Remix.run Logo
belorn 2 days ago

The politicians in Germany went to great length to promote natural gas as the green technology to be combined with renewables, a strategy they succeed in the European Parliament and still seem to follow even when the fires roams and the pipelines get blown up. There is no seasonal grid battery storage in central and northern Europe, and outside of a few hundred household sized experiment, no grid storage is being built.

Looking at the platforms of political parties who oppose nuclear in a nearby country like Sweden, all of them highlight how thermal power plants are necessary to support further expansion of renewable energy, and those thermal power plants burn some form of fossil fuels. This include the Swedish green party.

What EU need is a ban on fossil fuels in the energy grid. Without that natural gas there is no need to buy gas from current war zones and their participants, and it would significantly decrease emissions. As long as people who oppose nuclear also agree to stop using thermal power plants, same as with the ban on ICE cars that will come into action in a few years, then the discussion of nuclear vs renewables + battery will be a fair one with everyone playing by the same rules.

Naturally in the south part of EU there is little reason to use nuclear plants. Energy demand correlates with solar production, and the need for seasonal storage is minimal. Sadly the same can not be said about central and northern Europe where wind speeds are the current dominant factor when it come to supply of energy, but seasons dictate demand. The size of storage needed for a harsh winter is magnitudes more expensive currently than reducing the need through nuclear, but that will never be tested since what countries there are actually building right now are more thermal power plants to address the issue of low supply during periods of low energy production from wind.