Germans giving up nuclear power?

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csirl

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http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0530/germany.html

See news link.

Says that Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants by 2022 and will have to find alternative ways to find the 22% of electic power that they currently provide.

Sounds like 'flat earth' stuff to be honest. Also, I could partially understand a decision not to build any new nuclear plants, but why shut down those that already exist (except for older obsolete ones)? Once they've been built, the 'damage' is already done - they are radioactive sites - so you might as well get the benefit of the electricity.
 
The only future for energy is renewables - everything else eventually runs out! The switch has to be made at some point. Only when there there is no other choice will the real strides in renewable energy technology be made.

It seems that they are not immediately shutting them down, so the damage that has been done will not completely go to waste. I suppose they will also need time to build a new renewable energy grid

It really is excellent news. Let's hope that there will be no more disasters in the meantime, as we seem to be getting them at an alarming frequency at the moment.
 
Maybe we could import them here, we seem to be the home for most of Europe's .......... <not very useful, indeed harmful, stuff>. T'would be another reason to kick us, and why not....

Am delighted that renewables should get a big push from this, just not convinced that renewables can be a total solution in our lifetime.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
It really is excellent news. .
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Couldn't agree more. Though I do wish there was a similar commitment to moving away from coal mining, strip mining, processing, burning etc. But then the daily cost of that industry on lives and the environment isn't worth our ire, when there's the nuclear bogey man to hang it on.

Still a move to renewables just makes sense and possibly (because of the start ups here) there's scope for Ireland to capitalise in that market if there's an investment into those businesses. But the caveat is that at the current rate of development, renewables won't match Germany's needs when it pulls the plug on the nuclear industry, so it will be buying a fair chunk of its energy from France.

How does France generate much of its power?
 
I think it is one of the dumbest decisions made by the German government. Germany generates about 25% of electricity through nuclear power plants, which is impossible to replace with renewables by 2022. That means that Germany will have to import electricity and the most obvious source will be France. And with France generating 75% of their energy through nuclear power plants Germany is simply replacing nuclear energy with nuclear energy from abroad where they have no say in the safety of the plants.

There is every reason to make sure that the plants are of the highest standards in the world (which they have been for many years), but even if there is room for improvement that is no reason to shut them down.
 
The immediate future is nuclear - there's no doubt about it. People will shut down the plants for now, have a party and pat themselves on the back, and then complain when they're without 24/7 supply of electricity that only nuclear can offer at the moment. I agree with Cringely (http://www.cringely.com/2011/03/is-anything-nuclear-ever-really-super-safe-small-and-simple/) - small localised underground generators will take over, until we come up with a better solution.
 
No it's not, it is the cheapest form of energy production. If it was economically more expensive then energy companies in Germany would not have been battling to retain their function.
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It is the most expensive form.
Here's why:

- Nuclear power plants have to be insured by the state. It's uninsurable any other way. When major problems happen, the costs run into hundreds of billions.
- Waste disposal costs. High level radioactive waste will have to be 'baby sat' for thousands of years. Who's going to pay for that?
- Decommissioning costs. These too are astronomical.

German energy companies are not paying for these costs.
When the pro-nuclear people are adding up how much nuclear energy production costs, they generally omit these factors.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
It is the most expensive form.
Here's why:

- Nuclear power plants have to be insured by the state. It's uninsurable any other way. When major problems happen, the costs run into hundreds of billions.
- Waste disposal costs. High level radioactive waste will have to be 'baby sat' for thousands of years. Who's going to pay for that?
- Decommissioning costs. These too are astronomical.

German energy companies are not paying for these costs.
When the pro-nuclear people are adding up how much nuclear energy production costs, they generally omit these factors.
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No these costs are not omitted:
1) German nuclear power providers pay a heavy tax, which in Germany is called the spent fuel rod tax; Sweden has a more general term for the tax but it serves a similar purpose, which is to cover the costs of storage.
2) The costs of decommissioning have to be accounted for on the books of nuclear energy companies, so they are also not ignored.
3) German nuclear power providers are liable with all their assets and their parent company's assets. There are very high liability requirements and in Germany these are self insured through the "Kernreaktor-Versicherungsgemeinschaft", essentially nuclear energy providers group together with multiple insurance and re-insurance companies to insure their operations. So again, the cost of insurance is reflected in the cost of energy production.

Despite all this German nuclear power providers are able to produce electricity at half the price of wind energy (and that is excluding subsidies) and 30% cheaper than coal.
 
The Italians did this already and regretted it hugely.
It's going to cost billions which they don't realy have to get their nuclear system back in place.

They should never had shut it down in the first place

Stupid move by Germany
 
Interesting article on the relative cost of generation here (US figures). These costs include all plant, fuel & transmission costs, but do not include incentives.

Nuclear is 20% more expensive than coal, and almost twice the price of the most efficient gas fired source, but obviously we can't keep burning fossil fuels.

What surprised me was that some of the renewable sources were cheaper, including on-shore wind and geothermal.
Leo
 
Call me cynical, but surely this is just a political ruse to get reelected etc. They are not shuting them down until 2022, so the incumbants will get a couple of election campaigns out of it. And those individuals making the decisions today will probably be retired by 2022. Something tells me that come 2022, most of these power stations will still be operational.
 
Leo said:
What surprised me was that some of the renewable sources were cheaper, including on-shore wind and geothermal.
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Keep in mind that "green energy" is extremely subsidised, which reduces the amnount charged by producers, but doesn't reduce the total cost of production.

csirl said:
Call me cynical, but surely this is just a political ruse to get reelected etc. They are not shuting them down until 2022, so the incumbants will get a couple of election campaigns out of it. And those individuals making the decisions today will probably be retired by 2022. Something tells me that come 2022, most of these power stations will still be operational.
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It's more a gradual switching off. I think the first power plants are due to be turned off by 2014. Only the two most modern plants will remain for a few months into 2022. Germany has already gone from a net exporter of electricity to an importer, and the cost of this has not been handed down to the consumer yet. Once the first plants start shutting down prices will rise and then there may be a shift in public opinion again.
 
csirl said:
Call me cynical, but surely this is just a political ruse to get reelected etc. They are not shuting them down until 2022, so the incumbants will get a couple of election campaigns out of it. And those individuals making the decisions today will probably be retired by 2022. Something tells me that come 2022, most of these power stations will still be operational.
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Exactly, it is simply political expediency, in the fight against climate change Nuclear power is the only form of low carbon energy that can generate enough power for Europe. The average consumer is unaware of the Intermittant power supply and seriously useless renewables like Wind farms that can contribute only 20 to 25% of their rated capacity on an annual basis. they are at best a joke and at worst being promoted seriously fraudlently as they are not low carbon but a highly overpriced intermittant energy source.
The average consumer knows little of their dreadful performance and worse they must be continously backed up by fossil fueled power stations to load balance their output with all of the increased carbon output that entails. The biggest fraud that could be perpetrated on the Irish taxpayer and its economy is if it goes down the renewable route. It will make the banking crisis and housing bubble look very small indeed
 
Chris said:
Keep in mind that "green energy" is extremely subsidised, which reduces the amnount charged by producers, but doesn't reduce the total cost of production.
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As stated, those costs are generation costs, including all plant construction and maintenance costs, and do not take incentives into account.
 
Leo said:
As stated, those costs are generation costs, including all plant construction and maintenance costs, and do not take incentives into account.
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Yes you did, I missed that; quote from your link: "The availability of various incentives including state or federal tax credits can also impact the calculation of levelized cost. The values shown in the tables below do not incorporate any such incentives.".
Anyway, I did some further digging into that report and especially the assumptions it is making linked to in a footnote (http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/index.html)
On the renewables side there is a serious flaw (http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/renewable_tbls.pdf). It states that for wind farms the capacity factor is 44% for 2009 and will remain the same for the next 25 years. In the footnote it states the following: "Wind capacity factors are based on regional resource availability and generation characteristics. The table entries represent the highest quality resource available in the specified year."
This means they are not taking the average capactity of wind farms but those that are best performing, which completely distorts any further calculations. The average capactiy for wind power that I have most frequently come across is in the mid twenties. According to following link it is less than 20% world wide: http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/the-capacity-factor-of-wind-power/
 
This Bill Gates TED talk re future nuclear energy generation is interesting [broken link removed]
 
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