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Switzerland Votes To Abandon Nuclear Power In Favor of Renewables (bbc.com)
Slashdot reader bsolar writes: Swiss voters approved a new energy strategy proposed by the government. Under this new policy no new nuclear power plant will be built and the five existing nuclear power plants will continue operating and will be shut down at the end of their operating life (expected to last about 20-30 years). The plan is to offset the missing nuclear energy production by renewables and lower energy consumption.
Though one-third of the country's power comes from nuclear energy, the BBC reports that more than 58% of the voters "backed the move towards greener power sources." One Swiss news site notes that "regions where the country's five nuclear reactors are situated rejected the reform with clear majorities."
Though one-third of the country's power comes from nuclear energy, the BBC reports that more than 58% of the voters "backed the move towards greener power sources." One Swiss news site notes that "regions where the country's five nuclear reactors are situated rejected the reform with clear majorities."
It took us long enough.
They don't need power at night as they glow in the dark
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
They import most energy from other countries, so it's not like they energy they're consuming becomes much greener.
During the cold war it was the "red scare", now in these modern times it's the "rad scare".
That's the plain and simple truth. Nuclear Fission only looks like it works if it is cross-funded by obscene truckloads of taxpayers money and nobody looks too hard at centralized power cartels (funded by said taxpayers money), reactor runtimes and maintenance costs (also paid by taxpayers mones). Factor in waste handling, storage and the risks of nuclear disasters and the balance sheet goes really deep-red.
The numbers don't add up and the whole concept simply doesn't work. Even the conservatives in Germany have noticed this. Replenishing Plant Wackersdorf - a multi-billion dollar project for the treatment and replenishing of nuclear waste - wasn't closed down by left-wing hippie protesters raising a stink of the better part of a decade, it was closed down by southern Germany state officials doing the math. Some backroom clerk adding up the numbers and seeing in awe and amazement that it wouldn't work, even with the best predictions. Same goes for the most advanced fast breeder at Kalkar - a building estimated more expensive than the Pyramids of Gizeh, inflation factored in.
Now Germany is moving out of nuclear alltogether and for once we're actually ahead of schedule - even with all the fuss about the new powerlines crossing the republic. AFAI understand we've simply decided to front a few extra billion and move those underground, so nobody can complain of them blocking their view. We crossed the 80% renewables a few weeks ago. If Germany can do this - really not a country known for it's sunny days - the rest of the world can do it too.
People have to see the light: Nuclear Fission as we know it is a 60ies techno-romatic pipe-dream. And a dangerous one at that, with a 200 000 year waste problem attached.
IMHO the world should move to decommission classic nuclear fission ASAP. I'm glad the swiss voted in favor of this. I personally don't want to many chernobyls and fukushimas happening before the world finally catches on.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Proof that democracy doesn't always work. People are morons. There are no "greener sources" than nuclear if you want a decent electricity grid with a reliable base load. All that will happen is what's happened elsewhere - wind, solar, and coal/gas to cover the inevitable large shortfalls as they fluctuate like hell (not to mention their massively lower energy density).
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
80% renewables? Bullshit, gonna need a source on that.
While I agree with a stop to build new ones, it's insane to turn off the ones that are still running reliably. Because whether you turn them off now or at their end of life, the building along with everything inside is radioactive waste you have to take care of. The damage is already done, the nuclear waste already created. You can as well reap the few benefits you gain out of it before throwing it away.
Or rather, driving it around Europe hoping to find some place to stow it. Maybe Moldova will allow you to dump it there if you throw enough money at them, they sure need it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
didnt realise the swiss were stupid.
Yeah, letting people vote is always a bad idea. Democracy is for dummies.
They should be busy bringing back coal, like the more advanced nations are doing.
No sig today...
When the nuclear power plants have 20-30 years left in them. They'll get some feel-good votes from the anti-nuclear crowd now and it's effortless for some other government who'll be in power 15-20 years from now with looming power shortages to decide to keep them open or to build a few more.
I agree to an extent. Slowly phasing out existing plants where the financial investment was already made could be smarter than simply turning them off and building intermediary coal plants to buffer the transition.
However, there is one thing to observe: Transition, where it is taken on, is happening at rate faster than anyone predicted, simply because setting up a windmill or a solar array is so much less hassle than building an nuclear fission cycle that follows all the required regulations. So we'd have to look very carefull if even existing nuclear cycles are cost effective vis-a-vis contemporary alternatives. Modern day stuff like Elon Musks solar roof and the powerwall basically pay for itself with current energy costs. No need to lug nuclear fuel and waste about anymore. The only infrastucture needed for larger off-shore windparks and desert-bound solar-arrays that isn't in existance are powerlines. And even those are cheaper and less fuss than NF, even if you put them into the ground.
If we de-throne the power cartels and allow for decentralised power we'd see all nuclear plants put into hybernation-mode faster than expected, simply because it's too much hassle to maintain them for regular throughput. I'd expect nuclear plants to simply be repurposed as storage facilities for their own waste.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh, stop that BS. Germany's power grid is going into a shithole and they're propping it with hastily expanding coal and natgas generation. That 2020 targets for CO2 emissions? Who cares about them!
Greeny idiots keep parading the peak numbers for renewable generation (now 100500% of the consumption!) but they conveniently forget to mention troughs. For example, this January the renewable production was 10% of the normal due to unusually cold weather with little wind. For about 2 weeks. Had Germany relied only on renewables they would have had thousands people dead from hypothermia.
Will ask what caused the 3rd planet to become like the 2nd? They will conclude three fatal mistakes sealing the fate of the planet :
1) the dominance of internal combustion engines over electric
2) a retreat from nuclear power after something called Fukushima
3) the race was not smart enough to get fusion power working in time
Well, if it is a binary choice between the Swiss being stupid, or you being stupid .....
What do you mean with "obscene truckloads of taxpayers money"? You mean more than the €40.1 billion Energy tax and the €6.6 billion Electricity tax that taxpayers had to pay in 2016 alone to fund alternative and green energies in Germany?
didnt realise the swiss were stupid.
Yeah, letting people vote is always a bad idea. Democracy is for dummies.
They should be busy bringing back coal, like the more advanced nations are doing.
Your views are apparently so weak that you have to put words in peoples' mouths? This is about nuclear. Who said coal?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
You really think the power cartels will be felled? You are aware that you're governed by a party that has "Christian" in its name and is praying to Saint Vattenfall, yes?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://www.technologyreview.c...
"After years of declines, Germanyâ(TM)s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs. Thatâ(TM)s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal."
The whole nuclear debate shows that the left can be just as "anti-science" as the right. Because of scaremongering, nuclear power plant construction and development has been hamstrung for decades. It produces less radiation than coal and scales a lot better than solar or wind. For all the money and jobs in solar it still produces a small percentage of power, even in places like Germany (less than 8%). Wind and solar combined only produce only 22% of energy in Germany.
If you believe that global warming is about to end the human race, we should be increasing all our options for non-CO2 polluting energy. Especially if you anticipate a huge need in energy as we shift cars from petrol to electric.
Abandoning nuclear is right when we need it the most is just stupid.
Yes, take the Germans as an example. It's not like they're still massively reliant on coal, phasing out nuclear in favor of importing power from France (guess how they produce it?), and are really unlikely to hit their 2022 phase out goal. Germany shows that a hard turn towards renewables is not effective or realistic.
It really depends on the structure of their economy and the type of industries they have. If they have miscalculated there is always the Polish brown coal they can use to smoke up the Alps.
That's right, and let me quote the President of the United States of America in further support of nuclear:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Wise words, from the president of the most advanced nation on earth! We need nuclear!
Disclaimer: I'm swiss, I know what I'm talking about. I voted no.
The swiss did not vote to decommission currently operating nuclear power plant. They will go on as planned and shut down as originally planned and expected. The last one will close in 2030 or something (I'm too lazy to check).
interesting, can you provide us with details(link) ?
And then its going to a be a hell of a cold winter.
In Switzerland the nuclear power plants loss money (in part because the Germany energy politic make the price lower) and the various funds that should pay the decommissioning of the nuclear power plants + the processing of the various nuclear wastes types + the facility to stock those wastes is now know to be not even half the money that there should be by now. Even for some of the oldest civil nuclear reactor still in operation, and even if there have been fully operational during decades where there was profitable. It's going to be a huge financial charge for the next generation that will pay for decades to cleanup that mess without getting a single advantage from it.
While others electric production methods have there own advantages and problems, at least there are easy to shutdown safely and to decommission without insanely dangerous processing that generate even more dangerous wast that last for million of years.
Finally the perception of the risk of major failure have changed. Not only because of the various majors accidents worldwide, but the because Switzerland operate very very old reactors that is now know to have major structural parts out of specification from day 1 and that was keep secret for decades.
Smart move. Nuclear Fission isn't cost-effective. That's the plain and simple truth. Nuclear Fission only looks like it works if it is cross-funded by obscene truckloads of taxpayers money and nobody looks too hard at centralized power cartels (funded by said taxpayers money), reactor runtimes and maintenance costs (also paid by taxpayers mones). Factor in waste handling, storage and the risks of nuclear disasters and the balance sheet goes really deep-red.
Current uranium breeder reactors weren't designed for to be cost effective, they were designed to generate weapons grade plutonium. If you want a cost-effective long-term energy solution then you should be doing R&D to make a fourth generation reactor which is more commonly known as LFTR or a Thorium reactor. A proper design could be completely autonomous, relatively small, consume existing nuclear waste but cannot meltdown/leak radiation.
People have to see the light: Nuclear Fission as we know it is a 60ies techno-romatic pipe-dream. And a dangerous one at that, with a 200 000 year waste problem attached.
This is foolishness of mdsolar proportions. We developed the technology to make weapons but if we invest and develop it further we can make the cleanest form of energy generation on Earth.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Had Germany relied only on renewables they would have had thousands people dead from hypothermia.
Not withstanding the other bullshit in your post, how exactly?
BS. German built -4 new coal power stations. In other words, they built some new ones but closed more older ones.
Anyway, you are pre-judging their effort. They are due to finish around 2024, when the last nuclear reactors are decommissioned. Until then it's still the transition phase and not indicative of the final outcome. Wait until the full renewable and storage capacity is there, and then compare some temporarily elevated CO2 emissions to permanently lower ones.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
See slashdot a week ago. Peak percentage production was 85%. So his claim if taken as "percentage of monthly/annual power" it's as accurate as the cries "what about baseload?!?!?!" in that both are technically correct but are easily misconstrued as being valid where it's actually bullshit.
But Germany has gone from 30% of annual generation (it exports about 15% of power, so that is 30/85ths) to 35% (again, exporting 15%, so that's really 35/85ths) in two years. And despite the claims from pro-nuke and the anti-greens that it would all fall apart if it were more than about 20% penetration, they are still a net exporter of power.
France mostly exports to the UK who has never had a net import, so their figures are not bad. The UK, meanwhile, has a love-fest for nukes, no place to put them, and a hate-on for renewables because they aren't a huge barrier for entry for small companies or individuals.
> People have to see the light: Nuclear Fission as we know it is a 60ies techno-romatic pipe-dream. And a dangerous one at that, with a 200 000 year waste problem attached.
Really? Where do you propose we get the base load from then? Renewables aren't reliable, and no one wants to live in the dark.
Germany is shuttering its nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal, which kills more people per year that nuclear (and emits more radiation too).
> I personally don't want to many chernobyls and fukushimas happening before the world finally catches on.
I personally would rather have people making decisions based on statistics than bogeyman fears. Nuclear is one of the safest and cleanest ways to produce base load.
> IMHO the world should move to decommission classic nuclear fission ASAP.
Good luck convincing the French to do this. They obtain a massive amount of their energy from nuclear, France has never had a major nuclear accident, and their CO2 emissions are far, far lower than most other European countries:
https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=map
Just because nuclear doesn't work in YOUR country (or Japan or the USSR) doesn't mean it's not a viable solution.
German power grid is fine, thank you very much. It is one of most advanced in the world, a (small, for now) part of it even uses high temperature superconductors. Neither natural gas nor coal are expanding, matter of fact one of fairly recently built natural gas power plants was closed only a few years after it went online (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irsching_Power_Station) and there is only one new coal power station planned to be built, in Stade, I think so it can reuse parts of the former infrastructure of a shut down nuclear power plant. Also there are two new blocks planned as extensions for existing coal power plants (Niederaussem, Datteln) but that is it, and even these were meant as a more efficient replacement for older coal power stations that will be shut down en masse this and next year. How can you call it "hastely expanding" with a straight face? The 2020 target is a problem because German cars became a lot larger and heavier in the past 15 years, not because of coal power plants.
By the way, 100500 is a very Russian meme. I do get it, but I think "OVER 9000" is probably more understandable in the rest of the world.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Theresa May is planning to reopen the coalmines in the UK.
Thatcher closed them so she wants to do it too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In my opinion, what closed the deal on this vote wasn't Fukushima.
We are currently close to shutting one of the five down due to age anyway. I believe it's one of the oldest reactor types in service currently (and I'm talking worldwide). Suddenly the company operating it says "Uh, no, we haven't prepared any funds for decommissioning the plant. That's your job!"
So not only is this whole thing a bit questionable security-wise, unless done absolutely right, it just goes to show that the private entities operating these things do not want or are not able to handle the responsibility involved. So after paying them for power for decades, now we're gonna have to foot the bill for cleaning them up, too.
And THAT pissed a lot of people off, I'm sure.
While I am pro modern nukes, I don't think they make sense in private hands and anyway, I find decentralized power generation to be much more secure in a variety of ways.
Here is a peer reviewed study on the net energy return of Nuclear Power. Let's just say the outcome isn't positive.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"Had Germany relied only on renewables they would have had thousands people dead from hypothermia."
Electric heating is not very common in Germany, at least not for central heating. You may have an additional electric heater here and there, but these are secondary, not primary heatings.
There is a small fraction of homes that still use "night storage heaters" which were subsidized in the 1950s to 1970s or so. These heat up storage ceramics at night and release the heat over the day. These were subsidized as they only used electricity at night when demand was low, so that nuclear and coal base load plants could be left running at night.
This form of heating is only used by a pretty small minority of households these days though.
Reading that broke the part of my brain that deals with language comprehension.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I think they did it for 5mins on a sunday morning..
as with most ecoloon shit, the lie is in the details.
I am not sure you can call that praying.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Saint Vattenfall
That's how the IPCC sees them too.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They are shutting down the old ones that are nearing the end of their life.
Moreover, the problem with nukes is that as you operate them they produce more low level waste in the hundreds of tons, so you're better off ending them early if you can so as to avoid having to clean up quite as much.
muh 5 minutes meme
Look at hydropower in Norway for an eye-opener.
That's just pure, evil genius.
they would have had thousands people dead from hypothermia
They may have been in the dark but no one gets cold when the power goes out. What kind of a neanderthal heats their house via electricity anyway?
You are talking out of your arse. RWE in Essen has a high temperature semiconductor cable connecting two substations. It is a part of the power grid in that city, not something in the lab and has been working well for a couple of years by now. Just becase you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That resembles English, but does not parse.
wtf did I just read?
Do you have sources for any of these numbers you're talking about?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Why did they replace the old coal plants with new coal plants? If they didn't replace them with renewables the first time around, why do you think they will in the future?
It's a shame that politics have to enter every decision made.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
It's true enough, the measure passed (FWIW, I voted against it). It's a stupid, knee-jerk reaction, still a follow-on from Fukushima.
However, in the current European political climate, constructing new nuclear reactors isn't possible anyway. People are too risk averse, there's far too much NIMBY-ness, we *still* don't have a proper solution for long-term waste storage (more NIMBY-ness), fuel-reprocessing barely exists - the whole situation is just impossible. The UK claims they're going to build some new nuclear plants: buy your popcorn now, because it's going to be long show, and most likely they will never happen.
So forbidding new plants from being built here doesn't really matter. And anyway, the law can just as easily be changed back, should the political climate for nuclear improve.
No, the biggest problem with the vote that happened yesterday are subsidies: More subsidies for renewables, more subsidies for renovating old buildings, replacing heating systems, etc.. These subsidies totally distort the market, and there are already people speculating on them, because apparently they will be retroactive. Also, it's kind of hilarious: some of the subsidies are to correct the damage done by previous subsidies. When the nuclear plants were originally built, the government subsidized electrical (resistance) heating systems, because electricity was going to be so cheap. Now, it will pay you to get rid of your electrical heating system and put in something else. And in 20 or 30 years, it will be something else again. Stupid.
The worst aspect of these subsidies is: they are, in the end, just income redistribution. Why does Hans get money from Fred, just because Fred has a new house and Hans bought an old one? Or because Fred invested in a good heating system, and Hans bought a crappy one that he now wants to replace?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
How expensive do you think is laying conventional lines in a German city? Hint: a lot of money because cables are generally laid underground and Germany is very densely settled. Matter of fact, the current price is ~10 millions for 1 km. See why that superconducting cable suddenly makes sense?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The voted law take years to be designed by all the parties that are represented in the government and in the parliament (individually and directly elected by the population). I'ts 50 pages long and cover a lot of details https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/federal-gazette/2016/7469.pdf
I believe you need the encryption key to decipher that, and that key is cocaine.
Cheap electricity makes for wasteful applications. France relies heavily on nuclear power, but every winter they can hardly buy enough electricity from Germany. Why? Because electricity is cheap in France, and people use it to heat their homes, which are poorly insulated. They don't use efficient heat pumps either: It's almost entirely wasteful resistive heating. Nuclear power does not lead to sane energy policies. The electricity grid in Germany is being upgraded to handle more diverse power generation. No rolling blackouts in this country.
UK has around 300 years of energy reserves in those coal fields. The past Conservative government had to close the mines in order to break the political control that Arthur Scargill, militants had over the unions and the economy.
They are shutting down the old ones that are nearing the end of their life.
I'ts the case of all of them! Even the youngest one, Leibstadt (1984), was not initially designed to run after 2024.
Beznau 1 (1969), Beznau 2 (1972) and Mühleberg (1972) are in a short list of the oldest civil nuclear reactors still in operation in the world. Beznau is now know to have keep secret from the beginning that major structural part of the reactor was out of specification. There all loss money each year and the fund for decommissioning, wast processing and wast storage is not even half what is should be by now. Total fiasco for the next generation.
The there would never be a valid excuse for turning off a working nuclear plant.
The incredibly small risk of running the plant would be nothing in the face of the dire risk being claimed for climate change.
Climate change alarmists call out the precautionary principle all the time. What if, what if, what if. To be true to the precautionary principle, the only course of action that should be supported is keeping zero emission plants running.
Yay, more power to sell.
duh, Norway isn't fucking Germany, thats what was being talked about, catchup your a bit fucking slow!.
Are you American, because you have their understanding of fucking geography...
60% of the electricity generated in Switzerland comes from hydro., a bit less than 40% nuke. But this only accounts for about 15% of domestic consumption.
The rest is bought from the Germans (burning lovely polluting brown coal) and the French, who have an abundance of cheap nuke electricity...(about the only country in the world that got its nuclear power generating strategy right)
So, yeah, this is a very "green" decision!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I was going to say "Firesign Theater" does it better, but then, I don't know...
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Just for the record, that speech was in Sun City, South Carolina, on July 21. It resembles Groucho Marx on acid.
Just think Europe, he's coming there after Israel. That'll learn ya to inflict all this global warming on the planet. Please...puuleeaase have a head of state tell him the trick is to bang the rocks together. He won't get the joke but you'll be treated to another incoherent monologue on how no one, no one can bang rocks together like he can, he's that smart.
Amazing, who might have thought that an incredibly complex project won't hit its target date. Next your going to tell me it'll be over budget, too!
And because it won't hit that date (which is actually in the future, so...) the conclusion is that it is not effective or realistic.
I believe that a lot of very large complex projects did not hit their target dates, yet ended up being both effective and realistic.
If you're just bitching about the target date being unrealistic: well, yes, of course, nevermind then.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
You really think the mainframe cartels will be felled by ma and pa shops building little "PC"s in their garages?
That's Corbyn not May. However the reason the coal mines closed in the UK is exactly the same reason that coal mines are closing in the USA. It's cheap natural gas and the hard economics that follows from it folks.
In the UK the natural gas came from the North Sea, in the USA it has come from fracking. In both cases the result was the same, the market for coal dried up so the mines closed.
Lignite, or brown coal, is the worst - well, maybe oil sands and shale are worse fossil fuels, but for power generation, brown coal has to be the most dirty form of energy around.
So it's 17% black coal, 25% much-worse-than-coal, 9% gas and 54% sane.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I remember the day after this speech came out. All the news was about those poor translators who had to try and either look incompetent or break their ethical responsibility to translate faithfully and make the president make sense.
Better than dozens dead from global warming induced heatwave.
Is the cost of CO2 also factored in? I mean e.g the amount of money it will take to build higher dikes in Sleswig-Holstein where the majority of the alternative energy comens from? Or are those wind makers build to work under water?
Also nice to know that SH pays the most in energy, while they produce also all that 'free' energy.
Since a long time the green party has been scare mongering people about atomic energy and it finaly paid off. Who again said "If you repeat a lie often enough, people think it is true."?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Inside the Energiewende
German Emissions Increase in 2016
Electricity Production in Germany
Production was only 85% momentarily, on a Sunday morning with exceptionally low demand and high wind conditions. Meanwhile, it was also shown how wind and solar production drops to below 4% quite often still. The problem is many talk about 'renewables' and fail to mention that it include burning biomass and hydro, but the only sources that can be added with any significance are the intermittent wind and solar sources. Wind and Solar only generated about 20% of German power in 2016, and they are already running into limits of what the grid can handle without significantly larger investments in transmission systems than what they've already had to do to get to this point.
Has that quote been through google translate to Japanese and back?
Pleas read the article again. Only 15% of the fuel is produced in Switzerland not the electricity. We don't have uranium mines and the like here.
This statistics include not only electricity but also fuel for cars and machines - we don't have any oil!
From the same page for a study from 2009:
The study also showed that the production in Switzerland (64.6 TWh) is similar to the amount of electricity consumed in the country (63.7 TWh).[12] Overall, Switzerland export 7.6 TWh and import 6.8 TWh; but, in terms of emissions of carbon dioxide, Switzerland export "clean" electricity causing emissions of 0.1 millions of tonnes of CO2 and import "dirty" electricity causing emissions of 5 millions of tonnes of CO2.[12]
In the UK there was a deliberate move from a manufacturing economy to a financial services economy, and it was funded by the windfall from North Sea oil sales. You don't need much coal when you are not making much.
The UK, especially Scotland and Wales, hasn't recovered.
It wasn't "hard economics", it was "hard politics" of the fuck you if you are not in banking or real estate variety.
Bring back Jimny Carter. He was part of the design team and notably worked inside a nuclear Reactor. Yes you read that right. Inside a live one
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
So Cordemais with 2.6GW of coal fired base load doesn't exist? Grand'Maison Dam with 1.8GW of hydro neither?
It's counterproductive to use bullshit to push an agenda when reality is impressive enough to do it on it's own.
Indeed, which is why it isn't happening anywhere. As reactors hit an age when they need seriously expensive work to continue operating they are being shut down. We haven't seen any relatively new reactors shut down since 1979 when TMI scared everyone enough to shut down the obvious 1960s deathtraps and upgrade everything else.
That's right, and let me quote the President of the United States of America in further support of nuclear
Link for anyone who wonders if that's more comprehensible when spoken, or mis-transcribed to make it less coherent. (Spoiler: No, and no).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Has that quote been through google translate to Japanese and back?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elhyo-_fR0E
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Did he actually say in there that we need nuclear? I can't really pull any meaningful content from the rambling. And as many know, I'm the most anti-trump guy out there. But if he puts forth a sensible policy on nuclear energy (i.e. lets use it for base load instead of coal until renewables are economically reasonable), I'd be the first to admit being impressed.
You just read conversational English with its wonderful tendency to self-interrupt rather than sort itself in to clean and concise sentences.
The implication of that is what was known earlier: even if he has speech writers, Donald Trump ignores them. Despite how it is reported, people in general prefer the conversational structure over people obviously reading from a script.
It's a goalpost shift to absurdity to pretend that a proposal to shut down reactors at the end of their planned service life (or beyond in some cases) is "turning off a working nuclear plant".
Why are you doing it? Are your arguments so weak that you have to resort to fantasy?
Personally I think you would push your agenda far better if you said something about benefits of new plant instead of pretending that reactors at the end of their service life are just as perfect as on day one.
You're right that nuclear power can only exist due to generous subsidies, but the same is really true for fossil fuels too. If anybody had to pay the correct price for coal power, including the capture costs for the CO2 or the compensation to future generations for climate change damages, that form of energy wouldn't be competitive either. And quite possibly even more expensive than honest nuclear power pricing.
And importantly, that doesn't only count for electric power gained from fossil sources, but also other fossil fuels such as gasoline or oil/gas heating. So it's not enough to move your country to a place where you generate 100% of your electric power from renewable sources. If we want to get climate change under control, the other forms of energy usage will also have to be replaced in the near future.
This is why I personally would've liked to stay with nuclear power for another generation, even with the danger of meltdowns and spent fuel storage. Trying to replace enough fossil fuel usage through non-polluting sources of power fast enough to be able to dodge the incoming climate disaster, while restricting ourselves from the most available source, seems like too much of a risk to take.
Just something to think about: The Fukushima and Chernobyl exclusion zones have a size of about 3000 km2 and are actually pretty nice nature reserves. Meanwhile, about 120,000 km2 of land are being lost to desertification every year http://www.un.org/en/events/de...
Your argument is that nuclear is too cheap?
That's the plain and simple truth. Nuclear Fission only looks like it works if it is cross-funded by obscene truckloads of taxpayers money
That's true now. It wasn't true forty years ago. Oh, nuclear fission was never the "too cheap to meter" dream originally touted, but it actually was extremely economical for a couple of decades. If you'd like to understand what changed, read this.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This may be outlandish, but I think George W. actually made more sense.
You cant rely on weather and natural phenomenon to produce energy. With all the global warming and changes in climate, sunshine may be less, rains may be less. How will you produce electricity then? Back to coal and gas? A mere 58% decided the future of everyone! Its crazy!
Generation doesn't mean squat if half or more of it is being thrown in the trash because it is too unpredictable. Base-load IS relevant because if renewables range from 5% to 85% of the grid production then you have to actually generate a base-load using other sources based on the lower 5% number or you face brown outs (plus whatever storage you have, so say a 10% number). In other words, you still need both sets of facilities. Yeah, the coal plant may not run at all in the summer when the sun shines bright but then needs to run all winter. Yes this is good from a carbon emission "at the tailpipe" standpoint but it is terrible from a cost of generation and TOTAL carbon emission standpoint (renewables do have a significant "carbon cost" to produce).
So you frequently end up in situations where the power is being thrown away or sold at near zero prices to other countries. I can't wait for the day where this stupid marketing bites them in the ass and people wake up. In the future there will frequently be days where "150% of demand is being met with renewable" yet they will still have gas and coal plants. Then lies will start to sink in for the common man.
That's in my opinion why the Swiss rejected a similar popular initative last November and accepted this legislation instead: the popular initiative included hard decommissioning deadlines which would have shut down some nuclear power plants much earlier than necessary. The approved legislation will phase out nuclear power plants when they'll reach end of life.
Unless they have enough dispatchable energy via hydro and geo-thermal, they are making a horrible mistake.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is more like the "seivert scare" or whatever new unit of radiation that people pull out of their derriere, be it rads, roentgens, lumens, or whatnot.
All right. Sit down, Lurlene, this may be rough...The president of the United States IS named Schicklegruber!
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nuclear electricity is cheap to consume, because it's heavily subsidized. When nuclear power was developed, the expectation was that it would be "too cheap to meter". But it is not cheap to produce. France is locked into an old co-dependence between an artificially cheap base load producing technology and a habit of wasteful electricity consumption. Stopping nuclear power in France or even just cutting the various ways it is subsidized would cause severe problems for a big part of the French populace. The situation is similar to the way American sprawl depends on cars and cheap gas. It is impossible to live in a typical suburban development without a car. Anyway, the point is that even with a very high percentage of nuclear power in the french electricity mix, France is still a net importer of electricity. Nuclear does not guarantee a stable grid or absence of blackouts. It creates all the wrong incentives.
yeah, and now they want to leave the EU. that will be funny when they find out that the banking sector moves away.
Not everywhere.
Things are still moving very very slowly in Russia, China and India where that excuse does not apply in any way at all. Maybe you should give up on that tired old excuse and try addressing the subject matter directly?
Whine whine whine - seriously? They have nothing to do with the issue here.
Shutting things down when they become too difficult to run effectively is silly in what way? Don't let blind ideology get in the way of practicality especially when you are accusing irrelevant others of doing the same.
He only sounds like that because of Russia's financial crisis. They had to let their translators go and they're using Google Translate to feed him his lines. Note how running this through English->Russian then Russian->English has no effect on its intelligibility; that's because it's already been made into semantic hash by the original mechanical translation:
Listen, having nuclear weapons, my uncle was a great professor, scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Good genes, very good genes, OK, very clever, Wharton financial school, very good, very smart - you know, if you are a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, for example, it's good if I ran. As a liberal democrat , They will say that I am one of the smartest people in any part of the world - it's true! - but when you are a conservative Republican, they try - oh, they make a number - that's why I always start: I went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, made it, built a fortune - you know that I must constantly Give your powers, because we are a little at a disadvantage - but you look at the nuclear case that really bothers me - it would be so simple, and it's not as important as these lives (nuclear powerful, my uncle explained that for I have many, many years ago, power and it was 35 years ago, He is Clarifies the strength of what will happen and he was right - who would have thought?) But when you look at what's going on with the Four prisoners - now there were three and now four - but when there were three and even now, I would say that this is all in the messenger; Guys, and they are guys, because, you know, they do not do it, they did not think that women are smarter now than men, so you know that they will need another 150 years - but the Persians Great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators , So, they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think there's a whole lot of people that wish he was back in the Oval Office rather than the current occupant. Sometimes it takes a full-on landfill fire to realize that the burning dumpster wasn't as bad a crisis as we all thought.
(No, this isn't some attempt to extoll the virtues of GWB. I just called his presidency a dumpster fire. Back off the kneejerk reactions already.)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
"regions where the country's five nuclear reactors are situated rejected the reform with clear majorities."
Interesting, this is the first time I've heard from the "Please in my Backyard" crowd.
please show present price is 10mill per km...
and then remember that 13.5mill does not include up keep (you have to keep the fucking thing really really fucking
cold)
Is this anything more than a stunt though? The only point of using a superconductor is to avoid the energy lost to heating the wires in transmission. While using a superconductor eliminates this if you have to spend far more energy cooling it to liquid nitrogen temperatures you have a net energy loss which would make this little more than a publicity stunt.
Why would he want to copy Maggie? Think you missed the point there sparky.
A big problem for Germany and others is that they include Biomass burning in their renewables credit. However, burning biomass emits a lot of CO2, so while it is renewable in terms of the fuel source, it is a CO2 contributor. If the goal is high percentage renewables, then fine, but if it is high percentage CO2 free sources, then biomass does not support the goal. In fact, if all of Germany's energy came from biomass burning, their CO2 emissions would rise tremendously.
http://www.ghgonline.org/co2bioburn.htm
Germany's current energy plan has nothing to do with economics. Their fast timeline for phasing out nuclear is costing them incredible amounts of money. The Swiss appear to be taking a more fiscally sound approach, phasing the plants out at the end of their useful lives.
There was a vast opportunity cost of CO2 that was pumped into the atmosphere by Germany due to their fast phase-out of nuclear. All the renewable generation they rolled out could have been displacing lignite generation, the dirtiest type of generation, but instead was displacing non-emitting nuclear energy.
Ow! My balls!
Another greenie BS. Some old plants were decommissioned but new plants were also built and existing plants were expanded. In 2011 the brown coal was at 19.85GWt and now it's at 20.90GWt, hard coal was at 25.72GWt and now it's at 28.32GWt, natgas was at 27.25GWt and now it's at 29.89GWt (source: https://www.energy-charts.de/p...). Victory for the environment!
Several new coal power plants are planned and are being constructed: https://www.bdew.de/internet.n...
The facts are:
1) Switzerland voted for increase in subsidies for "renewable" energy projects, i.e. a local and EU (meaning Germany) jobs program,
2) The five operating nuclear power stations will remain operating for their expected 20-30 year life-cycle.
3) Switzerland Gov will encourage efficiency and reduction of current energy-use.
This is just local politics in action and in two-years after the Switzerland citizens taxes rise again, they can vote on another measure to cut-back subsidies for "renewable" energy projects (mostly out-flows of capital to Germany and few low-wage construction jobs in Switzerland filled by migrant Muslims [Switzerland's Mexicans) and partner with French Breeder Reactor Nuclear power station construction firms to build Breeder Reactor Stations in Switzerland.
As for superconducting transmission lines - the only one production line in Germany is 200 meters in length, as far as I remember.
How can you call it "hastely expanding" with a straight face? The 2020 target is a problem because German cars became a lot larger and heavier in the past 15 years, not because of coal power plants.
Yes, they are hastily expanding. I keep offering bets to greenies that by 2020 Germany will have more fossil fuel generation than in 2011. Somehow they keep finding excuses to not enter it. Oh, and I was just referring to power generation emissions - the target won't be even close.
Such systems have been operational for many years in many places. See what ULTERA joint venture has delivered over the years.
Say that again in 20 years, when the US is a decade behind the rest of the world in renewables and having to spend a helluva lot more money to get up to speed than Europe, and hell likely even India and China.
The only morons are the people who think burning coal to produce electricity has any future at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I do remember interviews with Trump from the eighties where, while he's certainly a narcissist, he could at least put together a coherent series of sentences to produce a reasonably comprehensible narrative. I really do wonder if the man is suffering some sort of cognitive decline; in other words dementia. That sort of rambling and losing his place and even the point of what he's saying is indicative of some pretty serious cognitive issues.
At least Reagan didn't begin showing signs of his decline to the last year or two of his presidency. Trump's been showing signs of some sort of cognitive and language decline before he even was nominated.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dubya was a pretty stupid guy, there's no doubt about that. But there was never any evidence of any serious cognitive issues. He just wasn't all that bright, which is fine. Maybe not perfect for the leader of the Free World, but then again, Reagan was no genius either. In both cases they had enough sense to know their own limitations and surrounded themselves with sane (if possibly evil) advisers. In other words, they were examples of presidents who functioned more as figureheads for the Administration than the actual functional Executive.
In Trump's case, he appears incapable of recognizing his weaknesses, truly does believe he is a brilliant man, and about the only way to get him to do anything is to basically manipulate him into thinking it was his own idea. The US voters elected Fred Flintstone as President.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A struggling power grid means blackouts. They happen so infrequently that they make news. Matter of fact the power quality in Germany is among the best in the world.
And the superconducting line length is actually 1 km.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
That's bullshit. I've had conversations with all sorts of people, smart people, dumb people, regular people, and while we all we on occasion go into asides, this paragraph was gibberish. There is a complete lack of coherency.
Donald Trump exhibits signs of some serious cognitive issues. This kind of rambling is often a symptom of dementia.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Blackouts mean that your power grid has failed. A struggling power grid has other symptoms - unstable frequency and voltage. And Germany's grid most definitely has them to the level that actually hurts important industrial consumers.
And I see that you don't have objections to my other points? Are you willing to take my bet? I'll even make it easier - you win if by 2020 Germany has less installed coal capacity than now.
Doesn't matter how many decades or centuries of coal is there - we have to stop burning the stuff.
It runs out eventually anyway - so we need an alternative anyway and for the sake of our climate and health we better get out of burning coal now.
A blackout means that the grid frequency has dropped so much that the power stations start shedding load. In Germany this has to happen immediately after reaching 49 Hz - chapter 7.3.4 of the grid code. The grid operators have to implement a contingency plan using all available resources when reaching 49.8 Hz already - a value that is considered normal in other grids.
Here are German SAIDI values:
https://www.bundesnetzagentur....
As you can clearly see, the value has dropped by 50% during the past 10 years, showing that power quality got better, not worse, despite everything. In comparison, nuclear powered France has a SAIDI value that is 4 times higher.
Please also look at this report:
http://www.ceer.eu/portal/page...
It clearly shows that Germany has the third-best power quality in the EU. So much for that.
Let's bet that by 2020 Germany will have a higher percentage of renewable power than in 2017 averaged through the year.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
>> it's insane to turn off the ones that are still running reliably.
It may be much much better to turn these off BEFORE explosion.
aaaaaaa
Why does Germany rely upon Russian natural gas? Why is Germany increasingly reliant upon Russian natural gas?
I dunno on what grounds Switzerland voted for it, but it sounds like a very risky bet.
Look, I'm no climate change denialist, and I know that nuclear power has it's own share of problems that not even modern technologies can solve. I'm all for decomissioning old nuclear power plants because those are massive liabilities waiting to happen. Modern nuclear plants tech have solved most of the problems, but they yet have to prove themselves (if we only let them), and all modern propositions will still produce some form of nuclear waste... even if quantities are way smaller in comparison.
Plus, implementing new modern tech for the first time will be costly.
But abandoning nuclear in favor of renewables like wind and solar can end up being even worse. The first thing people have to understand is that with current tech, both wind and solar requires multiple times more investment and landmass to get near nuclear plants output. It's not "just a bit more"... we're talking about 200+ times more for wind, and 40+ times more for solar. I hope people understand this. We're talking about the dismantling of a single nuclear power plant requiring a city's worth of land covered in solar panels to get the same energy, or an entire state worth of wind towers.
Another thing that people need to pay attention to is that even if renewables don't produce radioactive waste, construction still generates toxic waste. It's not like we plant seeds to grow solar panels and huge wind towers, and it's not like those don't have an impact on the ecossystem, specially when we need a whole lot more of them. Chemicals produced by current solar panel manufacturing at proportional rates for energy generation can have a more impactful and long lasting effect on the environment than even an isolated nuclear meltdown. It's just that one is more imediate and impressive than the other.
Future technology can go both ways quite frankly, the important thing is not to halt development of neither. We could end up with nuclear power plants that have such a low possibility of accident and generates so little nuclear waste that it'd replace all forms of electricity generation. On the other hand, renewables also could reach a state of efficiency and eliminate needs for all sorts of toxic materials that it'd end being a viable alternative.
But we're not there just yet, and we have to work with current reality, not speculation.
Here are some links for those interested:
http://tsp-data-portal.org/Bre...
http://energyrealityproject.co...
https://nei.org/News-Media/New...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
I thought getting rid of both nuke and coal/gas was impossible, or rather, implied much lower life standards. Then I read the paper posted above. Many thanks for that. There's a link to the academic PDF in there too (no need to pay, thank you). With a bibliography. So I read through a few papers. Too bad the meta-analysis is paywalled.
Guess what? It gets more complicated. We won't go 100% renewables just because we're close to have the technical possibility to do it. Big investments need to be made upfront, e.g. in the power grid, and policies need to be established so that private actors act in the right direction. Energy prices would be higher, or rather, it's a risk assessment vs. climate change risks and nuclear risks, and it depends on future prices scenarii (coal and gas prices etc.). Technical hard-science papers are right next to executive summaries full of buzzwords. There are uncertainties everywhere, conflicting views, it's quite a mess.
I tend to think things are happening too fast for a bunch of stupid apes called humans to have any chance to catch on.
But it's very nice to know that baseload coal/gas/nuke power is not technically needed, at least not everywhere.
It really depends. If these reactors are running beyond their life, please shut them down. If they are maintained, then keep running them until they can't be maintained.
It isn't a question of "IF" a nuclear accident will happen, but when. I'm not opposed to countries that already have nuclear power to keep operating those reactors until they are done, but once they are done, where does the waste go? Where does the reactor go? It's a lot like tailings ponds from mining. This waste just sits there, forever. All these decomissioned reactors have to go somewhere, and it will be super-expensive to decomission.
So all things considered Nuclear has never been cheap energy. Renewables will never fill the base-load gap if you suddenly switch them off, but advancements in battery technology at least allows for the possiblity of using solar and wind with battery systems that can feed the power grid a constant energy source rather than sporadic bursts if the weather doesn't want to behave for extended periods of time.
Pretty much all of North America can do wind. It's not cost effective to put wind everywhere, and it kills a lot of wildlife just by virtue of existing. But that's why off-shore wind farms are better, because birds don't migrate over the ocean, they migrate over land.
Tidal power is another option that hasn't been considered to date because it has never been cost effective to use without being used in conjunction with desalinization. Salt water destroys machinery. So for effective tidal power you need to make everything out of plastic or glass, and it will have a relatively short life span. Once you use the tidal power to desalinize and pump water to another resevoir, you can "recharge" your hydro-electric power plants when the water drops below peak power-generating levels. Or you can just straight up start creating salt-water hydro-electric generators.
Solar will likely be the winner for the US and Central America. A lot of land in the US and Canada is just wasted space (eg parking lots, covered malls, flat "box" condos, houses, apartments, and so forth.) So that will likely be the next landrush, to replace old roofing systems with new solar roofing systems. Canada is not peak solar country unfortunately, so most energy in places like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal will not be solar. The snow will reduce the capacity for solar tiles to work, and like Alaska, in order to get the most efficient solar output, requires solar panels that can be tilted over the course of the year.
I see. But have we proven that solar and wind power work without huge government subsidies? Because that actually hasn't been tried yet.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So what is going to cover base load? Is geothermal and (ironically not very green) biomass enough to cover it in Switzerland?
Switzerland is an alpine country, and thus has functional low-pollution hydro that can be ramped up or down closely following demand.
(As opposed to tropical country where hydro-dam are producing pollution, simply due to rotting and decomposing mass that got submerged at the bottom of the artificial lake)
Switzerland is also investing into wind and solar. (Though wind is receiving a bit of the same "not in my backyard" treatment like seen elsewhere - it's not as popular as in Germany).
Switzerland is also making efforts to reduce it's energy foot-print. ("Minergy" norm for new buildings, public awareness programs, ban on conventional incandescent light-bulbs (though halogen incandescent are still sold), labeling of energy consumption on appliances, etc.)
The current hope is that it can manage to go through its energy transition like Germany, without requiring temporary increased coal until renewable is increased enough.
I for one will be laughing when they end up importing coal/gas power from neighbouring countries.
Given the above mentioned massive amount of on-demand hydro power, Switzerland is actually an energy *exporter*.
At worst, if renewables aren't ready yet to replace the demand once the last nuclear plant is phased out, the exports will just decrease a bit.
I can't believe this gets voted on by the common man in the street,
Switzerland is a Direct Democracy everybody constantly(1)voting about everything(2) is how things are normally done.
(1): in practice: every ~3 months)
(2): mostly 3-5 subjects such as new laws, public referendum, or reforms proposed through popular initiative, etc. But can occasionnaly have much more subjects
Voting is available in booth, through post, or recently : over internet.
who will be swayed by whatever the media has been reporting.
Switzerland isn't the US. We don't confuse "politics" with "wrestling matches".
In a country with such a long tradition of population voting, people tend to be much calmer, better informed, etc.
Also for various reason:
like Switzerland functioning by consensus - there isn't a single president, the head of the executive is a council of *7 persons* (of varying political affiliation) that are forced to collaborate together, etc.
it hasn't devolved into a bi-partisan shit-show were crushing the opponent is the most import stuff.
Though in this case, the people more familiar with the problems (living in region around nuclear plant) weren't favorable to this anti-nuke law, unlike the rest of the population deep into the mountains who have mostly only seen nukes through the news on TV (so most recently about Fukushima).
So a bit of fear of the unknown might have some influence.
But in general debates in Swiss media has nothing to do with the kind of shit-show / attention grabbing scandal crap that you see in less democratic countries.
Shouldn't this sort of thing be looked at by people that understand costs, risks and benefits of the current and near future technologies?
Or shouldn't the people that understand costs, risks and benefit take the time to inform the population so they can better make an informed decision,
instead of delving into conspiracy theories about what the politcos are doing in their back
and/or the few decision-making person being a smaller and easier target for bribing/lobyying/corruption ?
Switzerland has a *very long* tradition of direct democracy voting (even back in the era when male peasants gathered in an assembly in the middle of the village to perform raised hands votes).
People tend to be a bit more informed and curious, and use a bit more their brain than their guts when voting.
(Although I have to disclaim that personally, I am not against nuclear and dislike this decision. But hey, that what the majority voted. That part of the democratic game).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's true hat Germany is still reliant on coal (although with a clear downward trend). The rest of your comment is simply wrong. Germany had net exports of more than 50 TWh in 2016. The phase out is on schedule and I do not have seen any indication of anyone in Germany wanting to change this.
But how long would you want to run them? In theory, they'll be switched off at EOL. In practice, they'll keep running them well past their useful / safe life. Just take the Belgian power stations Tihange and Doel with their 6000+ micro-fissured reactors they keep on running by extending the deadlines over and again... until they'll finally give and we'll get a Chernobyl II with fallout all over the densely populated Rhine Area (think Cologne, Duesseldorf, the Ruhr-Area etc).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Renewable energy will NEVER be sufficient for a civilized culture. MAX 15% allowing for a decent ( nay dominating!!) human life ... not a Togaland sheep-herder village. Green-bean mud-hutters can rot-in-hell : though in Germany that escape will be froze over!
Except that he wasn't president then.
Happy days.
One single plant, Cordemais is 2.6GW base load, with a minimum unit size of 600MW, and there are others.
Base load of course means going all the time apart from shutdowns every few years.
That very pretty site you've linked to, which now appears to be built to distract, has it at around 330MW for coal total generation in France.
Why such a divergence from reality?
Cordemais isn't totally shut down so why isn't it showing up?
You've been conned and I really do not appreciated you trying to transmit your ignorance.
If she wants to be more Thatcher than Thatcher there's the NHS.
At the bottom of the
Wouldn't the simple solution for this to require they pay into a cleanup fund as they bring in nuclear material? If it costs $20,000 to clean up a ton of waste, then charge them that amount when they import it into the country or dig it out of the ground.
Duh. You forgot to mention that the total net amount of power production in 2011 was also quite a bit smaller.
Besides, that doesn't mean there are more coal power plants now than there have been in 2011, it just means that several old inefficient power plants were replaced with a smaller amount of more efficient power plants that produce more power from less coal.
Moreover, look at the government numbers:
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Zah...
You clearly see that the amount of actually produced (not the total installed capacity) electric power from both lignite and black coal goes down, not up, every single year, and not just in absolute numbers, but also as the percentage of total power production. The only fossil power source that actually goes up is natural gas, because it is used by peaking power plants that have to be used more often than in the past.
As to your list, here is some explanation
Datteln block 4: a more efficient replacement for 3 old blocks.
Stade: planning stage, no permit yet.
BoAplus Niederaussen: planning finished, no permit yet and the chances that it happens are pretty slim.
That is it, only three planned power plants, of which only one is actually a new power plant, not just a new block for an existing one, and only one of these three has an actual permit. Three is a very low amount of "several", and given that only one is allowed to be built, it is not even that.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Where did the biomass get its CO2 from?
We crossed the 80% renewables a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately only on special days.
The over the year contribution of renewables is close to 40% only.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Maybe Moldova will allow you to dump it there if you throw enough money at them, they sure need it. ;D
A post that suits your name
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Considering that "Vattenfall" is Swedish/Norwegian for "water fall" ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You wont get a "Chernobyl" from those reactors.
They are completely different types of builds.
However I agree that western Europe should either build more safe reactors or phase them out completely.
Except for weapon programs they are just an expensive hobby.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Oh, stop that BS.
Yes, stop that bull shit and read some facts, asshole. Yes, you are not an idiot but an asshole.
Germany is producing over the course of a year 40% of its power by renewables.
Had Germany relied only on renewables they would have had thousands people dead from hypothermia.
Germany lives in the EU. We have a power grid spanning from UK (yes they are connected by underground/undersea cables) to Mongolia. The biggest interconnected grind in the world.
And: no one is using electric power in Germany to heat a house. And: global warming, ever heard about it? This Januar was extremely warm ...
For fuck sake: damn idiots stop posting this bullshit.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It's designed by very very smart people, believe me. In reality, it's struggling to maintain frequency and voltage stability because control capacity is almost tapped out.
You are an idiot.
I suggest to check https://www.eex.com/en/ to see what primary reserves and secondary reserve power prices are.
Germanies grid has absolutely no problems to maintain frequency, WTF ... how dumb are you or who is paying you for spreading such bollocks?
Yes, they are hastily expanding.
No we aren't.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Blackouts mean that your power grid has failed.
The last black out was about ten years ago in a winter when "strange" weather caused power line poles to ice over and collapse. So the physical connection to the grid was lost for a few towns.
There are no other "black outs" ... why should there? Just because we now have a lot of renewables does not mean the old power plants no longer exist. And more important, for you dumb ass: we are interconnected in the largest power grid of the world, spanning 25,000 miles from east to west.
We never will ever have a power failure due to a grid problem unless the failing part is physically disconnected from the grid.
So, you dumb ass, why do you live in a galaxy far far away, and are so super smart smart smart and thing you are smarter than the people who are actually living in the country you complain about? Working on your PhD in Power Distribution? Then please don't invite me to your thesis defense ... it will be a disaster.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Actually high temperature super conductors are around -85 degrees, not -140 .... or are you arguing about science and using Fahrenheit instead of Celsius/Kelvin?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Only german Neanderthals :D (Considering that Neanderthal is a German place)
And, unfortunately my land lord replaced my perfect (I liked them!) gas ovens in every living room with a so called "Therme" and radiators. The Therme needs electric power to pump the hot water around.
But bottom line you are right ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In Germany we don't pay energy taxes to pay for renewables.
We pay CO2 taxes, though.
What was your point?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
First off I am a proponent of nuclear power, so this won't come as a surprise. I will agree with you, that when you take in the total lifecycle of the nuclear option, it is much more expensive than what some proponents might say. The most daunting component being the construction costs, and the length of the initial construction. Does the math make sense? Currently right now in the short term, probably not, no. That is largely because energy is pretty cheap by historical standards. In the longer term, it does make sense, and it isn't all about the economic "math" either.
Bottom line is base load and what options there are available. Right now, and into the foreseeable future in the next couple of decades, both Germany and Switzerland will be taking advantage of buying nuclear power from France due to their proximity. Looking at the Switzerland vote, it is basic NIMBY on a local scale, however it is wholesale national NIMBY by depending on France for base when renewables fall short. Both likely augment locally with gas plants as well, however without disposits of their own they are then dependent on largely imports from Russia. So there political issues at play as well.
I do see opportunity for decentralized renewables and storage, however on the national scale that is going to take a lot of time to build up the infrastructure. Perhaps that is what they are eventually gearing up for, however in the meantime they might be putting themselves in energy risk depending on what happens in the somewhat near term. What I see as the unfortunate outcome is that there has been lost opportunities to improve upon conventional (i.e. decades old) nuclear technology which may have produced smaller better nuclear systems, but largely that development has stagnated due to all sorts of factors such as fear, but also just cheaper commodities pricing, and looking for short term solutions for long term problems.
Every new build water power plant (based on a hydro dam) has the problem of rotting vegetation.
Has nothing to do with tropes or Alpes.
Has entirely to do.
In the most extremely exagerated case, the rotting vegetation is much more serious if you have submerged a whole chunk of tropical rain forest vs. only a bunch of rocks with a little bit of moss growing on them.
In real life, seriously, alpine climates tend to generate a biotope with is a bit more on the less luxuriant side of the scalat (similar to what you find going to northern latitudes).
There's a lot less thing to rot at the bottom if you have a lot less vegetation in the region and a lot less rich soil to begin with.
(Or another way to put it as a caricature : do you see much submersible tropical rain forest here ?)
Also part of the decomposition process is assisted by the micro-organisms present in the water. Colder climate means less activity of micro-organism, meaning the dam doesn't emit as much methane as it would in warm waters.
In the end, a dam in Switzerland doesn't emit that much greenhouse gazes as one in Brazil.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Germany is a net exporter of electricity.
And most of the time it is a next exporter to France, too.
Germany shows that a hard turn towards renewables is not effective or realistic.
Germany has right no about 40% of its energy produced by renewables, I think the truth is always realistic.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wind and Solar produced about 35% in 2016 in Germany, 2% are water and the rest is biomass.
And what is wrong with burning biomass is beyond me. It is climate neutral. Either it rots or you ferment/burn it.
and they are already running into limits of what the grid can handle without significantly larger investments in transmission systems
No we are not. That is fear mongering. We would in future if we would not upgrade the grid, but we do upgrade the grid, so what exactly is your point?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
(burning lovely polluting brown coal)
Care to explain how brown coal can be polluting when the power plants have the same regulations than other plants and basically have no traceable exhaust?
and the French, who have an abundance of cheap nuke electricity..
They actually have not, the French power industry is running at huge losses and is subsided by the government (which owns the power industry)
(about the only country in the world that got its nuclear power generating strategy right)
So why are they exiting nuclear power silently and quickly?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Considering that "Vattenfall" is Swedish/Norwegian for "water fall" ...
Vattenfall created an assessment of the energy return of the nuclear industry which painted a much rosier picture of how much CO2 it produces. It was de-bunked and critcised however that didn't stop the IPCC from using the Vattenfall paper to justify using nuclear power as a valid "renewable" source of energy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Let's bet that by 2020 Germany will have a higher percentage of renewable power than in 2017 averaged through the year.
Anyway, I offer this bet: by 2020 Germany will use more fossil power in absolute numbers (i.e. more GWt*hr) than now.
I'd rather see the Belgian reactors shut down immediately, especially Tihange. That thing is an accident waiting to happen. France also has several very old ones.