Meanwhile in Germany:
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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You are aware that this is over 5 years old data (2017!) for the German electricity mix, right?
Please don't get me wrong, the scale up of renewable energy sources is certainly not going fast enough in Germany (thanks to our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years until 2021!), but please argue this position using the real data for 2023 (57.7% renewables in the German electricity mix)!
Good for providing up to date data.
But damn, Germany could have been 65% fossil free if they hadn't closed the nuclear plants prematurely.
Such a waste of carbon budget.
Anyway, you're probably going to have a conservative government again after this one. Hope you don't become the big laggards.
Not true. One big problem in Germany is that the grid can't handle all the electricity generated by renewables so they often shut them down. Something you can't do with nuclear l. Since nuclear got of the grid it got more capacity for renewables hence the share jumped this year.
You can shut down or scale back energy/electricity produced from nuclear power plants as well by controlling the reaction rate. What would have been ideal was if nuclear had remained and the renewables took the production capacity share from fossil fuels
The German nuclear plants needed maintenance and refurbishment. Makes sense to invest an other billion to run it for 2 more years.
The renewable energy share skyrocketed since the nuclear shutdown
That's not how that works, mate. Nuclear is the highest priority of energy generation because it's ultra cheap to produce and completely stable (once you have the reactors built, that is). If Germany still had those power plants, they could've dumped fossil and kept renewables, all while investing in energy storage.
Not how the laws work in Germany: Renewables always have priority, they get to sell their production first, everyone else has to make do with the rest of the demand.
Well, duh - intermittent generation means it makes the most sense to use while you can and wait on scalable power for when your load demands more power than is available. What I meant by that is that, of all scalable sources, you always go for Nuclear first.
Except that if you calculate the complete cost including building the plants it's stupendously expensive compared to renewables even including energy storage.
Which is irrelevant, unless you're representing a profit-seeking corporation (if that were the case, fuck off, then).
I do like nuclear, but of course the costs matter regardless of profit seeking. If you have two options that are same benefit but one costs more, to go with that one is just wasteful.
They're not the same benefit. The cost of extracting the materials for building renewable infrastructure is also immense, and that infrastructure must be completely swapped out every couple decades.
Why is that irrelevant? These plants don't run forever and are very expensive. You wouldn't buy a car either that costs 15 million Euro, but in return just uses 1liter of diesel per 100km.
Compared to solar and wind, they may as well last forever. We're talking the difference between a century or more (nuclear) to complete exhaustion in just a couple decades (solar).
I wouldn't buy a car, period.
That is factually incorrect. The oldest reactors still in service are around 60years old and have to be maintained and repaired at high costs as safety relevant parts are heavily deteriorated.
With rising safety measures new plants get more expensive from year to year all the while renewables get cheaper and cheaper in production.
Nuclear costs double per kilowatt than solar tho??
And Nuclear Plants are always built by for profit companies?
Could you cite your source?
I can. But I'm not gonna. I'm lazy.
Here's one of many(pdf inside)