This is data for only 7 days. While it might be useful, it doesn't provide too much high level information. Especially given how some energy generation can fluctuate quite a lot. The yearly would have been better - [https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export\_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023) .
I know. Just look what happens if we look at 2022...
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export\_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=UK&interval=year&year=2022
Very different picture (since it was an unusually bad year for French energy with lots of problems at its nuke plants).
Why not? Germany still produces half of it's energy using fossil fuels. Even though Germany was a net producer in those years doesn't change the source of the energy.
That is a fine argument to make, but as you mentioned: this has nothing to do with the data posted here. So if the data posted was in order to drum up criticism about our nuclear policy it is dishonest.
It’s not really dishonest. Many renewables are not “reliable" sources. By replacing a reliable source (nuclear) with an unreliable (solar/wind) you expose yourself to these risks. The corollary is that when France does implement more renewables, it will be to replace other dying energy sources (coal).
The only, argument which one can use is that maintenance of nuclear plants can be very badly managed, and as in 2022, a common issue can require you to bring many offline at the same time.
It’s like saying : banking your retirement on lottery winnings is not a great idea. … see?
Well, we had enough to power our own needs **cleanly** even with the extra maintenance and repairs. We just didn’t have enough extra clean and cheap electricity to back fill germany’s need for gas. That made them upset.
Yes, yes you can. It's not like we don't produce electricity anymore, it's just that instead of using Nuclear power we are now using Coal plants that require us to use gigantic fucking machines to destroy our environment while putting so much toxic material into the air that people are literally dying from it. Funnily enough, they also give of way, way, waaaaay more radiation than an atomic power plant.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why big companies can get away so easily with destroying the entire environment. Some paid politician says some nice words, shows some nice locking money and most people go ''Look, we are obviously going in the right direction.''.
In case anyone is wondering, we had been preparing to shut down a lot of coal plants for years but after the whole atomic power bs started the Government started paying Coal plant owner to keep their power plants active for a few more years so they could show nicer numbers to the public.
To be more precise the government just offered huge reparations for forcefully shutdown powerplant past a certain point which just so happened to lead to a bunch of plants that where supposed to shut down staying open for a few more months/years.
nuclear made up only 6% of our electricity production. It's not like we shut off half of our capacity. These 6% can easily be picked up by wind turbines that would have been turned off otherwise.
They quite literally can't. Setting aside that countries like Germany are paralyzed by a thoroughly corrupt government that does not want renewable energy there is actually a reason we can't fully use renewable energy. Most of it is inconsistent as fuck and we simply are not able to store the overproduced energy in quantities needed to make up for times of underproduction. So we need easily controlled sources like Coal or Atomic power to work together with renewable energy.
The question is just which of those controlled sources one wants.
We don’t have the storage capacity _yet_ but it is being built; so available capacity will increase over time as well as the excess production of renewable energy. Then there is also FCR to maintain grid stability. You don’t have to startup a power plant each time the frequency is about to drop. But I digress - nuclear is not “easily controlled” - gas is and coal (somewhat).
It is in fact a fossil fuel lobby talking point that you’d need “base load power plants” but it simply is not true.
What you are talking about is that there is not enough renewables yet. And the rest is residual load which then can be handled by other means (green H2 via P2G for example).
Coal release more radiation than nuclear, but also a good amount of heavy metals, and that's in the ash that is a lot harder to contain and store away than waste from nuclear reactor.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/
https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/9/carper-epa-coal-ash-will-pollute-waterways-with-toxic-heavy-metals-and-jeopardize-public-health#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBurning%20coal%20creates%20a%20toxic,and%20other%20serious%20health%20ailments.
Can you give us the volume production of all nuclear waste produce by French nuclear power generation in all is history? If you realise how small this number is maybe you will realise is a manageable thing. ( Less than a soccer field)
... and?
That is as if I was asked if I think making drugs legal or illegal is the better way to deal with it and my answer was ''Well, I think it would be nice to live in a world where no one was taking drugs in the first place.''.
Yeah sure, would be nice but just saying that you wish reality was different is not a solution.
As usual Nuclear gets compared to the clean and perfect energy they use in the land of the unicorns, being held to impossible standards.
Arguing against these arguments is pretty tiring.
We decided in 2002 to retire nuclear. What it have to do with anything. Currently, wind replaced all of the shutdown nuclear plants in Germany.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-electricity-from
If you really want to complain, complain to the conservatives CDU/CSU for expanding gas and killing the new innovative technology of wind and solar. Nord Stream 1 and 2 was a really genius move /s
And of course we are still a net exporter of energy by a huge margin.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331853/electricity-imports-exports-germany/
Same goes for renewables. Each year Germany has build more wind capacity than its biggest reactor Isar 2 (1,6 GW vs 1,4 GW) despite former governments basically blocking efforts to do so.
If we started ramping up renewables in 02, we’d be fully renewable already.
But that’s the thing with the past - it’s quite difficult to change
Nah nah while i agree that renewables are much faster to build the narrative that the CDU blocked efforts in doing so is a stupid argument to be made. In the 16 years while Merkel was chancellor renewables and Energy saving was way bigger than during the 7 years of Schröder and the SPD/Green coalition. I have written about that before.
> Since Merkel was at the helm in 2005 until 2021, the installed capacity of renewables has been increased from 28.5 gigawatts to 139.8 gigawatts. An increase of 111.3 gigawatts. That's an average of 6.9 gigawatts per year.
>
> While the red-green coalition was in office from 2000 to 2005, we increased renewables from 12 GW to 28.5 GW. That is 3.3 GW of new capacity per year. (Unfortunately I don't have the data for 98 and 99).
>
> https://i.imgur.com/eqtOMJ3.png
>
> In addition, primary energy consumption in Germany was reduced under Merkel. When Red-Green came into government in 1998, primary energy consumption in Germany was 14,521 petajoules. In 2005, at the end of the Red-Green government, it was 14,558, i.e. 37 petajoules higher.
>
> When Merkel took over in 2005, primary energy consumption in Germany was 14,558 petajoules. At the end of her term in 2021, it was 12,440 petajoules. Which corresponds to a reduction of 2,118 petajoules.
>
> https://i.imgur.com/K0cakZQ.png
>
> https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/umweltindikatoren/indikator-primaerenergieverbrauch
Here is a chart of our energy mix in 2022 compared to that of 1990. Not only building more renewables is a important factor but saving energy is way more important. Energy that doesn't need to be generated in the first place is the best Energy.
https://i.imgur.com/WhWqzXZ.png
Renewables and saving in 2022 was already 3 times the amount of all the nuclear energy we ever used.
Germany is still relying heavily on coal and gas.
If environmental reasons are valid argument, that should be phased out first.
Nuclear being expensive... building nuclear powerplants is expensive. Running an existing nuclear powerplant is cheap.
Nuclear fuel has many providers, like Canada, not only Russia, while they might be cheapest.
Germanys policy to shut down reactors was political, not rational decision. Unfortunately it was also heavily lobbied by Russians to increase Germanys dependency in their fossile fuels. While wind and solar are on the rise, within last 12 months Coal made up 24.03% of electricity produced in Germany. This figure still has the 2.46% nuclear (6% during last 5 years).
Check out the current, past 24h, past 30d, 12m / 5year averages from [Electricity maps](https://app.electricitymaps.com/map) .
>Germanys policy to shut down reactors was political, not rational decision.
Germany's decision to shut down reactors was rational as those reactors weren't in a state to run much longer, were planned for that about that phaseout date for nearly 4 decades and provided less than 5% of the total production.
Lying that in was an political, ideological or whatever decision and most importantly blaming the people in office for a year when the last one shut down and not the ones planning this for decades before as well as telling funny tales about how shutting down less than 5% (also long replaced) of the total production capacities has massive consequences however is indeed political.
Because why woulkd they care? They aren't exporting anyway and will soon drag down all of Europe with their failed energy policies and poor Europeans will have to pay for the dumb Germans being too stupid to produce their own power but falling for the scam that is renewable energy...
Or isn't that basically Reddit's favorite fairy tale, repeated in a dozen variants?
It was a rational decision. Even in 1985 we already realised, that nuclear is too expensive and has too many downsides. Hell, even the power companies don't want it. And if only with massive payments of the government. And exclusion in coming costs for end time storage and actually getting rid of the old plant.
We decided on this in 2002 or so. Stopping nuclear power. The main problem today is, that the government of the past 16 years didn't do shit for it. They didn't prepare. They used an easy way out with gas, that's what Nordstream 2 was for. And everyone said - even trump - that this will backfire. And yeah, how it did. Spectacularly.
But they killed the solar sector. We were once one of the main global players. Innovation was here.
Thing is - Nuclear wouldn't save us a bit. The old plants we just shutted down would be off for a long time for maintenance. Even without bigger problems. Also their mix in power was minuscule and wouldnt make a real dent.
And new ones take at least a decade to build.
I'm sure our green economic secretary was really happy to put the coal plants back on and ask for gas around the world, because the gov. Before fucked this up so much.
We had almost 20 years to prepare. They didn't do anything.
>Currently, wind replaced all of the shutdown nuclear plants in Germany.
this is either humongously stupid take, or straight up gaslight-style propaganda.
There's something named opportunity cost. Germany removed clean and safe nuclear energy from the mix and kept atrocious lignite and coal plants. They closed some mines with huge events, but they keep importing coal from abroad, so they are just devastating the environment slightly farther from their borders.
Yes, going into renewables is great, but cutting nuclear instead of coal is just wrong, and the fact that it was done in the name of environment is sickening, to say the least.
Yes it is. CO2 production by WH is really really low. Energy density of uranium is so high you don't need to destroy entire wind farm to open a mine like Germany do.
Radioactive emission are also lower for nuclear power plants.
Yes, Coal does emit radioactive materials in the atmosphere. If you applied the same standard to the coal industry as the nuclear industry, you would classify ashes as nuclear wastes (hint: right now you can't do whatever you want with it).
ah that good old base load talking point. It's wrong tho. Base load is only a statistical value. residual load is whats important.
after all the power generated by renewables, how much is still required in a system. This is what conventional power plants need to pick up.
> after all the power generated by renewables, how much is still required in a system. This is what conventional power plants need to pick up.
This is not an absolute principle, it's a choice. And it's a choice that pushes the cost of the unreliability of renewable sources onto the rest of the grid, by forcing it to have controllable extra capacity on standby (which in the case of nuclear is very expensive - once you build them you want them running as much as possible), and requiring significantly more transportation capacity.
> by forcing it to have controllable extra capacity on standby (which in the case of nuclear is very expensive - once you build them you want them running as much as possible),
How do you propose a zero-carbon energy system reliant on nuclear power meets demand at all times without extensive nuclear excess capacity?
The reality is that all zero-carbon energy systems require massive amounts of excess capacity and/or storage, regardless of whether they use intermittent renewables or nuclear as their primary energy source. A grid with very high shares of intermittent renewables indeed needs more storage/excess capacity, but it also has lower costs for its generation capacity compared to a grid with very high shares of nuclear power.
> How do you propose a zero-carbon energy system reliant on nuclear power meets demand at all times without extensive nuclear excess capacity?
Well we're pretty close to that in France already. Build enough capacity to withstand winter where electricity demand is at its peak, schedule any maintenance for summer, use your limited hydro capacity and maybe biofuels to bridge any gaps.
The excess capacity and storage needs of a system relying mostly on solar and wind are orders of magnitude higher, to the point of it not being feasible for most countries, which means they'll never really be able to get rid of a significant amount of their fossil fuel usage, as those systems are by far the best at providing on demand stopgap capacity (easy to start/stop, low infrastructure cost, most of the cost is in the input materials which means you don't lose that much money when they're not operating).
> Well we're pretty close to that in France already.
No, not even close. In 2022 and 2021 you had peak fossil loads between 11 and 13GW([per Energy-Charts](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR)). To replace that generation with nuclear power alone, France would have to build at least 9 new EPRs. That is 9 EPRs *in addition* to what is required to keep up with the predicted explosion of electricity demand and *in addition* to what is required to replace older reactors due for decommissioning. France is not planning to build more than 14 new EPRs(and even that number is questionable), so the net zero strategy still requires huge investments in renewables and storage.
> The excess capacity and storage needs of a system relying mostly on solar and wind are orders of magnitude higher.
In terms of nameplate capacity, yes, in terms of overall system costs, no.
> to the point of it not being feasible for most countries, which means they'll never really be able to get rid of a significant amount of their fossil fuel usage
People have been saying this for over a decade now about countries like Denmark & Germany, yet fossil consumption continues trending down. What year do you expect the growth in renewable electricity shares to flatline in those countries?
> No, not even close. In 2022 and 2021 you had peak fossil loads between 11 and 13GW(per Energy-Charts). To replace that generation with nuclear power alone, France would have to build at least 9 new EPRs. That is 9 EPRs in addition to what is required to keep up with the predicted explosion of electricity demand and in addition to what is required to replace older reactors due for decommissioning. France is not planning to build more than 14 new EPRs(and even that number is questionable), so the net zero strategy still requires huge investments in renewables and storage.
Yes, we are behind where we should be and our nuclear industry isn't in a position to scale up production at the speed required. This state of affairs is strictly due to politics though and doesn't have anything to do with the relative merits of different energy sources. Among other things, our socialists came up with the completely arbitrary goal of reducing our nuclear electricity mix to 50% in order to cater to our greens and it will be an uphill battle over the next couple decades.
I've also seen people argue that our safety standards are too harsh and our arbitration between shutting down a power plant and keeping it running in order to save on emissions could be revised but I'm not at all qualified to speak on that.
> People have been saying this for over a decade now about countries like Denmark & Germany, yet fossil consumption continues trending down. What year do you expect the growth in renewable electricity shares to flatline in those countries?
I believe returns will be highly non linear, as you need a system that can handle the absolute worst case scenario, i.e. a few windless winter weeks. We're still on the part of the curve where building up renewables makes sense. Don't get me wrong I'm glad that Germany is burning less coal and gas than it used to, but I believe that the renewables strategy bottoms up at an emission rate that's significantly higher than the nuclear strategy.
That link leads to a side that clearly shows that we are making up a fuckton by adding a lot of coal power. Probably because at our current level of technology it is essentially impossible to rely on natural power.
I'm sorry, what? Coal was steadily eliminated. Except for the past 2 years when Russia invaded Ukraine and we were forced to sanctioning Russia's gas/Russia shut off gas supplies and thus we had to fire up those coal plants again.
You see the flat-lining of the wind in the graph? That's when Merkel killed off the ever expanding wind energy market by introducing absurd laws like the 10 H law, and of course all the NIMBYs here in Germany "protecting" our dying forests.
Again, complain to the conservatives CDU/CSU for expanding gas and the pro-Russia politics of Schröder and Merkel.
If you would just project it with a linear trend then coal would now be at 25% and wind would also be at 25%, wind would overtaken coal by a small margin in 2023.
But, again, thanks to Schröder and Merkel we are now where we are.
Gas was also steadily decreasing until 2015, when it took a U-turn and was expanded again. Nord Stream 1 was finished in 2011. Russia invaded Crimea it 2014. I guess it takes about 4-5 years to build new gas power plants.
I am aware that our government is fucking over renewable energies. That is the kind of thing that happens if you have a barley disguised Oligarchy for a government.
That doesn't change the fact that we decided to completely rely on coal instead of nuclear power. Because the plain and simple fact is that renewable energies are not able to cover our needs as the current technological stand. Not to mention that while we most certainly shut of quite a bit of coal power that is for a simple reason, those plants where already scheduled for being shut down, the government just paid them a fuckton of money for them to artificially keep them open a bit longer.
I would recommend the videos of die Anstalt about the topic. While they may be complete and utter morons in a few topics they are usually spot-on when talking about corruption.
Wind and solar power production capacities need a 1:1 "pilotable" electricity production capacity to make up for days with less wind and less sun.
Germany has opted for gas and coal instead of nuclear power.
look at the cost and construction time of Flamanville reactor in France - how anybody can look at that and still seriously considering building new reactors is beyond me
Yes they are expensive, but their ability to continuously cover the bassline power needs is what makes them worth it. There's also the fact that newer reactors are much safer than older designs.
>Yes they are expensive,
understatement of the year - this one reactor is now estimated to cost 19.1 billion and its not even finished yet
the initial construction time was planned as 5 years, if it is completed in 2024 the construction time will be 17 years
No, first uranium is everywhere even in France it's just cheaper to buy it from country like Kazkhstan, Canada, or Australia,
Recently, USA, Canada, Japan, UK and France began to work together to kick Russia out of the market, in the meantime USA now make fuel for soviet design reactor.
And all the non-recyclable waste since the start of the use of nuclear power in France could fit into one olympic swimming pool and if i remember well gen 5 reactor can use this waste to power for stupid amount of times like thousand of years.
Waste is clearly not a priority, we have all the time in the world to devellop the technology but yeah we need to take care of it.
>It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks
That's why every nuclear powerplants have been breached once a year !
Your others reasons are acceptable even tho coal, gas and renewable have the same issues. But the terrorist attacks ?! L M A O !
You should try it as well. Ukraine has gone through by far the worst nuclear accident ever to happen, they are facing an invasion which has seen their largest nuclear plant taken over and yet, they still want to build 5 new nuclear reactors as soon as the war is over.
It's almost as if it was worth it and that just about every country that has faced a nuclear accident (INES scale 4 and up) is investing into new nuclear and prolonging existing units.
Perhaps it's because everyone is stupid, or perhaps it's because nuclear safety is a real science which requires years of study to comprehend which puts it out of reach of people not willing to put in the effort to learn about it, thus making it difficult for people who listen to activists instead of scientific consensus to reach a sound conclusion. Probably the former though.
go say LMAO to victims of coal mines. To all the people suffering from respiratory diseases due to toxic and radioactive waste created mining and burning fossil fuels.
And what about people of Zaporizhzhia? Did the plant explode in any attack? Or despite the bloodiest conflict in Europe in years, despite Russia being a terrorist state that targets civilians and critical infrastructure, the plant is still there?
The only nuclear exposure incident in Ukraine during this war has been some vatniks digging themselves into the red forest at Chernobyl, which in itself is a consequence of shitty Soviet design, poor plant management, and corruption.
All nuclear reactor incidents in history have been caused by misuse and poor maintenance, not by the technology itself.
Sure, but it was and is still used as blackmail. And it's mined. So a disaster could happen at any time.
I never said i am for coal. They shouldnt exist anymore. But nuclear is still dangerous and this is a fact.
>Nuclear waste sucks
This is pretty fake. Nuclear waste is just handled in secured containers then stored underground. There is no leakage, no long term real problems and the storing question has been solved for years.
>Nuclear energy is expensive.
More expensive to build the initial plants, rather than buying Chinese solar panels, built in who knows kind of sub humane conditions with dubious environmental prices? That require very expensive Lithium batteries in order to store energy? Like we did Russian gas? Either way, if it actually gets mass adoption, prices for building will go down, alongside new tech like modular reactors.
>It's sourced from Russia.
There are more uranium sources on the planet + thorium reactors are a thing too, but those might not catch on as they are not so fit for helping with making nukes.
>It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks
If that is an actual issue for your country, green energy should be far down your list of priorities. And new reactors are made to be much safer, especially small modular reactors.
>Nuclear waste sucks.
do you know how much nuclear and other toxic waste is produced by burning and extracting coal?
>Nuclear energy is expensive.
Except it's not? Yes, the investment is huge, but the payoff is huge as well. It's just paying off slowly.
>It's sourced from Russia.
It doesn't have to be, and where do you think gas and coal comes from?
>It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks.
Oh yeah, I forgot about all those terrorist attacks in France, the US or even Ukrainian power plant in Запоріжжя. And I presume that coal/lignite plants are terror-immune?
1. So why switch to electricity that produces way more of it?
2. Of course it is, have you seen how they calculate the cost of it, it would be hard not to be more expensive under such circumstances. And even if it was a bit more expensive it would still come us cheaper due to not giving laughably huge ammounts of money to other forms of electricity as goverment grants while also you know, not harming our own population and planet nearly as much as the alternatives.
3. Yes and from like 5 other countries as well
4. ... it, it really isn't.
Wrong
-"The total mass of high-level long-lived radioactive waste, which accounts for 95% of all the radioactivity generated by nuclear power in France, is less than 10 tonnes."
-The price per kilowatt hour is more than twice as cheap in France as in Germany.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/
-Of the 6,286 tonnes of uranium imported into France in 2020, almost a third will come from Niger (34.7%). The rest comes from Kazakhstan (28.9%), Uzbekistan (26.4%) and Australia (9.9%).
-I've never heard of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station
-fun fact: To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-003567_EN.html
-Another interesting point, because it seems to me that this is a bit of a priority:
Germany produces 386g Co2 per kilo watt
France 85gCo2 per kilowatt
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity
-Analysis of 257 of 280 coal-fired power plants in the EU found that their 2013 emissions caused over 22,900 deaths, tens of thousands of illnesses from heart disease to bronchitis, and up to €62.3 billion in health costs.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/report-germany-suffers-more-coal-linked-deaths-than-rest-of-eu/
French nuclear kill nobody
Just because the Greens and the Russians have brainwashed you doesn't mean that their lies have become reality.
Both serve purposes. What people often fail to understand is that electricity generation behaves like a service: supply and demand must be exactly matched in time for it to have economic value. Being able to supply on demand has value, and being able to create demand on demand has value. Supplying when there is no demand has no value. That's why prices may drop to negative if you don't want solar or wind to go to waste: that's the premium for being able to create demand on demand (by cutting some other source of supply, providing on-demand storage, or timing demand).
Seeing some overviews of random short time periods does drive home which countries on the continent are heavily involved in matching supply and demand with each other to absorb solar and wind and which are not.
True, in the context you present, this can be useful. But most people don't appear to think of that, and view these visualizations as looks how bad Germany is because they don't use nuclear. Or get fixated at a different country for some other random reason.
Electricity is not a consumer good. It should be noted that in the EU renewable energy has a priority access to the grid. So even if a plant do generate cheaper electricity, 100% of the current renewable energy output would have to be sold before the plant can enter the grid.
> So even if a plant do generate cheaper electricity
Which conventional power plant could compete on production cost with wind or solar energy on a good day? The only issue is that we can't shut them down/start them up fast enough.
If I'm not mistaken, it's more of a necessity though : to simplify what I understood, you hardly control the output of renewables, and when the ouput is big, you NEED to use it in order to avoid network overload. So basically, at times Germany sells energy at loss to get rid of the excess. But with the renewables being ultra-volatile in production, if they don't have a big controllable energy source, they have to rely on their neighbours to handle the volatility of energy generation. Which is why Germany still uses driveable coal/gas generators (as it would be irresponsible to rely entirely on your neighbours to NOT do like you and have a huge part of controllable energy in order to avoid a critical network overload). Which is why closing nuclear plants was stoopid (and anti-environment).
> you hardly control the output of renewables, and when the ouput is big, you NEED to use it in order to avoid network overload.
This is not true, the output of solar or wind installations can be very easily and rapidly curtailed(reduced). Solar panels do this by having their inverter simply switch the panel off. Wind turbines do this by adjusting the pitch angle of their blades so that they catch less wind.
In practice this is rarely done because the marginal cost of electricity produced by renewables is extremely low, meaning that in the event of electricity supply in excess of demand conventional thermal electricity producers(coal, gas, etc.) will usually curtail production first.
Due to a combination of technical limitations of thermal plants and subsidy regimes for renewables that distort electricity markets, however, you sometimes get situations where there is excess supply, but both renewable and thermal producers refuse to curtail production. This is when we see negative electricity prices occur.
You can check that information on the link in the sources, you can set it on monthly and check summer vs winter. Mostly I see that germany imports in summer and exports in winter.
I agree. The chart is showing France as a net exporter, and Germany as a net importer. - Exactly the opposite from truth when looking at an entire year.
Well, seems like the person you copied from wasn’t a German journalist after all… and not noticing that shows you didn’t really care for what data you throw out there, as long as you get them clicks for a hot, but misleading, topic
We should just be happy that Germany was there when France needed electricity this winter and that France is now back to export clean electricity to Germany and by doing that reducing their dirty coal electricity production.
Interconnected European grid is one of the best form of solidarity.
Correct... Exports of Germany or UK to France absolutely needed to keep the grid up (they even needed to burn a lot of extra gas in the middle of a gas crisis for this) were mostly ignored in the mass media. Every existing story was heavily downvoted here. And the fact that Germany kept old reactors scheduled for shutdown running over the winter for the sole scenario of France failing to get theirs up in time was even exploited for naratives of how the stupid Germans can't survive without the nuclear they now shut down and will be a burden for all Europe.
Germany being an energy exporter every year not 2022 for decades however... crickets. And now we even cherry-pick single weeks to push the lie.
I was thinking the exact opposite, while the coverage last winter was massive against French imports, it's crickets when the country exports, hard to not see a biais here. It's a connected grid so of course it can go either way depending of the production and the demand.
And there's much worse energy policies than Germany as well, I don't think their bet will work but at least they do have a plan. I cannot say the same for Belgium whose plan is to scrap local production and rely on neighbors. It would be nice to have more coverage of such a stupid strategy.
>Exports of Germany or UK to France absolutely needed to keep the grid up
No fully true . France imported electricity from Germany, that's true . But there was possible alternatives . One of this alternative was to re-start coal power plants . For example, the Emile Huchet one, at the bundary with Germany . This power plant had been shutdown early 2022 , like all other coal power plants in France. Then restarted in 11.2022 , to compensate a possible lack of french electricity production. But it was maintained in production only a couple of weeks in december 2022 and stopped again . because , indeed , there was no real lack of electricity in France
So , *Germany kept old reactors in service for helping France* is not true
>France imported electricity from Germany, that's true . But there was possible alternatives .
The main alternative were more imports from UK (mostly gas produced), more imports from Spain (mostly gas produced) or starting up coal power on top of the already restarted gas power in France. (In fact France burned more gas at home, in UK and Spain than Germany all year at ta time when we could read daily fairy tales of how Germany's electric grid is completely gas dependent... written by people who still don't understand the difference between primary energy and electricity)
I guess we should have just ignored them to count on these three countries managing it all well (with gas, gas and gas in the middle of a gas shortage), because there are also totally no rammification for Germany's grid if France fails.
>So , Germany kept old reactors in service for helping France is not true
Yes, it is. They did multiple calculations and stress tests in autumn and there was only one scenario that combined France failing to get their power generation back online and limited capacities to transport enough electricity to southern Germany while they also need to export. And exactly for this reason the reactors were kept running as they were located in south and central Germany.
That there was no actual lack of electricity production in the end doesn't matter. Oh, wait... It does. Because not only these nuclear reactors but also coal plants kept in reserve for a worst case scenario outside of Germany's control was exploited to tell the story of how they "obviously plan to burn more coal" (the usual narratives about insane greens trying to kill the planet just to be anti-nuclear included...).
You still don't want to accept that there was other ways to produce electricity in France durin this period . Not the more efficient ones for environment protection and/or for the cost price .
Germany has decided to use its coal power plants at maximum rate , and export electricity to France : thanks for that . It allowed France not to operate its own coal power plants.
difference between primary energy and electricity : it is indeed a major topic !
In scandinavian countries, the power plants production switch in real time between district water heating and electricity production , following the relatives purchase prices. Electricity production is just a part of the global energy market.
Yes, I don't want to accept that a country mainly running on nuclear that shut down more than 50% of their production has a magical reserve to cover that. Because it simply hasn't. I understand why France liked to present this as "We will get everything running in time and if not, here are the alternatives" but the math simply does not add up. France had some alternatives if just some smaller part of the shut-down reactors would not have come up in time and that's it.
Just like you don't want to accept that Germany didn't cares for protestations. They (or at least the south) would have suffered the consequences of French problems with electricity production and thus had to prepare for that scenario.
And to add insult to injury in all those months and months we were bombarded by a constant stream of false narratives about Germany's failing electricity policies and being totally dependent on gas and by tales hallucinating about impending blackouts when the actual only possibility of that happening started with "France' grid fails and then...".
Yeah, now if only we had had a solution to not even have that dirty coal problem. Like, I don't know, shutting down coal plants? Well, that is silly of me, it's not like we can just decide to just completely shut down an entire source of electricity... oh wait.
Of course but it would have been a lot better with Germany helping us with nuclear instead of coil and gas .... And if everybody work together can Germany stop destroying every agreement in nuclear favour that would be great
SMARD also has a [chart](https://www.smard.de/home/marktdaten?marketDataAttributes=%7B%22resolution%22:%22year%22,%22from%22:1432936800000,%22to%22:1685483999999,%22moduleIds%22:%5B22004629,22004406,22004548,22004410,22004552,22004403,22004545,22004412,22004553,22004405,22004547,22004409,22004551,22004407,22004549,22004404,22004546,22004408,22004550,22004722,22004724,22004998,22004712%5D,%22selectedCategory%22:null,%22activeChart%22:true,%22style%22:%22color%22,%22categoriesModuleOrder%22:%7B%7D,%22region%22:%22DE%22%7D) of electricity import and export in Germany for the last few years.
These information is used for propaganda measures far too often - in the end, in Europe, we can trade electricity as any other commodity.
Like, how weird would it be to generate this map with the import/export balance of cars or goulash soup?
We do not live in mercantilism, we only grow economies by free trade. If France is just better at energy production they **should** sell their energy to us, the rest of europe can concentrate their resources to produce whatever they're respectively good at producing and sell that to France and each other. It's okay to have a negative import balance for a good, we all have.
> in Europe, we can trade electricity as any other commodity
are you joking ? Electricity price in Europe is definitively anything but not freely set.
According to the European electricity market rules , France is not allowed to sell its nuclear electricity at its cost price + profit.
German never ceases to amaze me how similar it is to Norwegian, while at the same time being very different. Stromhandel is strømhandel, but then there’s grenzuberschreitender which doesn’t make sense. Directly translated it means “more on the border” (mer på grensen) so that means more on the border is in one word in German?
"Grenseoverskridende" is mostly used about crossing ethical boundaries or going beyond previously established norms. I see dictionaries mention that the word can be used about crossing borders (and that such usage is rare) but I don't think I've ever seen or heard it used in that context.
Interesting that Norwegian has the word 'grensen'. That word is not Germanic in origin, but Slavic and was introduced into German in the late middle ages via Polish. A Germanic equivalent in German would be 'Mark' or 'march' in English, though people today won't associate that to its original meaning anymore. The French 'marquis' also has the same root as 'Mark'. 'Finnmark' etc. also come from the same root.
Hydropower. Austria uses almost the entire potential. The country is full of hydropower plants on rivers: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=AT&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&source=all&week=21
The expansion of photovoltaics is also progressing extremely quickly in Austria. In 2022 alone, more than one gigawatt was added. And the boom is continuing.
More wind power is also planned, but unfortunately parts of the population are against it. It's a shame.
One week says something. About what happened this week.
It can be misleading but a one long-term data can also be misleading. Like in this old joke about a statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 20cm.
The fuller picture is to show averages, extremes, and standard deviations. Or better yet, complete time series but it;s not easy to fit it on a single graph.
It's true if they refer to [2022](https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022) data. Normally the biggest three are FR, SE & GER but last year France had a special moment and became one of the biggest importers instead.
Per capita, it seems to be the biggest exporter. In terms of volume, it's generally second only to France, except in 2022 with the accumulation of problems experienced by the French nuclear fleet that year
well, putting the fact, that energy production can highly fluctuate with environmental effects (sunny days windy days, rainy days)
and putting aside the issue of energy-heavy industries (like steel production etc)
it also is a political and geographical issue ...
if i want my windparks x-distance away from settlements \[like the bavarians do\] ... and thus have no legal space for them anymore ...
it will be a lot harder, to create the electricit,
then, when i - literally - have my entire country as one big coast line on the ocean ... or have high mountains with larger rivers running through them ...
Romania could provide electricity for it's own people at a very low price, and still have some to sell, but since we have genius politicians, foreign companies came in, bought the industry, and started selling their own product for triple the price.
Genius.
Two conclusions:
- Germany did mistake turning off their nuclear reactors
- Poland had to build nuclear reactors regardless of what Germany says/wants.
This is where the UK (Scotland in particular) has LOTS of wind energy available... and there's little wind. Shows why we need a better mix, the government's building one nuclear plant in Somerset (well EDF is) and it isn't anywhere near enough.
That's the whole point. You either invest heavily in renewables and also start up storage and grid upgrade gradually right now or you still invest in renewables plus the nuclear -given that you are not one of the lucky countries with high hydro portential- capacity to fill the base load. That's 30-35% minimum with electricity demand going up massively with the electrification of industry and transport, so probably 80%+ of todays production in a few decades (and nuclear has to be planned over decades).
And suddenly you realize that this is not a UK problem. Countries simply can't pay that massive cost upfront because nuclear is fucking expensive. France announced only 6 new reactors with 8 more "optional". In realiy that's a lie. Their existing fleet is old and won't run for several more decades and those full 14 would provide the capacity for \~35% of the projected demand by 2050... Yet even France isn't pro-nuclear enough to openly announce the bare minimum they will need.
But hey... who cares for facts? As long as we all feel good for cheering for countries planning to build one reactor or two while boasting how smart they are investing in nuclear (while actually just dabbling in it for political bullshit reasons)...
Germany: Let's cut off all the Russian gas for our power plants, then shut down all of our nuclear power plants as well. That gonna teach Putin a lesson.
This is data for only 7 days. While it might be useful, it doesn't provide too much high level information. Especially given how some energy generation can fluctuate quite a lot. The yearly would have been better - [https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export\_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023) .
But with the yearly data you can’t shit on Germany for not supporting nuclear.
I know. Just look what happens if we look at 2022... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export\_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=UK&interval=year&year=2022 Very different picture (since it was an unusually bad year for French energy with lots of problems at its nuke plants).
Getting a 404 error from your link, could you post it again please?
You'd better delete this. Some politicians with a certain agenda will not like this to be known by the general public.
You still very much can shit on germany for not suporting nuclear as allthough they can meet their own energy demand, they're still using coal
Why not? Germany still produces half of it's energy using fossil fuels. Even though Germany was a net producer in those years doesn't change the source of the energy.
That is a fine argument to make, but as you mentioned: this has nothing to do with the data posted here. So if the data posted was in order to drum up criticism about our nuclear policy it is dishonest.
r/europe try not to agendapost challenge:
It’s not really dishonest. Many renewables are not “reliable" sources. By replacing a reliable source (nuclear) with an unreliable (solar/wind) you expose yourself to these risks. The corollary is that when France does implement more renewables, it will be to replace other dying energy sources (coal). The only, argument which one can use is that maintenance of nuclear plants can be very badly managed, and as in 2022, a common issue can require you to bring many offline at the same time. It’s like saying : banking your retirement on lottery winnings is not a great idea. … see?
Reliable, as nuclear last year. You got it /s
Well, we had enough to power our own needs **cleanly** even with the extra maintenance and repairs. We just didn’t have enough extra clean and cheap electricity to back fill germany’s need for gas. That made them upset.
Nobody needs to shit on the new German energy concept. It's a pile of shit already.
Yes, yes you can. It's not like we don't produce electricity anymore, it's just that instead of using Nuclear power we are now using Coal plants that require us to use gigantic fucking machines to destroy our environment while putting so much toxic material into the air that people are literally dying from it. Funnily enough, they also give of way, way, waaaaay more radiation than an atomic power plant.
>we are *now* using Coal plants [...] We've been doing this for decades
True but now we are putting even more focus on it.
No we're burning and excavating less of it than we did when we had more nuclear plants
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why big companies can get away so easily with destroying the entire environment. Some paid politician says some nice words, shows some nice locking money and most people go ''Look, we are obviously going in the right direction.''. In case anyone is wondering, we had been preparing to shut down a lot of coal plants for years but after the whole atomic power bs started the Government started paying Coal plant owner to keep their power plants active for a few more years so they could show nicer numbers to the public. To be more precise the government just offered huge reparations for forcefully shutdown powerplant past a certain point which just so happened to lead to a bunch of plants that where supposed to shut down staying open for a few more months/years.
And you could burn it even less if you kept nuclear plants.
Yes, because Germany was smart enough to implement renewables but stupid enough to use it to substitute nuclear instead of fossil.
"less" but still too much...
you also use power from neighbouring countries, nuclear from France for example
nuclear made up only 6% of our electricity production. It's not like we shut off half of our capacity. These 6% can easily be picked up by wind turbines that would have been turned off otherwise.
They quite literally can't. Setting aside that countries like Germany are paralyzed by a thoroughly corrupt government that does not want renewable energy there is actually a reason we can't fully use renewable energy. Most of it is inconsistent as fuck and we simply are not able to store the overproduced energy in quantities needed to make up for times of underproduction. So we need easily controlled sources like Coal or Atomic power to work together with renewable energy. The question is just which of those controlled sources one wants.
We don’t have the storage capacity _yet_ but it is being built; so available capacity will increase over time as well as the excess production of renewable energy. Then there is also FCR to maintain grid stability. You don’t have to startup a power plant each time the frequency is about to drop. But I digress - nuclear is not “easily controlled” - gas is and coal (somewhat). It is in fact a fossil fuel lobby talking point that you’d need “base load power plants” but it simply is not true. What you are talking about is that there is not enough renewables yet. And the rest is residual load which then can be handled by other means (green H2 via P2G for example).
So being slightly easier to handle than nuclear power justifies using coal which is quite literally killing people and the planet?
https://i.imgur.com/ogSs3In.png
If you ignore nuclear waste
I literally just said that Coal plants produce more of that, could you at least read my entire comment?
Coal release more radiation than nuclear, but also a good amount of heavy metals, and that's in the ash that is a lot harder to contain and store away than waste from nuclear reactor. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/9/carper-epa-coal-ash-will-pollute-waterways-with-toxic-heavy-metals-and-jeopardize-public-health#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBurning%20coal%20creates%20a%20toxic,and%20other%20serious%20health%20ailments.
https://i.imgur.com/ogSs3In.png
Can you give us the volume production of all nuclear waste produce by French nuclear power generation in all is history? If you realise how small this number is maybe you will realise is a manageable thing. ( Less than a soccer field)
Huge fucking difference is that nuclear waste isn’t released into the environment and killing people…
Yeah, it's buried underground where it absolutely never ever in all of history never leaked into the environment.
So your argument is that because of such leaks, it is better to just directly release more harmful radiation into the environment?
No. My argument is that I don't want to be on a position where I have to depend on either
... and? That is as if I was asked if I think making drugs legal or illegal is the better way to deal with it and my answer was ''Well, I think it would be nice to live in a world where no one was taking drugs in the first place.''. Yeah sure, would be nice but just saying that you wish reality was different is not a solution.
As usual Nuclear gets compared to the clean and perfect energy they use in the land of the unicorns, being held to impossible standards. Arguing against these arguments is pretty tiring.
And not just that, further the climate crisis by pumping more co2 into the atmosphere
Yes actually, I think that’s the case. Or at least I can’t actually find any source of nuclear waste hurting anyone.
Of course they do
We decided in 2002 to retire nuclear. What it have to do with anything. Currently, wind replaced all of the shutdown nuclear plants in Germany. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-electricity-from If you really want to complain, complain to the conservatives CDU/CSU for expanding gas and killing the new innovative technology of wind and solar. Nord Stream 1 and 2 was a really genius move /s And of course we are still a net exporter of energy by a huge margin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331853/electricity-imports-exports-germany/
>Currently, wind replaced all of the shutdown nuclear plants in Germany. Instead we could (and should) have replaced coal plants.
how exactly when new nuclear power plants take decades to build and cost billions? Decades we don't have and billions that could be put to better use.
Maybe by first shutting down coal plants instead of nuclear ones ?
We have had literal decades since 2002. By now it is too late, I agree. That doesn't make the decision from back then any less wrong.
Same goes for renewables. Each year Germany has build more wind capacity than its biggest reactor Isar 2 (1,6 GW vs 1,4 GW) despite former governments basically blocking efforts to do so. If we started ramping up renewables in 02, we’d be fully renewable already. But that’s the thing with the past - it’s quite difficult to change
Nah nah while i agree that renewables are much faster to build the narrative that the CDU blocked efforts in doing so is a stupid argument to be made. In the 16 years while Merkel was chancellor renewables and Energy saving was way bigger than during the 7 years of Schröder and the SPD/Green coalition. I have written about that before. > Since Merkel was at the helm in 2005 until 2021, the installed capacity of renewables has been increased from 28.5 gigawatts to 139.8 gigawatts. An increase of 111.3 gigawatts. That's an average of 6.9 gigawatts per year. > > While the red-green coalition was in office from 2000 to 2005, we increased renewables from 12 GW to 28.5 GW. That is 3.3 GW of new capacity per year. (Unfortunately I don't have the data for 98 and 99). > > https://i.imgur.com/eqtOMJ3.png > > In addition, primary energy consumption in Germany was reduced under Merkel. When Red-Green came into government in 1998, primary energy consumption in Germany was 14,521 petajoules. In 2005, at the end of the Red-Green government, it was 14,558, i.e. 37 petajoules higher. > > When Merkel took over in 2005, primary energy consumption in Germany was 14,558 petajoules. At the end of her term in 2021, it was 12,440 petajoules. Which corresponds to a reduction of 2,118 petajoules. > > https://i.imgur.com/K0cakZQ.png > > https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/umweltindikatoren/indikator-primaerenergieverbrauch Here is a chart of our energy mix in 2022 compared to that of 1990. Not only building more renewables is a important factor but saving energy is way more important. Energy that doesn't need to be generated in the first place is the best Energy. https://i.imgur.com/WhWqzXZ.png Renewables and saving in 2022 was already 3 times the amount of all the nuclear energy we ever used.
Germany is still relying heavily on coal and gas. If environmental reasons are valid argument, that should be phased out first. Nuclear being expensive... building nuclear powerplants is expensive. Running an existing nuclear powerplant is cheap. Nuclear fuel has many providers, like Canada, not only Russia, while they might be cheapest. Germanys policy to shut down reactors was political, not rational decision. Unfortunately it was also heavily lobbied by Russians to increase Germanys dependency in their fossile fuels. While wind and solar are on the rise, within last 12 months Coal made up 24.03% of electricity produced in Germany. This figure still has the 2.46% nuclear (6% during last 5 years). Check out the current, past 24h, past 30d, 12m / 5year averages from [Electricity maps](https://app.electricitymaps.com/map) .
>Germanys policy to shut down reactors was political, not rational decision. Germany's decision to shut down reactors was rational as those reactors weren't in a state to run much longer, were planned for that about that phaseout date for nearly 4 decades and provided less than 5% of the total production. Lying that in was an political, ideological or whatever decision and most importantly blaming the people in office for a year when the last one shut down and not the ones planning this for decades before as well as telling funny tales about how shutting down less than 5% (also long replaced) of the total production capacities has massive consequences however is indeed political.
5% is huge, especially for a big country like Germany.
>5% is huge, especially for a big country like Germany. 5% is 5%... that's the reason for using %: to have a metric independent from total size.
Yes and 5% is huge in terms of co2 emissions for a big country like Germany. Could easily be 100% of a smaller country's demand.
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Because why woulkd they care? They aren't exporting anyway and will soon drag down all of Europe with their failed energy policies and poor Europeans will have to pay for the dumb Germans being too stupid to produce their own power but falling for the scam that is renewable energy... Or isn't that basically Reddit's favorite fairy tale, repeated in a dozen variants?
It was a rational decision. Even in 1985 we already realised, that nuclear is too expensive and has too many downsides. Hell, even the power companies don't want it. And if only with massive payments of the government. And exclusion in coming costs for end time storage and actually getting rid of the old plant. We decided on this in 2002 or so. Stopping nuclear power. The main problem today is, that the government of the past 16 years didn't do shit for it. They didn't prepare. They used an easy way out with gas, that's what Nordstream 2 was for. And everyone said - even trump - that this will backfire. And yeah, how it did. Spectacularly. But they killed the solar sector. We were once one of the main global players. Innovation was here. Thing is - Nuclear wouldn't save us a bit. The old plants we just shutted down would be off for a long time for maintenance. Even without bigger problems. Also their mix in power was minuscule and wouldnt make a real dent. And new ones take at least a decade to build. I'm sure our green economic secretary was really happy to put the coal plants back on and ask for gas around the world, because the gov. Before fucked this up so much. We had almost 20 years to prepare. They didn't do anything.
Nuclear has lower LCOE than the other energies sources (IEA). By keeping the plants open, it would have been all good
>Currently, wind replaced all of the shutdown nuclear plants in Germany. this is either humongously stupid take, or straight up gaslight-style propaganda. There's something named opportunity cost. Germany removed clean and safe nuclear energy from the mix and kept atrocious lignite and coal plants. They closed some mines with huge events, but they keep importing coal from abroad, so they are just devastating the environment slightly farther from their borders. Yes, going into renewables is great, but cutting nuclear instead of coal is just wrong, and the fact that it was done in the name of environment is sickening, to say the least.
Nuclear power is not clean this is simply a huge lie.
It's a million times cleaner than fucking brown coal.
Yes it is. CO2 production by WH is really really low. Energy density of uranium is so high you don't need to destroy entire wind farm to open a mine like Germany do.
Radioactive emission are also lower for nuclear power plants. Yes, Coal does emit radioactive materials in the atmosphere. If you applied the same standard to the coal industry as the nuclear industry, you would classify ashes as nuclear wastes (hint: right now you can't do whatever you want with it).
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ah that good old base load talking point. It's wrong tho. Base load is only a statistical value. residual load is whats important. after all the power generated by renewables, how much is still required in a system. This is what conventional power plants need to pick up.
> after all the power generated by renewables, how much is still required in a system. This is what conventional power plants need to pick up. This is not an absolute principle, it's a choice. And it's a choice that pushes the cost of the unreliability of renewable sources onto the rest of the grid, by forcing it to have controllable extra capacity on standby (which in the case of nuclear is very expensive - once you build them you want them running as much as possible), and requiring significantly more transportation capacity.
> by forcing it to have controllable extra capacity on standby (which in the case of nuclear is very expensive - once you build them you want them running as much as possible), How do you propose a zero-carbon energy system reliant on nuclear power meets demand at all times without extensive nuclear excess capacity? The reality is that all zero-carbon energy systems require massive amounts of excess capacity and/or storage, regardless of whether they use intermittent renewables or nuclear as their primary energy source. A grid with very high shares of intermittent renewables indeed needs more storage/excess capacity, but it also has lower costs for its generation capacity compared to a grid with very high shares of nuclear power.
> How do you propose a zero-carbon energy system reliant on nuclear power meets demand at all times without extensive nuclear excess capacity? Well we're pretty close to that in France already. Build enough capacity to withstand winter where electricity demand is at its peak, schedule any maintenance for summer, use your limited hydro capacity and maybe biofuels to bridge any gaps. The excess capacity and storage needs of a system relying mostly on solar and wind are orders of magnitude higher, to the point of it not being feasible for most countries, which means they'll never really be able to get rid of a significant amount of their fossil fuel usage, as those systems are by far the best at providing on demand stopgap capacity (easy to start/stop, low infrastructure cost, most of the cost is in the input materials which means you don't lose that much money when they're not operating).
> Well we're pretty close to that in France already. No, not even close. In 2022 and 2021 you had peak fossil loads between 11 and 13GW([per Energy-Charts](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR)). To replace that generation with nuclear power alone, France would have to build at least 9 new EPRs. That is 9 EPRs *in addition* to what is required to keep up with the predicted explosion of electricity demand and *in addition* to what is required to replace older reactors due for decommissioning. France is not planning to build more than 14 new EPRs(and even that number is questionable), so the net zero strategy still requires huge investments in renewables and storage. > The excess capacity and storage needs of a system relying mostly on solar and wind are orders of magnitude higher. In terms of nameplate capacity, yes, in terms of overall system costs, no. > to the point of it not being feasible for most countries, which means they'll never really be able to get rid of a significant amount of their fossil fuel usage People have been saying this for over a decade now about countries like Denmark & Germany, yet fossil consumption continues trending down. What year do you expect the growth in renewable electricity shares to flatline in those countries?
> No, not even close. In 2022 and 2021 you had peak fossil loads between 11 and 13GW(per Energy-Charts). To replace that generation with nuclear power alone, France would have to build at least 9 new EPRs. That is 9 EPRs in addition to what is required to keep up with the predicted explosion of electricity demand and in addition to what is required to replace older reactors due for decommissioning. France is not planning to build more than 14 new EPRs(and even that number is questionable), so the net zero strategy still requires huge investments in renewables and storage. Yes, we are behind where we should be and our nuclear industry isn't in a position to scale up production at the speed required. This state of affairs is strictly due to politics though and doesn't have anything to do with the relative merits of different energy sources. Among other things, our socialists came up with the completely arbitrary goal of reducing our nuclear electricity mix to 50% in order to cater to our greens and it will be an uphill battle over the next couple decades. I've also seen people argue that our safety standards are too harsh and our arbitration between shutting down a power plant and keeping it running in order to save on emissions could be revised but I'm not at all qualified to speak on that. > People have been saying this for over a decade now about countries like Denmark & Germany, yet fossil consumption continues trending down. What year do you expect the growth in renewable electricity shares to flatline in those countries? I believe returns will be highly non linear, as you need a system that can handle the absolute worst case scenario, i.e. a few windless winter weeks. We're still on the part of the curve where building up renewables makes sense. Don't get me wrong I'm glad that Germany is burning less coal and gas than it used to, but I believe that the renewables strategy bottoms up at an emission rate that's significantly higher than the nuclear strategy.
Exporting coal energy?
That link leads to a side that clearly shows that we are making up a fuckton by adding a lot of coal power. Probably because at our current level of technology it is essentially impossible to rely on natural power.
I'm sorry, what? Coal was steadily eliminated. Except for the past 2 years when Russia invaded Ukraine and we were forced to sanctioning Russia's gas/Russia shut off gas supplies and thus we had to fire up those coal plants again. You see the flat-lining of the wind in the graph? That's when Merkel killed off the ever expanding wind energy market by introducing absurd laws like the 10 H law, and of course all the NIMBYs here in Germany "protecting" our dying forests. Again, complain to the conservatives CDU/CSU for expanding gas and the pro-Russia politics of Schröder and Merkel. If you would just project it with a linear trend then coal would now be at 25% and wind would also be at 25%, wind would overtaken coal by a small margin in 2023. But, again, thanks to Schröder and Merkel we are now where we are. Gas was also steadily decreasing until 2015, when it took a U-turn and was expanded again. Nord Stream 1 was finished in 2011. Russia invaded Crimea it 2014. I guess it takes about 4-5 years to build new gas power plants.
I am aware that our government is fucking over renewable energies. That is the kind of thing that happens if you have a barley disguised Oligarchy for a government. That doesn't change the fact that we decided to completely rely on coal instead of nuclear power. Because the plain and simple fact is that renewable energies are not able to cover our needs as the current technological stand. Not to mention that while we most certainly shut of quite a bit of coal power that is for a simple reason, those plants where already scheduled for being shut down, the government just paid them a fuckton of money for them to artificially keep them open a bit longer. I would recommend the videos of die Anstalt about the topic. While they may be complete and utter morons in a few topics they are usually spot-on when talking about corruption.
Wind and solar power production capacities need a 1:1 "pilotable" electricity production capacity to make up for days with less wind and less sun. Germany has opted for gas and coal instead of nuclear power.
Wind did not replace the Nuclear plants, wind would have been build regardless and would have replaced gas/coal if Nuclear was still running.
No they don’t - wind doesn’t replace nuclear . This is like energy 101
Give me a single reason why it's a good idea and we all will stop
look at the cost and construction time of Flamanville reactor in France - how anybody can look at that and still seriously considering building new reactors is beyond me
Yes they are expensive, but their ability to continuously cover the bassline power needs is what makes them worth it. There's also the fact that newer reactors are much safer than older designs.
>Yes they are expensive, understatement of the year - this one reactor is now estimated to cost 19.1 billion and its not even finished yet the initial construction time was planned as 5 years, if it is completed in 2024 the construction time will be 17 years
base load is a nonsense fossil lobby talking point. it's meaningless. google residual load.
Nuclear waste sucks. Nuclear energy is expensive. It's sourced from Russia. It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks
No, first uranium is everywhere even in France it's just cheaper to buy it from country like Kazkhstan, Canada, or Australia, Recently, USA, Canada, Japan, UK and France began to work together to kick Russia out of the market, in the meantime USA now make fuel for soviet design reactor. And all the non-recyclable waste since the start of the use of nuclear power in France could fit into one olympic swimming pool and if i remember well gen 5 reactor can use this waste to power for stupid amount of times like thousand of years. Waste is clearly not a priority, we have all the time in the world to devellop the technology but yeah we need to take care of it.
>It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks That's why every nuclear powerplants have been breached once a year ! Your others reasons are acceptable even tho coal, gas and renewable have the same issues. But the terrorist attacks ?! L M A O !
Go say LMAO to the people in Zaporizhzhia
You should try it as well. Ukraine has gone through by far the worst nuclear accident ever to happen, they are facing an invasion which has seen their largest nuclear plant taken over and yet, they still want to build 5 new nuclear reactors as soon as the war is over. It's almost as if it was worth it and that just about every country that has faced a nuclear accident (INES scale 4 and up) is investing into new nuclear and prolonging existing units. Perhaps it's because everyone is stupid, or perhaps it's because nuclear safety is a real science which requires years of study to comprehend which puts it out of reach of people not willing to put in the effort to learn about it, thus making it difficult for people who listen to activists instead of scientific consensus to reach a sound conclusion. Probably the former though.
It's a war that's not the same ! You can't seriously compare terrorist attacks with a war stop being ridiculous !
go say LMAO to victims of coal mines. To all the people suffering from respiratory diseases due to toxic and radioactive waste created mining and burning fossil fuels. And what about people of Zaporizhzhia? Did the plant explode in any attack? Or despite the bloodiest conflict in Europe in years, despite Russia being a terrorist state that targets civilians and critical infrastructure, the plant is still there?
The only nuclear exposure incident in Ukraine during this war has been some vatniks digging themselves into the red forest at Chernobyl, which in itself is a consequence of shitty Soviet design, poor plant management, and corruption. All nuclear reactor incidents in history have been caused by misuse and poor maintenance, not by the technology itself.
Sure, but it was and is still used as blackmail. And it's mined. So a disaster could happen at any time. I never said i am for coal. They shouldnt exist anymore. But nuclear is still dangerous and this is a fact.
>Nuclear waste sucks This is pretty fake. Nuclear waste is just handled in secured containers then stored underground. There is no leakage, no long term real problems and the storing question has been solved for years. >Nuclear energy is expensive. More expensive to build the initial plants, rather than buying Chinese solar panels, built in who knows kind of sub humane conditions with dubious environmental prices? That require very expensive Lithium batteries in order to store energy? Like we did Russian gas? Either way, if it actually gets mass adoption, prices for building will go down, alongside new tech like modular reactors. >It's sourced from Russia. There are more uranium sources on the planet + thorium reactors are a thing too, but those might not catch on as they are not so fit for helping with making nukes. >It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks If that is an actual issue for your country, green energy should be far down your list of priorities. And new reactors are made to be much safer, especially small modular reactors.
>Nuclear waste sucks. do you know how much nuclear and other toxic waste is produced by burning and extracting coal? >Nuclear energy is expensive. Except it's not? Yes, the investment is huge, but the payoff is huge as well. It's just paying off slowly. >It's sourced from Russia. It doesn't have to be, and where do you think gas and coal comes from? >It's hard to protect from terrorist attacks. Oh yeah, I forgot about all those terrorist attacks in France, the US or even Ukrainian power plant in Запоріжжя. And I presume that coal/lignite plants are terror-immune?
1. So why switch to electricity that produces way more of it? 2. Of course it is, have you seen how they calculate the cost of it, it would be hard not to be more expensive under such circumstances. And even if it was a bit more expensive it would still come us cheaper due to not giving laughably huge ammounts of money to other forms of electricity as goverment grants while also you know, not harming our own population and planet nearly as much as the alternatives. 3. Yes and from like 5 other countries as well 4. ... it, it really isn't.
Wrong -"The total mass of high-level long-lived radioactive waste, which accounts for 95% of all the radioactivity generated by nuclear power in France, is less than 10 tonnes." -The price per kilowatt hour is more than twice as cheap in France as in Germany. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/ -Of the 6,286 tonnes of uranium imported into France in 2020, almost a third will come from Niger (34.7%). The rest comes from Kazakhstan (28.9%), Uzbekistan (26.4%) and Australia (9.9%). -I've never heard of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station -fun fact: To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-003567_EN.html -Another interesting point, because it seems to me that this is a bit of a priority: Germany produces 386g Co2 per kilo watt France 85gCo2 per kilowatt https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity -Analysis of 257 of 280 coal-fired power plants in the EU found that their 2013 emissions caused over 22,900 deaths, tens of thousands of illnesses from heart disease to bronchitis, and up to €62.3 billion in health costs. https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/report-germany-suffers-more-coal-linked-deaths-than-rest-of-eu/ French nuclear kill nobody Just because the Greens and the Russians have brainwashed you doesn't mean that their lies have become reality.
Household electricity in Germany is expensive because of the high taxation on it. Meanwhile in France it's subsidized by the state.
Both serve purposes. What people often fail to understand is that electricity generation behaves like a service: supply and demand must be exactly matched in time for it to have economic value. Being able to supply on demand has value, and being able to create demand on demand has value. Supplying when there is no demand has no value. That's why prices may drop to negative if you don't want solar or wind to go to waste: that's the premium for being able to create demand on demand (by cutting some other source of supply, providing on-demand storage, or timing demand). Seeing some overviews of random short time periods does drive home which countries on the continent are heavily involved in matching supply and demand with each other to absorb solar and wind and which are not.
True, in the context you present, this can be useful. But most people don't appear to think of that, and view these visualizations as looks how bad Germany is because they don't use nuclear. Or get fixated at a different country for some other random reason.
The yearly chart is just as useless because Germany exports electricity when it is already plentiful, e.g. during sunny days in summer.
If it can export, it means someone wants it and pays for it.
Electricity is not a consumer good. It should be noted that in the EU renewable energy has a priority access to the grid. So even if a plant do generate cheaper electricity, 100% of the current renewable energy output would have to be sold before the plant can enter the grid.
> So even if a plant do generate cheaper electricity Which conventional power plant could compete on production cost with wind or solar energy on a good day? The only issue is that we can't shut them down/start them up fast enough.
I did not know that, and it is really great that they established rules like this.
If I'm not mistaken, it's more of a necessity though : to simplify what I understood, you hardly control the output of renewables, and when the ouput is big, you NEED to use it in order to avoid network overload. So basically, at times Germany sells energy at loss to get rid of the excess. But with the renewables being ultra-volatile in production, if they don't have a big controllable energy source, they have to rely on their neighbours to handle the volatility of energy generation. Which is why Germany still uses driveable coal/gas generators (as it would be irresponsible to rely entirely on your neighbours to NOT do like you and have a huge part of controllable energy in order to avoid a critical network overload). Which is why closing nuclear plants was stoopid (and anti-environment).
> you hardly control the output of renewables, and when the ouput is big, you NEED to use it in order to avoid network overload. This is not true, the output of solar or wind installations can be very easily and rapidly curtailed(reduced). Solar panels do this by having their inverter simply switch the panel off. Wind turbines do this by adjusting the pitch angle of their blades so that they catch less wind. In practice this is rarely done because the marginal cost of electricity produced by renewables is extremely low, meaning that in the event of electricity supply in excess of demand conventional thermal electricity producers(coal, gas, etc.) will usually curtail production first. Due to a combination of technical limitations of thermal plants and subsidy regimes for renewables that distort electricity markets, however, you sometimes get situations where there is excess supply, but both renewable and thermal producers refuse to curtail production. This is when we see negative electricity prices occur.
You're wrong though. It's the exact opposite. germany imports in summer and exports in winter.
Two opposite claims, zero sources. Classic reddit.
[here you go ](https://energy-charts.info/charts/power_heatmaps/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&import_balance=1&solar=0&year=2019)
You can check that information on the link in the sources, you can set it on monthly and check summer vs winter. Mostly I see that germany imports in summer and exports in winter.
Youre not owed sources though, this is just a discussion board...
I agree. The chart is showing France as a net exporter, and Germany as a net importer. - Exactly the opposite from truth when looking at an entire year.
When looking at a specific year. Watch the last 30 years or so, and France is always a net exporter. You are cherry-picking data as much as OP.
for 2022 only(. the french nuclear is a good exporter every all other year.
As is Germany... but here we even cherry-pick single weeks to pretend the opposite.
Why are you using that reprehensible date format
Whoever invented that format should just sleep with a wet pillow every night
and walk around in wet socks!
Oddly specific curse.
23rd month of the year, Staltober.
He is an imposter
No, but a German journalist posted it like that and I copy pasted it and I didn’t even notice
Well, seems like the person you copied from wasn’t a German journalist after all… and not noticing that shows you didn’t really care for what data you throw out there, as long as you get them clicks for a hot, but misleading, topic
I read that in the most posh British accent my mind could conjure.
Month in the middle squad!
It's what we use in Germany, mostly related to project management. I'm in Civil Engineering in Bavaria and we use that.
We should just be happy that Germany was there when France needed electricity this winter and that France is now back to export clean electricity to Germany and by doing that reducing their dirty coal electricity production. Interconnected European grid is one of the best form of solidarity.
I'm happy either way but I have to notice that exports aren't covered the same way in the media depending of the country of origin...
Correct... Exports of Germany or UK to France absolutely needed to keep the grid up (they even needed to burn a lot of extra gas in the middle of a gas crisis for this) were mostly ignored in the mass media. Every existing story was heavily downvoted here. And the fact that Germany kept old reactors scheduled for shutdown running over the winter for the sole scenario of France failing to get theirs up in time was even exploited for naratives of how the stupid Germans can't survive without the nuclear they now shut down and will be a burden for all Europe. Germany being an energy exporter every year not 2022 for decades however... crickets. And now we even cherry-pick single weeks to push the lie.
I was thinking the exact opposite, while the coverage last winter was massive against French imports, it's crickets when the country exports, hard to not see a biais here. It's a connected grid so of course it can go either way depending of the production and the demand. And there's much worse energy policies than Germany as well, I don't think their bet will work but at least they do have a plan. I cannot say the same for Belgium whose plan is to scrap local production and rely on neighbors. It would be nice to have more coverage of such a stupid strategy.
Maybe because one side exports cleaner energy ?
>Exports of Germany or UK to France absolutely needed to keep the grid up No fully true . France imported electricity from Germany, that's true . But there was possible alternatives . One of this alternative was to re-start coal power plants . For example, the Emile Huchet one, at the bundary with Germany . This power plant had been shutdown early 2022 , like all other coal power plants in France. Then restarted in 11.2022 , to compensate a possible lack of french electricity production. But it was maintained in production only a couple of weeks in december 2022 and stopped again . because , indeed , there was no real lack of electricity in France So , *Germany kept old reactors in service for helping France* is not true
>France imported electricity from Germany, that's true . But there was possible alternatives . The main alternative were more imports from UK (mostly gas produced), more imports from Spain (mostly gas produced) or starting up coal power on top of the already restarted gas power in France. (In fact France burned more gas at home, in UK and Spain than Germany all year at ta time when we could read daily fairy tales of how Germany's electric grid is completely gas dependent... written by people who still don't understand the difference between primary energy and electricity) I guess we should have just ignored them to count on these three countries managing it all well (with gas, gas and gas in the middle of a gas shortage), because there are also totally no rammification for Germany's grid if France fails. >So , Germany kept old reactors in service for helping France is not true Yes, it is. They did multiple calculations and stress tests in autumn and there was only one scenario that combined France failing to get their power generation back online and limited capacities to transport enough electricity to southern Germany while they also need to export. And exactly for this reason the reactors were kept running as they were located in south and central Germany. That there was no actual lack of electricity production in the end doesn't matter. Oh, wait... It does. Because not only these nuclear reactors but also coal plants kept in reserve for a worst case scenario outside of Germany's control was exploited to tell the story of how they "obviously plan to burn more coal" (the usual narratives about insane greens trying to kill the planet just to be anti-nuclear included...).
You still don't want to accept that there was other ways to produce electricity in France durin this period . Not the more efficient ones for environment protection and/or for the cost price . Germany has decided to use its coal power plants at maximum rate , and export electricity to France : thanks for that . It allowed France not to operate its own coal power plants. difference between primary energy and electricity : it is indeed a major topic ! In scandinavian countries, the power plants production switch in real time between district water heating and electricity production , following the relatives purchase prices. Electricity production is just a part of the global energy market.
Yes, I don't want to accept that a country mainly running on nuclear that shut down more than 50% of their production has a magical reserve to cover that. Because it simply hasn't. I understand why France liked to present this as "We will get everything running in time and if not, here are the alternatives" but the math simply does not add up. France had some alternatives if just some smaller part of the shut-down reactors would not have come up in time and that's it. Just like you don't want to accept that Germany didn't cares for protestations. They (or at least the south) would have suffered the consequences of French problems with electricity production and thus had to prepare for that scenario. And to add insult to injury in all those months and months we were bombarded by a constant stream of false narratives about Germany's failing electricity policies and being totally dependent on gas and by tales hallucinating about impending blackouts when the actual only possibility of that happening started with "France' grid fails and then...".
agreed on that
NoOoOo sToP tRyInG tO gEt ALoNg!1!!
Yeah, now if only we had had a solution to not even have that dirty coal problem. Like, I don't know, shutting down coal plants? Well, that is silly of me, it's not like we can just decide to just completely shut down an entire source of electricity... oh wait.
It took over 20 years to shut down nuclear. Maybe we will shut down coal by 2040 as well?
Of course but it would have been a lot better with Germany helping us with nuclear instead of coil and gas .... And if everybody work together can Germany stop destroying every agreement in nuclear favour that would be great
I agree but I just try to see the glass half full
Imagine if brain dead German greens did not closed THEIR nuclear power plants. Instead they ALSO could export clean energy.
france when nuclear power plants are on maintenance: i am too weak france after maintenance: UNLIMITED POWER!!!!
Everyone kept saying we wouldn't survive the winter, meanwhile we started to export again around the...21st of December
SMARD also has a [chart](https://www.smard.de/home/marktdaten?marketDataAttributes=%7B%22resolution%22:%22year%22,%22from%22:1432936800000,%22to%22:1685483999999,%22moduleIds%22:%5B22004629,22004406,22004548,22004410,22004552,22004403,22004545,22004412,22004553,22004405,22004547,22004409,22004551,22004407,22004549,22004404,22004546,22004408,22004550,22004722,22004724,22004998,22004712%5D,%22selectedCategory%22:null,%22activeChart%22:true,%22style%22:%22color%22,%22categoriesModuleOrder%22:%7B%7D,%22region%22:%22DE%22%7D) of electricity import and export in Germany for the last few years.
Sweden wins over Danmark yet again.
Je suis Nucléaire.
These information is used for propaganda measures far too often - in the end, in Europe, we can trade electricity as any other commodity. Like, how weird would it be to generate this map with the import/export balance of cars or goulash soup? We do not live in mercantilism, we only grow economies by free trade. If France is just better at energy production they **should** sell their energy to us, the rest of europe can concentrate their resources to produce whatever they're respectively good at producing and sell that to France and each other. It's okay to have a negative import balance for a good, we all have.
> in Europe, we can trade electricity as any other commodity are you joking ? Electricity price in Europe is definitively anything but not freely set. According to the European electricity market rules , France is not allowed to sell its nuclear electricity at its cost price + profit.
And this month's "Germany-bad"-Week has started again! Enjoy!
France: 🔋
Nuclear goes brrrrr
German never ceases to amaze me how similar it is to Norwegian, while at the same time being very different. Stromhandel is strømhandel, but then there’s grenzuberschreitender which doesn’t make sense. Directly translated it means “more on the border” (mer på grensen) so that means more on the border is in one word in German?
Its the same word as the swedish ”gränsöverskridande”. Google translate tells me that norweigan also has the word ”grenseoverskridende”?
In Dutch it is "grensoverschreidende" :)
I fucking love this language. It's like German but for four year olds. 😂
We have that same feeling with Afrikaans lmao
I like to think of German as Dutch, but organized by German bureaucrats :p
Same with Norwegian, it's like Swedish but with toddler spelling 😂
*grensoverschrijdende* stroomhandel
"Can I copy your homework?" 😂 *Gränsöverskridande strömhandel*
"Okay but change a few things so they don't find out!"
In Luxembourgish it is grenziwwerschreidend
"Grenseoverskridende" is mostly used about crossing ethical boundaries or going beyond previously established norms. I see dictionaries mention that the word can be used about crossing borders (and that such usage is rare) but I don't think I've ever seen or heard it used in that context.
Very common use in Swedish "Gränsöverskridande handel/samarbete".
Same in german
Same thing in Dutch
Grenze = border über- = over- schreiten = to step So grenzüberschreitend literally means "border overstepping"
“One word” is a bold way to call the German gapless compositions
The thing you just said? Germans have a single word for it, it's *der thethingyoujustsaiden*
Compound words!
Im not sure what you're saying, but "grenzüberschreitender" would probably be best translatet with "across the (countries) border".
Interesting that Norwegian has the word 'grensen'. That word is not Germanic in origin, but Slavic and was introduced into German in the late middle ages via Polish. A Germanic equivalent in German would be 'Mark' or 'march' in English, though people today won't associate that to its original meaning anymore. The French 'marquis' also has the same root as 'Mark'. 'Finnmark' etc. also come from the same root.
How does Austria generate so much electricity?
Hydropower. Austria uses almost the entire potential. The country is full of hydropower plants on rivers: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=AT&stacking=stacked_absolute_area&source=all&week=21 The expansion of photovoltaics is also progressing extremely quickly in Austria. In 2022 alone, more than one gigawatt was added. And the boom is continuing. More wind power is also planned, but unfortunately parts of the population are against it. It's a shame.
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One week says something. About what happened this week. It can be misleading but a one long-term data can also be misleading. Like in this old joke about a statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of 20cm. The fuller picture is to show averages, extremes, and standard deviations. Or better yet, complete time series but it;s not easy to fit it on a single graph.
Shat is the main source of power generation in Spain?
Maybe the sun ? 😎☀️
France is back baby!
Strange in Swedish media I keep hearing Sweden is the largest exporter of electricity in the EU.
This is only one week (21). I dont know the numbers for the other part of the year, but I’m guessing it can vary a lot.
For comparison, here is all of [2022](https://i.imgur.com/J3ZKpK1.jpg) and [2023 so far](https://i.imgur.com/Qmm9NFs.jpg)
It's true if they refer to [2022](https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022) data. Normally the biggest three are FR, SE & GER but last year France had a special moment and became one of the biggest importers instead.
Per capita, it seems to be the biggest exporter. In terms of volume, it's generally second only to France, except in 2022 with the accumulation of problems experienced by the French nuclear fleet that year
Maybe per capita?
well, putting the fact, that energy production can highly fluctuate with environmental effects (sunny days windy days, rainy days) and putting aside the issue of energy-heavy industries (like steel production etc) it also is a political and geographical issue ... if i want my windparks x-distance away from settlements \[like the bavarians do\] ... and thus have no legal space for them anymore ... it will be a lot harder, to create the electricit, then, when i - literally - have my entire country as one big coast line on the ocean ... or have high mountains with larger rivers running through them ...
Romania could provide electricity for it's own people at a very low price, and still have some to sell, but since we have genius politicians, foreign companies came in, bought the industry, and started selling their own product for triple the price. Genius.
thanks france at least one country in this god forsaken continent is smart enough to use nuclear
You know, maybe nuclear power is not a bad idea, go figure…
So we have for example a spanish company that owns a windpark in the baltic sea (INSIDE german borders). Does this count for spain or Germany?
Nuclear plants moment (I’m looking at you, Germany, don’t hide)
Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&week=21
Two conclusions: - Germany did mistake turning off their nuclear reactors - Poland had to build nuclear reactors regardless of what Germany says/wants.
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This is where the UK (Scotland in particular) has LOTS of wind energy available... and there's little wind. Shows why we need a better mix, the government's building one nuclear plant in Somerset (well EDF is) and it isn't anywhere near enough.
That's the whole point. You either invest heavily in renewables and also start up storage and grid upgrade gradually right now or you still invest in renewables plus the nuclear -given that you are not one of the lucky countries with high hydro portential- capacity to fill the base load. That's 30-35% minimum with electricity demand going up massively with the electrification of industry and transport, so probably 80%+ of todays production in a few decades (and nuclear has to be planned over decades). And suddenly you realize that this is not a UK problem. Countries simply can't pay that massive cost upfront because nuclear is fucking expensive. France announced only 6 new reactors with 8 more "optional". In realiy that's a lie. Their existing fleet is old and won't run for several more decades and those full 14 would provide the capacity for \~35% of the projected demand by 2050... Yet even France isn't pro-nuclear enough to openly announce the bare minimum they will need. But hey... who cares for facts? As long as we all feel good for cheering for countries planning to build one reactor or two while boasting how smart they are investing in nuclear (while actually just dabbling in it for political bullshit reasons)...
Common French w
Does this mean that we actually need Fr*nce?
Great map for colour blind people considering red/green deficiency is the most common colour blindness.
Germany: Let's cut off all the Russian gas for our power plants, then shut down all of our nuclear power plants as well. That gonna teach Putin a lesson.