Germany Faces Another Energy Threat... Stranded Coal From Low River Levels

[monstrosity 3,984]

12 hours ago, Economy said:

To be far Germany wasn't really a coal nation anymore but then the Russia thing happened

 

Yeah being dependant on Russia was always a political risk they obviously got too comfortable with, but now that u can't change that... There weren't many other immediate alternatives when gas got cut 

 

11 hours ago, TortureMeOnReplay said:

Germany is moving towards renewable energy. It was moving away from nuclear and had shut down 9 (I believe) nuclear plants last year. They're already being dismantled. The other 3 are supposed to be shut down this year. This was planned like 20 years ago and as such planner certifications, nuclear fuel purchases, etc around it. Because of the war in Ukraine and Russia's oil thing, they're having a lot of issues with energy and are using coal until they can get more renewable energy in place. 

 im aware of that

and, if politicians moved towards renewable before instead of being dependant on Russian energy (which was obvi a huge risk) this would've not happened so there's really no excuse imo

it's not like it's been more than 50 years that we know we have to de-carbonate our energy

[HiddenWeirdo 4,278]

5 hours ago, Economy said:

How much did Germany do in terms of financial support for ppl during pandemic?

I can only speak for students, as I was one at that time. 

Financial aid meant receiving a maximum of 500 euros a month (starting from June 2020, so two months late to the party). Why maximum? If you had 0 euros in your account, you received 500. If you had 200, you only received the difference, so another 300.

I was immediately fired when the first lockdown happend in April. Living in Germany requires way more than 500 a month. My rent was already 550 euros. So yeah, I struggled so much financially at that time and quickly looked for a good job 

[Supersonic 49,376]

53 minutes ago, HiddenWeirdo said:

I can only speak for students, as I was one at that time. 

Financial aid meant receiving a maximum of 500 euros a month (starting from June 2020, so two months late to the party). Why maximum? If you had 0 euros in your account, you received 500. If you had 200, you only received the difference, so another 300.

I was immediately fired when the first lockdown happend in April. Living in Germany requires way more than 500 a month. My rent was already 550 euros. So yeah, I struggled so much financially at that time and quickly looked for a good job 

It's absolutely f*cking ridiculous that the neoliberal establishment refuses to tax the people who benefitted from the pandemic and energy crisis but does basically nothing to help anybody that makes below 3k a month to maintain a life that's worth living. 

Like... remember that entire botched Covid-Bonus thing they did last year? Instead of making it a mandatory bonus for essential workers/people who work in high-risk situations, they made it *voluntary* for every employer. Which lead to f*cking well paid office executives bagging non-taxed bonuses, while the employers of essnetial workers just decided to not pay any bonus at all cuz it was voluntary.

My mom worked throughout the entirety of the lockdowns, when everybody else was at home, she had to get special permits to drive her car to work at 5am and in the end... she got nothing but burnout. And her "essential" job doesn't even nearly pay well enough to cover all of the costs, because it is subject to good old "Lohndumping". 

[Chromatislaps 34,854]

17 hours ago, Economy said:

This. I was gonna mention the nuclear decomissioning as well as an issue 

 

Tho I disagree with it

 

Im all for nuclear, in order to have a smooth transition to a green economy. But it has an issue especially with low river levels ... since older powerplants use loads of water to cool the fuel rods

[Gabi001 2,470]

Germany closed its nuclear power plants (even though they don't produce CO2 emissions and they are way more stable and realiable than air/water/sun) and now uses coal power plants instead (producing milions of tons of CO2 and pollusion). As a result, cost of electricity in whole Central Europe is becoming unbearable expensive. Thank you Germany  enjoy your polluted air.

[Economy 53,173]

4 hours ago, Supersonic said:

Daily reminder that Germany's current energy crisis in part is also caused by France's over-reliance on nuclear power plants. 

Only 26 of 56 nuclear reactors in France are currently running on low capacity BECAUSE it is too hot, there's not enough skilled professionals to maintain the power plants (labour often times has to be outsourced to other countries) and the powerplants need continuous water supply of rivers to cool down. That doesn't work because France's rivers shrivelled down even worse than the German ones.

Because of that, Germany has had to export a HUGE chunk of the energy it produced via renewables into France. It's raising electricity prices in France AND Germany. Matter of fact, Germany has had to continously export energy into France since 2020, just because they failed to properly maintain their nuclear system.

Climate change is showing that new nuclear reactors (and trying to maintain them without access to cooling water in the summer), is nothing but a pipe dream. Nuclear & fossils are blowing up on our faces at the same time. 

Well, global warming is making problems like that worse...

 

And to be fair, reliability wise, weather can affect renewables a lot too. If u have a dry spell in Wind like what happened in the UK some time ago a lot of power production can drop there too.

 

So it's not like the reliability issue in Nuclear France going thru can't happen with renewables also.

[Economy 53,173]

3 hours ago, Monstruous said:

 

 im aware of that

and, if politicians moved towards renewable before instead of being dependant on Russian energy (which was obvi a huge risk) this would've not happened so there's really no excuse imo

it's not like it's been more than 50 years that we know we have to de-carbonate our energy

Agreed. But again, now it's done and u can't change it. So they have to run the plants now they got no choice

[Economy 53,173]

3 hours ago, HiddenWeirdo said:

I can only speak for students, as I was one at that time. 

Financial aid meant receiving a maximum of 500 euros a month (starting from June 2020, so two months late to the party). Why maximum? If you had 0 euros in your account, you received 500. If you had 200, you only received the difference, so another 300.

I was immediately fired when the first lockdown happend in April. Living in Germany requires way more than 500 a month. My rent was already 550 euros. So yeah, I struggled so much financially at that time and quickly looked for a good job 

Why so stingy? Germany has the second lowest debt of GDP in the G7 after Canada. It's not like it didn't have the means to do more 

[Supersonic 49,376]

10 minutes ago, Economy said:

Well, global warming is making problems like that worse...

 

And to be fair, reliability wise, weather can affect renewables a lot too. If u have a dry spell in Wind like what happened in the UK some time ago a lot of power production can drop there too.

 

So it's not like the reliability issue in Nuclear France going thru can't happen with renewables also.

That's correct on wind energy, however most of Germany's renewables come from solar power, which is pretty reliable (even with overcast days). Considering that global warming is gonna cause Germany to have continously more sunny days, I personally think it's a nobrainer that solar is the way to go (here at least). 

What IS problematic is the fact that even the nuclear plants that currently don't produce energy, still need to be cooled and maintained, otherwise the entire continent would be uninhabitable. Dormant plants are getting huge fresh water deliveries, while in the south of France drinking water is getting rationed for the general public because of the drought.

I feel like re-investing nuclear would be done to the detriment of working class people. Nuclear powerplants are the opposite of profitable, they would forever live from government subsidies (even if they're privatized), aka tax payer money, like they did in the past. It's electricity, but at what cost? If renewables are not working, they're still not posing a literal threat to mankind. If nuclear doesn't work (and as of right now they are much less reliable than renewables), it's a f*cking sh*tshow for everybody. And the rich are defintely not gonna pay for it out of solidarity, it's gonna be the working class who will see their quality of life deteriorate further because of the additional costs.

Also I don't think it's a coincidence that in Germany all politicians who lobbied for coal until 2020 are now suddenly all aboard the nuclear train again. It's energy conglomerates that are worth billions lobbying conservative/liberal politicians to get back to nuclear, offering them a share of the profits behind our backs. The conglomerates are afraid of how heavily decentralized a solar power network could look like, because then they wouldn't be able to engage in price gouging for higher profit margins anymore. 

[Economy 53,173]

1 hour ago, Supersonic said:

That's correct on wind energy, however most of Germany's renewables come from solar power, which is pretty reliable (even with overcast days). Considering that global warming is gonna cause Germany to have continously more sunny days, I personally think it's a nobrainer that solar is the way to go (here at least). 

What IS problematic is the fact that even the nuclear plants that currently don't produce energy, still need to be cooled and maintained, otherwise the entire continent would be uninhabitable. Dormant plants are getting huge fresh water deliveries, while in the south of France drinking water is getting rationed for the general public because of the drought.

I feel like re-investing nuclear would be done to the detriment of working class people. Nuclear powerplants are the opposite of profitable, they would forever live from government subsidies (even if they're privatized), aka tax payer money, like they did in the past. It's electricity, but at what cost? If renewables are not working, they're still not posing a literal threat to mankind. If nuclear doesn't work (and as of right now they are much less reliable than renewables), it's a f*cking sh*tshow for everybody. And the rich are defintely not gonna pay for it out of solidarity, it's gonna be the working class who will see their quality of life deteriorate further because of the additional costs.

Also I don't think it's a coincidence that in Germany all politicians who lobbied for coal until 2020 are now suddenly all aboard the nuclear train again. It's energy conglomerates that are worth billions lobbying conservative/liberal politicians to get back to nuclear, offering them a share of the profits behind our backs. The conglomerates are afraid of how heavily decentralized a solar power network could look like, because then they wouldn't be able to engage in price gouging for higher profit margins anymore. 

Yeah solar is more reliable than wind but it is worth noting that any grid that relies on solar for a very high percentage of its power will also require a large storage capacity since u do not produce power at night. That can be very costly also producing so many batteries has its own environmental challanges

 

And I agree building new nuclear isn't the smartest investment but I wasn't suggesting investing more in them necessarily tho. I was refering to plants that still worked and could have produced power still but were instead decomissioned early

 

I agree in terms of building new ones I wouldn't go for nuclear either in most Countries but rushing shutting them down I think has also caused premature unnecessary strains on the grid

 

As u pointed out these nuclear plants still need to be cooled and maintained for many years after they are shut down anyway. Might as well with a little more effort keep them running longer and getting more out of them

 

I feel like exagerated fear from nuclear events like Chernobyl has played into these decisions. There has never been a major accident in the newer generation reactor technology that was built from the 1970s onward I believe

 

Of course the risk isn't 0 I get that, but given pollution kills ppl directly every year and the impact on global warming also makes fossil fuels a killer indirectly as well... I'd still call burning fossil fuels a greater risk than nuclear at this time. So shutting down nuclear plants that still work if u haven't finished ur investments in other renewables to handle the grid more on their own to me isn't very smart

 

Again, I agree in terms of NEW investment, I wouldn't go for nuclear either

 

[Epione 10,896]

Angelina Merkel knew what she was doing. Girl is now hiding in Berghain.

[Economy 53,173]

7 minutes ago, Epione said:

Angelina Merkel knew what she was doing. Girl is now hiding in Berghain.

Leaving that legacy

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 7,049]

7 hours ago, Gabi001 said:

Germany closed its nuclear power plants (even though they don't produce CO2 emissions and they are way more stable and realiable than air/water/sun) and now uses coal power plants instead (producing milions of tons of CO2 and pollusion). As a result, cost of electricity in whole Central Europe is becoming unbearable expensive. Thank you Germany  enjoy your polluted air.

The issue is that it isn't simple at all. Security checks for the still operating plants haven't been done in over a decade because they knew they'd be shutting them down 20ish years ago. And operating permits are due to expire and have expired on the ones already shut down. The ones that shut down before the war are already being dismantled, with things such as the containment buildings already being taken apart. Also, they're running out of nuclear fuel and it would take 12-15 more months for it to be produced.