kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@guenther

There's a nice picture that essentially shows "how much space we would need to occupy on the sea if we wanted to replace all power with wind" in UK... This is purely conceptual, but it demonstrates how delusional is anyone who claims "we can get 100% from wind".

@guenther

Yes, they are also protesting against new find farms in Bayern. Which is kind of understandable, if you look at how much space they occupy.

I live in south of UK and I there's one of the largest off-shore wind farms nearby - Rampion, 116 towers, 400 MW in total, occupying 70 km2 (!).

Also nearby is Dungeness nuclear power plant which occupies maybe 1 km2 and has nominal output of 600 MW.

And Dungeness operates at full power 95% of the time, while Rampion - only 40% on average.

@guenther

List of planned gas plants in Germany - what exactly are you trying to say here?

@guenther

You should see it, even to just make your mind about it.

@guenther

What I see it says is:

Gas - 20% per minute
PWR - 10% per minute
Hydro - 200% per minute

Except you can't build more hydro anywhere in Europe, can you?

@guenther

> 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.

@guenther

Also, have you seen the recent "Planet of Humans" movie by Gibbs and Moore?

No, I'm not going to use their arguments against wind and solar because - as many critics have noted - they talk about the state of the technology as it was 20 years ago, and always use "worst case scenario" (like dunkelflaute).

Unfortunately, this is *exactly* what the Greens were doing always when talking about nuclear power. Always talk about 70's reactors and "worst case scenarios".

@guenther

Have you actually read the article you linked?

@guenther

Fossil gas is perceived as "clean and safe" which is perhaps the largest irony of 2020 granted disasters such as Deepwater Horizon, enormous gas leaks in Siberia and the fact methane is much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. But again, this is 100% marketing and you can see all the large fossil producers, including BP, Shell, Exxon and Gazprom selling this picture.

@guenther

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.

@guenther

As I explained before, German government - including Schroeder - is just trying to live between a complete utopia of technically illiterate people who just want "no atom" and the same people who want 24/7 electricity and employment and all the civilization they enjoy today. This is precisely why they increase fossil gas imports.

@guenther

This is another fat lie of the Greens - in modern nuclear power plants you can control output as matter of minutes, just as in gas plants. There's no difference.

@guenther

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.

@guenther

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.

@guenther

> synthesizing hydrogen

Yes, the largest existing prototype power-to-gas installations are like 1 MW and they are, well, prototype. This may, or may not work in 10 years.

For example, 10 years ago Greens were telling exactly the same about DESERTEC, a project to build a huge solar farm on Sahara. It never happened.

@guenther

They are *more* fine with fossil gas than with nuclear, in spite of the scientific evidence and IPCC saying otherwise.

"Austrian Green MEP: Gas is a better transition alternative to coal than nuclear"

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/interview/austrian-green-mep-gas-is-a-better-transition-alternative-to-coal-than-nuclear/

The fact that Germany has build a whole shitload of pipelines from Russia and is just finishing another one, and Schroeder works at Gazprom, is a total coincidence of course...

@guenther

You want a good example of decarbonization? Here you go:

@guenther

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"!

@guenther

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.

@guenther

Not a single power plant calculation today would even dare to omit any external costs because it would be eaten alive by environmental activists.

Well, maybe with the exception for fossil gas which is currently accepted as a viable alternative by EU Greens and Greenpeace. And suddenly they forget about all the external costs of extraction of fossil gas, Deepwater Horizon, radon gas contained in fossil gas... is suddenly all green and clean.