
Germany looks to step up coal exit timetable - Tomte
https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/germany-looks-step-coal-exit-timetable-doc-1nr6j71
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_n_b_
This seems nearly unachievable--and will punishingly expensive--if they don't
reverse their nuclear phase-out.

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DarkWiiPlayer
I know this isn't a very popular opinion, but I've always thought that was a
hugely stupid idea in the first place. Instead of shutting down nuclear power
plants, we should have doubled down on them and spent more money on research
to make them safer (as I understand it, there's still many unexplored concepts
to make nuclear power much safer and reduce nuclear waste) and more efficient.

The sad truth is, that decision was largely driven by uninformed and emotional
reactions to a single event on the other side of the world. Many people think
a nuclear reactor can blow up like an atomic bomb, probably from movies and
games as well as just assuming everything "nuclear" is inherently explosive
and dangerous.

~~~
Tenoke
>I know this isn't a very popular opinion, but I've always thought that was a
hugely stupid idea in the first place. Instead of shutting down nuclear power
plants, we should have doubled down on them and spent more money on research
to make them safer (as I understand it, there's still many unexplored concepts
to make nuclear power much safer and reduce nuclear waste) and more efficient.

It's a very common opinion among people who have researched this
significantly, but not all that common in the general population, sadly.

~~~
_n_b_
I make my living off of the splitting of atoms, so the opinions I hear are not
reflective of the broader population. It's always interesting to hear what
people in the wider-world think. A big part of the perception problem, I
think, is that people don't really spend a lot of time to do significant
research about how power is made. This is understandable--the power industry
is kind of setup to keep the generation side hidden (both physically and
figuratively). All most people really need to know is that when they plug it
in to the wall, electricity will flow from somewhere and their vacuum (or
whatever) will work. I suppose that's something that needs to change.

I also wish it were more practical for interested people to tour operating
nuclear power plants. They're amazing feats of engineering and operations--and
that's very evident everywhere you look at most plants--but they're not so
easy to visit for most people.

~~~
majewsky
> They're amazing feats of engineering and operations [...] but they're not so
> easy to visit for most people.

Why is that knowledge important for a risk analysis?

Also, renewable power plants of all types (wind, solar, water, etc.) are also
amazing feats of engineering. So I don't see this impacting the argument in
any particular direction.

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hokkos
It is easy and only a political issue, because of the coal workers, but just
do like England and switch to fossil gas, it will be more useful with
intermittent wind and solar, but only moderately helpful for CO2/CH4
emissions, and doesn't lead to deep decarbonation, where the only solution is
a major nuclear mix, or more realistically for Germany with major renewable
load the use of batteries storage for daily intermittency and hydrogen in salt
caverns for seasonal intermittency.

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FisherGuy44
It seemed really expensive in the beginning, but now even more so, given
they'll do it 5 years faster. I wonder if the investment pays off as it's
implemented. Or does it pay off at all? It's really cheaper to move from coal
to other ways of producing electricity? I'm asking about the current state of
things because I'm sure in the future it'll be cheaper and cheaper

~~~
SethTro
it's not expensive considering the alternative is we all die in a giant
fireball.

edit: Also currently on HN frontpage is "Climate threats now dominate long-
term risks, survey of global leaders finds" so maybe adverting that is worth
the cost.

~~~
cesarb
> we all die in a giant fireball.

Hyperbole like that will only lead to the rest of your arguments getting
ignored. Even Venus, with its runaway greenhouse effect, is not a "giant
fireball" (we even have pictures of its surface).

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alexgmcm
Do they have a reliable and renewable replacement for baseload generation?

Nuclear would be ideal but that has been ruled out for political reasons.

~~~
barry-cotter
At worst they can import electricity from France which has plenty of nuclear
power.

~~~
nicolaslem
France will not have plenty of nuclear power to spare, many reactors are old
and there is no plan to build more of them. In a few decades most reactors
will have to shutdown because these things don't live forever.

~~~
Brave-Steak
They don't even have enough spare capacity now. I think I remember reading
that when peak loads were particularly high recently, they had to import power
from Germany.

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meerita
Didn't they opened a new coal plant?
[https://climatechangenews.com/2020/01/09/wont-let-germany-
bu...](https://climatechangenews.com/2020/01/09/wont-let-germany-build-new-
coal-power-plant/)

~~~
majewsky
Not yet, but Datteln 4 (i.e. the fourth block in the Datteln power plant) is
set to open soon. The operator has committed to taking blocks 1-3 offline and
argues that the new block will be more efficient than the old ones.

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Reggi55
Looks like they'll still be on coal when most of the world will be moving off
it.

Just because there's a timetable for it still makes it backward (including the
self-decided avoidance of Nuclear) to hang on so long.

~~~
adventured
> Looks like they'll still be on coal when most of the world will be moving
> off it.

That's only true if most of the coal-using world excludes the 2.7 billion
people living in China and India, neither of which have any plans to phase out
coal at all. The US is also only gradually phasing out coal, it'll still be a
major coal energy producer 20 years from now (probably 15% of its power base
at that point).

China is very aggressively expanding its coal use - despite using as much coal
as the rest of the world combined already. It's presently adding more new coal
generation than exists in the entire EU.

~~~
imtringued
That is true but I often see this used as a justification to not cut CO2
emissions because the "largest" emitters are growing their emissions. However,
it doesn't make sense in terms of fairness because if you only look at current
emissions you will not see the whole picture. When talking about fairness you
always want to consider the cumulative CO2 [0] emissions that a country has
emitted over it's existence and in those charts China is still a relatively
small player despite having 1.3 billion people. Roughly 14% of the emissions
in China are caused during the manufacturing of exported goods. The country is
investing in electric mobility and renewable energy as much as it can. The
only thing you can do to prevent an increase in CO2 emissions in China is to
invent new technology that reduces CO2 emissions in a cost effective way. That
won't happen if you just stick your head in the sand and continue defending
obsolete technology.

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/10/Cumulative-
CO2-tr...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/10/Cumulative-
CO2-treemap.png)

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ploden
At a cost of $45 billion. Or, 6% of the US defense budget. Good for Germany.

