Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
Why would anyone waste money on the worse option? An analogy: you need lunch and you can choose between a nutritious and tasty $5 sandwich from an independent deli or a $10 expensive mass-produced sandwich from a chain. The independent deli is tastier, cheaper, more filling, and healthier, and it’s easier for you to get since it’s on your way to work. Why would you ever get the $10 sandwich?
According to you, I’m an idiot, and yet no one has debunked a single one of my arguments. No one has even tried to, they immediately crumple like a tissue as soon as they’re asked directly to disprove the FACT that nuclear is more expensive, slower to provision and more environmentally damaging than renewables. If I’m so stupid it should be pretty easy to correct my errors?
Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that “there’s no point, I’ll never change your mind” or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose “that’s not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!”
Tell me how much energy it provides during night and during winter. Thats’s why. Coal plant produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plant. And that feared CO2 too.
We need to change how power distribution works. That’s just the point. There are easy ways to store power that’s generated by day. And since we don’t just focus on one single renewable energy source, it’s not even half as bad as you’re drawing the picture here.
Edit: since this is my only comment in here, I also want to point out that the chart is rising last year, I think/hope that it will continue rising. (Until CDU steps in again because people think “Hey there last years were so terrible, everything got more pricy and so on, that’s definitely on SPD, green, FDP, not just a random situation in the Ukraine” and vote for them…)
Tell me you are totally brain-washed without telling me you are totally brain-washed.
The correct take: Coal plants without any environmental requirements 50-60 years ago release more radiation into the area in the form of fly ash (containing natural amounts of radiation like all earth around you) than the radiation escaping from a modern nuclear power plant through it’s massive concrete hull.
Or in other worlds: If nothing goes wrong and we completely ignore the actual radioactive waste produced (of which a coal plant obviously produces zero) then the radiation levels in the area around the plant are miniscule and it’s really safe. So safe indeed that just the redistribtion of natural radiation via ash when coal is burned has a slightly stronger effect.
That’s it. That’s the actual gist of the study that is from the 1970s (referencing even older data).
Just the fact that this fairy tale about coal power producing radioactive waste based on some (already then criticised and flawed) old study is still going around shows how lobbyists have damaged your brains.
The criticism is extraordinarily simple and justified.
Which is better, Renewables and Nuclear or Renewables and Fossil Fuels?
Germany could have had an almost entirely fossil free grid by now, but instead they chose renewables & fossil fuels.
Please provide a source for your claim that 100% renewable energy is not possible.
Actually you can save yourself the time, because here’s two sources which show it is possible.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920316639?via%3Dihub
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-05843-2
Or (as this is in the context of Germany) one of the studies even modeling different acceptance levels of renewable energy in the transitioning until 2050:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/paths-to-a-climate-neutral-energy-system.html
I think you replied to the wrong comment by accident lol
No, I didn’t. You claimed that the choice was between either renewables and coal or renewables and nuclear. I am asking you to prove your claim that renewables are not a stand-alone option.
I did not claim that, I suspect that you misunderstood something.
I’ll clarify what I meant for your benefit. Germany has constructed a lot of new renewable power in the past two decades, which is great, but they prioritized shutting down nuclear power plants instead of fossil fuelled power. Because of this, they still get ~50% of their electricity from fossil fuels, which is not so great.
If they instead had prioritized phasing out fossil fuelled power plants, that number would’ve been more like 20-30%, and more crucially, they could’ve phased out their entire fleet of coal power plants. Ergo, criticism of German energy policy is entirely justified.
You replied to my comment. My comment simply stated that investing in building nuclear power plants is a waste of money that is better spent on renewables. You said that criticism of my comment was justified because Germany could choose between either renewables and coal, or renewables in Nuclear. I am asking you to support your claim. I am not inviting you to move the goalposts. If you replied to my comment and said criticism of my comment was justified and then started talking about something else unrelated to my comment then I don’t really know what to tell you?
…and your comment replied to one criticising German energy policy, hence the context of “the criticism being justified”. The bad policy decisions have already been made (from 2005-current) and it does seem like Germany will be stuck with coal power for quite some time because of their poor policymaking.
The question was not about the price of building new nuclear power, but of maintaining old plants, and existing nuclear) power provides incredibly cheap, green energy. Simply put, my “claim” as you want to put it, Germany could have rid themselves of coal power with the help of the VRE they invested ln, but instead shut down their old nucler plants. The “proof” is no more difficult than studying their energy profile for the past 20 yrs.
In hindsight, the OC was somewhat rude towards you in particular, which I don’t agree with, but alas.
Anyway, you seem to want to discuss future electricity solutions rather than the existing one, and I’d happily have a separate discussion on what mix of green energy sources ought to be used, if you’d like.
IMO based on what I have read over the years, optimal green energy mixes land on 40-70% VRE depending on regional climate factors, with the rest filled out by dispatchable sources such as hydropower, geothermal, biomass and nuclear power plants.
My comment was a response to someone calling me stupid for saying that nuclear power spending was a waste of money. Because it is a waste of money.
What you’ve read over the years is almost right, if you take “nuclear” out of the sentence you’ve pretty much got it.
Silverseren: Germany made a foolish choice shutting down their nukes
Blake: Renewables are a deli sandwich
The room: …?
Sorry if the analogy was too hard for you. Feel free to ignore it and address the remaining 90% of the comment which was not an analogy.
Why would I do that? You’ve made it clear that you don’t read people’s comments. Instead of reading and responding, you copy paste from thead to thread the same disjointed bullet points.
I have read absolutely every single word you have written and responded to them in kind. After your last comment, I went back over the thread from beginning to end and my conversation with you was lucid and coherent the entire way through.
I do appreciate the attempt at gaslighting, though. It’s a good feeling knowing that I’m having such a strong impact that you’re willing to try and psychologically manipulate someone.
Anyways, look, drop me a line, if you’ll send some of that sweet sweet nuclear lobby money my way I’m sure it would be a very worthwhile investment for your company or think tank or what-not. I have reasonable rates and give good results!
Are you hallucinating? What part of your comments do you think was ignored?
Because it certainly seems like you got your ass handed to you in this thread by someone who had the knowledge and could back it up with sources.
And your general framing of the issue, ommitance of the stong uptick in new renewables after the new government took power pisses me off as a german.
I’m taking about another thread in this post.
You forgot:
Renewables have their place, but they cannot sustain the entire grid. At this point, going all in on renewables means either prolonging fossil fuel usage, or condemning vast swaths of the population to brownouts and energy poverty.
Look at all of these wrong arguments. It’s so thoughtful of you to bring them all together like this.
You’re wrong. There are numerous studies which say a 100% renewable future is entirely possible with current technology. Since you’re incapable of googling this basic fact here’s a link for you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
Judging by your sneering tone, I doubt you’re going to be receptive to any further points.
You didn’t provide any sources.
If you’re trying to wave your dick around you better provide more sources than Blake did above. Moving electricity long distances isn’t really losing much anyway.
Pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t transfer power from the other side of the planet.
Nice, ignoring 99% of my comment to attack a strawman. The sun covers half the globe at any one time. I’m not suggesting that somewhere in midnight takes solar power from somewhere in midday. For example power can be moved across the US grid, which covers three timezones, which gives solar 3 hours more viability.
Not a strawman when you respond to “sometimes it’s night and solar doesn’t work” with “it’s daytime somewhere”. The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.
Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?
Your assumption is mostly correct - “day side power can be used on the night side”. Say that you live in a city where the sun sets at 7pm. The largest synchronous power grid in the world is in Continental Europe - from east to west, it’s approximately 5600 km, and connects Portugal (UTC 0) all the way to Turkey (UTC +3), covering three time zones. That means when the sun sets in Portugal, solar panels in Turkey are still generating power at 75% efficiency.
As you can understand, this is an entirely different claim from “we would get power from the other side of the world”. It’s a strawman because that’s the weakest possible version of the argument I made.
As for the US power grid, no, you’re right, I was totally wrong about that. I had thought that the east and west power grids were connected, but it seems that they still haven’t sorted that out yet. Thanks for correcting me. It looks like they have a project in the planning stage to make it happen (Tres Amigas SuperStation) but it probably won’t be for a while. It’s absolutely achievable, though, and pretty easily.
It would also be achievable to get a single planetary power grid, theoretically, but I think it’s practically impossible to achieve that at the moment. It would need a level of global cooperation far beyond what we have ever accomplished. Definitely a future goal for our species!
Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn’t count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.
You’re suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.
Absolute bullshit. HVDC cable power loss is between 0.3% and 1% per 100km. And when it comes to UHVDC, a typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. Transformers and substations cause a power loss of around 0.5% to 2%.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/13784-High Voltage Direct Current Electricity – technical information.pdf
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6761670
By the way, even with your completely wrong, off by a factor of ten numbers, renewables with that transmission loss would still still cheaper than nuclear, safer than nuclear, and quicker to provision than nuclear. Sucks to suck.
For #2 to add: you can just install them over a parking lot, too
Makes people happy that their car isn’t exposed to the sun/rain anymore and not removing anything from NIMBYs that fear for their car-privileges
How are renewables more responsive to changes in demand? I don’t know how to make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder. That seems like one of the weakest points for the case. And how much much safer are they as a function of unit of power generated?
In any case the argument between renewables or nuclear baffles me. Both are, in my view at least, an improvement over our current primary fossil fuel power generation systems.
Edit: I mistyped fossil as fissile, which while funny undercut my sentiment.
By angling the wind turbine blades, rotating the turbines, pitching the rotors, using breaks, gearboxes, etc.
It doesn’t really matter how weak this point is, to be honest. It’s just a bonus. The ultimate trifecta of “renewables are cheaper, better for the environment and faster to build” mean that renewables always win.
They’re both an improvement over fossil fuels, sure, but one is clearly the superior choice and resources are limited. It’s very important that we push for the right choices to be made to reduce the impact of climate change as quickly and effectively as possible. It’s literally one of the most important issues facing our species.
Every $1 spent on nuclear power is basically stolen from renewables. $1 spent on renewables generates 150%-200% more power than nuclear and it does it safer and cheaper. Why invest in nuclear at all.
Well I suppose there is a lot to unpack there but I want to hold to the one point. Renewables are absolutely in no way more responsive to demand. I’m not sure where you got that, but it seems clear you don’t even want to defend it when challenged.
It is in fact their Achilles heel, and regularly pointed out as the one reason why they are an incomplete solution requiring other solutions like batteries, or other storage and distribution.
Simply pitching blades cannot increase power in accordance with demand spikes. One would expect the current brake, blade pitch, and other controls to be set for current maximum generation capability given the current wind.
It’s easy to turn off wind turbines. It’s much harder to turn off nuclear reactors. That’s what responsive to demand means.
Without disputing any of your other points, you’re just dead wrong about this one. Look up dispatchability. Turbine driven power can go from zero to full multimegawatt power and back in very little time since we control the fuel. You cannot turn up the wind, nor the sun at night.
Nuclear power can be shut down very quickly, even more quickly in gen4. You have good points and you need not disrupt them by claiming renewables are good for demand response.
To clarify, I mean steam turbines but the same is true of wind turbines. Like you said, easy to disconnect them from generation. The difference is maximum power is limited by fuel rather than nature.
Again, I am talking about NUCLEAR VS. RENEWABLES. If you bring up fossil fuels once more I will just block you.
Provide a source of a nuclear power plant in operation which is capable of going from 100% to 0% in seconds.
I was rummaging this is probably the main reason for which they are pushed back in an excessively popular narrative in favour of nuclear: of course it is way harder to exercise capitalism when you can’t centralize power and control, with renewables instead it could probably only exist a form of cooperative enterprise with the business of managing the energy production, immagine the loath of some individuals even acknowledging some utterly leftist term such as “cooperative” even exists, let alone even works. Better.
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Go ahead and cite some sources that prove me wrong, unless you’re full of shit of course?
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Not a single one of them has addressed my claims in any way whatsoever.
All you have to do to prove me wrong is show that nuclear is cheaper or better for the environment than renewables. It should be easy to do if I’m spreading propaganda.
If you can’t or won’t do that, then your arguments can be dismissed. I have provided plentiful sources for my claims.
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Okay, go ahead and quote the exact phrases posted by other users which address the core of my argument, which I remind you, is the fact that nuclear power is cheaper, more environmentally friendly and faster to provision, than nuclear power.
Lemmy.world great arguing tactics as always
Can I follow a particular user? I just want Blake energy in my life.
Hahah, that’s sweet of you to say, thanks - I’m not usually so self-assured, but I do have a lot of opinions. Usually they’re just opinions rather than provable scientific facts though, so I don’t go quite as hard. As to your question, genuinely, I don’t know, but you can probably do something with an RSS feed? You can also add me on Discord if you want, DM me if you want my username.
Why do people have diverse stock portfolios?
Hedging and diversification is important. Unforseen consequences and unknown future conditions can screw up your long term plans for 100% renewables. The more diverse our energy portfolio is, the unknowns become easier to weather.
That is the answer for why we build and research something that is more expensive and may divert resources away from better options. To argue that there is literally no place for energy development other than purely renewable is a difficult position to defend.
Your sandwich analogy is lacking because we’re talking about far future consequences of our decision. Maybe you plan to eat the sandwich a week from today. Which do you buy? You don’t have enough information to determine which will be better in a week. Do you pick the chain store’s because it’s full of preservatives? Do you decide to buy both in case one of them gets moldy just to make sure you have anything to eat?
The consequences of developing or not developing potential viable solutions to energy requirements can be far reaching. Completely dismissing alternative options is just not rational.
I support continued research and development into nuclear power, but I oppose the construction of nuclear power plants for reasons beyond scientific research. My very first comment in my thread said as much. Perhaps you should read more closely?
I agree that diversification is important. Luckily, when it comes to renewables, we have an absolute feast of options:
You say that we should consider the long term implications of our decisions, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. That is another reason to favour renewable sources. The sun is the only thing we can be 100% sure that will always be there for humanity. If it’s gone, then so are we. Likewise for the wind - it’s guaranteed as long as the sun shines and that physics continues to work as expected.
Meanwhile, nuclear fissile material is a limited resource with extremely complex supply chains involved, with huge disruptions potential at any point in the extraction, refinement, handling, shipping, use and disposal of the material. Not to mention all of the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant - mistakes in maintenance or operation can leave it inoperable in a way which is extremely expensive and complex to fix.
Solar panels and wind turbines are so easy to install, maintain and repair that you could do it safely by having a high school level understanding of electronics and following a 20-minute YouTube tutorial.
A thought experiment for you: Can you describe a scenario where either solar power or wind power are no longer viable sources of electrical supply, without a mass extinction event also occurring?
Why would we limit our hedging to non-world destroying scenarios? It seems we’re already on track for a mass extinction event anyway. The reason you hedge is exactly for the worst case.
Are you serious? The reason I said that is because if we’re all fucking dead it doesn’t really matter what power plant we have because no one will be around to use it…
Yes.