The plan of the anti-nuclear crowd was to replace it with renewables, but then people kept voting rightwing parties after the nuclear phaseout was made into law. Nowadays rightwingers keep floating the idea of getting back into nuclear, but the electricity companies want nothing to do with it and no one actually wants to pay for it.
And despite all that, fossil fuels are still in the process of being phased out.
The issue is that renewables could have already (mostly) replaced fossil fuels in electricity production, which would have been better in the short to mid term. What OP is wrong about is blaming the anti-nuclear movement instead of the pro-fossil fuels “movement” (fossil fuel company lobbyists).
No they couldn’t have. Both fission and renewables require either fossil fuels or energy storage to build a grid off of them. They really do not complement each other well. They compete with each other; they do not complement each other.
Yes, that’d have been ideal. But what you said was still wrong, right? Nuclear went down and renewables went up. Therefore renewables replaced nuclear.
Fair, it would have been more accurate to say that the plan was to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with renewables in a reasonably short timeframe.
But given the current political trajectory, coal use is going to increase again - AFAIK it already did in the US.
If the demand is faster than the curve to replace fossil fuels, and then nuclear starts to go down thanks to not replacing old reactors, we’re going to go back to the fossil fuels. Because apparently we can’t touch demand, that has to go up.
The chart in the post indicates that demand went down … some of that might have been replaced by electricity imports depending on what the chart actually shows, but AFAIK those weren’t that substantial.
Meh. Why are you trying so hard to blame it on the overwhelmingly leftist anti-nuclear movement, instead of the overwhelmingly rightwing fossil fuel lobby goons?
Because there’s more to blame, and being right or wrong, than what fucking team someone is on. Because of anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, Germany is right now burning millions of tons of coal more than they would be if they’d kept up nuclear. And these are plants that already existed, that were switched off early. So the biggest modern objection to nuclear power - that it’s expensive compared to renewables - did not apply, because those costs are almost all incurred in construction and decommissioning.
We’re constantly making stupid decisions concerning energy. I mean we know about the planet, climate change, sustainability for a long time. Even the predictions in old geography books I found from the 80s are pretty much the right direction… First decision to eventually maybe cut down on nuclear was in 2002… We could probably have settled it by now. If it weren’t for stupid politics, big oil and gas lobbying and our politicians (to this day) trying to get hooked on energy from some wannabe dictators who (surprise) are going to blackmail us at some point.
I think the only sane option is to -at some point- get over it, look ahead and try to come up with a solution. And that’s a big investment into renewables, storage and the energy grid. So by now the first people we need to blame is everyone who isn’t en route towards a better future. I mean we can also blame Merkel. But that in itself isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Sure we are. But I reserve a special place for people who understand that we need to get off fossil fuels but can’t see that that is the most important energy choice of all, by several orders of magnitude, so that if you have the choice to do something else that might be a good idea in its own right, but it would make achieving that harder, you absolutely should not take that choice.
Hmmh. I mean there’s basically 2 options in the mid- and long-term. Renewables, and fusion energy (but we haven figured out that one, yet). Everything else is in limited supply. Oil and gas is predicted to last us for another 50 years, we got plenty coal, that’s a few 100(?) years and uranium is about 40 years until it gets proceedingly more expensive to dig it up. So we shouldn’t be investing in either of those more than we absolutely have to. Though I read maybe we can invent technology to pull uranium out of the ocean at a somewhat reasonable price.
Nuclear reactors are built with a lifespan measured in decades, not centuries, so investing in them when there are decades of economically viable fuel left is reasonable. I couldn’t find your 40 year number (I saw 230) but either way, it shouldn’t be a problem.
It will be a problem at some point, but not so that we should avoid it now.
I mean I guess if it is indeed 40-70 years… We’re looking at 5-10 years for all the planning and the permits… At the current construction timeframes we see in other countries, it’s another 15 years to build the thing. So if we decide to build nuclear power plants right now, it’s some 20-30 years until they start producing energy. And you’re certainly right, we need to look at the long-term picture in centuries, but also measure in decades. For reference, a nuclear power plant is good for about 40-50 years. On the upside, uranium ore isn’t the main cost of nuclear power. Even if it’s 3x or 5x as expensive as today, that’ll only make electricity like 1-2ct more expensive. But the downside is, we only have a few decades left until we definitely need to put in more effort, so that additional effort is going to cut into environmental impact, price and everything. And it also means another transitioning period of 20-30 years because we need energy in the next few years, and building them is slow. That’s then going to be fueled by yet more coal. Which isn’t great either.
I think everything has it’s time. But it doesn’t look to me like nuclear fission is the energy source of the future. At least not for Germany with our situation as is. It’d just be transitioning from one mid-term sustainable solution to another mid-term sustainable solution and spending money and more carbon dioxide to make it happen. But in the mid to long term, we need some kind of proper solution anyway. Something that’s cheap and doesn’t require constant digging up of finite resources. And by now we got the opportunity to go straight for that.
The plan of the anti-nuclear crowd was to replace it with renewables, but then people kept voting rightwing parties after the nuclear phaseout was made into law. Nowadays rightwingers keep floating the idea of getting back into nuclear, but the electricity companies want nothing to do with it and no one actually wants to pay for it.
And despite all that, fossil fuels are still in the process of being phased out.
But renewables have replaced it? It looks like renewables are over 50% of power generation. Not sure where bioenergy falls though.
The issue is that renewables could have already (mostly) replaced fossil fuels in electricity production, which would have been better in the short to mid term. What OP is wrong about is blaming the anti-nuclear movement instead of the pro-fossil fuels “movement” (fossil fuel company lobbyists).
No they couldn’t have. Both fission and renewables require either fossil fuels or energy storage to build a grid off of them. They really do not complement each other well. They compete with each other; they do not complement each other.
Yes, that’d have been ideal. But what you said was still wrong, right? Nuclear went down and renewables went up. Therefore renewables replaced nuclear.
Hell, coal is even at like a third of its peak.
Fair, it would have been more accurate to say that the plan was to replace both nuclear and fossil fuels with renewables in a reasonably short timeframe.
But given the current political trajectory, coal use is going to increase again - AFAIK it already did in the US.
If the demand is faster than the curve to replace fossil fuels, and then nuclear starts to go down thanks to not replacing old reactors, we’re going to go back to the fossil fuels. Because apparently we can’t touch demand, that has to go up.
The chart in the post indicates that demand went down … some of that might have been replaced by electricity imports depending on what the chart actually shows, but AFAIK those weren’t that substantial.
I hope all those anti-nuclear people enjoy all the coal they’re burning.
Meh. Why are you trying so hard to blame it on the overwhelmingly leftist anti-nuclear movement, instead of the overwhelmingly rightwing fossil fuel lobby goons?
I blame the fossil fuel lobby goons too.
Because there’s more to blame, and being right or wrong, than what fucking team someone is on. Because of anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, Germany is right now burning millions of tons of coal more than they would be if they’d kept up nuclear. And these are plants that already existed, that were switched off early. So the biggest modern objection to nuclear power - that it’s expensive compared to renewables - did not apply, because those costs are almost all incurred in construction and decommissioning.
It was a massive own-goal.
We’re constantly making stupid decisions concerning energy. I mean we know about the planet, climate change, sustainability for a long time. Even the predictions in old geography books I found from the 80s are pretty much the right direction… First decision to eventually maybe cut down on nuclear was in 2002… We could probably have settled it by now. If it weren’t for stupid politics, big oil and gas lobbying and our politicians (to this day) trying to get hooked on energy from some wannabe dictators who (surprise) are going to blackmail us at some point.
I think the only sane option is to -at some point- get over it, look ahead and try to come up with a solution. And that’s a big investment into renewables, storage and the energy grid. So by now the first people we need to blame is everyone who isn’t en route towards a better future. I mean we can also blame Merkel. But that in itself isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Sure we are. But I reserve a special place for people who understand that we need to get off fossil fuels but can’t see that that is the most important energy choice of all, by several orders of magnitude, so that if you have the choice to do something else that might be a good idea in its own right, but it would make achieving that harder, you absolutely should not take that choice.
Hmmh. I mean there’s basically 2 options in the mid- and long-term. Renewables, and fusion energy (but we haven figured out that one, yet). Everything else is in limited supply. Oil and gas is predicted to last us for another 50 years, we got plenty coal, that’s a few 100(?) years and uranium is about 40 years until it gets proceedingly more expensive to dig it up. So we shouldn’t be investing in either of those more than we absolutely have to. Though I read maybe we can invent technology to pull uranium out of the ocean at a somewhat reasonable price.
Nuclear reactors are built with a lifespan measured in decades, not centuries, so investing in them when there are decades of economically viable fuel left is reasonable. I couldn’t find your 40 year number (I saw 230) but either way, it shouldn’t be a problem.
It will be a problem at some point, but not so that we should avoid it now.
That’s the numbers the German government came up with. But I keep reading roughly the same estimates in other publications as well: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/509082/5594603c3ecf27933ad76d31faf89c27/uran-als-kernbrennstoff-data.pdf (Edit: Seems that document is 20 years old 😳 I should probably dig for a more recent estimate. I believe we learned somewhat recently how there’s more uranium in Australia(?) than we thought?!))
I mean I guess if it is indeed 40-70 years… We’re looking at 5-10 years for all the planning and the permits… At the current construction timeframes we see in other countries, it’s another 15 years to build the thing. So if we decide to build nuclear power plants right now, it’s some 20-30 years until they start producing energy. And you’re certainly right, we need to look at the long-term picture in centuries, but also measure in decades. For reference, a nuclear power plant is good for about 40-50 years. On the upside, uranium ore isn’t the main cost of nuclear power. Even if it’s 3x or 5x as expensive as today, that’ll only make electricity like 1-2ct more expensive. But the downside is, we only have a few decades left until we definitely need to put in more effort, so that additional effort is going to cut into environmental impact, price and everything. And it also means another transitioning period of 20-30 years because we need energy in the next few years, and building them is slow. That’s then going to be fueled by yet more coal. Which isn’t great either.
I think everything has it’s time. But it doesn’t look to me like nuclear fission is the energy source of the future. At least not for Germany with our situation as is. It’d just be transitioning from one mid-term sustainable solution to another mid-term sustainable solution and spending money and more carbon dioxide to make it happen. But in the mid to long term, we need some kind of proper solution anyway. Something that’s cheap and doesn’t require constant digging up of finite resources. And by now we got the opportunity to go straight for that.
Your own graph shows coal power has halved largely due to wind and solar and no thanks to nuclear.
That graph looks a lot like coal mine s the source with the biggest decrease
you missed the green part of the graph…