Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 1 2022 05:33pm)
It's much more than that. Germany phasing out its well-serviced and perfectly fine nuclear energy plants compounds the issue. As is the fact that France has not serviced its reactors well, so that a lot of them had to be taken offline for maintenance this very summer, the most unfortunate timing. The drought in parts of Western and Southern Europe also meant that some of France's nuclear power plants ran out of cooling water this summer. Note that this is not an issue, at least not yet, with Germany's nuclear reactors. As an unfortunate byproduct of half of France's nuclear power missing this summer, Germany had to use more natural gas than originally planned for power generation to stabilize the European grid, which further drove the already skyrocketing price for natural gas.
Another aspect is that Germany's clean energy transition has counterintuitively increased the country's reliance on gas plants since gas was slated as the fuel of choice (the German Greens are allergic to nuclear energy, coal is disastrous for the climate, water power isn't available in sufficient quantity due to Germany's topography).
I hope the OP gives me some latitude to respond to responses
relating to the above, as i understand it, there would appear to be an incentive to label nuclear power "green" in europe. will be a wait and see i guess. I dont disagree with you comments, i was merely highlighting that the Headline was deflecting away from the key issue which brought this energy crisis to front and center (i.e. the war).
This post was edited by ferdia on Sep 2 2022 03:25am