The Germans are shutting down perfectly serviceable and world-leading (in terms of safety) nuclear reactors purely out of doctrinaire ideology of the Green Party.
Yes, there was some anti-nuclear sentiment after Fukushima which made for an opportunity. But it was long in the running. Both the SPD and CSU/CDU had interests here. Lots have been written on this in established media, should you wish to delve deeper.
The Merkel government then stopped it, then resumed it again.
And now Greens try to claim it wasn’t their fault, despite it being the foundation of their party since the mid-1980s.
It was reverted as soon as the CDU took over, and reverted back after Fukushima. But it is originally a "Green" idea and ideology, and it remains to be one today (see: Bavaria trying to get their plants recertified after 2022, because of the gas situation, and Berlin - staunchly Green - fighting it.)
Read up on your history once more. Schröder/Fischer were both voted out of office in 2005.
Let's respectfully disagree here.
Anyway, don't let this cloud your judgement. There are economic issues here, and economics concerns trumps environmental, in Germany and elsewhere. This would have happened even if no anti nuclear campaigning had ever taken place.
In fact, it might even have happened faster if there wasn't also a big push for renewables, which have taken a lot of resources. The people really responsible should answer for this and not some convenient scapegoats.
you can read about this concept here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_element
Anyone using electric baseboards is getting highly subsidized electricity because any other energy source is cheaper.
Only place I saw baseboard heating was in school portables.
It’s something I’ve always wondered:
At night, it might be more cost effective to heat a bedroom electrically than an entire household with gas. But that’s a forced air heating issue: you can’t block 75% of a furnace’s airflow and expect it to keep working. Europe usually has boilers and radiators so dialing down heating to just a room is possible.
Or better yet, heat the person with a mattress pad instead of the building air at night.
Electric water heaters and baseboard heaters are common, and extremely efficient. In fact, resistive heaters in the scientific sense (watts in vs. watts out) are the most efficient form of heating.
They're extremely reliable and cheap because of how simple they are.
They may not be _cost effective to run_ in many regions due to high cost of electricity (per watt as compared to gas). But here in BC Canada, resistive elements are extremely common due to relatively cheap power (Hydro in our case). For whole home heating, heat pumps are usually used in new builds because of their advantages, but they're still very tied to the grid and have elements in them for defrosting and the like.
If you scaled up nuclear you'd similarly see prices of electricity drop, and if you have the grid infrastructure (or build it), electric heating (for your home, water, cooking, whatever) becomes pretty attractive.
But I'm glad you've been convinced :)
Electric resistive heaters are 100% efficient - they convert 100% of the electricity into heat.
Electricity heating does produce a bunch of heat at other places though, and it all comes from work, whereas the gas could only produce maybe 70% as much work if used some other way.
Yes there are inefficiencies at generation and transportation. But I don't think those are usually counted when talking about the efficiency of a home device. And it certainly won't be enough to bring it down to 0%.
As an illustrative example, you could get the same heating effect by putting the electricity through a computer or other appliance, or by putting the gas through a heat engine to produce electricity which is used inside the home and warming the house with the waste heat.
I know about heating by computer because for the last several years I've heated my apartment solely by mining Ethereum on my computer. The only dedicated heaters that my apartment has are resistive electric heaters built into the walls, so it's better for me to get a little Ethereum plus heat than just heat.
You could frame it as fraction of the heating that is possible at carnot efficiency, I guess. Ie. the amount of heat you put into your room / the amount of heat you with a perfect machine could at typical temperature differentials.
Then an element would be about 10-15% efficient (as measured at the wall vs. an ideal heat pump) and gas would be...awkward to calculate (I'd have to open up a textbook if not just multiplying max COP and max thermal efficiency of a heat engine), but somewhere in the 20-30% efficient range. Electric including a thermal generator would be in the 8-10% range somewhere.
Electric heat pumps would be around 50-70% by this metric, or in the 25-40% range somewhere if using a thermal generator.
Thinking about it, I like this metric because it really highlights how much more wasteful burning gas to heat a home with electricity is if you're not using the waste heat for something. If you're not using renewable electricity, even heat pumps don't break even if they're not high quality and well maintained.
Really drives home the importance of insulation and good curtains in cold areas.
Edit: looking at absorption heat pumps, they seem to be a little better than my guesstimate. I think they outperform fossil fuel powered electric heat pumps.
Electric heating is about the simplest machine you can possibly make (it's just NiCr wire and a thermostat which is already there), and the cost would almost exclusively be the labour of installation. Even heat pumps (including for water) could be built in relatively short order.
The problem is it would entail quadrupling the electricity generating and transmission infrastructure. This is the hard part that takes decades.
- Large parts of the Uranium are coming from Russia
- Nuclear power is not competitive and nuclear power is very expensive (especially if you conside the costs the government will be left holding the bag on, becuase nuclear power plant companies will spin off their power plants to new companies to go bankrupt once the profiting is done and the cleaning up the nuclear remains starts), no matter how much the pro-nuclear people want to lie about it
- Nuclear power is statistically not dangerous compared to fossil fuels, but not compared to renewables.
- The world's uranium supply is running out. Already since the late 1980s, uranium mines have been unable to meet the world's annual demand. The nuclear industry has so far filled the fuel gap with material from military and civilian stockpiles.
- Nuclear waste is a problem no country except Finnland is anywhere near solving. Germany has been trying to find a permanent nuclear waste storage location since 1999 and have not come closer to finding one since then, because every time the current favorites are revealed the "not in my backyard" screeching starts and local politicials force a restart of the search.
- Many of the world's nuclear power plants are old, because hardly any new ones have been built in ages, because ...
- The construction of nuclear power plants is unbelievably expensive and takes decades, and much of the know-how on how to build nuclear power plants has been lost in europe over the past decades because so few are being built, which drives up the costs even further.
- We still have 7 years of CO2 budget in Germany, so why do some politicians talk about building new ones, although they would only be finished in 20 years at the earliest (and we in DE can't even get the berlin airport built in anything close to the deadline, how long does a nuclear power plant take then ?)
- Budgets for nuclear power plants take budget away from renewables
- We have to change from a centralised to a decentralised grid, nuclear power is a step in the wrong direction
- Nuclear power plants make us dependent on dictators
- Climate change has an impact on reactor operations. With global warming, extreme weather events are on the rise. Unlike renewables, however, nuclear power plants are not adaptable. Rather, their danger increases in our changing climatic conditions.
- Our neighbour france has heavily invested in nuclear power and is is a complete shtshow. There are constant headline to the extend of "Low temperatures caused another french nuclear power plant to go off the grid, worsening the skyrocketing energy prices in france" (The same with "too high temperatures" any many other reasons). Even before the war they had an energy shortage.
The 3 remaining nuclear power plants in germany are: - Emsland (1335 MW) - Isar/Ohu 2 (1410 MW) - Neckarwestheim 2 (1310 MW)
All three are pressurised water reactors and thus not as bad as boiling water reactors, but total rubbish compared to liquid salt reactors.
Moreover, all three have been in operation for over 30 years and all three are due for a "periodic safety review" (every 10 years), which was allowed to be ignored during their last 3 years of operation due to a "grace period under the Atomic Energy Act". If they were allowed to continue running, the operation time extension of the of all three would start with at least one month downtime, because these inspections would have to be started again. These inspections would most likely also reveal necessary repairs, wich would further delay the timeframe.
By the way, all three power plants have not been employing new staff for some time because they knew the would soon be shut down soon anyway.
In short: these nuclear power plants have been preparing for their shutdown since 2011 and have let everything slide over the last few years because everything will soon be demolished anyway. There are not the necessary fuel rods, not the necessary personnel, not the necessary will of the operating companies and no safety checks that would be necessary for continued operation.
Also: Merkel decided in 2011 (one day after the nuclear power plant disaster in Fukushima) to not allow nuclear power after the 31.12.2022. Merkel, famously in the green party . (for anybody with no clue about german politics: Merkel is in the conservative party)
The conservative opposition needs things to disagree on with the government, the current government had no scandals so far and the conservatives are still salty for being voted out of government, so they just make sh*t up and currently that is the myth of our magical saviour nuclear power.
There is no exploration going on to find new uranium deposits because there isn't much willingness to make new mines
Nuclear power is about as safe as wind and solar if looked at per TW. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
A nuclear reactor can be built in three years, though admittedly this hasn't happened in Europe. They are mostly (85%) built in under ten years. Figure 3 shows we should expect around 5 years. https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucl...
Not immutable. There are other sources that are much friendlier
>- Nuclear power is not competitive and nuclear power is very expensive (especially if you conside the costs the government will be left holding the bag on, becuase nuclear power plant companies will spin off their power plants to new companies to go bankrupt once the profiting is done and the cleaning up the nuclear remains starts), no matter how much the pro-nuclear people want to lie about it
I doubt this hyperbolic assertion. Prove it.
>- Nuclear power is statistically not dangerous compared to fossil fuels, but not compared to renewables.
Again, prove it. This is unsupported, and in fact from what I've seen, false. So provide some evidence.
>- The world's uranium supply is running out. Already since the late 1980s, uranium mines have been unable to meet the world's annual demand. The nuclear industry has so far filled the fuel gap with material from military and civilian stockpiles.
This is again, an unsourced claim. In fact, a quick google shows: "There is not now, nor has there even been a shortage of uranium. Fear about reliability of the supply of uranium has been used in the past as an excuse to get something else done." Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewellynking/2020/06/08/uraniu...
>- Nuclear waste is a problem no country except Finnland is anywhere near solving. Germany has been trying to find a permanent nuclear waste storage location since 1999 and have not come closer to finding one since then, because every time the current favorites are revealed the "not in my backyard" screeching starts and local politicials force a restart of the search.
I agree this is a problem, but it isn't one that is unsolvable. It's a cultural issue, not a physical one.
>- Many of the world's nuclear power plants are old, because hardly any new ones have been built in ages, because ... >- The construction of nuclear power plants is unbelievably expensive and takes decades, and much of the know-how on how to build nuclear power plants has been lost in europe over the past decades because so few are being built, which drives up the costs even further.
This isn't inherent, it can change, especially with political need.
>- We still have 7 years of CO2 budget in Germany, so why do some politicians talk about building new ones, although they would only be finished in 20 years at the earliest (and we in DE can't even get the berlin airport built in anything close to the deadline, how long does a nuclear power plant take then ?)
CO2 budgets are now irrelevant currently. China and Russia do not give a shit about CO2 emissions; their energy and GDP are heavily dependent on them. Globalization was the only mechanism that allowed the world to enforce these two countries to behave with emissions, and with the ongoing breakdown of the globalized system, there's no reason they'll reduce emissions. Why cripple Germany's economy to meet a target that the world's largest emitters aren't willing to get anywhere close to?
>- Budgets for nuclear power plants take budget away from renewables
Possible, but renewables have their own downsides, which are well articulated everywhere.
>- We have to change from a centralised to a decentralised grid, nuclear power is a step in the wrong direction
Why?
>- Nuclear power plants make us dependent on dictators
How? How does solar not do the same, in the case of China? 80% of the world's solar panels are made in China, in fact, that rely heavily on the consumption of Coal to produce. Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/us-chinese-solar-panels...
>- Climate change has an impact on reactor operations. With global warming, extreme weather events are on the rise. Unlike renewables, however, nuclear power plants are not adaptable. Rather, their danger increases in our changing climatic conditions.
This makes sense, but I'd suggest that it's probably possible to take this into reactor design.
>- Our neighbour france has heavily invested in nuclear power and is is a complete shtshow.
Source on this, I don't know much about it. I've heard only good things about France's nuclear program.
I agree this is a problem too, and this is why people point out there is also a physical issue which transcends culture.
In terms of radioactive properties remaining over a period of millennia during which a culture can be expected to have lost its identity, or been forgotten completely.
If the problem is not truly unsolvable, a permanent solution may still not be possible without close co-operation with a future sympathetic culture.