| Much what you write is wrong. I live in Northern Germany and the days where it is not windy aren't that much. During the next two decades you will see massive investments in offshore wind parks. Winds on the North Sea are very strong and steady. Current distribution networks are being upgraded. You'll see more of that in the next decades. We'll have a HVDC grid around the north sea. Connecting the wind parks, pumped hydro and the consumers. 90% from new electricity from fossil in the next years? That won't happen. The market for new fossil fuel plants is currently dead in Germany. To make that happen, the market would need to be restructured. New fossil plants are also not that bad, since the new combined heat power plants are extremely efficient. There are new gas power plants which have a combined efficiency of 90%. Japan's phase out is also not only done with fossils. Much of that is done with reduced consumption. The German plans for its electricity production look forward to 2050, where around 80% of the electricity production will be from renewable energy. That's 38 years away, but it directs the policies and the investments. Nuclear then will be long gone. Nuclear is also extremely expensive. Not cheap. The private sector is not willing to invest into it, without massive subsidies. Nuclear is getting more expensive, not cheaper. The whole area of safety is underdeveloped. The storage of nuclear waste is not solved. The public pays for accidents (see Japan, where Tepco gets more and more money from the government). Acceptance of the technology is going down. The nuclear industry had many costly adventures: reprocessing plants, breeders, thorium reactors, ... Many old reactors need to be replaced or upgraded. Nuclear in its current form is no option. It generates huge centralized energy monopolies and it hasn't solved its core problems (waste, safety, security, ...). |