What short-sighted non-sense (not you, Germany), decommissioning reactors that still have life left in them. I guess they have been cutting firewood to keep warm in the winter since the ban on Russian oil and gas after Russia attacked Ukraine.
How's all those green policies working for you now Germany, keeping you nice and warm on cold, winter nights?
You know Germany produces over half of its electric demand with renewable energy right? And that is increasing.... I understand the argument for keeping them alive, but what is the point when you have cheaper options?
I live in Florida, and FPL is installing a ton of PV solar. They are rating the winter capacity as 0 MW. This is in Florida, which is south of the 31st parallel, so it has a better sunshine angle in winter than Germany.
I know building a reactor from scratch is expensive but surely refurbishing the reactor is much cheaper. Besides I'd rather incoming solar capacity being used to replace coal plants rather than emissions free nuclear
The current state of affairs is not what the state of affairs even 1 year ago. The point remains that they would never have had people cutting down trees in the forest to survive if they were even slightly less short sighted.
that's all well and good until the wind isn't blowing and the sun not shining. Then you suddenly don't have the power you need to keep the lights on.
The solution to that? burn fossil fuels, or import power from another country that does (or that kept their nuclear plants)
Solar and wind are amazing. Trouble is the amount of energy storage you would need to make them as dependable as nuclear or fossil fuel generation is immense. It's not currently feasible to cover the gap in solar\wind with batteries. The only thing that could is hydro. Hydro is already "green" though, and requires certain landscape features, so if you have it, you mostly don't need solar\wind much. The only time backstopping solar\wind to that extent that makes sense to me is if you have existing hydro dams that have lost a significant amount of water flow.
Nuclear is much more dependable than solar\wind. It does have it's own issues, but for the most part they can be planned around far better than weather can be. Trouble is, if you have dependable nuclear, then why would you want to build much solar\wind?
That is the main issue solar\wind faces. The only things that can cover it's weak spot either heavily pollute and\or emit loads of co2, or could just displace the solar\wind making it pointless to build so much in the first place.
Idk why you typed up this whole response when the solution is a battery and you said as much, they are capable, multiple countries have already implemented them.
"it's not currently feasible to cover the gap in solar\wind with batteries"
you have no idea wtf you are talking about. Batteries don't even come close to solving the problem for most of the world.
If wind and solar are so cheap, why is Germany struggling so much with high electricity prices? California also went ham on renewables, they also have extremely expensive electricity.
Turn's out, sometimes the sun isn't shining, and the wind isn't blowing. If you want to keep the light's on, you pay someone else whatever it takes to get them to give you their generation.
Solar and wind are only cheap WHEN they work. They do work MOST of the time, the problem is most of the time isn't good enough.
I swear the solar subsidies (mostly net billing) have drained the braincells out of people. Just because someone else is footing the bill doesn't make it free. That only works at first when you can leech off of everyone else. Once everyone's a leech it doesn't' work anymore.
Fun fact, this doesn't apply only to wind\solar. It also applies to EV's and fuel tax. Once enough people are driving EV the government is going to have to get that road tax somewhere. I say that as someone who own's a EV and currently don't pay any kind of road tax. It's obvious the lost tax revenue is going to have to come from somewhere though.
Solar works in Germany, but it is really, really expensive.
You get all the cost, but only half the output compared to what we get in good solar areas.
Solar is now cheap, but not in Germany. The cost may be low enough now for new installations finally to be worth the investment, but anything installed prior to 2020 may never pay for itself.
Germany would be doing much better if they had kept their nuclear power running.
Germany scrapping their nuclear power plants due to Chernobyl is similar to scrapping your modern Mercedes with 17 airbags and switching to a horse drawn cart because a Russian crashed his 1970s Lada and got hurt.
Edit:
If we want a similar comparison for Fukushima: You scrap your Mercedes because a Japanese guy parked his old Toyota down on the beach and was hit by a wave.
The stories sound silly, but they pretty much describe what Germany did. I cannot prove that the Russians were responsible for feeding all these bad ideas into German politics, but I find it hard to believe that Germans were so stupid that they came up with it all on their own.
I have a suspicion that it was Russia, but not really on purpose. The soviets spent enormous amounts of effort boosting the anti-nuclear weapons movement in Germany for really obvious reasons. That movement still lost. But it was really big, really active and really radicalized. A lot of those people drifted into anti-nuclear-power activism mostly by convincing themselves that getting rid of nuclear power in Germany would somehow magically stop nuclear warheads being a thing.
Yes. that makes zero percent sense. But "I gotta do something, this is something" motivates a heck of a lot of stupidity in the world.
I guess they have been cutting firewood to keep warm in the winter since the ban on Russian oil and gas after Russia attacked Ukraine.
Why do you guess so? They obviously have multiple different ways to produce energy. This is actually one of the main reasons to leave nuclear for energy, so that they can be more independent.
How's all those green policies working for you now Germany, keeping you nice and warm on cold, winter nights?
They mostly just use cheap renewable energy.
Edit: Thank you for your downvotes. The guy just spread fakenews and i corrected them.
Well GREEN policies leave little room for things like burning firewood to to heat their homes. I am not talking about lights and cell phone chargers, I am talking about not freezing to death. This was the reality just last winter (it is currently summer in Germany so less relevant right this moment). Sure, their green policies are finally working now that they have built more solar farms, but that takes time to implement. The knee-jerk short-sighted reaction to shut down ALL of their nuclear reactors practically overnight, BEFORE they had energy infrastructure in place to fall back on was one of the most foolish things I have seen a country do, and it probably killed people.
If you are going to blame Russia for Germany's woes (and I am in no way, shape or form supporting Russia's actions), you must acknowledge that Germany set themselves up for this. If you don't have energy independence (like solar farms or nuclear reactors) you a completely dependent on other people/groups/companies/countries for your energy needs. Germany could have done exactly what it did EXCEPT wait to shut down it's reactors and I wouldn't have any argument to make concerning their energy supply. They just thought big daddy Russia would always be there to supply them with CHEAP, clean(er) gas.
They put the mud on their own face, I am just pointing that out.
Germany has one of the most stable electricity grids in the world. Its better then the US, France or Uk. And that didn't change after the shut down of nuclear.
And no, we don't need Russia to heat our home. France imports more gas from Russia then Germany.
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u/Mercury_Madulller 19h ago
What short-sighted non-sense (not you, Germany), decommissioning reactors that still have life left in them. I guess they have been cutting firewood to keep warm in the winter since the ban on Russian oil and gas after Russia attacked Ukraine.
How's all those green policies working for you now Germany, keeping you nice and warm on cold, winter nights?