Germany's Emissions Dive to a 70-Year Low Amid Decline in Coal Use
Germany's Emissions Dive to a 70-Year Low Amid Decline in Coal Use
Germany's emissions have hit a 70-year low at 673 million tonnes in 2023, largely due to a decrease in coal power generation and an increase in renewable energy sources.
For a country that people shat on a lot for closing their nuclear plants Germany is on the right track reducing their C02.
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I think Germany should have kept open their nuclear power plants as long as they could. But I don't think opening new ones was the right idea.
Hopefully they keep making the gains they have.
No.
Schacht Konrad was a bad idea. Gorleben would've been a bad idea.
La Hague and Sellafield were bad ideas.
Nuclear risk aversion is democratically decided.
Nuclear energy discourages wind energy expansion, which is the better path for Germany IMO.
100% this, but idiots gonna complain because big oil pays propaganda to push nuclear wich needs years to build and is unreliable.
Hang on you are saying nuclear power has always been a bad idea? That a bit of an unusual view.
What I'm saying is it was good before wind and solar and is still cost effective to keep ruining once built. But I dont think new nuclear power plants should be built unless it's for national security.
The combined risk of posthumanity pollution and catastrophic failures makes it a no-go for a risk averse society. Germany is spatially a comparably small country with high population density, there is not really a place where you easily can say no one lives here for the next thousands of years.
La Hague and Sellafield are or were places of necessary production chain segments with high pollution danger and history.
Zaporishja shows how dangerous centralised power production can be.
PV and wind energy were politically advocated for in Germany (California as well btw) before they were cheap and mass produced and efficient, even or especially against nuclear energy.
Austria actually is somewhat of a success story with a similar history.
It was always a bad idea and humanity should never have touched uranium at all. Would have saved us so much.
I don't know about that some of the new gen 4 reactors that are starting to come out effectively tackle a lot of the downsides like cost or the need to store waste.
I don't think a 100% nuclear solution is a good idea but it sounds like it'll have its place in a future national energy portfolio for a lot of countries.
It is expensive to run, has the same sort of issues with fuel procurement from potentially hostile countries as fossil fuels, has waste storage issues and takes ages to build. Cooling is also very vulnerable to droughts in the water sources used for it. There really aren't many arguments in its favour.
That's specifically why I said gen 4 reactors. They can take a broader array of fuel, recycle high level radioactive waste into energy, and are capable of being built as small modular tractors shortening cost and time for production. Additionally they also can use less water than existing light water reactors.
They do have the benefits of using a low amount of space, offering consistency regardless of environmental factors, having a longer service life, and being very efficient.