Slashdot Mirror
Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal (bloomberg.com)
Several readers share a report: Germany is widely seen as a world leader in the fight against climate change. Thanks to its investments in renewable power, wind and solar energy provide a third of its electricity, more than double the U.S. share. Germany's goal to lower carbon-dioxide emissions 40 percent by 2020 is significantly more ambitious than that of Europe as a whole or the U.S. After the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed even greater determination. "We can't wait for the last man on Earth to be convinced by the scientific evidence for climate change," she explained. But there's another, troubling side to the German story: The country still gets 40 percent of its energy from coal, a bigger share than most other European countries. And much of it is lignite, the dirtiest kind of coal. As a result, Germany is set to fall well short of its 2020 goal. This dependence on coal is partly a side effect of Germany's abandonment of emissions-free nuclear power and partly foot-dragging on the part of a government wary of alienating voters in German coal country. During the summer election campaign, Merkel largely avoided the subject.
High electric rates are a greeny GOAL.
They aren't very smart, but their mistake is bad goals, not bad execution.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Anyone considered just throwing it off planet?
Turn it into glassy lumps and simply throw it off planet with a linear accelerator. Take some gravitational influences into account and you could even aim it at the sun. The sun wouldn't notice the whole planet falling into and we're just talking about a few thousand tons of radioactive waste. (wait until we hear the arguments about polluting the sun. :-)
No. And No. I could like lots of other studies that show the need for "baseload" power is a myth, mostly created out of the way the power grid used to operate. It's not a requirement.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/12/germany-shutter-20-oldest-brown-coal-plants-without-creating-energy-shortages/
More likely the Envirowackos.
Nuclear is expensive due to incessant lawsuits and an uncertain regulatory environment. How many other 5 year, billion dollar construction projects are subject to the rules being change on a whim?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sorry but not even close. The nuclear FUD in Germany is well and truly a grass roots campaign led mostly by those who lived through the hysteria of Chernobyl. The world was largely comfortable with the idea of nuclear power maintaining the status quo right until the Japan incident. That started new fears of "if they can't even do it".
No need for the coal industry to get involved. The actual protests on the ground and the driving force from the people in Germany who have no concept of risk management and just know they are surrounded by these nukular things they don't understand was incredible. Protesters number in the hundreds of thousands there and after the Fukushima incident they even managed to form a 45km long human chain.
Never underestimate the power of ignorance combined with technical media reporting. The coal industry hasn't had to spend a dime in Germany battling nuclear, not since the 80s anyway.
If we include seawater extraction and thorium we can run our civilization for millions of years.
Reprocessing of spent fuel in combination with pebble-bed designs would go a long way...
The funny thing is that many continue to rip on America and then compare to Germany and China.
Yet, both Germany and China have high % of their electricity from coal. Germany is 45% and rising, and CHina's is around 80% (they refuse to allow external monitoring and their numbers change constantly). In fact, Germany has 45% coal, and 10% nat gas/mineral oil.
Germany's electricity is not only more CO2 / KWh than is America's, but is much dirtier since the majority of theirs comes from Coal and NOT nat gas.
America's electricity is about 28% coal, and 30% nat gas. BUT, America's coal continues to drop while Germany continues to build new coal plants. To be fair though, Germany's new coal is mostly about replacing old coal and nukes. By replacing their old coal plants, they are cleaning up the air, while getting more electricty.
And while America is slowly building up renewables compared to Germany and CHina, our electricity remains much cleaner due to heavy use of nat gas as well as nuclear.
In terms of Germany, they need a base-load system and solar/wind, even with storage, will NOT do the trick. So, if not nuclear, then what? Geo-thermal? Hydro? Nope to both.
China continues to build out coal, but they are also building up nuclear, along with hydro, both of which are base-load powers. Germany has some HARD choices to make.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The nuclear FUD in Germany is well and truly a grass roots campaign led mostly by those who lived through the hysteria of Chernobyl.
That is nonsense.
The population is against nuclear power since the early 1970s, after the TMI incident it rapidly increase. Plenty of emergencies in plants that did not got reported (unlawful) and got discovered later made them lose the trust completely.
The actual protests on the ground and the driving force from the people in Germany who have no concept of risk management and just know they are surrounded by these nukular things they don't understand was incredible.
That is nonsense.
Attempts to build a big reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf led to decades long protests and demonstrations. The government sent schock troops, police forces with only the order to beat down the demonstrations. Classmates of me, just 18 years old, escaped barely when a school class from the neighbour school got beaten into hospital by german police forces.
A few years later they gave up on the reprocessing plant.
Since 50 years we accumulate waste, have no idea where to store it, every attempt for "test storages" failed.
Germany has right now close to 20k metric tons radioactive waste (not counting ten times as much from uranium mining)
Around 1980 the green party got founded, with one main goal to exit from nuclear power.
When they managed to be in the government together with the central left SPD, they formulated the exit plan. That was around 1997 - 2000 the red/green government formulated a konsensus and laws to exit from nuclear power over the next decades.
2010 however a black(CDU)/yellow(FDP) coalation reformed the laws again and extended the runtime of the power plants for 10 or 20 more years. That lead to an outrage in the population.
Never underestimate the power of ignorance combined with technical media reporting.
You are an idiot. We live in a democracy, and over a course of 50 - 70 years the population could not manage to get rid of nuclear power. Because: democracy does not work!
THAT IS THE REASON WE DONT WANT NUCLEAR POWER ANYMORE. We worked so hard to get rid of it, and then Merkle in her wisdom extended the runtime, we tricked again.
If the reunification of east and west germany had not happened, we likely had have civil unrest, probably a mini revolution (because of plenty other problem, BaFoeg, housing crisis, unemployment etc. The Kohl government was simply completely unable to take care about german problems, however they run the european integration pretty fiercely)
Anyway: then came Fukushima, and we went back to the original plan of exiting.
Japan could ride the Fukushima disaster relatively good. Look on a map ... if something like that happens in Germany, our country will end up as "non existing anymore". Idiot!
Then I want to see which European nations take up 40 million refugees ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So, much like a country that signs the Paris Accord (but admits that it cannot meet its own pledge) and then loudly trumpets that it signs that accord and denigrates those that choose to pull out - and are exceeding their original pledge. Basically style over substance.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!