nuclear fission plants is a reasonable solution, in that most of the emissions of nuclear fission is the actual construction of a nuclear plant, and the mining and processing of it's fuel. You already had 20 years of carbon positive emissions when the plant was constructed, so at this point, it's almost - not the same, but almost - emissions free.
2. Building new nuclear fission plants is a very bad idea, as we know that they will create emissions that will take 20 years o
The situation of French reactors (Score:2)
At the 14 of September:
27 reactors connected
3 in economy mode to be preserved for the winter
26 offline. 10 for classical maintenance ( they accumulated because of COVID delays) 10 in corrosion repair, 5 in corrosion control. One in short unrelated interruption
Of these 26, 5 are scheduled to restart in September, 5 in October, 7 in November, 3 in December, 2 in February 2023. 22 over 26 then.
Sorry, my source is in French and is a long video in the bargain. It is the CEO of EDF in front of the Assemblée
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Read: ten yearly visit and not ten year. XD
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It's not like Germany (or any other country) is suddendly going to come up with an idea of a new, revolutionary source of energy? In particuar, a reliable source of energy which respons well to spike in demand.
You mean like wind?
All those green activists are daydreaming, completely detached from facts.
You're the one who forgot wind exists
Re: What then? (Score:2)
Yes, double down on the thing that hasnâ(TM)t worked
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Wind is the complete opposite of what I stated above - it's unreliable and doesn't respond to spikes in demand
Wind is very reliable, very predictable, and turbine blades can be pitched very quickly to respond to spikes in demand. You do need enough grid to pipe it in from where the wind is blowing, but nuclear requires a lot of grid capacity as well because so much production is in one place (and usually an inconvenient one.)
Do you have anything factually correct to share with the class?
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Wind is predictable however it is not reliable. Wind moves from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure and a manner that is impacted by the rotation of the earth. However the underlying drivers are chaotic. You can only generate energy when there is energy to extract from the atmosphere. It's like saying you can generate power at night by piping power from the other side of the world.
For example https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135
Pitch [Re:What then?] (Score:2)
Wind is very reliable, very predictable, and turbine blades can be pitched very quickly to respond to spikes in demand.
Not really.
You change the blade pitch as needed to respond to wind speed. (In general, the optimum blade pitch is such as to give the blade tip speed a fixed fraction of the wind speed.)
You feather the blades to reduce power if the wind increases over the design speed.
You are correct in that if the demand drops you can go off the optimal pitch to decrease the power output. But if the demand spikes, no, you can't change the pitch to give you more power than the wind is providing.
Or, to phrase it in the opp
Re:Pitch [Re:What then?] (Score:5, Insightful)
Wind is very reliable, very predictable, and turbine blades can be pitched very quickly to respond to spikes in demand.
Lets bring some proper context to this statement with some facts.
Fact. The wind is very reliable and predictable at certain locations and certain times of the year. In those locations where its is feasible those locations are tapped out.
Fact. The wind is not always reliable and predictable at all locations. Even at places where the wind is known to be reliable and predictable. Wind strength varies in all locations with time of year and weather conditions. This fact alone makes wind unreliable as a energy source. You can tap it, but you are a fool if you depend on it.
This is a issue with ALL green energy system with the exception of nuclear. The anti greenies always hoop and holler that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. This is another fact. It is another fact that the greenies like to ignore.
An the final fact. If we want a green carbon neutral energy system we need solar and wind power supplemented with a robust and safe nuclear base for it to stand on.
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The wind is very reliable and predictable at certain locations and certain times of the year. In those locations where its is feasible those locations are tapped out.
There are spectacularly large areas where wind is reliable all year... off shore. It is still cheaper and faster to build wind there than to build nuclear.
This is a issue with ALL green energy system with the exception of nuclear. The anti greenies always hoop and holler that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.
That's because they're dumbshits. The wind does always blow, that's why you need a grid that can bring power in from where it's blowing to where it isn't. And meanwhile, nuclear in fact has garbage uptime as it ages. You cannot rely on it, and it cannot load follow, which is why we have to have all these fossil peaker plants. Nuclear literally does not of
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drinkypoo 's prattling deleted by filter.
Hello Drinky. Let me bring you up to speed what is occurring here. After our last conversation. and other that you have with other users, I have decided that nothing you ever say will have any value in any conversation that I'm a part of. Therefor to spare me ordeal of having to read any more of your uneducated comments I have added you to an experimental filter that replaces any of your comments with the above quote.
Remember that *ploink* I that signed off with the on our last conversation? Well,
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Thanks. It all makes sense now. In retrospective, the pseudonym gives it away.
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No, I do not think this is really true. The electricity shortage is caused by the unavailability of nuclear plants in France. Despite high fuel prices (and for gas this is certainly because of Russia) Germany exports a huge amount of electricity to France. This year Germany exported 15 TWh to France and imported 3.5 TWh. France which is usually a net-exported because a net-importer of electricity. Germany needs a certain amount of gas for balancing a grid (but small amount compared to heating and industrial
Re:They are keeping them running because of Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany also generates a lot of electricity from lignite, aka dirt. The German government is thinking of shutting down its dirt-burning power plants some time in the future but not any time soon because they need that electricity. They are not building out renewables such as wind generating capacity at anywhere near the rate they need to replace dirt-burning any time this decade. France burns only a small amount of thermal coal to generate electricity and is on schedule to remove that generating capacity from its grid, although it will keep some coal-fired plants in reserve.
The electricity import-export process between France and Germany has been that France exports lots of mostly-nuclear electricity to Germany during the winter (as well as to other countries such as Italy, Switzerland, Britain etc.) During the summer it shuts many of its reactors down for refuelling and maintenance and imports dirt-burning electricity from Germany when electricity demand is lower.
Summer is ending and France is facing delays this year bringing most of its reactor fleet into service hence renewables-rich Germany is desperately scrabbling to find alternate sources of dependable electricity in a Europe-wide market which is constrained by the loss of access to Russian fossil fuels.
Re:They are keeping them running because of Russia (Score:5, Informative)
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Most of France's nuclear power plants are on the coast where there is no water shortage. Some reactors are sited on rivers where, in the summer it's possible to exceed the temp rise limits for cooling water for the reactor condensers so the reactors shut down (and often go into a maintenance and refuelling cycle). When winter comes those limits are not exceeded and the reactors can run normally.
France uses "inefficient" non-fossil-carbon electric heat for most domestic heating because nuclear power is cheap
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You can compare market prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/f... [tradingeconomics.com]
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You don't even understand the post you are responding to.
ZERO nuclear plants have lacked cool water to cool the reactor. A few plants have reduced temporarily the amount of hot water they rejected in the rivers because the couldn't heat the river water too much. For the wildlife. It concerned a very few plants since most plants have cooling towers and do not reject any water in the rivers. Or are near the sea and have not this problem since the sea is immense and won't be heated by a plant.
And it was for a
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While it is true that Germany uses a lot of coal and lignite, this is reduced rapidly. In 2010, int was 146 TWh lignite and 117 TWh coal and in 2021 110 TWh and 55 TWh, so 63% (in 2020 it was substantially lower). So yes, this needs to accelerate a bit but "not anywhere the rate" seems exaggerated.
The situation with France and Germany is not that France exports to Germany in Winter but Germany exports to France in Winter. This what the data says for recent years. At the moment Germany also exports in summer
Re:They are keeping them running because of Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
Of these three plants one of them is in a horrible enough condition that it has been shut down twice this year unplanned due to leaks. Keeping the ageing nuclear reactor population in operation is insanely stupid. They should have been replaced years ago but weren't. At this point even nuclear experts agree they should be shut down, way beyond their design life.
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Well Central europe has a different view on this, we were hit relatively hard in 86 by tschernobyl and we do not have the place to relocate in case of desaster in the size of it.
Germany for that reason has been investing the last 10 years into renewable energy big time and basically kept France and Spain afloat this summer when they had a severe problem with their nuclar plants due to extreme drought (they did not have enough water anymore to cool the reactors)
So YMMV on where you live.
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Central Europe should learn the difference between a very shitty and unsafe reactor design (Chernobyl's RBMK) and what was widely constructed in the west. For an example, Chernobyl happened because of gross mismanagement and really shitty design flaws that the operators were not told about. Fukushima happened because of a 6.6 magnitude earthquake, followed by a direct hit from a 15-meter tsunami. And even then, it still took Tepco's mismanagement of a critical situation to cause problems.
All nuclear reac
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Everyone was panicking because of Fukushima resulting in soaring rates for the Green party so Merkel just cut the knot. Now the Green party came to power anyways and has to deal with the results.
Hooray for reality.
True but only in the short term (Score:2)
These are old reactors that need to be either rebuilt basically from scratch or shut down. The cost of rebuilding them safely far exceeds the cost of building out wind and solar.
I really do not understand this obsession with nuclear power here on slash dot except that we all grew up being told it was the future
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Natural gas in particular is an interesting stepping stone because a lot the equipment can also be used for green hydrogen, which helps solve the chicken-in-egg problem of having to ramp up hydrogen production and consumption in lockstep.
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So it's not really a case of the lights going out, just having to pay more for electricity.
That's a distinction with no difference. When there is a shortage of a commodity the prices go up to increase supply and decrease demand. The definition of an energy shortage is prices going up.
In the medium term it helps to have some fossil fuel plants to cover until renewables can be deployed.
In the medium term it helps to keep nuclear power plants open so Europeans don't have to burn fossil fuels for electricity when there's not enough wind, sun, and rain for renewable energy.
Offshore wind is really cheap now so in a few years it will be making up the gap.
Are you willing to bet your economy, possibly your life, on offshore wind power meeting demand? Germany is already heavily reli
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The definition of an energy shortage is prices going up.
Or governments impose rationing, which several EU countries already plan for the coming winter.
Rationing is economically foolish. It is better to let prices rise until supply and demand are equal and use direct cash payments to help low-income families.
Re:They are keeping them running because of Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
A point to remember : German is not an island, and has a relatively short coastline to have an offshore of. That is further constrained by the limits imposed by their median lines with the Netherlands to the west, Poland to the east, Denmark in the centre, and Sweden (and to a lesser degree Norway), opposite.
I'd have to check the official maps, because I can't remember if the German offshore sector actually contacts the UK sector, or whether there is a triple or quadruple junction. It's fairly close.
Generally, people want to build as close inshore as possible for offshore wind farms, because the water is shallower, and the distances shorter to travel for maintenance and cable-laying. So the further reaches (approaching Denmark's median oilfields - I never worked there, so I forget their names - and the nearby Norwegian Ekofisk area) aren't terribly important, and it's the length of coast line that's most relevant. But that's relatively short for Germany, interrupted by the shipping routes into Hamburg, and not terribly helpful.
Germany will always have a considerably greater dependence on onshore wind (and solar) compared to offshore wind, relative to more maritime nations.
Germany keeping it's nuclear plant's operating is pragmatic. As they've realised with the problems with French supply (from their nukes) and Russian supply (from their gas fields), you can't rely on importing energy all the time. What I'm surprised about is that nobody has been asking the Norwegians to export more gas. But I'm not very surprised about that, because when the big export pipelines were being built in the 90s, it was well known they were designed to produce revenue at a rate the Norwegian government were happy with, not at the maximum rate the market would be happy with. They're effectively full already. You can't run a pipeline designed to work at 3000psi at 4000psi - not unless you want to produce catastrophic leaks (like those in the Nordstream pipelines which have just occurred).
Someone is going to pop up now and say "build more pipelines", neglecting that from choosing a route (through existing infrastructure, owned by different countries and companies), through installing the metalwork, to getting gas to the market would take 4-5 years if everything goes well. Which is about the timescale needed to drill the necessary wells too. So, the Norwegian "gas cavalry" will be coming over the hill in about 2026~7 (assuming some capacity can be borrowed from UK sector plumbing in the meantime - which is a substantial assumption).
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Except that "lead" in Nordstream wasn't caused by overpressure...of gas.
It appears more likely to be from some sort of planted, man made high explosive, which will tend to crack pipes...
At least that's what the news says.
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Fortunately Germany is part of the EU, so there is no problem working with neighbouring countries to get those turbines deployed. Germany energy companies already invest in and own infrastructure in other countries.
Also fortunately, there are large areas of the North Sea that are quite shallow. Used to be above the water, called Doggerland, but now submerged.
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No, no more than the within-country problems of everyone wanting the infrastructure to be "over the horizon" from their scenic view, and for the power cables to not pass through their scenic piece of coastline. The acronym you're looking for is "NIMBY", meaning "Not In My Back Yard", and it operated at levels from one neighbour complaining (lethally) about the hedge on the other side of their garden fence, to neighbour
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I fixed that. The image is now coming up on the page. It's been a while since I bothered putting an image into my blog.
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What I'm surprised about is that nobody has been asking the Norwegians to export more gas.
Well, they are doing exactly that (though as you say the planning started well before the war in Ukraine).
https://www.euronews.com/2022/... [euronews.com]
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So the amount it adds to Norwegian export capacity is a big fat zero.
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https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
Re:They are keeping them running because of Russia (Score:5, Informative)
although remember that nuclear energy in Germany is very expensive and emits a lot more carbon than renewables.
You're going to need to show your math on this one. How does running an existing nuclear plant emit more carbon than building new renewables to replace it? Sure, there's the emissions from mining and shipping the fuel assemblies, but that is dwarfed by comparison to what it takes to build offshore wind - that's a whole lot of materials being mined, refined, manufactured, shipped, and constructed before getting a single watt of renewable energy out of it.
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Re: Works until it doesn't (Score:2)
That is the final stage for renewable energy.
Maybe in the future we can invent some scifi alien tech to store electricity. Let's call it... "battery" and possibly "pump storage facility." That'd be the... next... stage, after the final stage, I guess...
Germany is connected to neighbouring countries so can buy power from them
And when those neighboring countries don't have enough power for themselves? France will not be able to supply Germany much if any power this winter.
Until now Germany is a net exporter of electricity. One of the few of the EU, I think by about 40,000 GWh per year or so IIRC.
Fundamentally wrong. Physics. (Score:2)
>> "renewable" energy simply can't produce enough power to meet the needs of a modern society.
Fundamentally wrong. Physics.
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Germany was hoping to import more electricity from France, but the startup of reactors France is doing is running into delays - this is the situation in France and what it has to do with Germany.
But I really don't see why Germany is still determined to shut down their nuclear power plants.
Also there are other political shenanigans going on, for example the EU could be importing more gas from North Africa but France has prevented the necessary investments in the pipeline (MidCat) coming from Spain to France
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The key problem is that the gas from North Africa is a fossil fuel. This is bad. We need alternatives which don't pollute, solar, wind and nuclear fit the bill. Gas, coal and oil don't.
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They are more concerned with the coming election - is it 6 weeks from now, 6 months, or 2 years? I forget - than they are with things that happen in the incredibly distant future, like 3 years from now.
Oh, you want "accountability" and "longsightedness" ? "Hello, Houston, we've had a problem."
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WTF is wrong with those shortsighted incompetent politicians?
Besides their short-sightedness, incompetence, and being politicians?
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A lot depends on whether or not these existing nuclear plants have enough cool water to cool the reactors. As we all know, this was not happening for some months this year (drought). So they can't really tell you if they will be able to operate next year.