ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
December 30, 2021
2:33 PM ET
Germany announced that it would shutter its remaining six nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, completely ending its reliance on the renewable source.
“For the energy industry in Germany, the nuclear phase-out is final,” Kerstin Andreae, the head of the nation’s largest energy industry association, told Reuters.
Three of the nuclear reactors will be shut down Friday while the remaining three will be closed in a year, according to Reuters. The German government accelerated its phase down of nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdown in Japan in 2011, a catastrophe that the International Atomic Energy Agency gave the highest level of accident rating.
In 2020, nuclear power accounted for roughly 6% of Germany’s total energy supply and produced more than 11% of its electricity, data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed. By comparison, nuclear power accounted for more than 13% of the country’s total energy supply and produced nearly 30% of its electricity in 2000. (RELATED: Nuclear May Be The Ticket To A Carbon-Free Future. Why Do Environmentalists Hate It?)
“Each country pursues its own strategy to fight man-made climate change,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Dec. 10 when asked if nuclear energy is sustainable, Reuters reported. “What unites us is that we recognize that responsibility and are ambitious.”
Sholz stopped short of explicitly labeling nuclear a renewable energy source, Reuters reported at the time. Nuclear energy doesn’t produce any emissions and is considered clean by the U.S. government.
Germany continues to pursue an energy policy that will make renewables account for 80% of power demand by 2030.
However, the move to shut all nuclear plants in Germany is expected to make the nation more reliant on fossil fuels, according to the Center for Promotion of Sustainable Development. It will also reportedly make Germany more reliant on natural gas imports from Russia, which has been accused of manipulating supplies for geopolitical purposes.
The country ultimately plans to generate most of its power from solar and wind in the future, two renewable sources that have been criticized as unreliable and intermittent. Europe is currently in the midst of an energy crisis largely because wind blew at levels well below capacity, forcing greater natural gas reliance and driving energy bills up. (RELATED: ‘Cannot Power The World With Solar Panels And Wind Turbines Alone’: Bipartisan Lawmakers Advocate For Increased Nuclear Energy)
https://buy.tinypass.com/checkout/template/cacheableShow?aid=2SUjiFgnKP&templateId=OTKNCQOEIXFA&offerId=fakeOfferId&experienceId=EXWKP4FOM02Z&iframeId=offer_d1dff69da469c9392330-0&displayMode=inline&pianoIdUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fid.tinypass.com%2Fid%2F&widget=template&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” Rory McCarthy, a senior analyst at the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters last week.
Wind produced about 23% of Germany’s electricity and solar produced about 9% in 2020, according to the IEA.
And how many Coal burning power stations using Lignite did they build.
https://networks.online/power/germany-to-switch-on-more-coal-fired-power-despite-2038-exit/
Wonder wat they are smoking to come up with such idiotic policies.
If they were smoking what I think they were smoking one ounce of it produces at least the equivalent CO2 emissions as burning 7 gallons of gasoline
Obviously, the CO2 emitted from smoking weed is beneficial whereas the dirty CO2 emitted from coal is dirty, horrible, child-stunting CO2
24/7 reliable electricity would also be helpful for growing the stuff. I haven’t known it grow by moonlight.
More of German industrial plants will move out of Germany
Much of them to China, to be powered by Coal burning power plants, thus helping to end AGW. Oh, wait…..
The new Government will legalize weed. Maybe they were smoking illegally when they signed the nuclear exit law.
Big problem with that though. And refer to stories of power use around Denver, you need a lot of electricity to grow high quality pot it seems.
“Each country pursues its own strategy to fight man-made climate change,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Dec. 10 when asked if nuclear energy is sustainable
….
Is Germany expecting that a tsunami will wipe out it’s nuclear power plants?
As Forrest Gump said; “Stupid is as stupid does”
I guess they want more CO2, not less ??
– JPP
You probably should have quoted this:
“The German government accelerated its phase down of nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdown in Japan in 2011, a catastrophe that the International Atomic Energy Agency gave the highest level of accident rating.”
Then your comment would have proper context.
Under what context is shutting down nukes not stupid?
I worked on post Fukushima design modifications for some US plants. Based on the costs for some older smaller plants, it did not make economic sense to keep the plants running.
re: “it did not make economic sense to keep the plants running.”
Pricing against cheap nat gas in a ‘merchant (generation) market’ is a problem; no one wants to pay a slightly higher on-going cost in order to provide a hedge against possible (like we are seeing now) higher nat gas process …
You’re reading too much into what I said. The key word was “tsunamis”. Peterson didn’t include that in his quote, which would have made more sense. That’s all I was saying.
Wonder what the risk of tsunamis is along the German northern border? Otherwise, there’s not much point of worrying about a Fukushima-like incident.
Yes. But Peterson didn’t include the Fukushima quote, but mentions tsunamis, so it didn’t make sense.
Factually incorrect – the no-nuke law was signed in secret 5 months before Fukushima by the CDU/SPD not the Greens. Rather embarrassing, what?
Highest level? Wonder how they measure that given that according to Japanese authorities nobody died or has demonstrable long term radiation sickness as result of the nuclear accident itself. The thousands who did die, were killed by the quake and tsunami.
Absolutely.
You shouldn’t let the facts get in the way of a good crisis. Much of what happened in Fukushima was made worse by the orders of the Japanese government, which wanted the worst ‘disaster’ it could get in order to shut down their nuclear industry.
John H
Are you kidding us here?
The article you post is about 2 years old.
And soon the Stone Age will return to Stonehenge.
Remember Einstein’s famous warning, no matter what weapons WWIII is fought with, the next will be with stones.
re: “no matter what weapons WWIII is fought with”
If Einstein had been a virologist, he could have nailed it cold.
Kerzen kaufen.
The greens do have a real nihilist tendency.
Not just the Greens – it is Kant the Omnipulverizer, the destroyer of not just the body, but of ideas.
Incredible how easy it is to sabotage a country with green marxism.
But that’s what marxism was always about.
One can expect that lockdowns and vaccinations will continue to hide the destruction.
Engels and Marx were Germans.
Long live the poor proletariat.
Did the German people actually vote for these government idiots?
German power plant engineers should grow a pair, and resign en masse, and stay out, until the government falls.
“Did the German people actually vote for these government idiots?”
Do you think America actually voted for “Brandon” ?…Oops, I mean Joe Biden…
They voted for miniature ponies and a sugar-daddy … (and, of course, will get neither)
The idiots get the politics form the idots they elect — and they deserve every ounce of it.
Almost all those who believe will continue to believe, come hell or high water.
It is so comforting to know that major decisions affecting the quality of people’s lives, and even life itself are being made on the basis of emotions, not facts or actual science.
Dunning-Kruger affected voters driving Dunning-Kruger affected pols; where are the professional engineering societies (IEEE, APS etc) in all this?
“where are the professional engineering societies (IEEE, APS etc) in all this?”
If APS is any indication, they’re probably onboard with this nonsense.
re: “If APS is any indication, they’re probably onboard with this nonsense.”
Therein lies the problem; All rational thought has ‘left the planet’ at that point. We are doomed. Either that, or APS as an organization will die and some other org will take its place, in time. There is yet some hope for mankind as long as some of us do not abandon rational thought, it just will not be in this time frame, with this present generation … in the meantime, more ‘lessons’ will be learned the hard way.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Examples from the American Society of Civil Engineers. My physics instructors (High School and College) didn’t teach me like phys.org, but I’m not an engineer, having never worked with one like that either. “For an engineer to be expected to handle all of that plus concepts that are beyond engineering, I think you need an education that sets you up for that.”
https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2021/11/what-does-infrastructure-have-to-do-with-social-justice-and-equity?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-large-natural-gas-climate-gains.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io
From the article, I will call this ‘progress on the equity front’ (FWIW and I think its stupid):
Reyes cited the recent decision to put the I-710 S expansion on hold as a win for community justice.
The move came even though “the highway connects the ports with the rest of the country, (and those ports) handle, I think, the majority of the container goods for the entire country,” he said. “So there’s a real economic reason for this project.”
I’m sorry Bruce, but the Germans are rightfully afraid of all the tsunamis in Germany. Shut everything down!
Politicians think there’s votes in green energy. That explains a lot..
Politicians in the US look for large benefits to their deficit riddled pension plans.
What else could be expected from most tribes?
Amazing times ahead 😀
Air pumps will be asked to move the mills 😀
Will the last person to have a house or a car or a job please turn off the lghts before leaving the stage. On second thoughts dont bother they will switch themselves off
Rolls-Royce/MTU to the rescue with a complete offering of diesel and gas-fired gensets for those times when your wind turbines and your solar panels just won’t perform to expectations.
Curiously Rolls-Royce announced SMR, Small Modular Reactors, and BoJo apparently is doing something. Will Germany’s MTU tow the line?
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-secures-funding-for-SMR-deployment
Even France has a SMR program.
Are we seeing something like Mainframe Reactors replaced by SMR’s?
IBM’s Watson made the dumbest remark ever – the world needs 5 mainframes. Look what happened.
We need 6000 1gw reactors, or many more SMR’s…
A decade of hard work is needed to build the SMR industrial supply chain infrastructure; and once that industrial infrastructure is up and working reliably, to then prove that an SMR plant can be be constructed on cost and on schedule.
If the initial few plants built in the late 2020’s and early 2030’s are brought in on cost and schedule, it will be the mid to late 2030’s before the numbers of SMR plants being constructed begins to accelerate.
Here in the US, NuScale’s 77 MWe design is the SMR development project furthest along the pathway towards achieving that goal. Their first six-unit SMR plant is scheduled to go online in eastern Idaho in late 2029.
NuScale is where they are because their design leverages existing light water reactor technology, because NuScale has worked closely with the NRC to make sure no regulatory surprises occur while their design and its support infrastructure is under development, and because the NuScale project team of Fluor, UAMPS, and Energy Northwest is following a highly disciplined and realistic approach to managing the project.
Nuscale either is where it is, or are where they are…
I know no one learns grammar any more, but really..
/pedant
Leo, my choice of wording comes from my observation that the people who make up the NuScale project’s senior management and lower tier technical and management staff have all been around the block in every facet of nuclear power plant design, construction, and operations. That is likewise true of the personnel that Fluor, UAMPS, and Energy Northwest have assigned to the eastern Idaho project. In my mind and personal thinking, NuScale and its partners comprise a ‘they’, not an ‘it.’
And when the fuel for said generators is banned?
See, nuclear “clogs the grid”, and we can’t have that. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. Maybe Griff knows. The font of energy wisdom.
Clogs the grid with reliable electrons?
That’s what one German official said.
The problem is that if you have nuclear, sooner or later someone will ask what is the point of having windmills and solar panels as well…
So true. 🙂
Yet the French have 56 nuclear power reactors in operation.
And I bet they don’t retire all of them until “renewable energy” is proven it can take their place, which will be never.
The Germans ought to follow that plan. They shouldn’t be retiring nuclear reactors until they prove that windmills and solar can replace them. And I doubt they will ever be able to prove that, the way things are looking.
They shouldn’t be retiring nuclear reactors until they prove that windmills and solar can replace them.
The looming problem that I see is that by the time they realize they’ve made a mistake, it will be too late to change course.
Yes, they are going over the cliff right now.
But it has been proven. Proven that they can’t replace reliable FF generation. Just ask the people in Houston, California, the UK. Not to mention the people in Germany who have had their power cut off bc they can’t afford to pay their electricity bills.
That being said, it’s an open question if the Greens insist on going hell-bent on this insane course because they don’t understand that, or because they DO understand that. 🙁
South Australia proved that in 2016 when the whole grid failed. Also in SA & Vic in 2018 with rolling blackouts to protect the grid. Rolling blackouts have become a normal part of life in the south-east of Australia.
I suggest hedging your bets,
Pass the popcorn please!
It’s impressive that Germany has had the wit to learn from Japan’s unsolved disaster. If the careful, thoughtful Japanese could make the simple construction planning error that caused the death of Fukushima Daichi with the disruption of so many people’s lives, and the ongoing radioactive pollution of the North Pacific, what hidden Nuclear flaw awaits Germany?
Nuclear electricity remains:
”Whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.” ~ancient Greeks
Storage has always been the solution to Renewable Energy and continues to develop at high speed, with several more methods coming on stream over the past decade. Distributed Energy and Conservation are also helping.
Of course, most readers of WUWT have little concern with using fossil fuels, based upon the many researchers who report in these pages that CO2 is Not THE cause of regional climate changes worldwide. All we need is to have NetZero pollution of air, water & soil from mining and burning them.
You’re a blithering idiot.
Nuclear is cheaper than coal and is extremely safe. Nuclear is obviously insurable, moron. Nuclear waste IS disposable, idiot. Everything in the universe are a replaceable. Indeed if nations built and operated safe breeder reactors, then nuclear most certainly is sustainable because it produces its own plutonium fuel. In any event there is a virtually unlimited supply of uranium and thorium fuel easily recovered from the Earth’s crust.
NEW nuclear plants last 60 to 80 years, equivalent to 3 sets of wind turbines that would produce near zero, if the wind is blowing very little; anything less than 3.5 mph does not count.
Where will all these blades be stored?
So, nuclear is “BAD” because “something might happen”? That’s retarded.
CO2 isn’t a pollution, never was and never will be. For all life on earth it’s a fertilizer.
“Storage has always been the solution to Renewable Energy and continues to develop at high speed, with several more methods coming on stream over the past decade.”
what exactly are these? Pumped Storage is most likely the best, but not very efficient.
“Distributed Energy and Conservation are also helping.” What do you mean? People going without and freezing / burning up, because of the cost?
Pumped storage is also pretty much tapped out. There aren’t a lot of good sites left in the world.
Maybe use space elevators?
Mark,
there is abig misconception about pumped storage., it does not compensate for intermittency of renewable generation. It’s main function is frequency support because of it’s ability to come on line very fast but for a short duration to allow the grid to stabilise. batteries can also do the same job.
Lorne, which viable energy storage methods do you see for now and in the future? With viable, I mean safe, efficient, affordable energy storage that can be deployed anywhere in the world.
just look at facebook : not a day goes by without a new incredibly revolutionary battery breakthrough . ten thousand miles on a single battery charge for ev’s .
This, folks, is the Dunning-Kruger effect showing its “full glory”. The path to Idiocracy is paved with Green Ideas, and is being brought to by the likes of Lorne WHITE and his/her/its fellow travelers.
If you are to deny the extensive reporting supported by publi data concerning the beneficial greening of the earth by co2, better come prepared. Childishly denying the truths of it without even an attempt at argument squarely place you into the useful idiot rank.
You wrongly think most people here do not mind using fossil fuel. What you wrongly call pollution (co2) remain the basis of all life and the fact lso remain plant life prefer a 1000 or more ppm of it.
So my friend where is the beef? Because you resume of nuclear flaws were the failures of the past generations of reactors. The 4th generation solve all of them. Why don’t you give it a pass, since you are quick to give a pass to unrealized capacity storage that exist only in paper hypothesis.
fossil fuels have produced great benefits but what a waste of potential, if something else will work for power generation, as ff are vital for so many other things.
“Storage has always been the solution to Renewable Energy”
Not for woody biomass- the only truly green, renewable and dependable base load power. Storage is in the managed forests, which are also producing high value timber for homes, furniture and paper products- along with wildlife habitat, watershed protection, recreation, etc. Currently producing roughly 6% of electricity in Germany.
using wood from the US …
it’s called trade- look it up
they send us high tech machinery/optics, etc… we send them wood chips– seems fair enough
Are you Griff?
Seems dim enough.
Lorne didn’t post any links to articles that refute the point that he/she/it is trying to make.
NetZero costs $100 TRILLION as US Climate Finance expert Marc Carney ‘splained at COP26 :
Bloomberg : Net-Zero a Ruthless, Relentless Focus for GFANZ: Mark Carney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwz8i4UBGIE
So pony up!
and that’ll be only the down payment- it’s going to bankrupt any political entity so stupid as to try it- luckily, all those governments will be voted out- governments without democracy are of course not playing the game
At least China has the right idea — more nuclear — more coal & CO2 … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Iu9D5RhqQ
Obviously Lorne, the nuclear-fearmongering has gotten to you. What a shame, but you have alot of company.
re: “”Whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.” ~ancient Greeks”
Bastardization of the actual prose from the play Antigone where Sophocles quotes a version, which I excerpt from the Perseus translation below:
For with wisdom did someone once reveal the maxim, now famous,
that evil at one time or another seems good,
to him whose mind a god leads to ruin.
Often also translated as:
When a god plans harm against a man, he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.
if you want to make god laugh , make a plan
re: “if you want to make god laugh , make a plan”
Yet, our advanced civilization exists. In a prior century we put men and vehicles on the moon. This century we put computers on our wrists and become dumber. Peak stupidity reached? Maybe … but only because Facebook, Twitter make it evident.
Did you see the Elon Musk interview with the staff of the Babylon Bee? Worth at least the price of admission:
“FULL INTERVIEW: Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee”
The Babylon Bee Published December 22, 2021
https://rumble.com/vr8s2e-full-interview-elon-musk-sits-down-with-the-babylon-bee.html
Well, ok, I just sort of randomly clicked into the start of this interview a few times to try to see where it was going. I’m not going to watch the whole hour and a half, but I got as far as 44 minutes in, where Musk muses that the dependency on fossil fuels “could” get out of hand, despite his having said a bit earlier in the video, that CO2 is “not at a bad level” currently?
Can I just paraphrase now, Babylon Bee style, and infer that what Musk is really saying is “buy my limited range, battery intensive vehicles for no other reason than virtue signalling about what ‘could’ be, someday”?
The scary part of this, is that as quirky ‘genius’ level industrialists go, Musk is top notch, he’s the very best in the world, it seems, the best we’ve got. At the same time, he is not that different from Bill Gates really, in that the good ideas usually come mixed with some generally alarmist cautions, to say the least?
Well, for the less patient there are vid segments like the one below where Musk ‘gets sharp’ with the woke mob; this kind of thing is probably the bigger take-away of the “interview”:
“Elon Musk: Wokeness Is a Mind Virus That Wants to Make Comedy Illegal”
BonginoReport Published December 22, 2021
https://rumble.com/vr8fpw-elon-musk-wokeness-is-a-mind-virus-that-wants-to-make-comedy-illegal.html
Thanks Jim,
Bastardization indeed.
A god corrupts the mind of man to send man off the rails.
(by & through confusing good and evil actions … hence the description of the pavers on the ‘road to hell’).
Lorne White seems to be describing itself.
You call those manipulators gods?
“most readers of WUWT have little concern with using fossil fuels, based upon the many researchers who report in these pages that CO2 is Not THE cause of regional climate changes worldwide.”
Actually, what many people here are saying is there is not yet any PROOF that it is THE cause. Until that proof is made, it’s far more sensible to conclude that we don’t yet know THE cause, if in fact, there really is a problem. Many people are showing that there is no increase in climate “disasters” yet we see every day in the MSM that every time there is a flood, drought, forest fire, etc. it’s blamed on human caused climate change. And, we see how one of the climate science royalty, Mikey Mann claims human caused climate change is as definitive as our understanding of gravity- which claim is nuts.
Actually, I for one am not saying “there is not yet any PROOF that (use of FF) is THE cause…of regional climate changes worldwide”.
I’m saying that there is no proof of any of regional climate changes worldwide period. Yes, there have been huge climate changes over tens of thousands of years, just ask any Dinosaur. But for climate changes over the past several thousand years, much less the lifespan of any of us, NOPE don’t see any evidence of that.
The variance from Warm Period, to little Ice Age, to Warm period etc. is NOT climate change. It’s just the normal climate doing what it does, yo-yoing up and down. Like the famous quote: like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It gets cold, it warms up, it gets cold again. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
What ongoing radiation pollution? It never existed. As to the ongoing disruption of lives, that was a 100% political decision. There was never a need for a mass evacuation.
The only problems with nuclear are political ones, the technical problems were solved long ago.
Your belief that storage technology is advancing, much less at high speed, is as delusional as the rest of your post.
That CO2 is not the cause of the extremely tiny amount of climate change that has been seen over the last 200 years, is well and fully proven. The pollution problems with fossil fuels also were solved decades ago. But once again, since fossil isn’t your desired solution, you refuse to see it.
As to the so called mining problems, you see what you want to see, not what is there.
“Your belief that storage technology is advancing, much less at high speed, is as delusional as the rest of your post.” !!!!
nuclear has a pretty good record of powering submarines and aircraft carriers for the last 50 years . if it works so well in such a difficult environment why can’t it work on land . ?
Not reliable supply of water for cooling. Or possibility of water contamination.
” Storage has always been the solution to Renewable Energy … ”
Let me insert the missing words:
Storage has always been the theoretical solution sought to make Renewable Energy useful and reliable.
Battery storage for a utility scale total packet, for a few days of cloudy weather, costs 10x more than the panels when enclosure, fire suppression, switching, interconnects, construction labor, site prep., and more are included. Tesla packet for home use costs $1,000/kwh.
For real? Wow, was just reading that the average residential cost in the US is about $0.13 kWh…
Not sure why I got voted down there. If $1,000 kWh is true that’s obscene.
You probably got downvoated on account you didn’t understand that the capital cost of Tesla packet for home use costs $1,000 per kwh of installed capacity. THIS is the cost of the hardware (batteries, controller, labor etc)
We’re NOT talking about the cost per kWh of electricity drawn off the grid.
Thanks for the context, I’ve would have voted myself down as well but it won’t let me…
No problem. Glad to help out.
That’s the problem with the downvote system.
Someone chose to downvote you for not understanding something rather than trying to help clarify it for you. The whole thing reduces the overall quality of interaction in discussion.
Renewables have an even higher pollution of air, water, and soil from mining and disposal per kWhr. Impressive the cognitive dissonance in completely ignoring that inconvenience.
Lorne,
you say:- “Storage has always been the solution to Renewable Energy and continues to develop at high speed, with several more methods coming on stream over the past decade. Distributed Energy and Conservation are also helping.”
Pure wishful thinking at best, it is not possible for that to work. Renewables are a dead end and time will demonstrate that. Just watch New York and see how it fares?
I was waiting for a /sarc tag while I read your post. I should have been looking for the /shill tag instead.
There is nothing “renewable” about nuclear power.
Not true if breeder reactors are used. They consume uranium or thorium to produce mor fuel as reaction byproducts. The technology is well established and safe.
and that should be enough until fusion is mastered
Question: How many decades has this been studied and attempted? Even a small demo showing success would be welcome at this point, yet …
MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy
https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusion-energy-0908
“New superconducting magnet breaks magnetic field strength records, paving the way for practical, commercial, carbon-free power.”
re: “MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy”
Looks like support equipment; Not exactly a demo of FUSION power. Are tying to “snow” us?
Contrast that with this, which *is* the measurement of an actual, working device:
https://brilliantlightpower.com/pdf/Randy_Booker_Report.pdf
There is nothing “renewable” about nuclear power.
________________________________________
And then there’s this LINK it’s really difficult to know what’s true and what isn’t
There is no such thing as “renewable” energy. You cannt renew energy – you can only use it once. Wind and solar power rely on a continual stream of fusion energy from the sun.
woody biomass is renewable and can provide baseload power while for free, producing plant food as an emission! Some forests in Europe have been managed for a thousand years… and you don’t waste the landscape managing forests- you make it better! as shown by a colleague: https://www.facebook.com/MikeLeonardConsultingForester/photos/?tab=albums
Germany burns US wood for its energy … not their own forests …
you’re wrong- they intensily manage their forests and produce wood for energy, just like the Scandinavian countries- they all do intense forestry
Actually, one cannot consume or “use up” or destroy energy, it can only be dissipated to a less useful form (via entropy), or converted to mass (such as through photo synthesis). Even the sun, like other stars, once it uses up its hydrogen fuel, has simply redistributed the energy created by fusion of its hydrogen throughout the universe, and what is left will likely implode in a super nova, providing a supply of mass in the form of dust that can reform into another star and start the cycle all over again. Our sun is actually one of the younger stars in the universe, being third generation or later.
Besides fission fast breeders, with Fusion power All The Worlds a Mine.
With breeding, by the time nuclear runs out of fuel (1000 yrs), we should be able to mine metallic asteroids or other bodies like the far side of Mercury for more uranium or thorium.
With breeding, at current global energy consumption levels, if humanity were to derive all of its energy needs (not just electricity) from fission, there is enough thorium and uranium on earth to last humanity for at least hundreds of thousands of years. If we were ever to exhaust the supply on earth, there’s plenty more of both elements (thorium in particular) on the moon.
Have you looked at the sun?
Not “renewable?” So what?
as renewable as wind and solar … which aren’t renewable but replaceable every 20 years …
You keep repeating that lie, just like the brain-dead parrot you have proved yourself to be.
Wind and solar cannot replace themselves and therefore not renewable. They cannot sustain themselves without tax credits, mandates, grid priority and additional government handouts so they’re not sustainable. Thorium and uranium are not “renewable”, but essentially inexhaustible using fast neutron technology. Close enough.
So a retarded statement with no clear intention of the message … try again with explaination
They are against anything that actually works.
In the Superman comics there was Bizarro World. ‘They’ remind me of that.
‘They’ do the opposite of anything that makes sense because ‘making sense’ is a product of toxic masculinity, the patriarchy, and capitalism. Because of their ‘superior’ education, their attitudes and behavior mimic schizophrenia. link Defund the universities.
It is Kant, the Omni-pulverizer as Heine wrote.
The Uni’s adore this executioner of ideas.
When are the German people going to wake up! They are millions, the tyrants are few.
Mass psychosis. You can see it too with the branch covidians. But to be truthful, it’s not the peoples fault when full propaganda is on display.
They are awake and bamboozled – look at the votes parties got recently. It was the CDU/SPD coalition that legislated the nuclear exit 5 months before Fukushima. They got the worst results in 70 years!
A bit like the Dems/GOP. Look at polls right now. Look at Britain’s BoJo Tories. Talk about lock-step marching!
their guilt complex- so they have to be more politically correct than everyone else
going broke, cold and hungry should fix that problem
I am with Joseph 🙂
What woke them up to Hitler and The Final Plan? Oh, yea, everyone kicking the absolute living sh&t out of them. This time they are only killing themselves. Good riddance.
The German people never supported the Nazi Party. The most votes they ever got was 33%, much of which was a protest vote by people who didn’t really know what the Nazis intended to do. What the Nazi Party did was use a super effective version of ‘cancel culture’, where to even question the Party meant sending your entire family to die in a concentration camp. Most people weren’t willing to face that fate, so they kept quiet. Later they lied and said “we didn’t know”, but the truth was “we didn’t know what to do to end it”.
“What the Nazi Party did was use a super effective version of ‘cancel culture’,”
hmm…
Hmm, the “Battered Woman” defense. It is no more legitimate for the people of Germany than it is for a guy beating the crap out of his wife or girlfriend. Just because she won’t press charges does not mean he is not a guilty scumbag. Just because they claimed not to know what the National Socialists were doing until they were doing it to them does not absolve them of their guilt in the matter. And clearly they have learned nothing, they “voted” the exact same assholes into power yet again. They deserve what they get. The power to stop it is in their hands and they refuse to use it.
There is for sure something funny going on.
Austrian Chancellor Kurz left politics and now heads up Peter Thiel’s Global Strategy.
Thiel (German born) is a major investor in Helion, a breakthrough Nuclear Fusion outfit. Also a well known political activist.
https://www.helionenergy.com/
No mention of Fusion in Biden’s BBB, so it looks like powers-that-be intend private funding ¨at all costs¨ , like the latest private ISS Spacex/Blue Origin efforts. Ideology anyone?
This begins to look like Edison on $teroids, sorry $billions. And it looks like these IT billionaire’s see Fusion as the next Big Thing.
They could be right. Anyway we need massive power generation expansion. If these billionaire’s lock Fusion down with Intellectual Property, like Big Pharma with vaccines, power expansion will not happen. Then China will expand power production. Are we witnessing a huge R&D struggle? Where is Germany in this?
fission already works … no need for the unicorn fusion, the power source that has been “10 years from working” for 40 years …
The inmates have taken charge of the asylum in Germany.
The Greens got less than 15% of the vote this year. The real problem is there was no party that opposed the Green Agenda, and spoke out against it. Thus no way for the average voter to vote anti-Green. All of the Parties, in Germany, the UK, and to a considerable degree in the US, have been co-opted by Climate Scientology.
“The country ultimately plans to generate most of its power from solar and wind in the future, two renewable sources that
have been criticized asare known to be unreliable and intermittent.” There, fixed it.How do stupid people get put in charge of things like this?
We’re seeing it (have seen it?) here (in the US); The question should be: Are we immune to the same fate (Y/N)?
Are we immune to the same fate (Y/N)?
No. So plan for it.
Joe Biden has entered the chat
We’re living in an idiocracy and it’s getting worse.
A lot of smart decent people don’t want to put their family through the media ringer of running for higher office or get weeded out for not being politically correct.
Very hard to run against the entire MSM, Academia, the Swamp, and the cancel culture. It’s not as bad (yet) as my post about the Nazi hold on power above, but not because the Left isn’t trying….
Putin is smiling
Think how much easier it is to bring Germany to its knees by closing a few pipeline valves, than to manufacture the 60,000 tanks that were required during their last difference of opinion.
And why wouldn’t he be? He’s where fashion sits!
“completely ending its reliance on the renewable source.“
Nuclear is not renewable, as you have to mine the fuel, it is, however, (almost) co2-free.
then neither are windmills and solar panels … as you have to mine the materials …
There is no such thing as a Plutonium mine. It is made in a power reactor, and can be (is) burned in a power reactor. In addition, the Russians and Indians are working on projects to completely close the fuel cycle. Even without breeder reactors, there is current commercial use of MOX, or mixed Uranium/Plutonium oxides from reprocessed fuel and demilitarized weapons left over from the Cold War.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/russia-nuclear-power.aspx
Stupidity of this magnitude must be carefully planned. It is never spontaneous.
It begins with a ‘march’ (co-opting) through (of) the elementary education system …
-32 here in SW Saskatchewan
AB wind assets performing at less than 2%
http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market/Reports/CSDReportServlet
But it’s a dry cold. 🙂
“-32 here in SW Saskatchewan”
1.5C wouldn’t even make a dent in that.
England v Germany
Who can hit rock bottom first?
South Australia, though they are cheating …
… their starting position is “down under” …
England and Germany are “neck and neck” in that race..
Germany has deeper pockets so they should be able to outlast the UK because they’re both running at the same speed, full-bore!
Of Germany’s 6 remaining nuclear reactors, all began operation between 1985 and 1989. The oldest three will be shutdown by December 31, 2021; the other three by December 31, 2022. Assuming these are of similar design as contemporary US reactors, they should be licensable for 60 years — until 2045 at least. In other words, their operational lives have been artificially shortened by between 24 and 27 years.
This is wasteful. You lose the most economical years of the plant’s operation (construction loans all paid off and very low fuel costs), you accelerate the decommissioning costs with fewer TWh of sales to pay for it, and you can’t re-use the electrical distribution lines without building an equivalent sized plant in the same footprint, which is not possible with low-density generation like wind and solar.
Writing off a major 60 year asset after 35 years incurs a substantial cost which will no doubt be passed to the rate payers.
Losing roughly 8.4 GW of reliable generation is also going to hurt:
It’s too bad the Germans weren’t this dumb in 1939.
re: “It’s too bad the Germans weren’t this dumb in 1939.”
I would have picked an earlier year than that, but I think I get your point …
Why do I have a sneaky feeling that the power plants will be sold off cheap.
Must keep an eye on EBay, could be cheaper than a heat pump…_
https://www.netzerowatch.com/the-eu-must-give-green-light-to-nuclear-and-gas-or-face-disaster/
Last line is brilliant!
You state, “their operational lives have been artificially shortened by between 24 and 27 years”.
This is a blatant government taking without compensation. Shouldn’t the Corporations and or shareholders be provided relief through the courts? Incredible corruption and denying of the private right of ownership. And we are still supposed to believe Germany and the rest of the West are democracies and support the rule of law? Not IMHO.
Dennis:
I don’t know the financial details, nor do I know anything about German law. But I strongly suspect there was some kind of payout to the shareholders to avoid a court challenge.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” Rory McCarthy told Reuters last week.
Blame the weather! More brilliance by the rulers, more telling the peasants to eat cake while their power bills skyrocket.
as someone who has a wind generator i can say anecdotally that all wind generators underperform expectations .
nuclear is un disposable??
We take it from mother earth but not allowed to return it to mother earth. That sounds to me to be stupid. But perhaps I am the stupid one..
re: “But perhaps I am the stupid one..”
Tis the story you have been ‘told’. Likewise me, likewise all of us (so is the impression I get when I occasionally view the national nooze.)
Came across this video about recycling wind turbine blades (and burning them in cement kilns). Interesting comment that the blades are typically 8 to 12 years old! That’s about 1/2 the life expectancy most claim. What a boondoggle.
https://www.businessinsider.com/wind-tubine-blades-landfill-recycle-world-wide-waste-2021-12
“Interesting comment that the blades are typically 8 to 12 years old! That’s about 1/2 the life expectancy most claim.”
That *is* interesting.
a whole 8GW going in total…
They already went without the power from these a few years back, when they shut most of them down for their final maintenance cycle – shouldn’t be any issues around this…
Why didn’t the Germans just leave them closed and declare early victory?
That’s an outright lie, griffter. All 6 of Germany’s remaining nuclear plants were never shut down at the same time. Refueling of nuclear plants is staggered to assure continuity of baseload power and because some plants share contract labor. Besides, reactor shutdowns are always scheduled during periods away from peak electricity demand.
You lie so much we wouldn’t believe you if you stumbled onto the truth.
Amen. Still, it’s good that Griff still comes here. It’s necessary to know what kind of people we’re up against.
And right on que the lie spewing liar shows up to spew lies.
Hey – do y’all really have to be so mean to Griff? Sure he/she/it’s delusional but I kinda admire their willingness to come on this site and try to convert all of us climate apostates. So it stretches the truth all to heck, give it a break. /s/#pronoun-safe
“I kinda admire their willingness to come on this site and try to convert all of us climate apostates”
So you admire the propagandists who come on here, ignore all of the facts we provide, provide no documented links, and continually spew the same old discredited lies. I strongly suspect Griff is being paid to do this. Paid propagandist, or dedicated true believer, I find it hard to feel any admiration.
Griff:
I know you can do better than that. Take a look at the capacity figures I listed; those plants have been providing a lot of power over their lifetimes. Maintenance/refueling shutdowns are relatively brief and performed at times when there is adequate reserve capacity. Permanent shutdown means Germany needs to replace that 8.4 GW with something giving equivalent output 90% of the time over the next 35 years that isn’t nuclear and doesn’t produce CO2. And they have until December 2022.
Griff fact check: Statement false and misleading or just an outright lie.
“If we had high winds….”
If frogs had wings, they would not bump their asses so hard
Those people who are freezing in the dark should just be patient and wait for the wind to start blowing harder.
It’s sad.
One of the most technologically advanced and educated nations on the planet, turning its back on what needs to be used. German Engineers, so often the world’s finest. And all done for foolish political reasons.
Sadness from England.
Oh, how the practical have fallen!
Stupid is as Stupid does.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” …
… and if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t have to bounce around on their butts.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany – really intelligent people – specifically the professional engineers I worked with at Krupp, O&K, etc. The Germans make great heavy equipment, cars, etc. and have well-run cities, at least in the West. The East was a shambles when I was there in the early 1990’s, but a big improvement over my first visit through Checkpoint Charlie in July 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Not so their leadership – Merkel and successors are energy-imbeciles, intent on destroying German prosperity with their destructive anti-nuclear and pro-wind power fantasies.
We haven’t seen this kind of destructive leadership in Germany since the 1930’s. There are other similarities…
The current German energy policy is already causing great harm, and it will get worse, probably in January and February. Who lives and who dies depends on where the polar vortex dips down.
My strong advice – don’t shut down any German nuclear power plants at this time – that is lunacy. Keep your coal power plants running at peak power. If you have excess power, cut back on wind. Be intelligent and save lives.
Don’t forget Merkels political roots.
Ostie.
The DDR was the Comecon main industrial source during the Cold War. Dismantled after the Wall, not allowed to develop. Even Germany could not buck the orders from the great economic shock therapists which at the time destroyed Russia under Yeltsin. Putin reversed all that.
Now Germany must reverse this disastrous policy.
I thought the Germans were more intelligent than this – but then of course Merkel was in charge when this brilliant decision was put into motion. At least the new guy in charge could have put a stop to the madness – but then again, I hear he has built a “coalition” government that includes (ironically) the Climate Nazis, er, “Greens.” So there’s that.
Just how terrified are Germans of a tsunami-induced nuclear disaster in Germany?! That’s sort of like worrying about the wildfire risk in Antarctica.
Doesn’t bother me any. I hope they get rid of all their fossil fuel plants, as well. A powerless Germany makes for a safer world.
Who’s the fossil now?
“There are currently 30 coal-fired power stations in Germany, including RWE’s lignite-fired Niederaussem plant, accounting for around a third of its electricity generation.” What happened to “clean” coal? No investors!
I guess they’re okay with Russia invading Ukraine because you know Russia will hold the gas supply over Germany’s head if they make any more than token protests when that happens.
one thing is sure, WAR is coming in 2022.
All the obvious signs are there.
The greatest danger to Ukraine is its President.
Germany has so far vetoed arming these jokers.
And make no mistake Germany knows what an Ostfront means – been there done that.
Some goons in London and D.C. froth for war. Why? Simple, they are utterly and irredeemably bankrupt. That means since the financial implosion in 2007 they have tried every trick in the book to stay afloat, and taken on too much water from that iceberg. Of course that makes them quite possibly insane enough to go thermonuclear. Russia and China should never make the mistake of underestimating the irrationality of their tormentors!
Russia and China should simply say put your banks under Chapter 11, reorganize and get on with massive development, and pandemic measures!
“Russia and China should never make the mistake of underestimating the irrationality of their tormentors!”
We must not torment the dictators of the world?
How would a thermonuclear war be profitable for anyone?
I would be very surprised if Joe Biden did anything about Ukraine other than harsh language and sanctions.
Joe Biden isn’t going to war with anyone. Did you see his performance in Afghanistan? That’s the real Joe Biden, a clueless appeaser of dictators. A cut-and-run, guy.
On top of his mental misunderstanding of reality, he is also compromised by these dictators. Biden took their money. Biden wouldn’t want that to become public knowledge. So what’s Biden going to do? Not much of anything. Biden won’t be starting any wars.
All that expense and effort to prevent warming when the Earth is headed for an Ice Age.
A great country committing civilization size suicide, pushed without the consent of the people. Bon Bon remarked about Einstein and the next war, Einstein was right except the decline will be not by a shock but by slow torture. Dictatorships smiling.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,”
My dad used to say that if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it jumped. It took me a long time to understand the meaning. Quotes like this bring it into focus.
Safe. Clean. Reliable. Powers the submarines and aircraft carriers that are key parts of our national defense. What’s next? Replacing antibiotics with incantations and dances?
The German rationale for doing away with nuclear power is beyond bizarre. Every point German political leaders and ideologues make against it is exactly the opposite of reality. They say it’s extremely dangers, but in reality its track record makes it by far and away the safest energy technology humanity has ever devised. They say it’s bad for the environment, but in reality it easily has the smallest environmental footprint of any energy technology. They claim it’s too expensive, but in reality, it’s far cheaper than any of the renewables they want to replace it with, and when nuclear isn’t being kneecapped by a regulatory framework deliberately created to drive up its costs, it’s cheaper than coal too. They claim it can’t be scaled up quickly, but the French example shows that it can be scaled up quickly – and certainly far more quickly than the Germans have been able to scale up renewables (despite the much greater sums of wealth they’ve plowed into renewables deployment). Literally every point nuclear opponents make against nuclear power gets reality upside down and backwards.
Sadly, it looks like Germany’s political leaders are determined to make Germany a case study yet again in exactly what not to do.
” They say it’s bad for the environment, but in reality it easily has the smallest environmental footprint of any energy technology. ”
You are a bit dense, aren’t you?
People like you should be sent to the Fukushima area for the next five years to do social service for the people who have been displaced from their homes since 2011.
What about all the dead and displaced by the earthquake BIN?
duh?
deaths 19,747
March 11, 2011
magnitude 9.0–9.1
damage $360 billion USD
AFTERSHOCKS
More than 400 aftershocks were registered in the month after March 11, the highest ever recorded in Japan
aftershocks 13,386 (as of 6 March 2018)
You, in your hurry to write crap have to appeal to emotion of course! The people from, Fukushima area didn’t die drowned, they are still alive and well.
The real victims are NOT
“The central government pledged to rebuild the region and has spent around 31 trillion yen ($286 billion) on reconstruction. In the span of a few years, Japan built new neighborhoods, parks and schools. But the scale of loss here is beyond any policy response.
Thousands of residents have moved away from the hardest-hit cities, with many of those who remain haunted by all that was lost.”
“In Ishinomaki, a coastal city in neighboring Miyagi prefecture, nearly 3,200 people died in the disaster.”
You should rather think about the fact that the nuclear catastrophe was very well due to nuclear energy used at the wrong place.
If the nuclear industry was made responsible for such events, no insurance would accept it as a client, and no nuclear plants would be built at such places, Harrisburg of course included.
Is “Bindidon” code for “Biden” by any chance?
Your “stories”, your recounting of historical events is just as contorted, lacking basis and ‘made up’ as his is …
Putin and Xi The Pooh got to be laughing themselves sick, they hardly had to do anything to get dumbasses to commit suicide.
Intermittent wind and solar gives the game away for where this is heading.
Dummkopfs!
Bring it on. The sooner we get to the end game on the renewables debate, the sooner the truth will out. If Germany can do what its policies and propaganda proclaim then the debate, at the very least, will be reframed. If not, then there should be an accounting that moves energy policy out of the green political arena and returns it to bulk power system operations reality. In the meantime, buy sweaters.
re: “In the meantime, buy sweaters.”
And if not in Germany, maybe sweater futures … (/s if needed)
Well that should increase their footprint massively.
Unless the whole country shuts down.
Popcorn?
Germans have a history of thoughtlessly following loud and strident leaders with grandiose ideas. I say, close down those reactors asap: go full bore wind and solar. Let Germany freeze in the dark while the rest of us still have the electricity to watch it happen on TV. Maybe, just maybe, their sacrifice will wake up the rest of the world to the true costs to ordinary non-elite citizens.
Imagine the chagrin :
Reuters : Draft EU proposal to list nuclear as green :
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/eu-plans-finish-green-investment-rules-gas-nuclear-next-year-2021-12-20/
Had to happen, and the timing is a howler!
Have they heard of the phrase “shooting yourself in the foot” I think it fits these ideas, it’s not like they’re going to just shut the gate and walk away. These plants are going to have to be decommissioned or mothballed both expensive and time consuming. But what the hey it’s for the good of the planet?
As for blaming Fukushima, I wasn’t aware that Germany had suffered any Tsunami’s please correct me if I’m wrong.
James Bull
This just in, Vladimir Putin is said to be building his 5th and 6th dacha. Sources say it may have something to do with Germany’s unwavering ability to write cheques to Russia
With all the advances in science and engineering that have come out of Germany and German expats their present behavior is a mystery. Is it that they do not want a leadership role after what happened under Hitler?
Sorry for the late post. In 2008 Germany established a plan in concert with the EU to end nuke power in 10 years. They are a bit late finishing up. The plan was to go to natural gas powered turbines in smart grids leveraging an expected natural gas glut with Brazil and USA shale gas. The impact of a huge influx of Western Hemisphere natural gas, (liquid natural gas) on the geo-politique was not well considered by the EU or Germany. Putin and Gazprom would throw a huge wrench into the works with Russian invading the Ukraine and seizing the liquid NG ports on the black sea. The chill in Europe is as much Russian as it is failing north sea wind power.
A Russian instigated NG/LNG cartel is better than all out war in central Europe. Growth in NG/LNG demand would come naturally has the Nukes shut down and as buses and cars transitioned from petrol to NG