[sneeuwpopsneeuw]

In northern Europe its even more insane. Germany is closing 6 nuclear power plants earlier because of what happend after Fukushima. And they will switch to Lignite / brown coal. The energy companies took the state to court because of potential money loss, and they won 2.4 billion euro in damages. Meanwhile in the Netherlands more and more politicians want nuclear energy in the national energy mix because biomass, wind and solar is not growing fast enough to meet the Paris agreement.

[michieldotv]

This coal spiel is getting so old. This shift to coal in the German energy mix hasn't materialized. This is counter to what many predicted (or hoped?) would happen as the nuclear share weaned.

The facts:

In the time frame 2010 to 2020, the share of nuclear energy in the German energy mix has halved, from 22% to 11%.

At the same time, the share of lignite in the energy mix has dwindled from 23% to 16%. The share of hard coal has gone from 19% to 7%.

Germany reduced its nuclear power output while at the same time reducing its coal power output by even more than its nuclear output.

Gas is up by 2 percentage points, but renewables have more than doubled their market share in 10 years time, and now make up 45% of the power mix (was 17% in 2010).

So no, Germany simply is not switching to coal (or even gas for that matter), and renewable energy production is ramping up rapidly.

Source: Agora Energiewende

[martin_a]

To be fair: Wind energy and solar has gained a lot of traction in Germany and is producing more and more energy every year.

Sadly "the big four" (energy companies) are influencing politics and are actively halting progress on renewables which leads to really strange effects.

My landlord installed a rather big solar system on the roof and due to its size, the energy company can decide to remotely shut it off when there's enough energy in the grid.

It's really a shame and a lot of corruption is going on there.

Also: Little to no research on energy storage was done in the last 25 years, because of all this corruption.

[bluelu]

There can't be too much or too less electricity in the grid. So it's normal that the power operators can shut off larger producers, as they can also shut off large consumers.

This has nothing to do with corruption.

[martin_a]

> This has nothing to do with corruption.

In the end it has. Development and building of energy storage systems of any kind was not in the focus in the last decades because nuclear energy and coal was always "the solution" for energy problems and the big four told us not to worry about anything, so they could do their business as usual.

[speedgoose]

They have to shutdown production if the demand is not high. Once in a while they pay other countries to get their leftover electricity while they shutdown production.

[martin_a]

And we could use that energy instead to fill storage systems, be it water reservoirs or large battery packs or what might come.

But we need to have the right technology to do things like that...

[londons_explore]

Nuclear isn't quick to build though... I doubt you could plan and build a nuclear plant anywhere in the west in anything under 20 years...

[corin_]

As one data point, one of the UK's in-development nuclear power stations, Hinkley Point C, was announced in 2010, plans approved by the owner + government in 2016, and expected to be operational by 2025 (no idea if that's an accurate expectation or not). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

So a bit less than 20 years, even including the 6 years between announcing a site and actually confirming plans to go ahead with it.

[lorenzhs]

Hinkley Point C has been delayed until at least June 2026: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-27/edf-sees-....

Another reactor of the same EPR model family that EDF is building in Flamanville, France, started construction in 2007 with commercial introduction originally scheduled for 2012 but now delayed to 2023 (no official statement with that date, but fuel loading is estimated only for the end of 2022 and it takes a few months after that). It's also five times over budget (€19.1bn, original estimate was €3.3bn, for one reactor with 1.6GW of electrical output).

Yet another one, Olkiluoto in Finland, began construction in 2005 and is also not finished, with commercial introduction planned for 2022. Its cost is estimated at €11bn, but was supposed to be €3bn originally.

The two operational ones, Taishan 1 and 2 in China, took 10 years of construction, too. It was planned to take less than 2 years.

[londons_explore]

But the latest satellite images [1] show they're still laying flooring concrete, so there's no way it'll begin operations in 2025.

[1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Cru4YAkVvxyv8idc7

[corin_]

I know little about the subject, and it would certainly make sense for it to be running late with a pandemic going on, but it seems like 5 years is a typical prediction from start of building to being in operation according to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_nuclear_power_station...

The planning and getting approvals actually takes longer than the construction itself.

[bildung]

> And they will switch to Lignite / brown coal.

This isn't true. The one new coal plant, bad as it is, was planned and allowed before Fukushima happened. These things change slower than the news cycle.

And Germany still is a net energy exporter, BTW, even without the nuclear plants.

[lispm]

> And they will switch to Lignite / brown

Germany does not. coal usage has been going down.

[hef19898]

Yeah, I remember that discussion after Fukushima. We had an agreement and a plan to get out of nuclear power. Back than, climate change was less of issue (at least as far as policy was concerned). Then we got a conservative government, and one of the first things they did was to cancel the nuclear power exit. Only to reverse that basically immediatly after Fukushima due to public pressure. This time so, without any long term plan.

As a result, Germany is now pushing coal instead of nuclear while limiting wind and solar due to legal restrictions.