How about invest 100 billion on renewables to get independence from russian gas.
One thing that is often left out of the international discussion of Germany's domestic policies is that we actually put a law into our constitution to limit governments from making new debt... So if the current government wants to take on new debt for Defense and Energy Transition, it will have to either do some tricks (the 100B for the military is supposed to come from a different, special pot), or change the constitution again, for which they would need the votes of the opposition.
A lot of the 90s era monetary economics that the euro is intertwined in has been collapsing as a dominant school of thought. Covid plays a role here, but a lot of it has been building since 2009 & the greek debt crisis. I don't think many are ready (especially in germany) to throw out institutions, even ethereal intellectual ones... but OTOH change has come. Military emergencies, historically, are pivot points for monetary infrastructure... FWIW.
Interestingly, I'm not sure the german constitution necessarily has to change. In some sense, the more conceptually radical solutions wouldn't require it. ECB debt, or at least the debt transferred to the ECB in the 90s, just needs to stop being considered debt.
Now if that doesn't sound like the ideal starting point to ever more lying into ones own pocket about money and debt.
> ... ECB debt, or at least the debt transferred to the ECB in the 90s, just needs to stop being considered debt.
Without diving too deep into what such a sentence means in practical terms .. purely semantically it sounds a lot like consciously ignoring some inconvenient numbers, hoping they'll magically dissolve.
It'll "work" for some time and by "work" I mean, people will notice the bad effects but still put up with unsound government budgeting .. but it's surely not a healthy/stable dynamic of an economic system. Pair this looking away with what is basically an imperative (because of climate crisis) to not further _increase_ the worldwide output of material goods but _reduce_ it (as long as most products aren't climate neutral, which will remain the case for quite some time) and you'll look at a dire prospect concerning prices/inflation.
It will take longer to move away from gas as an energy source. That will happen over next decade at least.
It feels more like modern cooperation working together.
- From helmets to actual military aid to Ukraine.
- large increase in military expenditure instead of woeful inadequacy.
- reversal of Swift decision.
Why wouldn’t there be a change in energy policy if Russia continues its war in Ukraine? This huge reliance on Russian gas has Europe, and especially Germany, in this strange conflict of interest.
If political winds change to support nuclear then such processes would evaporate into something far more streamlined and efficient because they simply don't make any sense in the context of "we want to do this nuclear thing and we want to do it ASAP".
It doesn't seem to be so impossible as you think.
Lets imagine that the gas pipeline from Russia explodes due to war or Putin shuts it off. Is it still 'impossible', as in we'd rather freeze and have blackouts?
which one? https://www.gie.eu/publications/maps/gie-lng-map/
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make sense to go back to nuclear power. It is afterall a very expensive technology. It is much more efficient to go full in with renewables. And nuclear power does not work well together with renewables, as it cannot be controlled fast enough.
Would it make more of a difference than just using the same amount of money that would need to be spent to refit the old nuclear plants for longer use to build out renewables across the EU? No, not even close.
> German nuclear energy companies reject demands for nuclear power extension
Maybe nuclear waste storage is not yet solved, but it is a long term problem while global warming is already here. I’d rather work on storage solutions for the next 1000 years than fighting floods, hurricanes and forest fires every day.
Hydrogen is a joke, just the infrastructure to distribute it will dwarf any costs nuclear could ever have. Not to mention production costs . . .
And you are already irradiating your country by burning coal, so no idea what do you mean by "Instead of investing into irradiating our country".
And observed practice in Germany confirms this. Or do you have real data pointing in other direction? Say, period of low output from solar & wind which resulted in anything else than using mostly (imported) fossil-fueled electricity?
EDIT to illustrate:
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electric... - emission factor of Germany's power generation was for several days (during the selected week) far above EU average (https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/overview-...)
But to entertain your argument: yes i agree that it would make sense if i, personally, had more energy storage. However i don't see how that is relevant to my point against investing (tax money probably) into reviving a dead nuclear industry.
As a side note with you, _Tev, on a personal level: sure we could have a talk about that "fig leave" metaphor and if there is some kind of conspiracy in german politics and power industry that profits from coal. We could talk about whether hydrogen "is a joke" or a worthy investment, but honestly your rhetoric makes me not want to talk with you at all, as i don't think i will enjoy it.
Back to the point: this constant reiteration of "it is either coal or nuclear" is a false dichotomy and answering an argument against the nuclear industry with "but what about coal" is what-about-ism. My point is: the german nuclear industry is/was incredibly dirty, with an unsolved waste problem, expensive, reliant on Russia, failed to deliver its promises for decades and by now it is deader then disco. The newest german nuclear power plant was constructed in the '80s. Trying to revive that industry is not an actual solution to the problems of our energy market. That is like trying to revive the soviet union to get rid of Putin. The way forward must be something else. And no, that does not mean i am in favor of coal, russian gas, or american fracking.
So you say i should invest into energy storage? Sounds reasonable, any more concrete pointers?
Logically it's absolutely true that inattentive drivers are a greater risk to Americans than airline hijackers but 3,000+ people dying in one day in one location hits a lot harder than 30,000 people dying mostly one or two at a time, over 12 months, spread out across fifty states.
As an aside, France announced last week a plan to construct 6 new EPR installations, and a plan to revamp and extend the existing fleet.
The Netherlands has reversed it's decision to phase out gaz, and is extending it's capacity.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/27/why-environmentalists-pose-...
Nuclear has a place to do what the French did, massive subsidies to achieve a national security motivated energy independence. With renewables at the fore front that argument does not exist anymore. Now nuclear only exists to share an industry base with naval reactors in submarines.
Turns out environmentalists of the 20th century are directly responsible for global warming.
But as airplane crashes became rarer the more we flew, so will nuclear accidents the more we build and use nuclear power plants. The ones we have are a very old and early technologuy.
The French famously had some negative learning by doing in their nuclear build out.
> The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Contrast that to any other kind of power generation, and the regulatory uncertainty alone is enough to sink any interest in spending a large amount of money up-front on something so uncertain.
> By the mid-1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as quickly as once believed. Cost overruns were sometimes a factor of ten above original industry estimates, and became a major problem. For the 75 nuclear power reactors built from 1966 to 1977, cost overruns averaged 207 percent. Opposition and problems were galvanized by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.[48]
> Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.[53]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
As said, the only enemy nuclear faces is it's own economics.
Ah yes, the magical private capital, we should trust in it's infinite wisdom and do no national policy or planning ourselves.
Thats why the greatest infrastructure projects, like tbe hoover damn or interstate highway system, or Netherland barrier system for holding back the sea, are all private capital, right?
The auctions for off shore leases for wind power are getting up into nuclear power range. This does not include the constructions of them. The capital exists, it simply seeks alternatives which can actually bring a profit.
"New York Bight Offshore Wind Lease Auction Smashes Offshore Energy Record with $4.37 Billion in High Bids"
https://gcaptain.com/new-york-bight-offshore-wind-lease-auct...
Good luck trying to auction the possibility of building a nuclear plant.
Yeah private capital is great at cookie-cutter projects, like buying factory-made pre-built windturbines or solar panels and operating them, this a low-risk operation and every bean-counter can model it's profitability in excell. But when it comes to developing new types of solar panels and suddenly without government research dollars there is zilch.
It is also nowhere to be seen when we need actually risky and difficult projects like build a massive hydroelectric damn or multi-gigawatt power storage which will be required to support these renewables. It is nowhere to be seen in Tidal and Geothermal, which you can't buy premade from a factory in China. It is also useless in keeping reserves of grain, gas, or any other critical resource.
So why should anyone take seriouslty this point about private capital if it only contributes in areas of least concern?
If the human race was sitting around for private capital, we'd have gone extinc by now.
> As of Oct. 2021, ERCOT had about 1100 MW of grid-connected battery storage in service with a pipeline of 4,000 MW by March 2023.
https://www.power-eng.com/energy-storage/batteries/texas-add...
The point is that nuclear is not risky or difficult. It is simply awfully inefficient.
The risky nuclear move, which states should take, is investigating the possibility of supercritical CO2 turbines and similar technologies. That is to get away from the dead end of boiling water into a steam turbine which haven't have not been economical for 40 years.
First steam turbines was out competed by gas turbines and now gas turbines themselves are having a hard time competing with the solid state components of PV or an axle right into a generator for wind turbines.
So how do we reduce gas use the most, building $X Billion nuclear or $X Billion solar, wind and batteries? The expert consensus is the latter.
Where can this expert consensus be found? I don't think this is accurate
A readable summary of the latest info is "Electrify": https://www.rewiringamerica.org/electrify-the-book
Germany should start building nuclear themselves, instead of bailing out the French nuclear industry. $100bn can build a lot of nuclear powerplants.
Why the hell do we have these highly polarized discussions whenever Germany, France and electricity production comes up?
You are aware what Habeck is currently doing?
There are already plans for laws which will force more investment and reduce burdens.
He talked about it in length just in January.
Exactly.
He already mentioned his timeline.
Let's start critisis him when the time is right and not just a few month after the election.
And yes corona and Ukraine conflict adds additional burden on everyone.