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hunterpaynetoday at 5:47 PM2 repliesview on HN

How is closing your nuclear plants working out for you?

Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.


Replies

bryanlarsentoday at 6:15 PM

15 * 600 GWh < 12B KWh.

It'd be even worse if the nukes would be shut down due to lack of cooling water.

eigenspacetoday at 6:27 PM

Wow, impressive velocity of bullshit claims, but I guess one has to grade on a curve, this is Hacker News of course.

> Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet.

Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out.

I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal.

> Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world.

Germany's grid is on average cleaner than the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia's grids. It's only dirty by western european standards, not by the standards of developed countries. Certainly not by world standards.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly

Germany is also on a better decarbonization trajectory than any of those countries other than Australia.

> And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.

Those 15 NPPs were not putting out anywhere near your claimed number.

July 2017: 5.3 TWh

July 2018: 6.1 TWh

Julu 2019: 5.4 TWh

July 2020: 4.2 TWh

July 2021: 5.5 TWh

July 2022: 2.9 TWh

Calculated using API data from https://www.energy-charts.info which gives the electricity mix on any given time or day as it evolves every 15 minute interval.

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