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) by bob_super on Monday June 29 2015, @06:48PM
So, how many gas turbines are on standby to compensate for it on cloudy windless days?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @06:54PM
> cloudy windless days
Ja, und was ist das?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday June 29 2015, @08:31PM
Wenn es bedekt ist, und wenn es kein Wind gibt, was macht man? (sp. it's been nearly 20 years)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 29 2015, @11:21PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @06:56PM
Germany imports about two-thirds of its energy already.
Confusingly, it also exports rather a lot too - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Monday June 29 2015, @07:44PM
It's called free market, yay! There is a lot of energy bartering going on.
Personally I used to pay my bill to a norwegian hydropower plant, but now I'm just too lazy to switch my supplier (1/3 coal, 1/3 gas, 1/3 renewable).
Now I feel bad, thank you.
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:47PM
Germany is importing coal and gas, not electricity.
We are a net exporter of electricity since decades. The amount of months where we imported more than we exported is roughly a hand full.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday June 29 2015, @07:23PM
Not that many. They power up all their nice all natural earth friendly coal power plants instead. How exactly that is better the nuclear I will never understand but I guess I'm not supposed to.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 29 2015, @08:18PM
Probably they just crank up the existing nuclear plants to 11.
They have indeed added coal plants since this announced shutdown. And they appear to only be shutting down the oldest nuke plants. Roughly half their nukes are still running, and they buy a lot of electricity and gas from across borders.
It will take just one nasty spat with Russia in a strong winter for them to realize renewable isn't going to carry the load.
They would need to build out solar a ten to twenty fold to approximate what they get from coal, gas, and nuclear. Germany seems to go to great lengths to propagandize their energy sources making the appearance of making great strides. But its only when you dig just a little bit [cleanenergywire.org] that you find layers upon layers [cleanenergywire.org] of bullshit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Monday June 29 2015, @09:43PM
Without further digging, the numbers in the diagrams seem to be for primary energy, which includes residential and other heating. The big bar for "petroleum" is for all the houses that have the tank truck come once a year for their oil heating. The remaining heating is done with natgas, which makes up the larger part of the "gas" bar. There's even trouble going on with gas-fired CCPPs (including a world-leading >60% efficiency one, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Irsching [wikipedia.org] ), because the grid doesn't call off enough power from there. It's indeed lignite (brown coal) that supplies most of the fossil based energy.
Germany is also not in need to import any electricity; quite the opposite. The Germans export over 30B kWh/a. http://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=27846 [www.iwr.de] This, for a good part, goes to the French with their dense NPP-population that has to be throttled in Summer when the rivers are too warm. Convenient, when German PV outputs near its peak (> 30 GW) on a sunny summer day.
The Russians have been perfectly reliable suppliers for the last 100 years, except for a short while that had something to do with a little invasion, supposedly (*) to secure Romanian oil sources, and maybe obtain some Kazhak ones, too. This is in contrast to the arabs which brought Germany a car-free-Sunday period in 1973.
So, really, the big piece of the cake is residential heating, which is why the Germans (**) are so obsessed with insulating houses (cf. my post in the bricklaying-robot article).
My NPP stock (which I didn't want to divest of, because of some tax regulation change) took a steep dive not only because they had to shut down a good number of NPPs, but also because it eventually came to be widely known that they had their "savings for dismantling" in the books, but not in the bank (hence the breakup of e.On; RWE might follow suit.).
On top of that comes the discovery that the low-activity waste dump at Asse is rotting away with the junk in mild-steel barrels and the price of fixing this alone will be probably in the dimension needed to kickstart a whole syngas economy. (Mind you, the German subsidies for PV got the current worldwide avalanche rolling). On the topic of this article, the dismantling is particularly interesting, btw, because it resembles the common large 1300 MW PWR widespread in the country in fully irradiated state. AFAIK all previous dismantlings were on less irradiated or smaller plants; they're taking apart a 600 MW PWR at Stade right now (and found out that primary circuit leaks caused the foundation to be contaminated).
(*) Depending on how revisionist someone is, of course :)
(**) except those who celebrate burning US-supplied petroleum just to show the stinkin' treehuggers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:51PM
They have indeed added coal plants since this announced shutdown.
Wrong. Added implies the number went up. We built new coal plants, more efficient ones to replace old ones. Bottom line the number of coal plants is dropping.
And they appear to only be shutting down the oldest nuke plants. Indeed. Actually the article (did you read the summary?) sys so.
It will take just one nasty spat with Russia in a strong winter for them to realize renewable isn't going to carry the load. That is a pretty silly remark as the russian gas in winter is used for heating houses with gas furnaces. How exactly would the house be heated anyway? The amount of gas we use to produce electric power is very low.
They would need to build out solar a ten to twenty fold to approximate what they get from coal, gas, and nuclear.
You are bad in math ... if we increase solar (I assume you mean all renewables) by factor of ten we can power three countries ...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 29 2015, @10:48PM
Go back and read the numbers.
You've cherry picked all the easy renewables, already, and you are still only up to 11% of your energy needs. The next best renewables are going to be a lot more costly, because you haven't addressed storage at all.
Like I said. It looks rosy till you start digging through the numbers in great detail. But if you limit your self to the public consumption nonsense you might never know this and will still run around regurgitating the same old nonsense. The figures are available. You just have to dig.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Touché) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @11:35PM
Renewables don't need storage.
That is an american made up myth.
BTW: all renewables together are the biggest power source in germany.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 30 2015, @02:26AM
Go look at the numbers and stop spouting nonsense.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:05PM
Fossil fuels are renewable too. It just takes a few million years to renew them. ;-)
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:05PM
And then non-renewable again as our sun dies out.
And then renewable again as the universe collapses and a new big bang occurs.
As you go up (or down) the time scale, renewable and non-renewable tend to alternate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:49PM
What makes you think the Universe will collapse? Currently the expansion is accelerating and it doesn't look like it will ever collapse, likely ending up in the heat-death of the Universe.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday June 29 2015, @08:26PM
And here I'll just trump out the stats from World Coal Association. I love them to prove points like yours,
http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ [worldcoal.org]
Germany is by FAR the largest producer of brown coal - the shittiest coal around. But then it is what they have. In 2012, 44% of German electricity was coal sourced, more than US's 38%. Germany also imports another 1/3 of what it produces, probably from Poland. And Germany is world's 8th largest coal producer, a large importer and hence a major consumer.
Shuttering nuclear power, keeping in mind that there is plenty of nuclear power plants that surround Germany (France, Chech republic, etc), while keeping coal running, is a little anti-green. Keep in mind that Chernobyl area will be resettleable almost completely within current generation's lifetimes (Fukushima area within about 100 years), but carbon emitted by Germany (and others) will continue to warm the climate 1000 years from now. People 100 years from now will curse the shortsightedness of current decision makers - they are the ones that will have to move entire cities, and even nations, out of the way of rising oceans.
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:55PM
brown coal - the shittiest coal around
That was perhaps, note the bold, 30 years ago. In a modern plant it is no difference whether you burn brown coal or black coal.
Shuttering nuclear power, [...] is a little anti-green. Perhaps you should simply dig out a graph how much power comes from nuclear plants ...
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:07PM
Shhh, quiet now! Nuclear is anti-green because dogma.
Don't question the dogma!
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:45PM
Obviously none, as gas turbines are not used to replace base load plants, *facepalm* stupids question in ever asked in an energy related topic.
Gas turbines are used for secundary reserve power ... google is your friend.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 29 2015, @09:58PM
When your PV/Wind goes beyond a certain threshold in the mix, your fast-start plant doubles as your base load plant.
If the weather forecast gives you a couple weeks of great renewables, you'd be dumb to keep running base at full tilt and crash the spot price.
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @11:37PM
Actually the wind/solar plant is then the base load plant.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 29 2015, @06:52PM
I really can't endorse panic moving people from nuclear to fossil fuels. It's not an improvement. Not for health, not for safety, not for economy.
But at the same time, Germany has been making moderate strides in improving their usage of genuinely renewable energy. There's probably a whole world of nitty gritty economic planning that a stupid online hot take can't even begin to answer, but this action still reeks a bit of populism, rather than considered planning.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 29 2015, @07:29PM
I have to agree, but point out that considered planning is also lacking.
In this case of Fukishima, IIRC, there was a *sister* nuclear plant that *survived*. If anything, the populist position is based on a reasonable fear, just misplaced. It's not that nuclear science cannot be safe, and efficient. From what I understand the sister plant was built differently since the man in charge over there *refused* to build the sea wall so low to save money. He disagreed with the suits and went ahead to build it *right*. Had the sea wall at the 1st reactor been built the same way, they would've had power still, just like the 2nd. I don't think it's just luck that the 2nd survived, and the 1st didn't. It was *proper* execution of the considered planning in spite of management disapproval with the engineering requirements. How widespread is this tom foolery?
Unfortunately, nuclear may be our only real option to provide the power we need. Also unfortunately, it's become clear we can't trust them to be built or operated correctly due to motivations for profit.
Populism isn't completely off the mark here, but I sure wish it had a dedication to creating safer nuclear technologies. Unless we have monumental strides made in solar tech, and fabrication, the easiest way to produce power is natural gas while still remaining mostly clean. In the U.S, there are obviously huge questions regarding fraccing and the dangers of obtaining this "environmentally safe" fuel. We may be lucky to have the fraccing argument, since before the discoveries of the new shale, natural gas was well on its way to becoming a luxury in the U.S. They were discussing, and still pursuing the transport, of natural gas across the ocean in massive tankers. Probably kill anything within 10 miles from the shockwave alone when one of them blows up.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday June 29 2015, @09:43PM
Any tiny incident concerning nuclear power becomes high profile news around the world, giving a disproportionate view of the actual safety record and tiny amount of damage and death caused compared with fossil fuel burners. I was going to make a point about the coal power industry fiddling while the world burns, but that would require me to mention a particular solidly-proven environment effect that guarantees a backlash from morons who've been listening to other morons who are paid to spread bullshit, so I won't.
Oh... wait...
(Score: 1) by angelosphere on Monday June 29 2015, @09:57PM
The problem was not the sea wall.
I doubt there even was any.
The problem was that the emergency power generators where on ground level and not elevated or much better in a water tight compartment-
The sea wall wont help ... next big Tsunami is simple even higher ... what then?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @01:18AM
The problem was not the sea wall.
Sure, in that it wasn't the only problem. But if the Fukushima plant had a sea wall about 5 meters higher, we wouldn't have even known the place existed. That makes the sea wall one of the problems.
The sea wall wont help ... next big Tsunami is simple even higher ... what then?
What's going to generate this higher tsunami? And how many centuries from now will it come?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 29 2015, @07:52PM
I know Solar is supposed to be the new hotness, but are the panels actually a renewable source? Do they use any fairly uncommon ingredients? Will we run out of X ingredient that is necessary to make the solar panels efficient say in 100 years, 200 years, or 1000 years?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 29 2015, @08:37PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_solar_cell [wikipedia.org]
Look out for a thin, wallpaper-like solar panel with lower efficiency but low cost sometime in the future.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 29 2015, @10:01PM
The elements themselves aren't going anywhere.
If you have a renewable energy surplus, then extraction(i.e. recycling) from retired cells isn't extraordinarily impossible.
The end question is "Can you build enough to handle current demand from currently economically accessible resources?" I believe the answer to be "Probably."
What's definitely true is that you don't want to be making the transition when you don't have cheap fuels to power the change-over. That's an economic transition that would suck for everyone alive. 80% by 2050 is a good goal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @01:28AM
What's definitely true is that you don't want to be making the transition when you don't have cheap fuels to power the change-over.
Expensive fuel does wonders for powering a change-over.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:18AM
Yeah, and the floor does wonders for stopping a free fall. So what is the point in parachutes?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:29PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:25PM
Perhaps because we don't have a spare planet to experiment on. Given the choice I'd rather pay for a parachute and not need it rather than just jump and hope for the best.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:32AM
Given the choice I'd rather pay for a parachute and not need it rather than just jump and hope for the best.
There's plenty of nebulous and imaginary dangers out there. I'd rather we work out an evidence and economics-based approach rather than a jump-at-shadows approach. I think it's time for triage - to work on the risks and problems that are most important to us. And frankly, climate change doesn't make the cut.
(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.