It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
And yet, Germany prefers to pollute the atmosphere with the smoke of coal and other fossil rules, than to simply maintain the storage of nuclear waste until a hole can be found or created.
At least we‘re on a track to carbon zero as you can see here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
It‘s not perfect and could be faster. However, we‘re way better than other countries that don’t move.
Edit: I forgot to mention, that half the year Germanies power is over 50% from renewables. Share is increasing every year.
Still your corrupt politicians are rather taking people’s homes in a town i forgot the name of (with police going there daily so people sell their homes) and clearing forests to mine coal… fucking stupid corrupt politicians.
Yes, that was close to where I live in Western Germany. Last outburst of old thinking (I hope). Meanwhile, the power company said in the news, it doesn’t need that entire area and forest anymore, because renewables have gone too competitive. Coal is too costly now.
If you like to see a moon-alike area in a densly populated area in Western Germany - the open field coal area Hambaxh: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H47EKatEDyKut3XZ6?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
As big as city of Cologne. I‘m happy that this is going to stop by 2030. Or even faster
The nuclear energy made up about 1.5% of our entire energy production in 2023 the final shutdown didnt really made any difference, since we were able to replace this fairly easy with renewable energy. This year we had the lowest use of fossile energy since about 60 years(if I recall correct). Yes, we still use coal and this is bad, but the nuclear energy didnt had any noticeable difference for our energy production. Also: the shutdown of nuclear energy was planned after Fukushima happened, so its nothing that was anywhere in the power of our current government.
Fukushima, Tchernobyl.
It’s been a while since I read about it, but iirc Chernobyl is suspected to have been sabotage because they turned all the safeties off and then basically walked away until it started melting down.
Fukushima was doomed from the start. Iirc they were told not to build the plant there due to extreme earthquake and tsunami risk, but they did it anyway.
Those two disasters were caused by stupidity and negligence. You can argue that humans can’t be trusted with radioactive materials, but the process itself is pretty safe. Meanwhile coal plants release significantly more radiation over their lifetimes than nuclear reactors do.
Sure. They did a test in Chernobyl, with an unexperienced operator. And the plant at Fukushima was there after all, warning ir no warning, so why in hell should that be safe? Ok, next one: Zaporizhzhia. Atomic plant as hostage in a conventional war. Safe? Maybe not, with that whacko as Russian president. They even blew the dam that basically provided the cooling water supply for the plant. Now downvote me again.
btw: Interesting read: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c984l87l2w6o
You can’t separate humans from any process. The risks with nuclear are the risks of the most reliable person to eventually work at the plant. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it’s a possibility.
It’s entirely possible for a natural nuclear reactor to occur. So yes, you can separate humans from the process. Make a reactor that a human can’t reasonably open and has zero chance of melting down, and you have safe nuclear.
Also yes, you can make a reactor that can’t melt down (without human interference). It’s called an RTG and they’re commonly used on spacecraft.
If you could entirely separate humans from the process, then there would be nobody to design and build it.
Then a war starts between a nuclear nation… Oh wait.