Germany shuts down half of its 6 remaining nuclear plants

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By FRANK JORDANS

BERLIN (AP) — Germany on Friday is shutting down half of the six nuclear plants it still has in operation, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power.

The decision to phase out nuclear power and shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy was first taken by the center-left government of Gerhard Schroeder in 2002.

His successor, Angela Merkel, reversed her decision to extend the lifetime of Germany’s nuclear plants in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan and set 2022 as the final deadline for shutting them down.

The three reactors now being shuttered were first powered up in the mid-1980s. Together they provided electricity to millions of German households for almost four decades.



FILE - The nuclear power station is seen in Gundremmingen,southern Germany, May 23, 2006. Germany on Friday, Dec. 31, 2021 is shutting down half of the six nuclear plants it still has in operation, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power. (AP Photo/Christof Stache, file)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-germany-angela-merkel-gerhard-schroeder-11b97717f822a38c90fb7483ffc825aa

[Ligyron]

1. Then I assume they have enough wind and solar etc to make up the difference?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. No, but Russia has all this natural gas that they're willing to sell to Germany. NT

[Chainfire]

4. I would think that, from a historical perspective,

that Germany would shy away from becoming dependent upon Russia to keep them warm. Pipelines can be turned on and off like a light switch.

[former9thward]

22. Which is why Germany has been largely silent on Russian encroachment on Ukraine.

[Torchlight]

26. Merkel had been a vocal critic of Moscow's posturing and recent invasions

Hardly "largely silent"

[former9thward]

27. Talk is cheap.

What has been her position? Merkel has backed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, that Ukraine and the U.S. have warned will not only strengthen Moscow’s energy hold on Europe, but cut Ukraine out of lucrative gas transit fees. She got the U.S. to remove sanctions to allow the pipeline to be built.

[Happy Hoosier]

30. She makes a lot of noise...

... but if Germany is dependent upon Russian natural gas, the talk is largely meaningless.

[paleotn]

11. Wind? Not really. Solar? At that latitude? Not year round.

Classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[cinematicdiversions]

3. Don't Look Up...

Ah yes our friends the pro natural gas and coal Greens.... Still living like it was 1981....


Honestly, is is nice to find a large industrialized country even more bullheaded and stupid than the US.

[hunter]

9. Tagebau Hambach...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine

The Greens protest but offer no viable alternatives but dangerous natural gas.

France closed its last coal mine twenty years ago.

[JI7]

5. Going backwards

[gab13by13]

6. Nuclear power and fossil fuels

are subsidized to the hilt while renewable energy is taxed.

Daughter bought a house 10 miles from a nuclear plant, she made sure it was upwind before she bought it.

[former9thward]

23. Not really.

Non-hydro renewable energy (primarily wind and solar) benefited from $158 billion in federal subsidies, or 16% of the total, largely in the form of tax policy and direct federal expenditures on research and development (R&D). Nuclear power benefited from $73 billion in federal subsidies, 8% of the total and less than half of the total applied to renewables, while hydro power received $105 billion in federal subsidies, 10% of the total. Between 2011 through 2016, renewable energy received more than three times as much help in federal incentives as oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear combined, and 27 times as much as nuclear energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United_States

[womanofthehills]

24. My cousin in NJ lived within 10 miles of Oyster Creek nuclear power plant

It closed a few yrs ago but people within 10 miles were offered potassium iodide pills (just incase) when it was up.

Health Department Distributes Potassium Iodide Pills
NJ SPOTLIGHT NEWS | FEBRUARY 20, 2017 | HEALTH CARE
The health department is distributing free potassium iodide pills to anyone within a 10-mile radius of Oyster Creek. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/video/health-department-distributes-potassium-iodide-pills/

[hunter]

7. Germany is a fossil fueled hellscape increasingly dependent on natural gas.

Their ambitious renewable energy schemes have failed.

Except for their filthy domestic coal production they are now entirely subject to the whims of weather and foreign energy providers, most dangerously Russia.

[OnlinePoker]

8. I guess Germany is willing to trade Ukraine for Russian gas.

If they're beholden to them to keep the lights on, they won't put up much more than cursory protests against any Russian aggression in Ukraine.

[paleotn]

10. Ugh. Just ugh.

I guess the idea of diverse sources of power is lost on the Germans.

[inwiththenew]

12. I'm sure this was welcome news in Moscow

Maybe they can build another pipeline to Germany.

[PhylliPretzel]

13. Rooftop Solar

Germany developed a rooftop solar program years ago in order to phase out their nuclear plants. The government backed 10-year bank loans at 1 or 2% interest to homeowners to put solar panels on their roofs with the utility company purchasing the excess electricity produced. It has been highly successful even with Germany's higher latitude and fewer sunny days than the USA. Our government should be so creative and forward thinking!

[Slammer]

15. long overdue

The US Democratic Party should have definitely done something like that during the Clinton or Obama administrations.

[hunter]

18. And that experiment failed...

..just as it has in California.

These renewable energy schemes will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

[Slammer]

29. solar

My rooftop solar cost me $25,000 to install. I sold significant amounts of power back to the electric company every month this year except August when I owed the electric company a little over $5. When I get my December statement, I estimate I'll have generated a credit of somewhere eight hundred and a thousand dollars for the year by selling power back to the electric company.

So no monthly electric bill at all for me plus money in my pocket from selling electricity.

And I could have done this a decade earlier if I'd been offered a low interest government loan rather than having to wait until I could afford a standard bank loan.

If we did this in the US, it definitely wouldn't "prolong our dependence on fossil fuels".

[womanofthehills]

32. I have roof top solar panels too & so do many of my neighbors out here in NM

My significant other was working in the solar business 20 yrs ago - so I’ve had them since 2000 but have upgraded along the way. I ‘ve been pumping my well with solar panels since 1995 - I have a huge water holding tank.

[hunter]

33. The hard numbers are here:

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

Unfortunately the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Then natural gas is burned.

When the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing the electricity you use in your home comes from fossil fuels, unless you happen to live in a place with large hydroelectric or nuclear resources.

At a certain point adding additional wind and solar generation is useless. The grid can no longer accept it.

And no, batteries won't solve the problem.

The problem is the same at any scale, from an individual household to a regional electric grid.

Homeowners who disconnect entirely from the grid soon experience the miseries and expenses of batteries and fossil fueled backup generators.

"Renewable" energy schemes are simply not viable without fossil fuels, especially natural gas, as California and Germany have demonstrated.

I live in a California neighborhood that probably exports electricity when the sun is shining. Rooftop and parking lot solar is everywhere. I can park under solar panels when I visit the supermarket, which is nice on hot sunny days. When the sun is not shining our neighborhood burns natural gas.

Personally, I don't mind rooftop or parking lot solar. But I'm vehement in my opposition to wind and solar projects built on previously undeveloped land, or offshore. That strikes me as a completely unacceptable. It's a "we had to destroy the natural environment in order to save it..." mentality.

In the larger picture, as the human population approaches eight billion, we've become dependent on high density energy sources, especially fossil fuels, to feed and shelter everyone. We've worked ourselves into a corner. If we don't quit fossil fuels soon, billions of people are going to suffer and die as a consequence of global warming.

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist. I'm not anymore. The hard numbers tell me that nuclear power is the only energy source capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely. Hybrid natural gas / renewable energy schemes will not save the world.

[Lokilooney]

14. Looks like they are going the burn baby burn rout.

Meanwhile France is doubling down on nuclear, currently they get 70% of their electricity from it. They bought the technology from the US and built all the reactors on the same plan therefore building them cheaper and if a problem arises at one plant they are able to retroactively apply the fix to the other 55 or so reactors they have, they really nailed nuclear. The US only 20%, I wonder how different things would be today if we didn't cave to the fearmongering at least got up to half. The fossil fuel industry thanks you Jane Fonda...

[dalton99a]

16. .

Top 10 countries by cumulative installed nuclear capacity, GW

1. United States - 91.5GW
2. France - 61.3GW
3. China - 50.8GW
4. Japan - 31.7GW
5. Russia - 29.6GW
6. South Korea - 24.5GW
7. Canada - 13.6GW
8. Ukraine - 13.1GW
9. United Kingdom - 8.9GW
10. Spain - 7.1GW

Data as of October 2021. Source: GlobalData

[TexasBushwhacker]

20. The problem with our nuclear reactors is they're OLD

The average age is 39 years.

[womanofthehills]

25. And- where do they want to store spent nuclear fuel rods

They plan on transporting them to NM but would have to built a whole new RR system to do it

That aside, many have expressed concerns about the safety risks involved in carting highly radioactive waste thousands of miles.

“It’s not safe, which is why the people who have it want to get rid of it,” said Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Safety program at Albuquerque’s Southwest Research and Information Center. “A lot of us believe in improving storage where it is.”

Rose Gardner of the Alliance for Environmental Strategies, who lives in Eunice, argued that New Mexico is home to no nuclear power plants; why should the state take responsibility for waste generated largely on the East Coast? https://www.abqjournal.com/1147077/proposed-nuclear-waste-facility-in-se-new-mexico-

under-review.html

[hunter]

28. It really doesn't matter that much.

These used fuel rods can be safely stored on site indefinitely. The volume is small and easily contained.

More dangerous fossil fuel wastes, the stuff that's destroying earth's natural environment as we know it, is freely dumped everywhere.

Natural gas is probably the most dangerous energy source, largely because people wrongly believe it's "clean" and natural gas power plants support their renewable energy fantasies.

[NNadir]

17. ...showing that they really don't give a rat's ass about climate change.

[NickB79]

19. In related news, their coal use shot back up this year

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105

In the first half of 2021, coal shot up as the biggest contributor to Germany's electric grid, while wind power dropped to its lowest level since 2018. Officials say the weather is partly to blame.
Despite efforts to boost renewable energy sources, coal unseated wind power as the biggest energy contributor to the German network in the first six months of 2021, according to official statistics released on Monday.

The data comes as Germany looks to speed up its exit from coal-powered plants after years of mounting pressure from climate experts and activists over the country's dependence on coal and its detrimental impact in fueling the climate crisis.

But the latest figures also reveal the challenges that lie ahead with the country's energy shift.

[madville]

21. Right in Russia's pocket

Shutting down their domestic energy production, to rely more on natural gas supplies from Russia through their new pipeline…. Smart…….

[Happy Hoosier]

31. This is a huge mistake.

Nuclear power may be the only thing that can reduce greenhouse emissions enough to really matter in the short term.