Imho it’s a good thing to not block other countries approach to clean power from a german perspective.
However, there is just no way new nuclear power makes any sense for German grid. Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand (yes, peak demand is usually around noon, it’s just not visible because there is so much solar self-consumption)
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.
izacus · 2h ago
I wonder if the Spanish also looked at numbers during the day of a very sunny spring week when they designed their power network to fail.
exabrial · 1h ago
> Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand
Burning coal for negative prices is not a good thing.
AustinDev · 2h ago
>What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.
Germany would have one of the biggest batteries on the continent if they controlled Lake Geneva @ ~341bn liters of water.
Pumped hydro storage is infinitely superior to Li-ion battery storage where it is available. Batteries are good for instantaneous response but lack the stability of water turning a large mass.
Solar creates a difficult environment for base load generators such as hydro, nuclear and nat gas. When it's sunny they nuke the price down to zero or negative but produce nothing when it is not sunny. As evidenced by Spain's recent blackouts you need a healthy mix of generation because renewables are seasonal in nature and not very stable compared to a large mass spinning at the correct frequency.
codingbot3000 · 31m ago
fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known.
I won't deny that solar and wind make things harder, but linking the recent blackout to renewables without the facts is only done by fossil/nuclear propaganda orgs and their useful idiots.
The Spanish network had much wilder days before and did not break down. First insights point to possible design flaws in the network.
"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D
dapf · 2h ago
Do you have the pixie dust needed to make enough of them at a reasonable price?
matthewdgreen · 2h ago
The Pixie dust is called China. BNEF is tracking 7.9 TWh of annual battery manufacturing capacity for the end of 2025 [1]. Chinese manufacturers' all-in costs for BESS are now down to $66/kWh and still dropping [2]. We (or at least China) have crossed the "knee" of the exponential for battery production, and loads of people don't seem to realize this.
The term is technology agnostic, just fyi. There are many ways to store energy.
Schiendelman · 2h ago
It's less pixie dust than nuclear capacity - the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.
chickenbig · 1h ago
> the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.
Nuclear capacity and grid batteries do different things, so the word capacity is rather too imprecise. Otherwise one could argue that a lightning rod has higher capacity and is cheaper than a battery.
With a noscript/basic (x)html browser I get blocked by a javascript captcha...
diggan · 2h ago
I tried telnet and it couldn't even connect. Clearly the fault of the website operator.
sylware · 2h ago
Clearly for properyl educated brains, telnet and noscript/basic (x)html are the same :)
You know, we all know a compiler is actually a shell, :)
Arnt · 5h ago
«“The Germans are telling us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear power,” said a senior French diplomat involved in the talks. This meant that “all the biases against nuclear power, which still remain here and there in EU legislation, will be removed.” “This will be a sea-change policy shift,” said a German official.»
Will it really?
https://www.pv-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Level... is a little unusual, it shows the cheapest nuclear power to be as cheap as the most expensive PV+battery. Still, it's difficult for me to see how this policy change will really change anything.
A real change would require a commitment against market-based production/sale of electricity, e.g. a quota such that power generators using PV/batteries were allowed to produce at most x% of the power in the EO.
StopDisinfo910 · 4h ago
> Will it really?
Yes, it will. As they are currently drafted, the EU energy regulation forces France to invest in renewable and shift away from nuclear it already has to avoid missing the mandated European target as nuclear is not considered renewable. Currently France is being routinely fined despite providing Europe with a ton of clean energy.
The situation is beyond silly.
Arnt · 1h ago
Good point. That is a real change, I agree with that, and it makes a great deal of sense for France to want it.
I was only thinking about new investment.
credit_guy · 4h ago
China installs about as much new solar capacity each year as the rest of the world combined. They manufacture the most PVs and have access to the cheapest PVs for that reason. Yet, they also have installed more new nuclear capacity (by far) than the rest of the world combined. Not only they do that, but they also have more nuclear plant being built right now, and more being already approved. Nuclear power is expensive because of the initial construction cost, and that is expensive because we forgot how to build. China didn't.
matthewdgreen · 2h ago
China is building more nuclear power than the rest of the world, but it's not even remotely keeping up with their renewable buildouts [1]. Mostly this is because renewables like PV modules are built in a factory using standardized mass-production techniques, and nuclear plants (currently) are not.
There is zero chance that Germany will build or reopen nuclear power plants.
Neither citizens nor power companies want that.
preisschild · 4h ago
> nor power companies want that.
Important Context: Power companies were paid by the state to shut down their nuclear power plants, of course they want free money for not producing anything.
__m · 3h ago
That was a one time payment and wouldn't stop them for reopening (accept for the dismantling process) or building new ones
DrillShopper · 3h ago
The Greens will take care of that (kind of ironic, really)
Arnt · 1h ago
The Greens are out of power and I think they're going to stay out of power for a while. The road is free for anyone who wants to invest. (We even have precedent that the state will pay if an operating license is withdrawn, which might happen if the Greens return to power.)
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
Shutting down nukes costs money to do right, it's not money for nothing.
preisschild · 2h ago
The money for shutting down the nuclear power plant and replacing it with another would have eventually been paid anyway, the money from the govt was for missing out on the income from actual energy production.
preisschild · 5h ago
You quote a PV-lobbying firm as your source, what do you expect?
Also LCOE is just not adequate to compare these two, as you have additional storage and transmission costs for intermittent, weather-dependent sources, whereas most nuclear power plants can be online providing full capacity more than 90% of the time.
LCOE does not account for that.
This IEA report uses a metric that includes those system costs (value-adjusted LCOE, VALCOE) and it shows nuclear energy is definitely competitive. Especially if managed well and power plants aren't prematurely shut down due to political reasons, like they were in Germany.
Competitive now? Or competitive in the near future? All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price. This does not seem to be true of nuclear. It's easy to make conservative assumptions that leave you with a bunch of financially unsustainable infrastructure. This would be a total disaster.
chickenbig · 2h ago
> All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price.
Also it seems like a fallacy of composition to believe that a cheap system is formed from cheap individual components.
exabrial · 1h ago
The anti-nuclear bullshit needs to stop. Germany got it wrong.
German power generation is some of the dirtiest in the world. In 2024 321g CO2eq/kWh. Right now at the time of posting, literally they're emitting 1/2 a kilogram of C02 for one kilowatt-hour.
Meanwhile France, the country Germany claims is not producing "clean" energy: 2024 27g CO2eq/kWh. Time of posting, 95.7% of their electricity is from nuclear, wind, hydro, solar.
If you like nuclear, ask yourself the following questions:
- Would you want to raise kids living close to a plant? (with higher likelihood of childhood leukemia etc.)
- Would you want to live close to a nuclear waste processing plant such as Le Hague or Sellafield, with all the incidents?
- Would you want to live close to a nuclear waste disposal site?
- Would you want to pay much more for electricity than would be possible using cheaper sources than nuclear, either directly, or hidden through taxes (as in France)?
- Do you want your country to import uranium from countries such as Russia or Niger, and depend on them?
If you can answer all these questions with a clear yes, continue to promote it. If not, please don't!
preisschild · 5h ago
Good. If Germany wants to do its own thing, then so be it, but they shouldn't be allowed to block / disincentivize other EU members from using nuclear power.
If we want to incentivize "clean" tech, we should go by an objective metric, such as co2 emissions per kilowatt-hour (where nuclear power is even less emitting than PV/Wind over its total lifecycle)
cwassert · 3h ago
First of all, of course one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU. That's the whole point of the EU.
Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2.
Handling of this waste is often overlooked when looking at the costs or CO2 footprint.
And that does not even touch the associated risks.
natmaka · 2h ago
> one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU.
Who pays decide (Germany is the first financial contributor), that's business as usual.
> Whereas the CO2 is in the air
In the UE the question is how much renewables and how much nuclear will be built, and their (dubious) compatibility. Very few want to see more fossil fuel.
The "nuclear waste is a solved challenge" is funny, as experts explicitly state that there is no safe solution (due to risks induced by seismotectonics, intrusions, casks imperfections...).
> First of all, of course one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU
Blocking other countries tends to make member states hate each other, which isn't good for the EU.
> Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2
You literally just put them inside steel concrete casks [1] after they were in a pool for a few years. You can even hug those casks safely. Whereas the CO2 is in the air we breathe and in the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming.
Just like more people are afraid of airplane accidents in spite of them being much more likely to die in their own car.
natmaka · 2h ago
> Just like more people are afraid of airplane accidents
This doesn't compute: avoiding being a victim of a plane accident is rather simple: don't hop on any plane and your are something along the .99999 covered.
Avoiding being threatened (and many generations after you) by a nuclear major accident or erring 'hot' nuclear waste is way (WAY!) more difficult.
moi2388 · 1h ago
It’s not. Example: I’ve never been in contact with nuclear waste, yet constantly breathe in the co2 from coal plants.
nottorp · 2h ago
So you are walking to work right? If you avoid airplanes, why not extend this to cars?
s1artibartfast · 39m ago
I don't think it's a slam dunk for banning nuclear, but agree with the parent post that consent to risk is a valid part of the conversation.
Car or plane, the people most exposed to the risk have some choice in the matter - to fly, drive, or be around vehicles.
New considerations are introduced when those exposed to the risks of your choice maybe hundreds of miles away with no say, or even yet to be born.
natmaka · 2h ago
Germany sets the tone in Europe (at least financially) and used to refuse to pay for nuclear power which (since Fukushima) it does not want at home and which, deployed in other nearby nations, exposes it to risk.
I suspect a trade/swap: Germany will obtain something from France in return.
barbazoo · 1h ago
I would say this started after Chernobyl. Long before Fokushima.
However, there is just no way new nuclear power makes any sense for German grid. Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand (yes, peak demand is usually around noon, it’s just not visible because there is so much solar self-consumption) https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.
Burning coal for negative prices is not a good thing.
Germany would have one of the biggest batteries on the continent if they controlled Lake Geneva @ ~341bn liters of water.
Pumped hydro storage is infinitely superior to Li-ion battery storage where it is available. Batteries are good for instantaneous response but lack the stability of water turning a large mass.
Solar creates a difficult environment for base load generators such as hydro, nuclear and nat gas. When it's sunny they nuke the price down to zero or negative but produce nothing when it is not sunny. As evidenced by Spain's recent blackouts you need a healthy mix of generation because renewables are seasonal in nature and not very stable compared to a large mass spinning at the correct frequency.
I won't deny that solar and wind make things harder, but linking the recent blackout to renewables without the facts is only done by fossil/nuclear propaganda orgs and their useful idiots.
The Spanish network had much wilder days before and did not break down. First insights point to possible design flaws in the network.
"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D
[1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt...
[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implicatio...
Nuclear capacity and grid batteries do different things, so the word capacity is rather too imprecise. Otherwise one could argue that a lightning rod has higher capacity and is cheaper than a battery.
You know, we all know a compiler is actually a shell, :)
Will it really?
https://www.pv-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Level... is a little unusual, it shows the cheapest nuclear power to be as cheap as the most expensive PV+battery. Still, it's difficult for me to see how this policy change will really change anything.
A real change would require a commitment against market-based production/sale of electricity, e.g. a quota such that power generators using PV/batteries were allowed to produce at most x% of the power in the EO.
Yes, it will. As they are currently drafted, the EU energy regulation forces France to invest in renewable and shift away from nuclear it already has to avoid missing the mandated European target as nuclear is not considered renewable. Currently France is being routinely fined despite providing Europe with a ton of clean energy.
The situation is beyond silly.
I was only thinking about new investment.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...
Important Context: Power companies were paid by the state to shut down their nuclear power plants, of course they want free money for not producing anything.
Also LCOE is just not adequate to compare these two, as you have additional storage and transmission costs for intermittent, weather-dependent sources, whereas most nuclear power plants can be online providing full capacity more than 90% of the time.
LCOE does not account for that.
This IEA report uses a metric that includes those system costs (value-adjusted LCOE, VALCOE) and it shows nuclear energy is definitely competitive. Especially if managed well and power plants aren't prematurely shut down due to political reasons, like they were in Germany.
https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
Definitely not true of offshore wind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012502
Also it seems like a fallacy of composition to believe that a cheap system is formed from cheap individual components.
German power generation is some of the dirtiest in the world. In 2024 321g CO2eq/kWh. Right now at the time of posting, literally they're emitting 1/2 a kilogram of C02 for one kilowatt-hour.
Meanwhile France, the country Germany claims is not producing "clean" energy: 2024 27g CO2eq/kWh. Time of posting, 95.7% of their electricity is from nuclear, wind, hydro, solar.
Sources:
* https://www.nowtricity.com/country/france/
* https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/
- Would you want to raise kids living close to a plant? (with higher likelihood of childhood leukemia etc.)
- Would you want to live close to a nuclear waste processing plant such as Le Hague or Sellafield, with all the incidents?
- Would you want to live close to a nuclear waste disposal site?
- Would you want to pay much more for electricity than would be possible using cheaper sources than nuclear, either directly, or hidden through taxes (as in France)?
- Do you want your country to import uranium from countries such as Russia or Niger, and depend on them?
If you can answer all these questions with a clear yes, continue to promote it. If not, please don't!
If we want to incentivize "clean" tech, we should go by an objective metric, such as co2 emissions per kilowatt-hour (where nuclear power is even less emitting than PV/Wind over its total lifecycle)
Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2. Handling of this waste is often overlooked when looking at the costs or CO2 footprint.
And that does not even touch the associated risks.
Who pays decide (Germany is the first financial contributor), that's business as usual.
> Whereas the CO2 is in the air
In the UE the question is how much renewables and how much nuclear will be built, and their (dubious) compatibility. Very few want to see more fossil fuel.
The "nuclear waste is a solved challenge" is funny, as experts explicitly state that there is no safe solution (due to risks induced by seismotectonics, intrusions, casks imperfections...).
It's the "Asse II mine" joke all over again: "there will be no problem" followed by "Ouch! Err...". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine#History
What is their definition of safe?
> It's the "Asse II mine" joke all over again
It would be good to see the cost/benefit analysis of the proposal to remove everything from the mine
https://www.nwtrb.gov/docs/default-source/meetings/2018/marc... page 17 has backfilling as the preferred option in 4 out of the 5 assessment categories.
Blocking other countries tends to make member states hate each other, which isn't good for the EU.
> Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2
You literally just put them inside steel concrete casks [1] after they were in a pool for a few years. You can even hug those casks safely. Whereas the CO2 is in the air we breathe and in the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming.
How is this "more problematic"?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage
Just like more people are afraid of airplane accidents in spite of them being much more likely to die in their own car.
This doesn't compute: avoiding being a victim of a plane accident is rather simple: don't hop on any plane and your are something along the .99999 covered.
Avoiding being threatened (and many generations after you) by a nuclear major accident or erring 'hot' nuclear waste is way (WAY!) more difficult.
Car or plane, the people most exposed to the risk have some choice in the matter - to fly, drive, or be around vehicles.
New considerations are introduced when those exposed to the risks of your choice maybe hundreds of miles away with no say, or even yet to be born.
I suspect a trade/swap: Germany will obtain something from France in return.