BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.
Nuclear output 12.2021: 5599.8 GWh
Brown coal output 8.2023: 5422.0 GWh
Black coal output 8.2023: 2049.2 GWh
So if you, y’know, hadn’t shut down those nuclear plants, you’d be burning 1/4 as much coal as you actually are.
Brown coal output 12.2021: 10100 GWh Black coal output 12.2021: 5391 GWh
Of course comparing August 2021 - August 2023 there’s less of a difference, but still a noticeable drop.
Sure, but nevertheless they’re burning a lot more coal than they would be if they hadn’t pointlessly shut down their nuclear plants.
“We were able to grow enough soybeans to replace half of the whale meat we were eating, but we can’t replace the other half yet because even though we have plenty of lentils, we hate lentils and don’t want to eat them anymore”
pointlessly shut down their nuclear plants
So you’d rather they instead got another round of fuel rods from the russians? Because afaik swapping out those fuel rods for american designs would not have worked without redesigns of the reactors (not feasible in the time available). Besides, the plants were scheduled to shut down for a while now, some of their safety certifications running out shortly after shutdown due to those plans. Renewing those certifications in time would have been a mammoth task better spent on more renewables.
There can be a discussion about the order of planned shutdowns here (coal before nuclear) but to argue the plants lifetime should have been emergency extended is pretty delusional. Such a thing was simply not possible given the constraints present.
That’s not how reality works. The remaining reactors produced less than 5%. But the money needed to keep them running for a few more years -especially as the shut down was planned for years, checkups and revisions were skipped, no more fuel was ordered- would have come from the same budget that is now paying for grid upgrades and renewable build-up. So keeping them running would have had a minimal impact of a bit less co2 now but a massive damage to the transition to clean energy for the next 10+ years. But that’s of course a fact we don’t want to talk about in media as that doesn’t fit the narrative of stupid Greens having killed nuclear for ideological reasons.
For reference: The shutdown of all but 3 reactors was decided a decade ago, planned for years and came into effect 2 weeks before that new government came into office… the ones they were left with produced -up to their shutdown- ~1,5% of all electricity in 2023. But sure… keeping them alive for the sake of having nuclear reactors (they basically did not have any value other than as a talking point) would have totally made sense… in some alternative reality.
