What a waste of resources. The nuclear plants were up and running. Could be running for decated with good maintanance. The most of the costs were already paid. And now:
Germany won the European Union's informal approval to pay billions of euros to gas powered plants to be able to stabilise the grid when unsteady renewable energy supplies fall short, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on Friday.
People in my country are upset when gas and coal barons get rich. But we are making them rich by our wrong decisions.
Gas turbines and nuclear do not fulfill the same role. Nuclear is base load, gas is peak load.
You can’t stabilize a grid with base load because you want to run base load plants at maximum capacity. Whereas peaker plants are quickly spun up and down to match up supply with demand.
To be clear, shutting down those nuclear plants is a bone-headed decision fueled by a false idea of greenness, but it has little to do with gas turbines. Nuclear replaces coal or hydro.
There's not much hydro where I'm wrong, so I might be mistaken with this. But I always thought hydro was also pretty flexible, so it could serve as peak load? Like, you can even pump water up a dam if you have a surplus of electricity.
I understand, but there is no need to stabilize when you have big nuclear base load.
EU is just burning money left and right. The transition could be slower, more green and more cost effective and with less impact on industry if it just wasn`t driven by fake "green" ideology. And antinuclear fear mongering.
The nuclear plants were aging out anyway and nuclear power is not suitable for use as a peaker like gas or batteries or pumped storage are.
(it's technically possible to use as a peaker by throwing away power, but costly enough that the idea is overwhelmingly stupid, so it is not suitable)
The only reason any country builds it is to provide economic support for the military industrial complex. The cost even when not using it as a peaker is truly staggering compared to alternatives.
The minimum requirements for the manoeuvrability capabilities of modern reactors are defined by the utilities requirements that are based on the requirements of the grid operators. For example, according to the current version of the European Utilities Requirements (EUR) the NPP must at least be capable of daily load cycling operation between 50% and 100 % of its rated power Pr, with a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% of Pr per minute.
--- end quote ---
As the chart on the same page (page 8) shows, a change from 800 MW to 1300 MW was routine operation for German reactors
I have no idea what link you're making between nuclear power and the military industrial complex. The vast majority of nations with nuclear power have no nuclear weapons program - Germany first and foremost, for obvious WWII-related reasons.
Nuclear power is expensive because decades of fear mongering have made it so.
Today nuclear power is one of the safest, together with solar and wind [1]. If we were to make coal power as safe as nuclear (including externalities), I wonder how much the difference would be.
Decades of fear spread by the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the media have made any argument in favor of nuclear power a waste of time in Germany. It's really sad that the party which stands for climate protection and the environment is the main culprit for shutting down nuclear power in Germany, thereby keeping coal power running for now.
To be fair, the Greens were the only party to oppose Nord Stream 2. However, they did support (and where in power togehter with the SPD) the construction of Nord Stream 1, which was already part of the Energiewende plan, as cheap gas was (and still is) required for it.
Sure, Russia that exports nuclear power plants and processes 50% of the world's uranium wants to get others' off of nuclear energy, when it's the energy source they have the tightest grip on.
> Well, we still don't even have a solution for nuclear waste.
We do. The requirement for hugely complex disposal sites is mostly a political one. There's very little long-term hazardous waste that we need to take care of, and we already know how to store it for a very long time.
Also, how many nuclear waste death do we have per year? How much do we pay for it's current storage? How does it change the climate? How much nuclear waste is there even? There is no nuclear waste problem. It's FUD.
>Decades of fear spread by the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the media have made any argument in favor of nuclear power a waste of time
Actually it's exclusively cost that made it a waste of time. The (quite valid) safety concerns are just a cherry on top of the staggering cost.
As it is sophisticated private insurers view it as too risky which is why the taxpayer has to step up to lavish the industry with free insurance against $800 billion Fukushima type events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industr...
Even before that the LCOE is 5x solar and wind. No, the reduced storage requirement doesn't bring 5x down to 1x. Not even close.
Some numerical context: current installed capacity 34.8 GW (gas), about 39 GW (coal), 170 GW (solar and wind). Obviously the installed capacity for renewables is only half of the story, the output depends both on the respective input and on the capacity of the grid to accept electricity. And since the gas power plants serve as peaker plants even now, they're running only at 15% load.
As a transitional fuel source, gas turbines seem like a good choice. I still find their decision to decommission nuclear odd but having done so and with no appetite to reverse a gas fall back works fine. Easy to deploy, well understood tech and the least offensive of the carbon intense electricity sources.
They can sit on standby for ages and be up to load inside the window battery stacks would drain on. That's all you need and the battery can arbitrage and do FCAS outside of those times.
The only problem with gas is that Germany does not have its own gas. After Russian supply stopped it has to buy it from Azerbaijan, which not only has its own trail of human and civil rights abuse as well as ongoing military aggression, but also is plausibly suspected in reselling the same Russian gas.
Germany has made many strategic errors in many domains over the last 20 years because of political and ideological priorities over pragmatism and long term thinking.
But all in all, at this point gas turbines make some sense, especially if they allow to speed up the phasing out of coal power, which is still 25+% of electricity in Germany.
Nuclear can be a win-win. Build enough to reach peak use, and then use the extra capacity during low use hours for producing hydrogen for clean vehicle fuel. All at near zero CO2 emission.
I still wonder, how come noone cares who did it... or why the ones that do, don't get mad at the government. It was billions of damage, a huge ecological disaster, and everyone acts as if nothing has happened... there should be daily questioning of the politicians (by the journalists, etc.) about who did what, and what the reaction will be.
What do you mean? For months there were many long detailed news articles and segments, government inquiries, international cooperation between the Baltic states, Denmark, and Sweden. They are still ongoing. Scientists are still monitoring how much gas dissolved in the waters as we write this.
Previously when it was built, the environmental lobby was raging mad that it got green-lit (and even the military leadership sort of opposed it by saying that "it affects our security") but the commercial interests and ruling parties allowed it to go through anyway.
I think it was a Russian operation, it makes most sense to me that they would try to deprive Europe of gas and make Europe war-weary to stop supporting Ukraine sooner. But at the same time I would not be very surprised that a small group of Ukrainian operatives (as rumoured) did it to deprive Russia of income from the gas line.
bc the natural question after that would be "why do you care so much? Do you support russia? Do you want to pay money to the Russia's war machine?" And tbh these questions are somewhat valid. The NS blowing was a signal for germany to reorient it's dependency on other re-sources, be that from US liquified gas, or gas pipes from norway, or buy nuclear from france, or buy solar panels from china
I think no one cares because basing your energy policy on buying gas from Russia is such an obviously stupid idea that no one wants to bring it up.
Russia is not your ally, Russia isn't even a reliable neutral party. Russia is explicitly the enemy of Europe and when Germans get that into their heads things will be a lot simpler.
Readit News
Germany won the European Union's informal approval to pay billions of euros to gas powered plants to be able to stabilise the grid when unsteady renewable energy supplies fall short, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on Friday.
People in my country are upset when gas and coal barons get rich. But we are making them rich by our wrong decisions.
You can’t stabilize a grid with base load because you want to run base load plants at maximum capacity. Whereas peaker plants are quickly spun up and down to match up supply with demand.
To be clear, shutting down those nuclear plants is a bone-headed decision fueled by a false idea of greenness, but it has little to do with gas turbines. Nuclear replaces coal or hydro.
There's not much hydro where I'm wrong, so I might be mistaken with this. But I always thought hydro was also pretty flexible, so it could serve as peak load? Like, you can even pump water up a dam if you have a surplus of electricity.
Making an inherently and unfixably unreliable source your primary and then trying to fit everything around that is...unwise.
(it's technically possible to use as a peaker by throwing away power, but costly enough that the idea is overwhelmingly stupid, so it is not suitable)
The only reason any country builds it is to provide economic support for the military industrial complex. The cost even when not using it as a peaker is truly staggering compared to alternatives.
This is, of course, a lie. https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
--- start quote ---
The minimum requirements for the manoeuvrability capabilities of modern reactors are defined by the utilities requirements that are based on the requirements of the grid operators. For example, according to the current version of the European Utilities Requirements (EUR) the NPP must at least be capable of daily load cycling operation between 50% and 100 % of its rated power Pr, with a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% of Pr per minute.
--- end quote ---
As the chart on the same page (page 8) shows, a change from 800 MW to 1300 MW was routine operation for German reactors
Today nuclear power is one of the safest, together with solar and wind [1]. If we were to make coal power as safe as nuclear (including externalities), I wonder how much the difference would be.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
They should have repositioned to support nuclear, increase VAT, reduce waste, plant trees... there are so many battles they could have taken on!
We do. The requirement for hugely complex disposal sites is mostly a political one. There's very little long-term hazardous waste that we need to take care of, and we already know how to store it for a very long time.
Only 0.2% of all waste is long term highly radioactive: https://international.andra.fr/sites/international/files/202...
Also, how many nuclear waste death do we have per year? How much do we pay for it's current storage? How does it change the climate? How much nuclear waste is there even? There is no nuclear waste problem. It's FUD.
Dead Comment
Actually it's exclusively cost that made it a waste of time. The (quite valid) safety concerns are just a cherry on top of the staggering cost.
As it is sophisticated private insurers view it as too risky which is why the taxpayer has to step up to lavish the industry with free insurance against $800 billion Fukushima type events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industr...
Even before that the LCOE is 5x solar and wind. No, the reduced storage requirement doesn't bring 5x down to 1x. Not even close.
https://gas.info/gas-im-energiemix/strom-aus-gas/versorgungs...
https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
They can sit on standby for ages and be up to load inside the window battery stacks would drain on. That's all you need and the battery can arbitrage and do FCAS outside of those times.
But all in all, at this point gas turbines make some sense, especially if they allow to speed up the phasing out of coal power, which is still 25+% of electricity in Germany.
Getting some energy out of that would be a net positive.
FWIW, depending on cheap Russian gas was very pragmatical and it worked well for the economy.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Previously when it was built, the environmental lobby was raging mad that it got green-lit (and even the military leadership sort of opposed it by saying that "it affects our security") but the commercial interests and ruling parties allowed it to go through anyway.
I think it was a Russian operation, it makes most sense to me that they would try to deprive Europe of gas and make Europe war-weary to stop supporting Ukraine sooner. But at the same time I would not be very surprised that a small group of Ukrainian operatives (as rumoured) did it to deprive Russia of income from the gas line.
Russia is not your ally, Russia isn't even a reliable neutral party. Russia is explicitly the enemy of Europe and when Germans get that into their heads things will be a lot simpler.