RT @gretathunberg
Germany is opening a new coal power plant this summer. It’s run by Finnish state-owned Fortum.
Swedish state-owned Vattenfall is already operating new coal plants in Germany.
Everyone involved claims to be “climate leaders” but this is the opposite of leadership.
This is failure. https://twitter.com/fridayforfuture/status/1262314065843695617
@gretathunberg This is because Germany dismantled its nuclear power plan.
I'm sorry, but this is just reality hitting home. If you are anti-nuclear, you're pro-coal.
cc @kravietz
@drq
That's a false binary.
Germany also dismantled its solar power plan, and significantly dampened the wind power development. If it had not, one coal plant would be easy-peasy to replace. And that's not even taking into account all the gas plants which exist but are rarely used.
Building coal plants today is in direct contradiction to any plans to protect the climate.
@Mr_Teatime Solar is never going to replace nuclear. Nor is wind. Thy are not as reliable, not as controllable, and nowhere even near its energy density.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gg9_zTlg4M
See this? This is the insides of the Electric Arc Furnace. This is the technology that lets us melt steel without using coal or gas. It is used to recycle scrap metal into useful material. Waste into new things. Every given moment the temperature inside this giant arc welder must exceed 1800 degrees centigrade when in operation.
I can see households be powered by solar or wind, probably. I want to power mine with solar and wind myself when I get a suitable one someday. I can't see solar or wind powering heavy industries like this anytime soon, save for maybe a Dyson sphere. And the stuff people use must come from somewhere, it has to be made by someone, and powered by something. I'd rather it be powered by electricity, than by coal or gas.
And we already have a way to do it.
@drq
oh here's a link:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station
That thing has plenty of power, including at night, and Morocco is building more.
That said: Who says we need to keep running such furnaces? There may well be other ways to melt metal. The priority is not on being able to do everything the way it works now. It's on stopping a catastrophe.
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
And it makes a lot of sense there. Not so much in Europe. But also note the downsides:
* area - 2500 ha (!)
* water usage - 1.7 million m3 per year
And as DrQ noted, it's 510 MW so around the same as a single reactor at Dungeness B nuclear power plant in UK produces, except it works 24 h and the whole plant occupies 0.3 km2.
That's a typical apples-to-oranges comparison:
1: Many of the same people shouting that nuclear energy is essential are afraid that Iran might build nuclear plants
2: That plant is in Moroccco for good reasons. Of course!
3: UK is afraid of wind turbines on land. Why?
4: When I mentioned grids, that's what I meant: Catch the sun where it shines, wind where it blows etc., get it where it's needed. And then work with that. There is no magic bullet.
@drq @gretathunberg
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
> people shouting that nuclear energy is essential are afraid
No, these people are usually very well aware that you can't make plutonium with PWR or EAR. The proliferation argument is used exclusively by Greenpeace and friends.
> UK is afraid of wind turbines on land
Because every fscking square meter (sorry, they call it "yard" here) of land is occupied? If not by people, then by farm land, if not farm land then nature reserves.
@kravietz
I've lived in Germany long enough to know that farm land and wind turbines are not mutually exclusive, and in the UK long enough to wonder why I rarely see any wind turbines, and why on earth optics is the only thing anyone mentions about them?
I think wind turbines look a lot better than nuclear power stations...
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
> wind turbines look a lot better than nuclear power stations
Sorry, but nuclear power plant does not "look like a nuclear power plant'. It just looks like "a plant". I was driving many times by Hinkley Point before I realized *it is* Hinkley Point.
I can see beauty in one or two wind turbines as they look quite majestic, but if you have a hundred of them, this is just devastating the landscape, not to mention birds and bats.
So, the aesthetic aspect is probably very subjective but I'd much prefer a bunch of wind turbines to a nuclear plant with a huge plume.
That said: aesthetics is a tertiary argument.
Birds ... dude, have you got any idea how many animals are run over by cars every year? Wind turbines are meaningless compared to that, and cars are nothing next to cats.
Read this and never speak of bird strikes against wind turbines again:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/bird-death-and-wind-turbines-a-look-at-the-evidence
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
People are protesting against on-shore wind turbines in Germany, Norway, France and other countries for very practical reasons. They are huge, noisy and kill birds. In Norway they caused whole migration of reindeer populations due to noise.
if you think cars should not be outlawed, then unironically bringing up bird strikes to wind turbines says a lot about you.
Actually, you are right about land being "occupied" in the sense of it being privately owned. There's next to no public land in the UK, and nothing has driven that home as nicely as being back in Germany after 7 years and just being able to stroll trough a forest. No "public footpath" signs pointing at holes in hedges, no fenced-in parks with locked gates at night ...
So amazing!
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
I agree, this fencing in the UK is totally absurd aspect of living here.
@Mr_Teatime @drq @gretathunberg
> Catch the sun where it shines, wind where it blows
This was exactly the idea of DESERTEC. Please go and check the history of the project, because their PowerPoint slides looked really cool (sample attached) and then they hit a range of real-world challenges such as large distance transmission, sand and... politics, because sun happened to be in countries not exactly known to be reliable or stable.
I was a big fan of DESERTEC, and politics definitely were not on their side, at least not after 2012.
But they also went for a big organized solution, orchestrated by European companies. I hope if the plant in Morocco works out well, other countries in the region may build their own.
Politics in *some* of those countries are looking better now, too, so my hope remains alive.
@kravietz 0.3 km2, that's like nothing. I've seen districts larger than this.
@Mr_Teatime @gretathunberg