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FreezingRobot t1_it2lwzv wrote

Here's an idea, Germany: Turn your nuclear power plants back on. They're one of these countries who's going through an "Eww nuclear is scary" phase, and now they're out there with their pants down because they didn't plan ahead.

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EasterBunnyArt t1_it2vgs7 wrote

But I love my willie blowing in the freezing wind….

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Tulol t1_it3sbf2 wrote

Flap your willie for renewable energy.

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EasterBunnyArt t1_it3wy3t wrote

Challenge accepted. Since I live in the US I shall need to find a remote and wooded area to perform this maneuver. Don’t want to get a record for indecent exposure. Not like the average person will see it without a microscope in this weather. 😀

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foundafreeusername t1_it48rdt wrote

I wish once in my life I arrive to a discussion here and people use actual data instead of hearsay.

Germanys nuclear phaseout looks like this:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?time=2000..latest&country=~DEU

They roughly halved coal usage since the nuclear phaseout began and replaced both with renewables.

For comparison here is the us:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?time=2000..latest&country=~USA

They also roughly halved coal usage ... and replaced it with gas.

Notice the difference?

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4i6ag wrote

yea they did better than USA, but they can do better than themselves by making that purple(nuclear) on the right side as big as the grey(coal)... also the nuclear would bite into the gas as well. By now if done right, it'd be entirely solar, wind, & nuclear.

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strangefolk t1_it3a4ev wrote

They threw it all into solar/wind in a place with little sun and wind. And those don't provide baseload power anyway. Fashionable energy policy makes brown-outs.

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Mecha-Jesus t1_it42ei7 wrote

Actually, Germany gets a ton of wind on the North Sea coast which is why they’ve been prioritizing offshore wind development. It’s also very sunny in both the coastal region and in the south.

And even with its relative lack of extremely sunny areas or onshore wind potential, solar and wind sources already meet 50% of Germany’s electricity needs, up from only 15% just 7 years ago.

Germany should absolutely do what they can to shut the coal plants and reopen their nuclear plants. But it’s not like Germany’s solar/wind development is only a “fashionable” fad. And at the rate new solar and wind projects are being developed, it’s expected that solar and wind will provide 100% of Germany’s electricity needs within 15 years.

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Snuffy1717 t1_it48h7f wrote

Haven't they also had days in recent years where 100% of their energy was generated by green / renewable energy?

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4hus1 wrote

they haven't stopped buying coal-generated energy from poland yet, so no

maybe some city did it or something.

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SAugsburger t1_it45n4u wrote

At the very least keep the existing plants running beyond April. I don't seriously think that the issue in Ukraine is going to be resolved by then.

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fgdfghdhj5yeh t1_it4hnlh wrote

yea no shit.

Germany consumes more coal than anyone else in Europe... turns off their nuclear for publicity stunt, has to buy coal burning energy from poland.. like what are you even doing lmao

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egnirceravog t1_it3bklf wrote

> Turn your nuclear power plants back on

those reactors need fuel, just look at france

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rex30303 t1_it3s3j4 wrote

You don WANT those plants running change my mind.

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Socky_McPuppet t1_it41p5k wrote

Change it yourself. The facts are not hard to find. And you can ask for help with the big words.

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rex30303 t1_it41u1j wrote

No what i mean they arent in great shape.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it2zq50 wrote

As is tradition on Reddit there can't be any article about Germany and energy without some completely uninformed person pointing out that nuclear power is the answer.

Germany is going full renewables which isn't really compatible with nuclear power for simple economic reasons.

The current energy crisis in Europe has nothing to do with a lack of nuclear power, except for France where nuclear power is actually the reason for their energy crisis.

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Senyu t1_it30ao9 wrote

Find me a cleaner baseload power source. Not to knock alternatives as the whole solution requires a diverse energry portfolio, but it seems silly to think renewables can supplement 100% of our needs 24hrs a day everyday.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it339v7 wrote

> but it seems silly to think renewables can supplement 100% of our needs 24hrs a day everyday.

Nobody said that this is the goal.

The thing about nuclear power that is that it's very expensive to build a power plant. But once you've built it the fuel and running cost is quite low, but only if you actually use the power plant on high load most of the time.

Now let's assume you've build enough wind, solar and hydro power plants that you need nothing else for about 80-90% of the time. What would you use for the remaining 10-20% of dark and windless days? Certainly not nuclear power because it's way too expensive to build a nuclear power plant and then only use it sometimes. That's what I meant by saying that renewables and nuclear power are not compatible for economic reasons.

What you want are power plants that are cheap to build, so it's okay when you only run them once in a while. And when you only need them 10% of the time it's okay if the fuel is a bit more expensive. And the answer here is natural gas which perfectly complements renewables (you just don't want to be too dependent on a single, evil country for your gas source). On days with a large surplus of renewable power you can even run electrolysis to create clean hydrogen which you then store and you in those same gas power plants later on. And exactly that's Germany's plan which requires no nuclear, no coal and eventually less and less natural gas from the ground.

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Kirov123 t1_it38d99 wrote

Pretty sure nuclear is moving towards clustered mini reactors which can operate fine with low demand and start up/shut down much faster than many currently operating reactors. By having many smaller reactors they can easily scale up/down generation to meet grid demand.

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Amtsschreiber t1_it3agz9 wrote

The power demand scaling is not as much as factor as the cost. Also call me again when those "clustered mini reactors" actually exist in mass production.

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Fuckyourdatareddit t1_it46pt7 wrote

Pity there aren’t any operating prototypes for small commercial nuclear reactors yet 😂 But yeah of course, just wait for the the prototypes to be built and tested and improved and THEN start building more nuclear power, that’ll solve all our problems… in fifteen years when the first of them come online

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Senyu t1_it3mxv2 wrote

Or you could stand up a nuclear plant that can reliably provide surplus base load power whenever it's needed. Not only is it helpful in the event issues occur to renewables (disasters, maintenance, poor weather conditions) but it also can remove the need for natural gas. It's also a smaller footprint in space consumed compared fields of solar & wind, and ecological damage of dams is just a given. Nuclear is the cleanest source of energy available to our species, it ensures guranteed power for a long time (provided it's following all regulations, looking at you Fukishima) and if we to stop being so hesistant towards it we'd already have some up and going. Nuclear and renewables not being compatible isn't an economic decision, it's a choice to have a more limited energy portfolio.

The futher nuclear tech matures (despite all the pushback over the decades to its development & implementation) the more sensible it will be to implement alongside our other energy options simply for its reliability.

Maybe it won't happen until we can finally mass produce mini reactors, but when such a time comes there should be serious evaluation to the benefits of adopting it for all countries capable of running the plant (capable workers for employment).

Edit: also, just sell any extra nuclear power when it isn't needed.

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hoodoo-operator t1_it3bzc4 wrote

>Germany is going full renewables which isn't really compatible with nuclear power for simple economic reasons.

And in the meantime they shut down already built, currently running nuclear plants, which means they need to run old coal plants to makeup the lost power.

If you have a perfectly functional carbon free powerplant running right now, it seems dumb to shut it down and run coal instead while you're waiting to build out your renewables.

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rex30303 t1_it3sjp2 wrote

You mean shut down those which were planed to shut down for quite a while and are in an according state where the companys running them are like na mate shit idea.

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