this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?

Installed Wind Capacty - Germany

German Wind Capacity

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[โ€“] [email protected] 88 points 2 years ago (26 children)

All this debate and nobody brings up that, thanks to climate change, cooling nuclear power plants will become a roll of the dice? Same as it already happened in France?

Droughts are really, really bad for nuclear power. Solar and wind don't give a shit.

Doesn't even matter much which technology is better on any other point. If you cannot run it, it's worthless. Especially at times with increased power demand for example due to AC usage spiking thanks to the same heat that just poofed your cooling solution into oblivion.

[โ€“] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not to mention that building new plants can take a decade and costs a fortune - if you invest that money into renewables and power storages you have working power much faster.

Also OPs graphic is a real problem but it only goes until last year where we just got rid of Merkel. Her party was actively working on making it as hard as possible to work wind turbines while investing into gas from russia so with the new government the speed should finally pick up again

Of course shutting down existing nuclear reactors is a bad idea (which also happened because of Merkel) but that decision was made so long ago that the companies running those plants prepared for them to shut down for a decade and have stopped hiring people, the ones working there are on retirement contracts and they didn't invest into future proofing the plants anymore so they were kind of falling apart

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