[ZeroGravitas]

Yeah, well if they shut down the nuclear plants, they'll be generating 0.

So they need to either build a lot of nuclear or build a lot of wind.

One of these is cheap, easy and fast, one is hard, expensive and slow.

3-4 years of German rollout of onshore wind would probably do the job.

[idiotsecant]

Not to mention a MW of wind is not equivalent to a MW of nuke. If you want wind you need a substantial overbuild that is geographically diverse and the necessary transmission to support that, which will cost as much as the generation itself, or you need storage which again costs as much as the generation itself. I am all for wind power, but only when we realistically consider the real world engineering constraints involved.

[ncmncm]

Always "mentioned", always irrelevant.

Obviously if you will rely on wind or solar for baseline, you will need to build out storage. And, equally obviously, you don't waste money building out storage you don't yet have capacity to charge up.

It is a trivial observation that adds no light.

[idiotsecant]

You might consider it a trivial observation, but the economic and physical implications are not trivial. They still cost money, and the physics still don't work if you don't consider them. Any discussion of the cost or viability of a generation source must include the cost and viability of augmenting the weaknesses of that source to address these deficiencies. Anything else is wishful thinking at best and magical thinking at worst.

[ncmncm]

The physics of practical storage have been fully understood and well internalized in civil engineering for centuries: E = Fx. All that remains unclear is which forms will turn out to be cheapest at the time when they need to be built.

What is known now is that costs are falling even faster than did solar and wind, and are already of similar order.

[ipaddr]

The same Germany who can't cut Russian oil supplies or the country falls apart. Not sure I'd go that direction.

[freeflight]

Not a single country with any manufacturing and/or industry [0] to speak of [1], can just casually cut off their main hydrocarbon supplier without major consequences, nor do nuclear reactors replace such resource dependencies.

If Russia stops delivering gas, then ultimately that will translate to a higher German oil demand, as a lot of formerly gas tailored usage will be retooled to oil.

As Russia is sitting on the single largest gas supply on the planet, nearly a quarter of the worlds supply [2]. While with oil there are a few somewhat competitive non-Russian alternatives [3]

So if Russia's resources will continue to be geopolitically taboo, then a lot of Europe will shift back to oil instead of gas.

[0] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products...

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?location...

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-reserves-by-country/

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/gas/oil-reserves-by-country/

[pydry]

Going all in on nuclear wouldnt have fixed that. At least, not without an additional $2-$3 trillion spent.

The nuclear plants they shut down were a drop in the bucket compared to gas, solar and wind.