As everyone is praising Germany with good weather and temporarily increased use of renewables, the same people rarely notice that France *also* has renewable and combined with nuclear their energy sectors is extremely low-carbon (30 gCO2eq/kWh) - Germany never goes below 150.
@kravietz
such calculation often omit the externalized costs of nuclear energy. A study by the French government concluded that a Fukushima style disaster would cost them €430bn, which is more than plant operators and insurance companies can pay, meaning the state will have to cover it.
https://fr.reuters.com/article/topNews/idFRPAE91601Q20130207
The ecological/social/health impacts of uranium mining and the somewhat unsolved problem of waste disposal have to be considered as well.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/36725
Regarding mining, you are certainly aware that any modern renewable energy technology (solar panels, wind turbines, batteries) requires vast amounts of rare earth metals which are... mined. And since they co-exist with radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium, radium, they result in radioactive mining waste too.
BTW this is from an ad by a mining company who is boasting that their industry is making solar panels possible - what an irony 😂
Now, you can certainly compare material inputs into various energy sources and this is being done all the time...
@kravietz there are no rare earths in that plot
But since we're now most concerned with CO2 emissions, it makes sense to compare the energy sector emissions of various countries. Germany for example is boasting all the time about #Energiewende yet it emits on average 5x more CO2 than France... yet it's bullying France to abandon #nuclear
@kravietz i'm not saying that our (germany's) government doing a particulary great job at the energiewende (cutting subsidies for renewables while creating monetary incentives for buying new cars).
German government is only making one mistake which is bowing to the blackmail of Greens, who are ideologically biased, anti-scientific and completely clueless about engineering. As result they are hurting the environment and climate to the same extent as climate deniers. This applies just as well to nuclear power, which is the only zero-emission *and* stable energy source available today, and to genetic engineering, which reduces land usage *and* herbicide usage.
@kravietz while i agree that the issues you mentioned exist in the green party to some degree, it's worth mentioning that they are neither currently in power, nor ok with the government's overall policies on the matter.
They have enough power to lobby against and kill any project that is not compliant with their worldview.
This is precisely why the policy of German government is so inconsistent. The country needs 24/7 power. But they have to shut down they only zero-emissions *and* stable power source and aren't allowed to build new ones.
So they invest in fossil gas and coal, which are at least reluctantly accepted by the Greens.
You want a good example of decarbonization? Here you go:
@kravietz yes, and now they are replacing the nuclear plants with safer and cleaner alternatives.
You mean French? No, they keep nuclear as their base load and *add* more wind and solar.
Which is precisely why on good weather days - when Germany is boasting about 150 gCOeq/kWh - France achieves 30 gCOeq/kWh.
But on bad days of dunkelflaute Germany goes well above 300, while France or Sweden remain at 60.
Once again, this graph says it all.
> The government has also announced to bring down the nuclear power generation to 50% of the net generation by 2035. The plan is to decommission around 14 nuclear reactors by 2035 and fill the gap by renewable energy sources.
Absolutely, because nuclear *fission* is going to be eventually decommissioned when nuclear fusion goes into production. Not incidentally, the first large fusion reactor ITER is scheduled to go "first plasma' in France in 2025 and first production (DEMO) goes live by 2030.
Obviously, Greenpeace is protesting against nuclear fusion too - they say it's "unrealistic". Except it's way more realistic than hydrogen or power-to-gas.
@kravietz oh i don't have anything against fusion research, i implicitly assumed we were talking about fission because that's the one everyone is using at the moment (and what you're arguing for if you present today's France as a role model)
But betting on fusion turning out to be ready within the necessary time frame is a risky bet as well.
> betting on fusion turning out to be ready
Sure, let's instead bet on hydrogen technology that is not even close to ITER in terms of technological readiness.
Again, if you don't understand why German grid is installing more gas power, this is exactly the reason. They've been terrorised not to use the only zero-emissions stable source, so they use the closest one.
List of planned gas plants in Germany - what exactly are you trying to say here?
@kravietz the part above the table says that many projects are currently stalled because it's not very profitable to run a gas power plant.
So what you are trying to say is that even though Germany is consistently increasing gas imports, building a second Nord Stream pipeline and has like 10 new gas power plants in construction, it al doesn't make any sense because an unsourced paragraph in article heading says so? I would definitely look for a more reliable source.
german federal environmental agency
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/1410/publikationen/2017-05-22_climate-change_15-2017_strommix.pdf
page 20
or the more recent one on wikipedia
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg
(this one somewhat incorrectly includes waste as a renewable, but the share is very low (light green bar))
Ok, you're right, gas has increased, but coal went down by more.
You need rare-earth metals for any modern engineering today, starting from computers and mobile phones. This is engineering. And engineering is sometimes dirty, we just need to make sure it's only as dirty as necessary.
The problem is that Greens create a black-and-white utopia where any amount of radioactivity is totally deadly and solar panels are totally clean and nice.
And everyone is very surprised to find out that oh, solar panels are also "made with dirt"!
@kravietz i don't see how that supports your original argument
@kravietz solar panels are made of silicon, the second most common element in the earth's crust.
As for rare earths, it's not like we wouldn't need them if we built more nuclear plants instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element#Uses