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German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
(www.reuters.com)
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
I think you replied to the wrong comment by accident lol
No, I didn’t. You claimed that the choice was between either renewables and coal or renewables and nuclear. I am asking you to prove your claim that renewables are not a stand-alone option.
I did not claim that, I suspect that you misunderstood something.
I'll clarify what I meant for your benefit. Germany has constructed a lot of new renewable power in the past two decades, which is great, but they prioritized shutting down nuclear power plants instead of fossil fuelled power. Because of this, they still get ~50% of their electricity from fossil fuels, which is not so great.
If they instead had prioritized phasing out fossil fuelled power plants, that number would've been more like 20-30%, and more crucially, they could've phased out their entire fleet of coal power plants. Ergo, criticism of German energy policy is entirely justified.
You replied to my comment. My comment simply stated that investing in building nuclear power plants is a waste of money that is better spent on renewables. You said that criticism of my comment was justified because Germany could choose between either renewables and coal, or renewables in Nuclear. I am asking you to support your claim. I am not inviting you to move the goalposts. If you replied to my comment and said criticism of my comment was justified and then started talking about something else unrelated to my comment then I don’t really know what to tell you?
...and your comment replied to one criticising German energy policy, hence the context of "the criticism being justified". The bad policy decisions have already been made (from 2005-current) and it does seem like Germany will be stuck with coal power for quite some time because of their poor policymaking.
The question was not about the price of building new nuclear power, but of maintaining old plants, and existing nuclear) power provides incredibly cheap, green energy. Simply put, my "claim" as you want to put it, Germany could have rid themselves of coal power with the help of the VRE they invested ln, but instead shut down their old nucler plants. The "proof" is no more difficult than studying their energy profile for the past 20 yrs.
In hindsight, the OC was somewhat rude towards you in particular, which I don't agree with, but alas.
Anyway, you seem to want to discuss future electricity solutions rather than the existing one, and I'd happily have a separate discussion on what mix of green energy sources ought to be used, if you'd like.
IMO based on what I have read over the years, optimal green energy mixes land on 40-70% VRE depending on regional climate factors, with the rest filled out by dispatchable sources such as hydropower, geothermal, biomass and nuclear power plants.
My comment was a response to someone calling me stupid for saying that nuclear power spending was a waste of money. Because it is a waste of money.
What you’ve read over the years is almost right, if you take “nuclear” out of the sentence you’ve pretty much got it.
The reason they were annoyed is that they were referring to keeping old nuclear plants running, and you are pointing to the costs of new nuclear.
-and the reason that nuclear is in the sentence is that access to the energy sources within it depends on geography. Filling up those last 30-60% of the energy mix with hydropower, geothermal and biomass is simply not possible in some areas, which is where nuclear comes in, regardless of whether we look at the most pessimistic cost estimates (which you are doing).
The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.
And nope, you’re wrong, 100% renewable power across the entire planet is absolutely viable and would be much cheaper than involving nuclear. I have proven this again and again and again in this thread, but here’s a starting point for you:
The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
There are other sources all throughout this thread to back up this claim, and no one has posted any sources to dispute it.
We’re done here. Have a pleasant evening.
It is not, the past and current failures of German energy policy is a very good basis for criticism, especially when they seem to have a continued reliance on fossil fuel power. But, as I said, we seem to have starkly different opinions on German electricity policy, and you seem to have a specific idea of the existence of "goal posts" in that particular discussion, and what they are, which many of us disagree with. Let us put that discussion to rest. It is clear to me that it will go nowhere.
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Now, on the topic of new power, I fully understand where you're coming from with your frustration, because I've been there, many many times, discussing with folks who refuse to give any background to their claims. So, I've called upon a reddit comment from past me (ca. 2021) for some reliable sources and updated the meat of the text a little to be more suitable to you. Hence, below follows the wall'o'text you have been so sorely missing out on, because I was a lazy boy posting from me phone yesterday, properly addressing each of the arguments in your original comment and backing up my previous statements.
So, where to start? Perhaps the costs of 100% renewable systems in practice, as the portion of electricity sourced from variable renewable energy (henceforth VRE) approaches 100%. I'll start by addressing your wikipedia source, all of the examples of "near 100% renewable" there rely almost entirely on hydropower (which is highly geography dependent) or are very small grids (thousands or tens of thousands of people). This makes their significance for this discussion debatable, as our scope is rather in the size of millions or tens of millions of people.
A key problem with examining these scenarios is that the number of data points where VRE exceed ~45% are incredibly few, and additionally these few systems still have significant portions of electricity generated by cheap, dispatchable fossil fuelled power plants. This means their statements regarding cost are a lot less relevant for a scenario where we want a clean energy grid and VRE portions start approaching higher levels. I'd really love to see if you can refer me some sources which examine such grids.
Following along this path, comparing the LCOE of VRE to other dispatchable plants is not particularly straightforward. Here is some critique towards a study made by Lazard, which highlights the fact that renewables can effectively outsource their system costs in grids with a high degree of dispatchable power generators (hence creating hidden costs for the systems). This method of using only LCOE without accounting for system costs is prevalent in many studies on the costs of new electricity production, and thus skews the available data. This skewing is not necessarily a problem when adding a small amount of VRE to a system, but becomes a severe issue when they start representing a plurality of electricity produced.
We can follow up by examining this study by the oecd which calculates estimations on grid level system costs comparing VRE and nuclear. It's very interesting, but also like... 200 pages, so I haven't read the entire thing, but below you'll find a few very short take-homes from what I did have time to read.
The integration of large shares of intermittent renewable electricity is a major challenge for the electricity systems of OECD countries and for dispatchable generators such as nuclear. Grid-level system costs for intermittent renewables are large ($8-$50/MWh) but depend on country, context and technology (onshore wind < offshore wind < solar PV). Nuclear related system costs are $1-3/MWh.
They make several very interesting observations regarding how improper implementation of VRE in a system leads to an economic environment that favors fossil fuel peaker plants to solve intermittency problems, due to their low capital costs and ability to ramp up and down with relative ease. Unlike green solutions such as pumped hydro storage, other energy storage solutions and nuclear power. The closer our goal approaches 0% fossil fuel energy production, the more nuclear power makes sense.
Now, based on the above and a few other sources, I will deconstruct the arguments you made in your original comment. I'll use hydropower as comparison for a lot of these points. It is often considered the holy grail of renewable energy.
Cheaper - See above. A system which uses some mix of nuclear power and renewables is often a cheaper system than one that demands 100% renewables.
Lower emissions - Nuclear emissions are comparable to hydropower, and entirely from infrastructure & supply chain emissions, something expected to disappear in a 0% fossil fuel economy.
Faster to provision - Individually, yes, but a construction time of 5-15 years is still reasonably fast for the huge amount of power that a single NPP adds to the grid (consider constructed MW/time). Additionally, construction times are expected to go down if the nuclear industry is revitalized.
Less environmentally damaging - Debatable, renewables in general have huge land usage, and affect the ecosystems in which they are built to a significant degree.
Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel - Yeah, a benefit, but also not problem for nuclear. Known supplies of Uranium can supply the entire world for some 70 years, which is longer than known oil supplies will last us. That's not accounting for improvements in utilization, newly discovered resources or other nuclear fuels. Besides, renewables use lots of other resources such as copper. Our limited supplies of these are a far more pressing problem in our clean energy efforts.
Decentralised - I don't see how this is relevant. The benefits and costs of decentralized power are situational. It is useful in areas with spotty infrastructure (large parts of Africa and Asia), but creates system level costs in developed countries, where most of our electricity consumption is centralized.
Much, much safer - Not really. Casualties and damages from nuclear power are far lower than those from hydropower, and depending on your data source and opinions, even on par with wind power.
Much easier to maintain - I don't have any good sources of the top of my head here, but many of the nuclear power plants running today are pushing past their designed life spans due to the maintenance being worth it. Closures are more often related to political decisions than actual end-of-life status.
More reliable - not really
Much more responsive to changes in energy demands - not really
Hope this is more to your liking :)
P.S, apologies if there are any typos, didn't have time to proofread this time around.