Couldn't it go to 5% by using nuclear?
No, my original argument was about stronger reduction of coal by using nuclear, no matter that it's already decreasing. You just didn't understand me (or shifted the goalpost?).
Upd: I see that you avoid answering this question all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29768086.
False. If the removed nuclear was replaced by coal, coal % of the produced electricity would go up. In reality nuclear % went down, was replaced by renewables, and coal % also went down, also replaced by renewables. As a result of this, carbon emissions are way down, despite the nuclear phase out. Yet another thing that people like to falsely claim.
And of course as usual, once we establish what is actually going on, the goal posts get shifted to "well it could be even better". There is nothing to avoid really, my position on that I've posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29770486.
But don't pretend you're having a rational debate. You don't check the numbers to form an opinion, you google for links to prove your point which is based on the wrong data, don't adjust your opinion when you see the data and instead shift the topic to something else. So there is nothing to discuss there.
False. Coal went from 45% to 25%. The remaining 25% are needed to cover closing nuclear. This is what people mean when they say about coal replacing nuclear. We could remove coal completely (or significantly more) if not stopping nuclear. Total coal percentage doesn't matter.
Compare two possibilities:
1. Coal 45% to 25%, nuclear 10% to 0%.
2. Coal 45% to 0%, nuclear 10% to 55%.
In both cases coal usage is decreasing, but in the first case, nuclear is (partially) replaced with coal. In the second case, coal is replaced with nuclear.
By that logic you could also make the case that nuclear replaced coal.
The 25% value is too high, and it could be much lower if not decreasing the nuclear. That's all I want to tell you. If you don't like the wording, you can change it as you wish. It's wrong to let coal go to 25% and not lower while removing nuclear. Nuclear should not have been removed before coal.
Same thing is said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29890760.
I think it matters that Germany's fossil fuel use for electricity went from 60% in 2010 to 40% in 2020. I also think it matters the US went from 60% in 2010 to 60% in 2020 (although I didn't check the US numbers in detail, so I might be slightly off). So in this regard, what Germany is doing is an obvious success, but reality does not fit to agendas. If everybody was doing this, the world would be in much better shape. Instead those that do well, are criticized for not doing better, mostly on wrong assumptions and bad data. That's just weird.
This is whataboutism. The fact that someone else is doing worse, doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for the better. There is no reason to switch off nuclear in Germany before switching off coal, except propaganda and irrational fear.
I repeat: if all the countries in the world would go their route, especially the developed countries, the world would be in much better shape. There is no counter to that because that's what the data says. Emissions way down, full stop. No threat of Fukushima like event because of reactors built 50 years ago. Full stop
This is false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987.
The Fukushima and Chernobyl are included in all statistics for nuclear. Even then, it's the most safe, green energy source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874421 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324974.
I did not make up that coal replaced nuclear. It's the fact which you are unable to accept. Let's come back to our examples.
Possibility 1. Coal 45% to 25%, nuclear 10% to 0%. Why is coal not at 0%? Because the renewables are not enough to cover the energy usage! This is why coal is still there. In other words, coal (partially, along with the renewables) replaced the removed nuclear, despite they both are used less.
Nuclear is so green, the japanese people will shell out $200B for the cleanup of the mess. So much for that argument.
IMHO it depends on the purpose of the decrease. If it's about green energy, then removing the nuclear while keeping the coal is a wrong choice (see links above), and the remaining coal was chosen to be kept instead of the remaining nuclear. I would call it "coal replaced nuclear".
> Nuclear is so green, the japanese people will shell out $200B for the cleanup of the mess. So much for that argument.
There is a difference between an anecdote and reliable statistics.
You can call it any way you want, but the question remains. If there is less coal use now than before, and coal was used to replace the reduced nuclear, what replaced the coal? It has to be nuclear, no?
No, it can be renewables.
> the insurance of one nuclear power plant would be around 70 billion per year. And we know from another recent story, that people doing those estimates are really good at math.
The insurance takes into account huge costs unreasonably added by politicians. This is not what you should look at for a scientifically sound comparison.
You don't even understand how insurance works. Added costs or whatever have no influence on the potential payout after an accident would occur. When even something nuclear proponents call benign like Fukushima costs $200B to cleanup imagine how much Chernobyl would cost today. We are easily talking trillions. Insurances are not lobby driven business like nuclear plants, whose main business model is dumping external costs on the public. E.g. nuclear waste, accident cleanup etc.
> like nuclear plants, whose main business model is dumping external costs on the public.
Actually, this is even more true for the coal. According to available statistics, coal results in more deaths, more CO2, more damage. I admit that I don't know how the insurance works. Where do all those costs for nuclear insurance come from, while the coal insurance is cheap and more damaging?
Yet somehow there is less of what you call harmful balls. What happened to them if they weren't removed? Are you always in disagreement with reality or is this an exception? This is even weirder than the person that claimed a decrease is an increase because it wasn't big enough.
Ok, maybe you understand it better if I reformulate: When you choose to remove more harmless "balls" and less harmful "balls", it means you support the latter, even if both numbers decreased. How else would you call it if not supporting? Those got money and resources which they should not have obtained.
> Yet somehow there is less of what you call harmful balls. What happened to them if they weren't removed?
In this hypothetical case, they would be also be unreasonably supported, even stronger. It's better now than that, but not nearly good enough.
Personal attacks are against HN rules. It's always easy to claim that the opponent is stupid and you are a genius. Try to understand instead (as I do).
This is really only about you googling for stories that coal use in Germany went up, reading half the headline and not realizing it's not saying what you want it to say, and that coal is in fact drastically down. To call yourself understanding in that case is, uh... So now I am faced with a living breathing example of backfire effect, which is potentially annoying, but not really as the bottom line is this: last year renewables almost 300GW of new capacity, nuclear roughly 0GW (I did not actually check the numbers, but am pretty confident it's almost 0 since it almost always is). To quote Amory Lovins: "it's game over".
Did I say otherwise? I didn't. I said it's not down enough, even if you think it's down "drastically".
I didn't understand one thing. Do you actually accept or deny that due to not enough decrease of coal the world got a lot unnecessary harmful CO2 and radiatioin, or not?
> To quote Amory Lovins: "it's game over".
Maybe in Germany, but not necessarily elsewhere.
Um, no, you did.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29890517
"actually it's not even going down"
Googling for proof that should validate your wrong beliefs is not called understanding. It's called reinforcing my wrongly held beliefs.
So after saying "removing something" means "not removing something", now saying "it's not even going" down means "I never said it's not even going down". Am I again breaking HN rules by repeating the contradicting things you keep saying?
New capacity in nuclear worldwide last year was roughly zero. There is around 50GW of in construction nuclear currently that will be finished god knows when and, which is about 1/6 of renewables that got deployed last year without a lot of fuss, being over budget and late. It's very much game over, and poor mental gymnastics you're showing here cannot change that.
>Googling for proof that should validate your wrong beliefs is not called understanding.
I didn't Google for the proof. I am well aware of the confirmation bias. I simply took this reference from the same discussion, different thread. Moreover, my original argument wasn't based on this reference and I'm ready to stand corrected if it's wrong. It doesn't matter whether it goes down on not in the end. What matters is the choice which harms the health of people and the environment.
It's very sad if you are right about the end of nuclear. I see no reason for that except unscientific fears, and many scientific reports suggest that nuclear is the solution to the climate change.
You see no reason because you generally don't look at facts and numbers, and this is quite clear. Nuclear is stupid expensive and slow, and investing in it is guaranteed to prolong the death of coal. We have neither the time nor the money to deal with it. Germany is living proof that you don't need it to get rid off coal.
Even if you're the smartest person in the world, you are not smarter than the majority of mankind that is currently looking the other way. If you don't understand the reasons, try to understand first. The mountain is not coming to Muhammad, so Muhammad will have to go to the mountain. Happy trails.
This is just bullshit. Germany is a living proof that removing coal before removing nuclear results in unnecessary damage to the environment and money to coal plant owners: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/01/14/germany-dramatic.... I showed you proofs that nuclear energy is a green energy. You didn't provide any links against this point at all.
> Even if you're the smartest person in the world, you are not smarter than the majority of mankind that is currently looking the other way.
This is false: https://listoffallacies.com/appeal-to-majority aka the Bandwagon Fallacy.
I see that you are also full of bias against nuclear. You also don't have any scientific arguments and just playing with words and trying to find problems in my logic (which do exist, but they don't negate my main point). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
It's just not interesting to argue with you anymore.
- it's a fact building nuclear is expensive even when it's on budget, and it's costs can balloon to ridiculous levels
- it's a fact it's slow even when it's on time which it can really blow up
- it's a fact the costs of Fukushima will be multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
- it's a fact that had Japan switched off their plants in 2010 and invested $200B in renewables you would've called them crazy, but this would've been an amazing call for them
- it's a fact that most of Germany's plants were old and planned for decomissioning anyway
- it's a fact nuclear plants get decomissioned all over the world because of the same reasons. it's likely that nuclear capacity added for last year is negative since more was decomissioned than added
- it's a fact Germany will have to pay €170B in the next decades for the storage of nuclear waste. this number would've only been higher without the forced decomissioning. instead the public invested in renewables with amazing results
So those are all facts. The rational people around the world, that invest their $$$, have looked at facts and numbers and called your "scientific" reasoning total nonsense.
IMHO it depends on the purpose of the decrease. If it's about green energy, then removing the nuclear while keeping the coal is a wrong choice (see links above), and the remaining coal was chosen to be kept instead of the remaining nuclear. I would call it "coal replaced nuclear". You may have a different opinion on the semantics. It doesn't matter much. What matters is the wrong choice which led to unnecessary CO2 and radiation in the air (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Damage_to_human_health).
> Nuclear is so green, the japanese people will shell out $200B for the cleanup of the mess. So much for that argument.
There is a difference between an anecdote and reliable statistics.