Laying out key priorities for the EU’s upcoming Clean Industrial Deal, German Economy State Secretary Sven Giegold said on Monday (30 September) he wants the Commission to prioritise renewable energy, taking a tough line on nuclear power and France’s renewable targets.
Alongside a quicker roll-out of renewable energy facilitated by “further exemptions from [environmental impact] assessments,” Giegold outlined several other German priorities for the EU’s upcoming strategy.
Based on the 2030 renewable energy targets, the EU should also set up a 2040 framework, complemented by new, more ambitious targets for energy efficiency, he said.
“It should include new heating standards, a heat pump action plan and a renovation initiative,” he explained, noting a heat pump action plan was last shelved in 2023.
Hydrogen, made from renewables, should be governed by a “a pragmatic framework,” the German politician stressed, reiterating calls from his boss, Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), to delay strict production rules into the late 2030s.
This comment is a preventative measure:
No, Germany didn’t replace nuclear with coal. They replaced it with renewables.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants, and shutting off nuclear was an important incentive to build more renewables.Here are some charts on Germany’s energy mix and long-term development (April 2024), it supports @[email protected]’s statement:
No, Germany didn’t replace nuclear with coal. They replaced it with renewables.
That’s… One way of looking at it. Another way to look at it is: “the closing of nuclear power plants has allowed gas and oil plants to stay in operation”.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants
But it could have been even lower.
Actually, the plan was to phase out coal and nuclear while building up wind and solar and using gas as a bridge. That was 2004. Then a coalition of conservatives and social democrats took over from the coalition of social democrats and greens in 2005 and coal was back on the menu and the exit from.nuclear was postponed, over time devastating the renewable industries almost completely. 2011 with Fukushima happened, nuclear was to be exited sooner again, but nobody cared about renewables anymore under a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. Meanwhile, Merkel said something about “Wandel durch Handel” (change by trade) and made the german power supply dependent on Russia and Putin by buying too much gas there, which backfired completely in 2022 (because nobody in Europe cared in 2014) and the now again green minister of economics had to deal with it, but the nuclear exit was done by now, without having build up renewables in the meantime as planned almost 20 years before.
So no, shutting down nuclear was not the reason gas plants kept working as long as they did, conservatives (and socdems and libertarians as their junior partners) shutting down renewables are the reason.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants
But it could have been even lower.
Yes, but not because of exiting nuclear.
Edit: also, gas power plants and nuclear power plants have different tasks.
Second edit: nuclear isn’t exactly clean either.
No, because specific power levels need to be available at specific moments. The flat production curve of nuclear does not pair well with varying production from solar/wind. Gas sucks for climate-change reasons but at least you can regulate it up/down in a matter of half hours to react to variability of your other production. While we still had nuclear, wind parks needed to shut down more often.
In the longer run, batteries will shift solar peaks over the day and H2 will likely be used to replace methane.
There are ways to modulate production even with “flat” production. A clever way is to use water as energy accumulator: you pump water into a dam during the night, that you later let flow through turbines during the day.
If artificial reservoirs were feasible, they would be better used to flatten the production from renewables.
In practice it is only feasible in areas that have existing natural geographic features.
Germany already have hydroelectricity accounting for 3% of their production, however 3% is nowhere near enough to neither flatten renewable or to modulate flat nuclear production to fit the daily volatile consumption.
If artificial reservoirs were feasible, they would be better used to flatten the production from renewables.
Of course, they require the appropriate geographical features, but those features are relatively widely available in hilly landscapes, which are rather abundant in large parts of Germany.
The reasons why relatively few hydroelectric pump storage power plants have been built in Germany in the recent decades are entirely homemade. For once, the spirit of NIMBY is very strong in Germany, so if you’re planning to build something like that, you’ll be facing the wrath of a plethora of angry German Spießer forming citizens’ initiatives and fighting your project. On top of that, there is German bureaucracy, which will ensure, that the volume paperwork you’ll have to file for building your reservoir is sufficient for filling it up, should you happen to drop it in there. Then, there is the privatised power grid and its idiotic circumstances and rules, which make it unlikely for a pump storage power plant to be profitable, but thanks to the ideology of having privatised essential infrastructure, the state isn’t going to operate them.
Sure, if you’d wanted to put a lot of money into 30±year-old nuclear reactors, the power companies could have added storage. However, this is not the only issue of nuclear either and the societal consensus at one point was to phase the reactors out.
(Fwiw, the TerraPower reactors are supposed to store heat — except of course none have been built so far.)
Pumpspeicherkraftwerke. We have 31 of them in germany. Which is pretty much the maximum possible because you can’t build them just everywhere. And quick search says these things are economically unsustainable because of the extremely high construction costs but very low revenues. It is wasted money.
It is wasted money.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it waste. It’s an inherent problem of any energy storage, and we need energy storage if we want to go all in on renewables. Storage has to pay for the energy it stores and can only sell that energy for profit if there is enough demand on the grid, so it sits idle for a lot of time, but you still have the building and maintenance costs.
My wording was poorly chosen. You are right of course. Its not a waste in that sense. But when better alternatives are available, which will hopefully soon achieve an acceptable level of efficiency, it makes no sense to build more. Apart from the space problem.
It’s only wasted money because we deliberately chose to have for profit businesses run infrastructure essential to the functioning of a modern society. In a nationalised power grid, it wouldn’t matter that a storage system has to use electricity in order to store it, because all that matters is meeting the demand and keeping the grid stable. Of course, if all that matters is profits, storage systems will only be economical to a very small subset of operators.
It’s only the maximum possible due to NIMBYs, misguided self proclaimed “environmentalists”, German bureaucrats and their petty shit preventing a dozen or so of new ones from being built in the past two decades. On top of that, idiotic “energy market” rules make them very unlikely to operate at profit, but thanks to the neoliberal ideology, essential infrastructure can’t be state operated.
Feel free to tone it down a little.
Your discussion of reservoirs/pumped hydro seems a bit one-sided too. Environmental concerns around e.g. sawing off hilltops to build a reservoir (happened in Czechia) or of destroying aquatic eco systems by sucking up/shreddering fish along with river water or drying up river beds are pretty real. Not to mention that reservoirs are already massively affected by climate change, as could be seen particularly well in China in recent years.
You know what’s also destroying ecosystems, but at a way larger scale? Climate change.
Landslides caused by reservoirs can be avoided by proper planning.
With your mindset, there won’t be any possibility of transforming power generation to something less environmentally damaging, because everything new you build has to do some sort of environmental damage. Wind turbines will shred some birds, water turbines will shred some fish, you’ll need land to build any of those, you might even have to cut down an odd tree, or two.
NIMBYs are a political reality in a democracy. The power grid has to be built with them in mind. The alternative would be Chinese-style dictatorial measures, which aren’t something you want in a democracy.
NIMBYs aren’t very democratic either, it’s a small, but loud minority holding an entire society hostage.
It’s easier, faster and cheaper to build renewables plus a storage infrastructure to provide power during low production times than to build an infrastructure with nuclear that is able to respond quick enough to fluctuating demands.
You make it sound like the completely predictable power output of nuclear is a problem and unpredictable variation in output of the wind/solar is great.
That’s totally not what they said. Nuclear is very slow to change power output slower than demands fluctuate.
You make it sound like the completely predictable power output of nuclear is a problem
That is a challenge, because it means you need a flat consumption curve as well – which in reality you don’t see often. I.e. you either need to waste or cheaply export energy, especially at night and over the weekend to make sure your grid doesn’t crash.
and unpredictable variation in output of the wind/solar is great.
The point is that augmenting solar/wind with (plain) nuclear doesn’t work well.
But the variability of solar/wind are a challenge as well, especially given the at times negative energy prices. Fossil, biomass, battery, pumped hydro, and H2-based power production have a huge advantage there.
Well there’s a base load of the grid that can be effectively served by the non-variable power plants - or is this outdated approach?
For every country that is moving to a solar/wind-dominated future, “base load” definitely is outdated. “Base load” was always artificially propped up economically through night-time power tariffs, and propped up practically through night shifts in factories (thus continually running processes) and things like night storage heaters.
You certainly don’t need base load to keep the grid stable, you just need to be able to quickly match production and consumption.
No it couldn’t because nuclear power plants are much too inflexible in their power output to fit into a grid designed for renewables. Wind power often had to be shut down when its output was too high for the grid cause you couldn’t shut down the nuclear power plants.
This is a myth, most of the nuclear reactors can be throttled down, it is not instant but they can go as low as 20% in around 30 min.
The thing is it is much easier to stop a wind turbine than to throttle a nuclear reactor, and unlike fossil fuel power turbines most of the cost of the nuclear reactor is fixed cost, whether the reactor is running or not it still costs the same.
Afaik, German reactors were designed to be throttled to 60% capacity, within around a week. And doing that too often wasn’t safe either. And there was no economic incentive to do so because a reactor throttled is not a reactor earning—you have to do a bunch of extra work to throttle the reactor and you’re only conserving negligible amounts of fuel.
I am not deep enough in the topic to know whether that’s a limitation due to all the German reactors being particularly outdated. But “30 min” and “20%” sounds more like an emergency protocol to me rather than any kind of standard procedure.
The PWRs most prevalent in Germany did control their power output by modulating the boron content of their primary loop coolant in regular (non emergency) operation. This is a slow process, but it was done deliberately, because using control rods for this purpose would lead to inefficient fuel use due to uneven fuel burn.
Don’t even bother. The crowd “informed” by big nuclear doesn’t care about facts.
Additional interesting stats, especially regarding statement on the safety of nuclear energy and waste:
IAEA-database of nuclear and radiological incidents
Note that although the list which is linked above gives an impression of the spread, diversity and frequency of incidents and accidents with nuclear power plants radioactive transports, it is not a complete list of all nuclear incidents and accidents; different national regulators have different regimes as to which incidents to report to the IAEA and which not.
One article on nuclear energy in the UK from May 2024 says:
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK’s nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money…The waste itself includes 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuels & about 120 tonnes of plutonium. – Source
[Edit typo.]
A related article with interesting stats on the world’s nuclear power plants: the U.S. and France have the largest fleet, but China Is rapidly building new nuclear power plants as the rest of the world stalls
“There are probably not more than seven countries that have the capability to design, manufacture and operate nuclear power plants,” Cui Jianchun, the Chinese foreign ministry’s envoy in nearby Hong Kong, said during an official visit to the plant. “We used to be a follower, but now China is a leader.”
And yet, China is still building out solar, wind, and coal faster.
That’s despite nuclear having a lot of advantages in China:
- high level of centralization (even SMRs produce 0.5TW)
- high level of governmental involvement in economy (which means huge investments can be a lot easier)
- low level of governmental transparency (which means you don’t have to deal with NGOs or Nimbys)
- rapidly increasing demand for electricity (which creates an incentive to build as much supply as possible)
- first-class universities (for independent R&D)
- large land mass (which is useful both for mining and disposal)
- lax environmental policy (same)
Seems more like a german french beef.
I’m all for renewables and let’s kick nuclear out when we have enough of them (and the tech tunuse them ofc.) to scrap oil, coal & gas.
That german french beef sounds delicious.
clean
kick nuclear out
Sure…
Nuclear ain’t clean when you don’t have a solution for spent Uranium Rods.
We don’t have a solution for all the CO2 in the atmosphere, yet we happily continue burning fossil fuels at record levels.
And I wonder what exactly you think the danger is of radioactive waste. We have excellent methods of getting it into caskets safely. Maybe don’t dig it out of its casket and eat it? Then you’ll be fine.
Not to mention the dozens of ultra deadly forever chemicals we use by the tons in industrial processes. We store them perfectly fine and they pose a much greater risk to people of they were to come into contact with it.
It’s like we have this thing that guaranteed kills millions every year and causes so much suffering, but we keep on using it because the alternative might have some downsides. It’s so weird.
And where do you store that casket? That still leaks radiation.
But yeah both have downsides (nuclear and coal/gas/oil) so we need to force more Renewables.
The caskets don’t leak radiation, you can hug them and be perfectly fine.
Even renewables have their downsides, nothing is without downsides, but we need to way them fairly and equally. But nuclear for most people is like the boogeyman and gets an unfair treatment, even though it’s used with great succes all over the world.
With solar for example we are currently producing huge amounts of solar panels, but often (in China for example) the waste generated with this isn’t handled properly. Also they have a life span of 15-20 years and we haven’t figured out the recycling all that well. Do these issues stop us from going all in on solar? Hell no, we need to go in fully on solar. But with nuclear (in some parts of the world at least) it’s like it needs to be perfect, with no outstanding issues in order for it to even be considered an option.
And just wait till you find out they pump deadly industrial waste straight into the ground using injection wells, where it just sits for thousands of years. Nobody ever makes a fuss about that. But putting some concrete caskets into an old mine is somehow a crime against humanity. It makes zero sense.
The caskets don’t leak radiation, you can hug them and be perfectly fine.
Asse, Germany, radioactive waste deposit. Known since 2008 to be leaking, research shows noticeable higher numbers of cases for thyroid cancer and leukemia.
Hug that shit all you want.
For information:
A significant inflow of water and a subtle loss of mechanical stability may jeopardise the underground mine integrity – the site is in danger of collapsing and becoming flooded.
Between 1988 and 2008 32 new entry points were recorded. In 1996, the BFS notified the Bundesumweltministerium that there was a risk of severe radioactive contamination if the mine ran full of water and that further investigation was urgently required.
After the controversies about the facility became public and the operator was changed to the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, a new plan was developed in 2010. It became obvious that the recovery of the waste is necessary for long-term safety. The waste is planned to be collected by remotely controlled robots, sealed in safe containers, and stored temporarily above ground. Preparations include creating a new shaft that will be big enough and building the above ground storage facility. The estimated costs for the closure of the mine are estimated to be at least 3.7 billion Euro. The recovery of the waste and closure of the mine will be paid with tax money, not by the operators of the German nuclear plants, even though most of the waste was created by them. The beginning of the recovery is planned to start in 2033 and is estimated to last for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
Edit: Wow. I’m getting downvotes for providing additional information. Teriffic!
Yeah the anti-nuclear crowd just goes and downvote all the things, they don’t even read anything. It’s kinda sad.
So they fucked up one time 50 years ago and thus the entire process is deemed to be flawed? Mistakes were made, mistakes are going to be made and as long as we learn from them and fix our mistakes, that’s just a normal part of life.
Look at any tech, machine or industry we have today and you can see how many people died and suffered for those things to exist today. Hydro power has killed over a hundred thousand people and has destroyed entire eco systems, we still consider that clean and safe power. Cars kill people every day and planes still fall out of the sky sometimes. I still feel perfectly safe stepping into my car and driving on the road. So you saying “hug that shit” is like I’m supposed to fear my car, because of the horrible accidents that happen every day.
I can’t find the source for you claiming higher cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia due to the leak of hazardous materials from the Asse-II mine. I can find plenty of FUD articles from anti-nuclear websites, but no actual peer reviewed research.
So they fucked up one time 50 years ago and thus the entire process is deemed to be flawed?
Nope, it’s only an example. Castor caskets have always been critized for safety issues, especially because testing wasn’t done thoroughly enough. That’s not a mistake, it’s a systematic issue.
Your second paragraph is just not a good argument. We should opt for the safest feasible option and that is not nuclear. It has safety issues (especially with waste), takes too long to build and is too expensive.
By the way, for the reasons you mentioned (and more) you will not see me arguing for hydro power, and also I strongly argue for reducing the use if cars. The issue is, we have a straight up fetish for cars, to the point that we swipe away legislations that would improve the safety of drivers and non-involved (like a general speed limit on the Autobahn). Cars in Germany are similar to guns in the US regarding their respective standings in society. It is simply irrational.I can’t find the source for you claiming higher cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia due to the leak of hazardous materials from the Asse-II mine.
Auswertung des EKN zur Krebshäufigkeit in den Gemeinden Cremlingen, Stadt Wolfenbüttel, SG Baddeckenstedt, SG Oderwald, SG Schladen, SG Schöppenstedt und SG Sickte is the source.
By the way, there is still no disposal site deemed safe enough for final storage of nuclear waste in germany.
In the significant amount of space no longer used to store coal? People vastly overestimate the volume (physical dimensions) of nuclear waste produced, and ignore that the “waste” is largely still usable for other purposes.
And my personal wishlist would be to kick the German lobbyists out of the room. Solar is great, but wind is a dead end. Nuclear is clean enough and the waste hysteria is overblown, there isn’t all that much radioactive waste to manage.
It’s one of the few things the Chinese government actually got right.
Wind energy covered 19% of EU electricity production. More than twice as much as solar. The total costs per energy produced are on the same level like coal and nuclear is more than twice as expensive.
It is the strongest renewable energy source. It seems like you know very little about energy production.
I don’t doubt the energy production of wind, only the (non monetary) cost of area.
Wind power has a very low area impact. The existing impact mainly affects birds. Otherwise wind turbines can be built directly on fields where the area used is just a few square meters for the towers base.
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