Denmark’s wind farms generated 140% power needs on July 9

[Thanas]

The planning issues and building reactors on faults thing is dumb, but the answer is "ask the Geologischer Dienst to produce a map of safe areas, and don't allow politicians to start messing around till it's done" and not "no nuclear power ever because we built political prestige projects in a disorganised way".

I would be ok with them having a few issues. But it has gotten far beyond that. I'd rather not risk my well-being on the word of somebody who has been demonstrably incompetent.

[blowfish]

I would be ok with them having a few issues. But it has gotten far beyond that. I'd rather not risk my well-being on the word of somebody who has been demonstrably incompetent.

Then reform the nuclear industry. Since we are throwing half a trillion euros at energy issues anyway, we should be able to divert a couple billion towards reviewing regulation, drawing up new standards, and employing an army of geologists rather than being scared away from a promising way of generating energy. The rest of the money could go towards a fuckton of inherently safe reactors where even "do nothing" would be a safe (if not economical) reaction to accidents, so that the nuclear industry's level of competence ultimately wouldn't matter.

Oh and also recognise that nuclear reactors are big and complex and therefore the first prototypes being money sinks that don't work is expected if we develop anything novel ourselves rather than buy off the shelf reactors from someone else, just like the current state of fusion power (seriously throw money at fusion, it's always 30 years away because the funding levels have been a few percent of the assumptions in the original "30 years away" estimates).

[Thanas]

They have tried reforming it, it won't work suddenly if it hasn't worked for sixty years. At some point you just have to kill it. The only solution would be a new national nuclear energy, but that is a political non-starter and would be illegal anyway.

[blowfish]

They have tried reforming it, it won't work suddenly if it hasn't worked for sixty years. At some point you just have to kill it. The only solution would be a new national nuclear energy, but that is a political non-starter and would be illegal anyway.

What exactly would make having a state owned energy company (or a state owned nuclear reactor builder that gets first dibs on any nuke plant construction and sells it back to the private sector or whatever) illegal?

In addition, how serious were the attempts at reform till now, I don't recall much beyond cussing operators out over not being forthcoming when comparatively minor accidents happened? - And even so, again, nuclear power has yet to do as much damage in Germany as coal does every couple of years with hardly anyone caring.

[Thanas]

What exactly would make having a state owned energy company (or a state owned nuclear reactor builder that gets first dibs on any nuke plant construction and sells it back to the private sector or whatever) illegal?

The Grundgesetz, specifically economic freedom and prohibition of state monopolies. You may attempt to argue that this is an issue of national security but that would not fly in court.

In addition, how serious were the attempts at reform till now, I don't recall much beyond cussing operators out over not being forthcoming when comparatively minor accidents happened? - And even so, again, nuclear power has yet to do as much damage in Germany as coal does every couple of years with hardly anyone caring.

Nobody minds coal everybody minds a nuclear plant operator being dodgy. It should be self evident why.

[blowfish]

The Grundgesetz, specifically economic freedom and prohibition of state monopolies. You may attempt to argue that this is an issue of national security but that would not fly in court.

Then what about the occasional noises about nationalising the grid?

Nobody minds coal everybody minds a nuclear plant operator being dodgy. It should be self evident why.

If we had thousands of deaths from nuclear every year, I would agree. However, as pointed out repeatedly, even including the worst examples of incompetence and outright criminal irresponsibility in countries with completely dysfunctional regulations, nuclear has been much safer and harmed much fewer people than coal.

To me, it is therefore self-evident that nuclear power is the best example of how bad people are at assessing risk.

[Purple]

Call me strange. But I do believe that any law that prohibits the state from forming monopolies in critical sectors such as utilities is to put it mildly insane.

[salm]

So, blowfish, are you saying that you used the price of nuclear power as an argument for nuclear without actually knowing the price?

I'm saying that power companies' numbers aren't the only source you should use. There are, however, renewable projects and nuclear projects for which prices are known (and I'm assuming that Germany wouldn't fuck up building projects even more badly than Areva in Finland).

So could you tell us what a unit of nuclear energy costs (with all costs such as waste storage and insurance included) compared to a unit of renewables (with all costs such as grid upgrade and energy storage included)?

[Thanas]

The Grundgesetz, specifically economic freedom and prohibition of state monopolies. You may attempt to argue that this is an issue of national security but that would not fly in court.

Then what about the occasional noises about nationalising the grid?

Different issue, also has never gone forward.

If we had thousands of deaths from nuclear every year, I would agree. However, as pointed out repeatedly, even including the worst examples of incompetence and outright criminal irresponsibility in countries with completely dysfunctional regulations, nuclear has been much safer and harmed much fewer people than coal.

To me, it is therefore self-evident that nuclear power is the best example of how bad people are at assessing risk.

We cannot afford a single nuclear plant going off near one of our cultural centers. We can afford occasional coal pollution.

[LaCroix]

Part of it cost, but there's also complexity and systems integration to consider. Renewables, other than hydroelectric, are highly variable and non-dispatchable, which then requires a very sophisticated electrical grid with highly complex monitoring & control systems to balance generation, load, and storage to keep it stable. It's pretty much the worst of all possible worlds; a system that's less stable, more complex, and with more points of failure compared to a conventional power grid. You can throw all the money in the world at it but it won't change anything, it's like trying to make a gasoline engine more reliable & durable than a diesel. Ain't gonna happen, the diesel is inherently simpler and more robust.

Agreed, but if there is one country that excels in managing, automation and monitoring of complex systems, then it's Germany.

(Funnily, all energy sectors apart from nuclear do function fine and mostly flawless, only the protected nuclear companies are behaving so un-german.)

[Broomstick]

However, as pointed out repeatedly, even including the worst examples of incompetence and outright criminal irresponsibility in countries with completely dysfunctional regulations, nuclear has been much safer and harmed much fewer people than coal.

Excuse me. Nuclear might have killed fewer people, but there is no question that something like Chernobyl or Fukushima, which results in people losing their land, their homes, and pretty much everything they own permanently is, in fact, harmful. Stripping people of everything they own is most definitely harmful. Please take that into account.

[Simon_Jester]

Or not and like every other little mind who has been proven wrong in history (A talking string? Nonsense) the critics will just have to deal with it.. Or German energy will be slightly more costly but better in terms of emissions, which is another thing the German people are willing to accept. So it is their sovereign choice and you will not change it.

Nuclear energy is dead in Germany. I know this hurts all the castor-cuddling people out there but they don't matter in elections. The Energiewende is happening.

Yes, I get that, and you declaring that I "will not change it" serves no particular purpose except to make you look angry and defensive.

As noted, though, if the German people are sufficiently determined they can no doubt decide that 100% of their domestic electricity production will in future come from hamster wheels. There will be consequences, whether the German people like those consequences or not, but if they decide to make it happen and ignore the alternatives hard enough, it will happen.

The fact that the sovereign German people have made such decision doesn't make it a good decision, however.

It is not an impingement on your national sovereignty for me to question the wisdom of your nation's half-trillion-Euro boondoggle, any more than it is an impingement on my nation's sovereignty for you to question my nation's boondoggles.

Why?

More generally, the point is that you can't just decide to ignore the difficulty of making a system work, when you decide that system is 'better' than the one you have. Sure, it would be 'better' for me to live in a mansion than to live in my apartment, but if I can't afford the mansion, it doesn't matter.

Most importantly because there is will to dedicate resources towards an electrical car while there is almost no will to dedicate resources to a flying car. People want electrical cars just like they want renewables.

You're not addressing the problem or the question here.

The point is simple. There are many areas of human affairs where you might desire the expensive, difficult-to-do thing... but be unable to get it because the price is to high. Claiming that the high-cost outcome is 'more desirable' is irrelevant if you are not prepared to pay the cost to get it. A luxury car may be 'more desirable' than a normal sedan for my purposes, but that doesn't mean I should be prepared to accept a huge debt to buy a luxury sedan I can't afford.

So please, stop dodging the subject.

You cannot ignore the cost of an all-renewable system, compared to systems that use nuclear power or fossil fuels, and then claim the all-renewable system is preferable. That is not an accurate measurement of the desirability of the all-renewable system.

Therefore, please acknowledge that statements about the costs and negative consequences of the all-renewable system matter, if you intend to seriously participate in discussions of renewable energy.

Otherwise, there's not much point talking to you about the merits of the system.

Building a 100% renewable energy economy, without importing electricity form another country's DIRTY NUKES or fossil fuel power plants, and with making due allowance for the extra cost of storing surplus energy for days when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining at full strength, is going to get very costly. Costly on a scale where you have to seriously think about what else you could have done with the money if you were willing to go nuclear.

Costly yes. Worth it? Well, that´s what everybody has to decide for themselves and it appears that a lot of people have decided that it is worth it.

And the entire point being made by several people on this thread, who are presenting numerical evidence to support their positions...

...Is that the people supporting this all-renewable plan are making a mistake.

If you're not interested in debating the issue except to say "well, a lot of people think all-renewable is worth it," then fine. But if that's all you have to say, I don't understand why you're participating in the conversation.

Unless I am badly wrong, building nuclear plants is competitive in terms of cost per megawatt of generating capacity relative to wind, and superior to a number of other renewables. In which case it certainly ends up making sense to use nuclear power to generate a 'base load' and rely on stored energy from renewables to carry you through the peak demand periods.

You'd need the energy storage system anyway in a 100% renewable economy. And unlike the renewables, you CAN ramp up power production from the nuclear reactors in an emergency, even if it does take time to do so.

The price of nuclear energy is something I´m having a lot of trouble finding out. There are gazillions of statistics that show that nuclear is cheap and there is the same amount that show that nuclear is expensive. There are plenty of statistics that show that wind is cheaper than nuclear. Some even claim that solar is cheaper (usually claiming since 2013).

Complaints about nuclear energy statistic usually include the fact that the price of what it costs to build a German nuclear plant are not public and therefore have to be estimated. Furthermore it is critisized that such statistics often use the prices of when the nukes were built 30 years ago ignoring increased cost of labour and saftey standards of today. Further problems are that some statistics don´t include the costs of storing the waste. In fact statistics by the power plant owners never include these costs because storage of waste is paid with tax payers money. Sometimes they don´t include dismantling consts. They don´t include insureance costs. And so on.

So, if somebody knows how to calculate the true cost of German nuclear power produced by a hypothetical plant built within the next 10 or so years I´d be very interested.

A great deal would depend on decisions only the German government can make, though. If the German government and legal system make it difficult or impossible to build nuclear reactors in Germany, then of course nuclear reactors will be immensely expensive in Germany.

If the German government wants nuclear reactors as part of its energy-transition, though, it can find many ways to make building them efficient and cost-effective while still making them safe.

I will note that the costs I referenced were based on US costs- where there are no particular obstacles to building wind power plants, but where the obstacles to building nuclear plants are... large but not insurmountable.

This will leave Germany dependent on foreign suppliers for electricity, probably at inflated prices.

Also, it's grossly irresponsible to say "nuclear power isn't safe because I heard a rumor, so I'll let someone else run the nuclear power plant and just buy the electricity from them!"

First, I´m not arguing that nuclear isn´t safe. I think it is very safe.
Second, I´m not saying that being dependant on foreign suppliers is good. I´m saying that if the Energiewende is going to fail, which is entirely possible, we won´t have some sort of doomsday scenario because we´ll be able to import power from other places until the shortage is taken care of by, for example, building a nuclear power plant or whatever possibilities we´ll have then.

My criticism, though, is that the Energiewende is highly likely to fail, resulting in very expensive electrical costs for Germans, plus German dependency on foreign goodwill for its power supply, plus Germans irresponsibly exporting pollution and the hazards associated with electrical generation into other countries while pretending that these costs have somehow been avoided.

All of those are bad potential outcomes, which represent a drawback for the Energiewende.

So basically, the argument why Energiewende won't work is "If you build a system big enough, it's much more expensive than nuclear"? (While, as salm already stated, there is still so much hidden cost that you probably should actually triple the price of nuclear power to get better numbers)

All this "economic best" reasoning is ignoring the fact in that Germans, like many Europeans, are accepting the fact that they will pay more for "clean" energy and are willing to do it. Just as they are willing to pay double or triple the usual price for "organic" food or "Fair trade" articles. Not everyone is living according to the capitalist "cheaper is better" dogma.

(Especially since monthly energy cost in Germany is about 30€/month/capita. They can afford this to raise a lot and still be fine.)

The fundamental issue is that if you accept significantly higher energy prices, while ignoring cheaper alternatives that produce equally desirable results...

Everyone is a little worse off in your country.

You may remember the American president Eisenhower, speaking of the military-industrial complex, saying: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

This is a great illustration of the idea of opportunity cost. If you spend a billion euros on 'this,' when you could have more profitably spent the money on 'that,' you are making a sacrifice. You are sacrificing 'that' in exchange for 'this.'

Renewable energy is a 'this' more desirable than the 'this' of weaponry. However, it is still a 'this.' It is a thing, upon which you spend money and time and resources and genius, which could otherwise be spent on some other purpose.

If the Germans, or any other nation, spend a lot of 'thats' in exchange for an all-renewable energy system, the costs will express themselves. It is only right and proper that we at least TRY to make a realistic accounting of the costs, and determine if there is a cheaper way to get an equally good result.

Agreed, but if there is one country that excels in managing, automation and monitoring of complex systems, then it's Germany.

(Funnily, all energy sectors apart from nuclear do function fine and mostly flawless, only the protected nuclear companies are behaving so un-german.)

If the Germans are so wise and capable in handling complex systems...

I fail to understand why it is somehow unthinkably hard for the German nation to 'Germanize' the complex system that is their nuclear industry, if they are indeed good at handling all other things.

[Thanas]

Yes, I get that, and you declaring that I "will not change it" serves no particular purpose except to make you look angry and defensive.

Then what's the point? I've largely giving up on posting USA stories on here because I realized the US populace is okay with innocents getting killed/tortured, so I stopped trying to change what is never going to change.

And maybe I am a bit defensive because I remember people questioning less than five years ago that any industrial power or developed nations could ever rely on renewable energy. This was as asinine back then as it was now, only you had the same group of nukewhores chanting the same thing. "Too costly" "Too unreliable" "Will never work" blablabla. They have all been proven wrong. So why should the same arguments be suddenly right now?

As noted, though, if the German people are sufficiently determined they can no doubt decide that 100% of their domestic electricity production will in future come from hamster wheels.

You making this anology is both insulting as it is dishonest. That'd be like me using Ghenghis Khan as a measurement for Obama.

The fact that the sovereign German people have made such decision doesn't make it a good decision, however.

The fact that it works and has prove the nukewhores wrong however does.

You cannot ignore the cost of an all-renewable system, compared to systems that use nuclear power or fossil fuels, and then claim the all-renewable system is preferable. That is not an accurate measurement of the desirability of the all-renewable system.

Yes you can, especially because nobody has ever proven that nuclear is cheaper in Germany than renewables.

You may remember the American president Eisenhower, speaking of the military-industrial complex, saying: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

And yet, the choice of the US public to dump billions into it is not questioned. At best some parts are questioned but nobody ever questions the whole program. Why should the same courtesy not be extended to the Energiewende as well?

This is a great illustration of the idea of opportunity cost. If you spend a billion euros on 'this,' when you could have more profitably spent the money on 'that,' you are making a sacrifice. You are sacrificing 'that' in exchange for 'this.'

Then please point out the true cost of nuclear energy in Germany, including legal and storage cost.

I fail to understand why it is somehow unthinkably hard for the German nation to 'Germanize' the complex system that is their nuclear industry, if they are indeed good at handling all other things.

Nobody understands it either.

[aerius]

You cannot ignore the cost of an all-renewable system, compared to systems that use nuclear power or fossil fuels, and then claim the all-renewable system is preferable. That is not an accurate measurement of the desirability of the all-renewable system.

Yes you can, especially because nobody has ever proven that nuclear is cheaper in Germany than renewables.

I'd say the key point in this discussion is "in Germany". For reasons that are unique to Germany, they've managed to fuck up nuclear power worse than pretty much everyone else, much like the US has fucked up healthcare worse than everyone else. We could argue that everyone else has made it work so that it should be a solvable problem for those nations, but for various reasons, social, political, and otherwise, it just doesn't work. Just like making affordable single payer healthcare work in the US is impossible, safe affordable nuclear doesn't seem possible in Germany either.

So we go to the next best solutions to meet the goals of CO2 reduction and energy availability. Germany ain't Canada where we have a million rivers to dam up so hydropower is off the table. That leaves wind, solar, and natural gas. Natural gas isn't the best option since it means you're dependent on Russia and the Middle East, not exactly the most friendly nations around. And that leaves wind & solar, for all the costs & problems they have.

[blowfish]

However, as pointed out repeatedly, even including the worst examples of incompetence and outright criminal irresponsibility in countries with completely dysfunctional regulations, nuclear has been much safer and harmed much fewer people than coal.

Excuse me. Nuclear might have killed fewer people, but there is no question that something like Chernobyl or Fukushima, which results in people losing their land, their homes, and pretty much everything they own permanently is, in fact, harmful. Stripping people of everything they own is most definitely harmful. Please take that into account.

The evacuation in Fukushima was a disorganised and overblown mess, and by itself did 1600 people in. Even according to the estimates of the outright anti-nuclear study on potential health impacts Mark Lynas rips into here, that would be at the high end of the estimated damage from radiation. It would, in fact, have been better to just tell people not directly next to and downwind of the Fukushima reactors to stay put.

Similarly, while due to more released radiation a larger extent of evacuation in the area around Chernobyl was justified, even there arguably more people have suffered more heavily from unnecessary fear than from radiation.

A response to radiation releases as justified by actual radiation-caused harm and more in line with responses to any other type of industrial accident would have reduced the indirect harm from nuclear disasters by avoiding needless panic.

[blowfish]

I'd say the key point in this discussion is "in Germany". For reasons that are unique to Germany, they've managed to fuck up nuclear power worse than pretty much everyone else, much like the US has fucked up healthcare worse than everyone else. We could argue that everyone else has made it work so that it should be a solvable problem for those nations, but for various reasons, social, political, and otherwise, it just doesn't work. Just like making affordable single payer healthcare work in the US is impossible, safe affordable nuclear doesn't seem possible in Germany either.

So we go to the next best solutions to meet the goals of CO2 reduction and energy availability. Germany ain't Canada where we have a million rivers to dam up so hydropower is off the table. That leaves wind, solar, and natural gas. Natural gas isn't the best option since it means you're dependent on Russia and the Middle East, not exactly the most friendly nations around. And that leaves wind & solar, for all the costs & problems they have.

Unlike Thanas I think even German nuclear power is safe enough (no literal monkeys mashing buttons on Chernobyl style reactors ), but out of these options I think we'd probably end up having too many still-CO2-producing natural gas or ecologically-damaging biomass powerplants to supplement renewables after a complete nuclear and coal exit because it's the least unaffordable option.

[Broomstick]

However, as pointed out repeatedly, even including the worst examples of incompetence and outright criminal irresponsibility in countries with completely dysfunctional regulations, nuclear has been much safer and harmed much fewer people than coal.

Excuse me. Nuclear might have killed fewer people, but there is no question that something like Chernobyl or Fukushima, which results in people losing their land, their homes, and pretty much everything they own permanently is, in fact, harmful. Stripping people of everything they own is most definitely harmful. Please take that into account.

The evacuation in Fukushima was a disorganised and overblown mess, and by itself did 1600 people in. Even according to the estimates of the outright anti-nuclear study on potential health impacts Mark Lynas rips into here, that would be at the high end of the estimated damage from radiation. It would, in fact, have been better to just tell people not directly next to and downwind of the Fukushima reactors to stay put.

Similarly, while due to more released radiation a larger extent of evacuation in the area around Chernobyl was justified, even there arguably more people have suffered more heavily from unnecessary fear than from radiation.

A response to radiation releases as justified by actual radiation-caused harm and more in line with responses to any other type of industrial accident would have reduced the indirect harm from nuclear disasters by avoiding needless panic.

Yes, we do evacuations for nuclear accidents poorly.

That really shouldn't be entirely surprising - there haven't been a lot of such evacuations, so there is little real-world experience. And, since some of those evacuated were fragile, even dying, patients some of them likely would have died during that time frame anyway (which doesn't make hastening anyone else's death OK).

One of the problems with evacuating in any potential hazardous situation - things like chemical spill, wildfire, and so forth as well as nuclear accidents - is that you can't wait until the deadly hazard is actually there, ideally you get out of town before that happens. Which means in every precautionary evacuation there will be some "unnecessary" movement of people. The alternative is to wait until people actually come to harm. Is that somehow better?

Radiation is invisible and the average person has no way to detect it. Telling people to simply stay put and close the windows is probably NOT going to result in cooperation. Prenatal fetuses and young children are especially vulnerable, and can be permanently harmed by a radiation dose that does not pose a long-term hazard for adults. You have to, at least initially, evacuate a wider area than strictly necessary or you aren't actually protecting peopel from hazard.

Of course, afterward, people should be allowed to return to areas not actually harmed by the accident.

That aside, though, there ARE swaths of land that are now off-limits for a generation or more. Effectively, those people have been stripped of everything, bankrupted, by the accident. As I said, if you're tallying up harm you need to include the economic variety as well and there will be such harms even in a perfectly managed evacuation.

[salm]

You're not addressing the problem or the question here.

The point is simple. There are many areas of human affairs where you might desire the expensive, difficult-to-do thing... but be unable to get it because the price is to high. Claiming that the high-cost outcome is 'more desirable' is irrelevant if you are not prepared to pay the cost to get it. A luxury car may be 'more desirable' than a normal sedan for my purposes, but that doesn't mean I should be prepared to accept a huge debt to buy a luxury sedan I can't afford.

So please, stop dodging the subject.

You cannot ignore the cost of an all-renewable system, compared to systems that use nuclear power or fossil fuels, and then claim the all-renewable system is preferable. That is not an accurate measurement of the desirability of the all-renewable system.

Therefore, please acknowledge that statements about the costs and negative consequences of the all-renewable system matter, if you intend to seriously participate in discussions of renewable energy.

Otherwise, there's not much point talking to you about the merits of the system.

I think I´ve addressed the higher cost. I´m fine with higher cost (even though it isn´t clear that the cost even is that much higher due to electrical companies and other sources giving dishonest numbers).
Long term storage solutions are an expensive pain in the ass that nobody has worked out yet. Nuclear in general has its own problems and I simply don´t think they can be worked out more easily than the engeneering problems a renewable system brings with it in a climate in which people absolutely hate nuclear power.

Your analogies with the flying car or the mansion are not relevant because even though you might desire a flying car or a mansion you don´t desire it enough to spend resources. A renewable system on the other hand is desired enough to spend the resources.

An electrical car on the other hand is a better analogy because there is will to invest resources on its development and because the only thing that is keeping us from having electrical cars are engineering and some infrastructural problems which we assume can be solved in the future. The same goes for renewable energies.
A lot of nuclear problems are not something we can solve with engineering because they are political and social issues.

Of course you can argue that you can just spend resources on reeducating the population but then I´d like to see some decent numbers of what that would cost and how long it would take. If you start re-educating now you´ll need a couple of decades before you can start building the power plants. Reeducation also might fail of course.

And the entire point being made by several people on this thread, who are presenting numerical evidence to support their positions...

...Is that the people supporting this all-renewable plan are making a mistake.

Nobody has presented numerical evidence. I´ve asked for numbers that include all hidden cost of nuclear power multiple times and nobody seems to know it.

If the German government wants nuclear reactors as part of its energy-transition, though, it can find many ways to make building them efficient and cost-effective while still making them safe.

I will note that the costs I referenced were based on US costs- where there are no particular obstacles to building wind power plants, but where the obstacles to building nuclear plants are... large but not insurmountable.

Just out of curiosity, can you show the real price of a unit of nuclear power in the US. I´ve seen a whole bunch of claims that the US has similar problems with muddled number due to the statistics ignoring dismantling and long term storage cost (which AFAIK is just like in Germany also picked up by the tax payers but often not included in the electricity price statistics).
Note, that I´m not arguing that nuclear is more expensive in the US, I´m just genuinly interested if these dishonest price claims are standard practice in the US as well.

Regarding the ways to make building them efficiently and cost effective I think they´ve had enough time to show that can´t find these ways.

My criticism, though, is that the Energiewende is highly likely to fail, resulting in very expensive electrical costs for Germans, plus German dependency on foreign goodwill for its power supply, plus Germans irresponsibly exporting pollution and the hazards associated with electrical generation into other countries while pretending that these costs have somehow been avoided.

All of those are bad potential outcomes, which represent a drawback for the Energiewende.

Well, I think it´s not highly likely to fail.
Also, why reduce this to Germans? Plenty of other people profit from cheap, mass produced renewables. The only reason countires like Bangladesh are able to provide their people with solar power en masse is because rich countries decided to throw money at developing such technologies for their own profit.
So if the Energiewende fails and leaves us with higher energy prices but manages to provide large parts of the thrid world with afordable energy then that´s cool, too.

[Lonestar]

Between the USN, RN, and FN thousands of reactors have been built with young/inexperienced personnel(between the ages of 19-22) running them without significant nuclear accidents.

I guess I find it really hard to believe that nuclear can be written off in Germany because of safety worries about "ham-fisted incompetents".

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, I get that, and you declaring that I "will not change it" serves no particular purpose except to make you look angry and defensive.

Then what's the point? I've largely giving up on posting USA stories on here because I realized the US populace is okay with innocents getting killed/tortured, so I stopped trying to change what is never going to change.

And maybe I am a bit defensive because I remember people questioning less than five years ago that any industrial power or developed nations could ever rely on renewable energy. This was as asinine back then as it was now, only you had the same group of nukewhores chanting the same thing. "Too costly" "Too unreliable" "Will never work" blablabla. They have all been proven wrong. So why should the same arguments be suddenly right now?

The question is, who has been proven wrong, and what claim has been proven wrong?

If anyone ever said "it is impossible for any country's renewable energy supplies to ever provide 100% of its power," they are a fool. If nothing else, because a country like Algeria could tile its deserts with solar cells and vastly oversupply its power needs. So, in principle, could the US- I don't know about Germany, but it's beside the point.

However, "no country can ever supply its power needs with all renewables" is a strawman version of the arguments I've actually seen advanced here.

The ones I've seen here boil down to "all-renewable energy for Germany will be very expensive and cause considerable amounts of environmental damage that haven't been fully accounted for, and it would be better to use a hybrid nuclear-renewable plan."

Nothing I've seen has properly refuted that claim.

As noted, though, if the German people are sufficiently determined they can no doubt decide that 100% of their domestic electricity production will in future come from hamster wheels.

You making this anology is both insulting as it is dishonest. That'd be like me using Ghenghis Khan as a measurement for Obama.

To review what I said:

If the German people wished to do so, they could choose to produce electricity through no means other than hamster wheels. That is a fact. You may find it offensive to imagine that the German people could ever be so foolish. They surely couldn't be so foolish, no one would expect such foolishness. But it is true. If they decided to do that, they could.

The point is that "the German people have decided on X" is completely irrelevant to the question of "is X a good idea?" People are trying to argue on the basis of facts and numbers, and pointing out hidden costs of wind/solar power for Germany. That is not a category of argument that can be countered with "The German people have decided, stop being a naysayer!"

The fact that the sovereign German people have made such decision doesn't make it a good decision, however.

The fact that it works and has prove the nukewhores wrong however does.

The fact that what works? Germany's all-renewable power production system? That system does not exist yet, it hasn't been built. And for that matter, no one is saying it "can't work."

People are saying it will be "too expensive" or that other alternatives would be better and cheaper. That's not the same thing.

You cannot ignore the cost of an all-renewable system, compared to systems that use nuclear power or fossil fuels, and then claim the all-renewable system is preferable. That is not an accurate measurement of the desirability of the all-renewable system.

Yes you can, especially because nobody has ever proven that nuclear is cheaper in Germany than renewables.

So... you can start ignoring the costs and problems of whatever proposal you choose.

Then so can I.

Fine. Germany should use fusion power. Exclusively. So there. And anything you say to the contrary about "working fusion reactors haven't been invented yet" and "it'd cost trillions of euros or more" can be ignored, right?

No. Obviously not.

Now, obviously, that is a ridiculous claim. If I declared victory on the basis of that I'd be an arrogant fool.

Now that we're done being two-year-olds, how about we actually try to think? We can bring up the problems of nuclear power, versus wind-plus-solar-plus-storage, realistically and honestly.

And going into denial about the costs of System A when trying to compare it to System B is beneath us. Believe it or not, I do listen when you tell me there's something wrong with the German nuclear industry that makes it unsafe or incompetent. I may reply, I may not believe you as fully as you'd like, but I'm not just ignoring you.

You may remember the American president Eisenhower, speaking of the military-industrial complex, saying: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

And yet, the choice of the US public to dump billions into it is not questioned. At best some parts are questioned but nobody ever questions the whole program. Why should the same courtesy not be extended to the Energiewende as well?

Because it's idiotic to refuse to question bad policy decisions out of "courtesy."

I can't believe I'm having to explain this to you.

This is a great illustration of the idea of opportunity cost. If you spend a billion euros on 'this,' when you could have more profitably spent the money on 'that,' you are making a sacrifice. You are sacrificing 'that' in exchange for 'this.'

Then please point out the true cost of nuclear energy in Germany, including legal and storage cost.

We're working on it. There is ongoing discussion on that subject in this thread if you'd care to contribute usefully.

I fail to understand why it is somehow unthinkably hard for the German nation to 'Germanize' the complex system that is their nuclear industry, if they are indeed good at handling all other things.

Nobody understands it either.

This suggests that reform is needed.

I haven't given up on my own country being able to develop a functional single-payer health care system that will bring our per capita costs back down into line with the rest of the developed world. It hasn't happened yet but it's not magically impossible.

Why should the German nuclear industry be different?

[His Divine Shadow]

Nukewhores, lol...

[salm]

The thing with the external cost of nuclear energy is that nobody seems to be able to agree on what should actually be included. Estimates range from nearly 0 external costs per kWh to over 3€(!) per kWh.

One large recent study by FÖS which is often used in studies by other entities as well places the external cost of nuclear alone at a range between 14,3 and 37,1 ct/kWh which is absurdly expensive making nukes at best competitive with other conventional power (hard coal, lignite) and at worst thrice as expensive.
The study also states that it is next to impossible to make a good guess of what the real external costs for nuclear are because of unsolved issues regarding waste storage and dismanteling differing opinions regarding insurance and things like that.

The study concludes that renewables are allready a lot cheaper than coal. Solar still looks more expensive because the statistics include less efficient old solar plants. However, new solar plants are allready cheaper than coal.

A short sumary of the paper in form of a factsheet in English can be read here (external costs on page 3) Link

The paper (130 pages pdf, German only) can be read here Link

This study does not include cost of necessary grid upgrades (estimated 42 bn € until 2030) and energy storage requriements. It is argued that this is not all that expensive because of how long investments into grids last.
It is estimated that the grid upgrade will increase energy cost by 0.5 ct/kWh

It is estimated that energy storage will only be needed in 20 or so years because before that there is enough other power in the mix as well as possibilities to import from else where. The latter also makes it unnecessary to wait until storage tech has caught up. Off shore wind compensates for a lot of storage as it runs very reliable (340days/year) and the amount of storage needed depens a lot on off shore wind. All in all this means that there is plenty of time to research economically viable storage systems.

[blowfish]

The thing with the external cost of nuclear energy is that nobody seems to be able to agree on what should actually be included.

I'll go dig up some numbers in a few days when I'm not in the process of moving back to uni. In the meantime, I completely agree with Simon Jester:

The ones I've seen here boil down to "all-renewable energy for Germany will be very expensive and cause considerable amounts of environmental damage that haven't been fully accounted for, and it would be better to use a hybrid nuclear-renewable plan."

[madd0ct0r]

The thing with the external cost of nuclear energy is that nobody seems to be able to agree on what should actually be included.

I'll go dig up some numbers in a few days when I'm not in the process of moving back to uni. In the meantime, I completely agree with Simon Jester:

The ones I've seen here boil down to "all-renewable energy for Germany will be very expensive and cause considerable amounts of environmental damage that haven't been fully accounted for, and it would be better to use a hybrid nuclear-renewable plan."

I can give you estimates for the UK, but that ain't Germany, and also has lots of interesting experimental honagovers we're still clearing up.

[Simon_Jester]

Put this way. Renewable energy is good for certain purposes, and right now building more of it is likely to Germany's long term advantage as long as they have enough power plants to supply Germany's base load of electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind is weak.

The base load must be supplied somehow, somewhere, by plants that you can switch on and off when they are needed.

Meanwhile, to be effective as a large fraction of a nation's overall power supply, renewables must come with energy storage capability somehow. Even if you supply base load by other means, the 'peaks' of renewable power generation simply do not occur at the same moments as the peak demand for electricity. The energy you integrate over time by generating power has to be stored in a battery until it can be drawn off to run people's factories, cars (hopefully), air conditioners, heaters, and so on.

If we're talking about physically dismantling power plants that supply the base load, though, then we have a problem. That power has to come from somewhere. If it comes from renewables it has to be stored in a battery... and it starts to get very expensive to build enough energy storage to supply the many gigawatts of electricity an entire country needs, over the entire span of time it needs it.

At which point the expense (and potentially, environmental cost of the storage systems) argues in favor of making sure that base load is supplied by SOME kind of plant where the power supply is very reliable, and/or is under direct human control rather than being at the mercy of the elements. Either fossil fuels (which are environmentally terrible and economically dubious), or the highly stable types of renewable power (geothermal, hydroelectric, OTEC, and tidal power)... or nuclear.

That's the point where we get debates.

I for one tend to favor large-scale use of renewable energy, with storage facilities where it is practical and doesn't cause undue environmental harm. In countries whose land and resources allow it, I favor geothermal, hydroelectric, OTEC, and tidal power as means of generating base loads (though I am in particular concerned about how to get tidal energy without causing environmental harm to the sea). Where that is not possible, I favor nuclear reactors as the main method of generating the base load, at least until we work out something more efficient and/or safer.
____________________

P.S. The key point is that, so far as I know, none of the above is a matter of opinion except the last paragraph. These are the basic facts about how electricity is made and used, and we cannot escape or evade them. Any plan any nation makes for generating electricity has to accomodate these facts on some level.

P.P.S. Solar power satellites are a favorite of mine for replacing fission power, but we are nowhere near making them cost-effective. They don't pay even at launch costs 10 to 100 times lower than they are today, you basically need a space elevator to make them work as far as I can tell. Fusion power, likewise- but we are probably several decades from an economical fusion reactor, and it may well be that they will NEVER compete with solar power or nuclear fission due to the sheer expense of a fusion reactor's physical plant.