Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
Don’t import Reddit’s extremely ignorant takes on nuclear power here, please. Nuclear power is a huge waste of money.
If you’re about to angrily downvote me (or you already did), or write an angry reply, please read the rest of my comment before you do. This is not my individual opinion, this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’re about to lecture about “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, save your keystrokes - the majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable. Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding or whatever other potential future tech someone will probably comment about without reading this paragraph.
Again, compared to nuclear, renewables are:
- Cheaper
- Lower emissions
- Faster to provision
- Less environmentally damaging
- Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
- Decentralised
- Much, much safer
- Much easier to maintain
- More reliable
- Much more responsive to changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. It is 100% worth researching for future breakthroughs. But at present it is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on nuclear power should be spent on renewables instead.
They also depend on water. And as I looked recently into the world, we are drying out.
…Nuclear power is a huge waste of money…
…this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
A battery of tests were performed on the economics of mitigating the impending climate disater. These tests indicated that nuclear is a huge waste of money (p<0.05) (Blake, 2023)
Hahaha :)
I’m on my phone, dude, I’m not gonna juggle a dozen sources on this tiny screen and crappy keyboard just to prove you wrong, you’re more than capable of using Google to find the facts yourself. I challenge you to prove me wrong. You can even cite some hilariously biased source like World Forum of Nuclear Investor Funds or something, those ones are always fun because they’re like “oh with our super cool advanced new nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist, it’s as good as solar or wind for almost 150% of the cost!! :)”
And the argument vanishes into thin air…
Wow I’m surprised to see people are actually downvoting you and arguing about this. It’s common knowledge that the cost, impact, and build-time of new nuclear plants makes them a poor choice for energy. Not only is wind/ solar cheaper, it’s faster to build.
It’s also common knowledge that the more often you build something, the lower its price tends to go as that knowledge spreads. It’s part of the reason it’s so expensive to build trains in the US and so cheap in South Korea and Spain.
This is just more reasons to prioritise the already cheaper renewables, isn’t it?
I feel like climate change makes this a yes and situation.
It is not a yes and, because urgency favors renewables even more. If it wouldn’t be for bureaucratic and political hurdles, from planning to operation is about 2 years for onshore wind and solar sites. For things like retrofitting a small solar plant on a residential or industrial building it can be as short as three months and for balcony solar power as a small hobby project it is as little as a day of planning + the delivery time + a day of installation.
Nuclear plants on the other side take minimum a decade, more likely two decades and that is despite strong political and bureaucratic support that is needed to get it going at all. Otherwise with citizens protest it would stay in court indefenitely.
I agree with you on nuclear being more expensive as all facts point that way and future nuclear technology, but i dont understand how we could transition to a 100% renewable energy sector, It would be good if you could give a citation or explanation for that. Diverse and distributed source is how we get an energy secure grid, renewables could help with the distributed source part, but when it comes to diversity the popular renewable technologies wind and solar are very limited, both of these source cant power a base load without batteries (this applies mostly to solar, but wind too has low output at night). Also there is this issue witj managing generation and demand (Nuclear too have issue with this as its not possible to quickly adjust nuclear power generation like other conventional spurce). A full renewable energy grid would depend on batteries, currently we have much limitation with batteries. Mature technologists of acid based batteries require huge areas, and lithium based ones would require rare lithium which its mining alone would cause alot of pollution, and relying on other alt battery technology itself would be a long stretch as its development and commercialisation to usable form would take years to achieve as the same case afforable future nuclear technology.
Other alt renewable energy like geothermal could help with base load (not sure, someone could correct me if this is not the case), but itsnt possible everywhere. The same goes for tidal plant as it depends on geography and specific time of day. With this scenarios if we were to move to a 100% renewable grid then, the price for energy will increase at night time in a way that i think could reach nuclear energy rate.
A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up and possibly contribute to climate change. Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact, i read this on a text during my academics (havent checked the source for this other than that).
Demand sheduling.
The current grid is run on the idea that we ramp up power plants until the current demand is met.
The future will be to make the demand flexible and follow the availability. Typical example is when to charge a car battery, but it also goes for heating and cooling applications, using power to x converters, like hydrogen production, sheduling household appliances like washing machines and industrial processes.
Doing so we can close the gap between real baseload and available renewable supply, which in turns reduces the amount of storage needed.
Here a paper on the base load.
Also solar panels power amortization time is around a year, depending on cell chemistry, production and installation location.
Have fun paying more for electricity and more fun with inflation, and even more fun with the ECB enslaving you further with their new restrictions on cash and “travel rule” becoming less than 1000 Euros.
People who voted this moron in are paying for their decision. I can’t enjoy this enough! Every time I see inflation news in Germany I laugh. Good for me I left that shit hole.
Until you vote in someone who promises you economic strength, instead of hippy objectives, you’ll get nowhere. But what do I know? I’m the guy who left you to die because I’m sick and tired of the stupidity of average Germans.
Enjoy your fall! At least I am enjoying it.
lol
Tbf it’s starting to be too late, even if they were pro nuclear it’s going to take like 20 years
Better start now than wait then.
Yes pouring down money on a technology, that at best can help us mitigate emissions in 20 years, instead of investing it in a scaleable and cheaper technology now (wind, solar) is a great and reasonable strategy…
And that is entirely ignoring the debate abou the safety and waste issue of nuclear power.
Scholz is right that nuclear is dead in German. Nuclear is always political and there’s no stable political majority pro nuclear. This has nothing to do with the technology. It just won’t happen.
Most entreprises, energy or else, are privately run and financed. Capitalism. Nuclear is private on paper, but no one is going to build reactors without governent support. Many industries are regulated, like banking, but they are still driven by profit motives, private interest. At least in Germany, there’s no entrepreneurial mindset behind nuclear. Rent seeking business people and lobbyists, sure. But not risk takers. The businesses lobbying pro nuclear are lead by ex-politicians and similar types who secretly want a safe government job.
Nuclear is dead and it’s not the biggest problem. The much bigger elephant in the room is that we mostly talk about renewables. Sure, renewals grow, but nowhere near the rate needed. Everyone can see this, the data is available, and we just don’t give a shit.
And don’t get me started on hydrogen. Doesn’t make sense to even consider hydrogen unless you have a huge surplus on (preferably renewable) energy.
It’s always too late, might as well not try
You could also channel the effort into renewable energy and the the reward would be greater and faster achieved.
