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Germany's oldest remaining nuclear reactor has been shut down, part of a move initiated four years ago to switch off all its nuclear plants by 2022.
Bavaria's environment ministry said Sunday that the Grafenrheinfeld reactor in the southern German state was taken offline as scheduled overnight, the news agency dpa reported. Grafenrheinfeld went into service in 1981. It's the first reactor to close since Germany switched off the oldest eight of its 17 nuclear reactors in 2011, just after Japan's Fukushima disaster. The next to close will be one of two reactors at the Gundremmingen plant in Bavaria, which is set to shut in late 2017. The rest will be closed by the end of 2022.
Germany aims to generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @07:59PM
They just replaced a very clean source of electrical power with coal power. And not even clean-ish coal; this is the brown coal coming from open strip mines. Burnt in Soviet-era coal plants. All because of some political posturing and Green hysteria about nuclear power. "80% by 2050" That's a BS timeline and everyone knows it but nobody will say it. What will happen is all of Germany's neighbors will build Natural Gas turbines and more coal plants. And the Greens get to pretend to themselves that they "did something".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bełchatów_Power_Station [wikipedia.org]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/02/140211-germany-plans-to-raze-towns-for-brown-coal/ [nationalgeographic.com]
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/04/coal_mines_swallow_towns_in_germany_why_solar_and_wind_haven_t_kicked_the.html [slate.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine [wikipedia.org]
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/germany_to_expand_brown_coal_mines/ [earthisland.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @08:04PM
That's OK, they'll just keep building new nuclear power stations in France to export electricity to Germany. France is the nuclear power leader in Europe now that the UK wound down R&D to burn natural gas back in the 90s. We import French nuclear electricity here too, and they're building our next generation of nuclear power stations for us.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday June 29 2015, @08:33PM
You know that in summer, France imports electricity from Germany because they have problems to cool their nuclear power plants?
Well, I guess in the UK you won't have that problem. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @08:41PM
We used to have that problem where nuclear power plants had to be run at slightly reduced output when cooling water was scarce. By scarce I don't mean that there wasn't enough of it: the sea is effectively infinite, but that it wasn't cold enough to give a big enough temperature difference to get maximum heat transfer. We used to be able to get a few megawatts more in the coldest months of winter for this reason. In the UK, though, no one has domestic air conditioning, so the demand for electricity wasn't as excessive as it was in warmer countries.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Monday June 29 2015, @08:55PM
Actually, a few degrees warmer river doesn't matter too much for the power plant's pure efficiency, but there are people who object to the ecosystem-killing temps of the output flow back to the river.
They should just seed tropical fish (after each shutdown) and be done with it
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @10:25PM
Thermal efficiency goes up as the difference between reactor inlet and outlet temperature decreases, but thermal (power) output increases with the temperature difference. Carnot cycle. The sea fish thrive in the warmer water.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 29 2015, @10:40PM
Wikipedia quotes PWR [wikipedia.org] as generating steam at 275C under 60atm: Your cold-point river being 33C instead of 26C isn't of much consequence.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:48AM
My power station had two very old Magnox reactors. The whole power station could put out a maximum of 246MWe on the coldest days. At the height of summer it could do about 242MWe. It was on a tidal estuary and warmed the water up by 9C. The fish were very happy there. Output varied sinusoidally with the tide. Thermal efficiency was about 25%. Reactor gas inlet temperature was about 180C and outlet was 360C.
Primary coolant was carbon dioxide at 126psig.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @09:33PM
Well, duh! Just build some water chillers. You can run them off of the electricity from the nuke!
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @10:03PM
at slightly reduced output when cooling water was scarce.
Wrong. They ran at 40%, not 40% reduced to 60% ... but: 40%.
the sea is effectively infinite, but that it wasn't cold enough
Wrong twice: a) there are only a hand full of reactors close to the sea, and they are certainly not cooled by sea water. b) All relevant nukes are at rivers. Is the water level to low, the plants are not allowed to use it for cooling. Not because the water is to warm but because the plant would heat up the water to much and cause fish death.
So your environmental friendly plant (in your imagination) is shut down for environmental reasons.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @10:20PM
Have you been at the crack pipe? My reply specifically mentioned the UK nuclear power industry because I am British and have direct experience of operational nuclear plant. I can assure you that most of our reactors used sea water for their primary coolant. One site in Wales used water from a lake. None used freshwater from rivers. As for relevance, many are still in operation putting out many gigawatts of electricity and warm water. Yes, other countries have nuclear power stations on rivers. And your efficiency percentages must have floated out of your crack pipe too. Our reactors never got above about 25% thermal efficiency.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @10:01PM
Yes, because the UK have no summer :D
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:59PM
You miss the fact that France is phasing out nuclear power, too. And is slowly switching to renewables.