By the end of 2022 Germany will have no nuclear power plants remaining. I have covered why this policy is folly elsewhere, so won’t cover it again here. Instead let us consider in a little detail how things will pan out in the next decade. To put the numbers in perspective I will estimate how much solar power will need to be added to replace the lost production due to each reactor being closed early (assuming a solar panel life span of 25 years and capacity factor of 10%). I’m using solar, not wind because the load factor for wind farms will be quite dependent on how much offshore wind is built, but if you want onshore wind figures just divide by 2.5.

Here’s the timetable of future reactor shutdowns:

2015: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Grafenrheinfeld, (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 85.8%

Original shut down date: 2028

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

2017: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Gundremmingen-B (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 83.6%

Original shut down date: 2030

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

2019: 1 reactor closes

Reactor: Phillipsburg-2 (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.3%

Original shut down date: 2032

Solar required to replace lost production: 7.3 GW

2021: 3 reactors close

Reactor: Gundremmingen-C (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.3%

Original shut down date: 2030

Solar required to replace lost production: 5 GW

Reactor: Brokdorf (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 88.2%

Original shut down date: 2033

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.7 GW

Reactor: Grohnde (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 90.4%

Original shut down date: 2031

Solar required to replace lost production: 5.6 GW

2022: 3 reactors close

Reactor: Isar-2 (1.4 GW)

Average load factor: 89.5%

Original shut down date: 2034

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.7 GW

Reactor: Emsland (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 93.5%

Original shut down date: 2035

Solar required to replace lost production: 6.8 GW

Reactor: Neckarwestheim-2 (1.3 GW)

Average load factor: 92.3%

Original shut down date: 2036

Solar required to replace lost production: 7.3 GW

Looking Ahead

In total Germany would need to build an additional 59 GW of solar power to replace the lost production of the shuttered nukes. This of course is a rather simplified view. The sun does not shine at 6 pm in Winter when Germany’s electricity demand peaks. And the wind does not always blow either. In fact Germany can probably rely on just a bit above zero wind power, so this lost nuclear production could be made up by building a large number of wind turbines and solar panels. However the lost capacity cannot be, a distinction many fail to recognise. Fossil fuelled (or biomass) power plants will need to be built. To see this consider that Germany has over 30 GW of wind turbines, yet at 6pm on January 14th 2013 barely 0.5 GW, or 1.5% of capacity, was feeding into the grid.

 

Things can be even worse, as can be seen on October 24th 2012 when wind power was a mere 134 MW, 0.5% of total capacity:

So, to replace its 12 GW of nuclear with renewables Germany will have to build enough renewable capacity to replace lost production and enough fossil fuel capacity to keep the lights on when it is not windy. It would appear that the dreams of Angela Merkel to put a stop to rising electricity prices will remain just that.

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15 Comments on "Germany’s Nuclear Energy Phaseout: The Timetable"

rollin on Wed, 1st May 2013 6:51 pm 



Instead of surmising what Germany’s plan is, why not look at their plan. I doubt if the Germans would wander into this blindly, in fact they probably have an extremely detailed survey and plans which take into account the vagaries of solar and wind power.
The author also choses the low end of PV lifespan as well as the low end of efficiency. He also neglects the factors of both concentrated and distributed power storage, which would be part of any renewable plan.
Nuclear, in it’s current mode, is extremely expensive and dangerous, a strong consideration when planning forward.

J-Gav on Wed, 1st May 2013 7:04 pm 



I’d agree, Rollin, that nuclear is folly and has been since day one. That doesn’t remove the obstacles from Germany’s energy future. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the country has had numerous problems with grid connections, power back-up and load-dumping and, yes, they’re moving somewhat back to coal! (Ah! I remember shoveling that up from the basement in Cologne where I lived back in the mid 70s). The takeaway? Germany’s energy transition is not likely to be as smooth as advertised.

Plantagenet on Wed, 1st May 2013 7:29 pm 



Germany’s plan to mothball their nukes while building coal-fired power plants to replace them will result in massive CO2 increases and serial violations of the Kyoto Climate Accord.

But apparently the Germans don’t care if they destroy the entire planet through Greenhouse warming.

rollin on Wed, 1st May 2013 8:22 pm 



Germany has not started any coal plant projects or approved any since the nuclear phase-out commenced. In fact it has abandoned six planned projects. The coal-fired plants that are being completed were started 4 to 6 years ago, well before the new policy came into being – they were actively in the pipeline.

At the same time, an equivalent (in power generation) number of nat gas power plants have been shut. So the net gain in CO2 is small. Cheap American coal has been the driver for this.

The Germans are ahead of everybody else when it comes to actually installing renewable energy. Talk is cheap, the Germans are actually doing something on a large scale.

Kenz300 on Wed, 1st May 2013 8:29 pm 



Fukishima and Chernobyl are teaching the world how EXPENSIVE nuclear power really is.

The disaster at Fukishima continues today with no end in sight. The cost to decommission nuclear plants around the world as the reach the end of their useful life will be enormous.

Alternative energy sources are safer, cleaner and cheaper.

Wind and solar are the future,

GregT on Wed, 1st May 2013 11:57 pm 



I find it interesting that everyone seems to be concerned with finding ways to replace one form of power generation with another. Coal is dirty, so we’ll replace it with natural gas. Oil is dirty, so we’ll replace it with solar. Nuclear is dangerous, so we’ll replace it with wind power, or geo-thermal.

Has anyone even thought about what caused global overpopulation? The very thing that has caused all of the other dilemmas that we now face as a species on this planet? The very thing that threatens to cause global mass extinction within 2 generations for sure, and now possibly even in 1?

Thats right! Excess energy. It has allowed us to extract renewable resources faster than they can renew themselves. It has given us technology that has increased our natural lifespans. It has allowed us to feed more people than the earths ecosystems can naturally support. It is the very thing that will ultimately lead to the death of most of the life on this planet.

So why do we want to keep finding more sources of man made energy? We lived without it for tens of thousands of years just fine. In less than 150 years we have completely fucked up the planet.

We eventually will go back to living without technology. When we do go back, will the planet be healthy enough to even support life?

DC on Thu, 2nd May 2013 12:09 am 



Q/. When we do go back, will the planet be healthy enough to even support life?

Somehow, I dont think so. Even now, if you want to start a garden in your yard,(if your lucky enough to have a yard), you would be well advised to get the soil tested first. To say nothing of what those 400+ piles of glowing rubble will do to what is left of the world after all those nuke plants melt down. AND the chemical plants, and oil plants etc. A world made toxic for all time will be our legacy, if anyone is around to suffer through it that is.

Nothing built with all that excess energy will have any value going forward. All our engineering and tech is built so poorly any survivors of the industrial age will gain little benefit from what is left.

GregT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 12:51 am 



DC,

It doesn’t need to end this way, but sadly, it is looking that way more each day.

BillT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 1:35 am 



I can only add to the plight of the comments above. Even if … All hydrocarbon use was ended today, and 6 billion of us just disappeared, the other billion would struggle to survive.

There is about 250,000 TONS of spent radioactive fuel stored around the earth that will take expensive, energy intensive care for the next 1,000 years. If Fukushima is dangerous, what would 400+ Fukushima’s do? Yep! Kill off all life on earth in a few years.

Throw in polluted water and soil everywhere. Depleted minerals in the soil that we need to live. A climate on the rampage making living conditions erratic and dangerous, and we would quickly wish for the days of our ancestors when all they had to worry about were sabre tooth tigers.

rollin on Thu, 2nd May 2013 3:02 am 



GregT and DC,
The reason for substitution is many-fold. First is stability. Without stability we would rip this ecosystem apart. Do you think we won’t still be powerful during descent and under extreme stress, we will eat, kill and burn everything in sight without stability? Without stability nuke war is likely.

Next we need time, time to figure out how to deal with those 400 nuclear piles/waste pimples that are ready to spew hell on us. We also need more time to figure out how to make this all work, us and the eco-system. Maybe we can’t but at least we should give it a heroic effort. This is the first time that a species can knowingly swing the eco-pendulum.

In the worst case, don’t worry, there will always be niches of life on the planet, maybe as big as cockroaches, maybe only bacteria and fungus. Still, even with a reset, life will eventually evolve again and plants will cover the earth, things will swim, crawl and fly. Just no humans, an extinct species among many extinct species. I wonder if flowers will evolve again.

deedl on Thu, 2nd May 2013 6:27 am 



The typical arguemnt why the “Engergiewende” can’t be done is the question what to do when both sun and wind are low. This argument is based on a false assumption, because it assumes that supply has always to fit a demand without interrelating both. In fact there is a market for energy and in times of low supply high prices will drive down demand. So supply has not to meet demand, it will alwys meet demand, as in any market system.

How does this work in reality? Today large energy consumers, like steel plants, book packets of energy to a fixed price many days and weeks before actually consuming them. Those packets consist of certain energy amounts consumable to fixed times at a fixed price. Thus the producers can always plan their costs. When the time arrives, the steel plant compares their package price with current spot market prices. If demand exceeds supply, the spot market price will be high, and the steel producer will decide not to make money by consuming their energy package by themselves to produce steel but by selling it on the spotmarket to a higher price than they paid for it. This means that demand will decrease, because the demand of the steel plant is taken off the market.

This way large consumers can be shut down if supply is low, but they still can plan their costs and make money by curbing their own demand.

Its a myth that renewables can not meet demand, because supply will always meet demand in a free market. The simple solution, which will, forced by the marketmechanism, develop by itself is that large industry consumers will couple their production to the weather. In a few decades large energy expensive industries, such as chemical industries, cement and steel production, aluminium refineries and so on, who consume more energy than private consumers, will run when the sun shines and when there is wind on cheap renewable energy caused by low spot prices.

Supply has not to follow demand, because large parts of demand will follow supply. It’s that simple, its how markets work.

rollin on Thu, 2nd May 2013 12:51 pm 



Germany has been using pumped hydro-storage for years and is now investigating CO2 to methane conversion as a storage solution.

BillT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 3:16 pm 



“…aluminium refineries and so on, who consume more energy than private consumers, will run when the sun shines and when there is wind on cheap renewable energy caused by low spot prices….”

Obviously, you have no idea how aluminum is made. It is not an on again, off again process. No real manufacturing on any level can be done that way. And solar/wind CANNOT replace themselves at any level. Yes, demand will regress to the level of hunter/gatherer.

GregT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 3:53 pm 



“Its a myth that renewables can not meet demand, because supply will always meet demand in a free market.”

This is not correct.

Just because a Human Being demands something does not will it into existence. Take, for example, a lake full of fish. The fish are ‘renewable’, because they naturally reproduce. If we limit the amount of the fish that we consume from the lake, the fish in the lake will continue to thrive. If we ‘demand’ more fish from the lake than can naturally renew themselves, the fish go into decline. If we eat all of the fish in the lake, the renewable resource ‘supply’ can no longer meet ‘demand’ because the ‘renewable resource’ no longer exists.

Looking at the natural environment from an economic perspective is a flawed way of thinking. The natural environment, is where all of our resources come from. Some are finite, while others are ‘renewable’. Finite resources are FINITE, once they are used up, they are gone. Renewable ‘resources’ run out forever, once their extraction rate exceeds their natural rate of reproduction.

The Earth’s natural ecosystems do not follow our economic ideology. They are not there merely for our consumption.

Our very lives depend on the health of the Earth that we live on, not how much of it we can consume to turn a profit.

GregT on Thu, 2nd May 2013 4:38 pm 



rollin,

“Without stability we would rip this ecosystem apart.”

Correct.

It took the Earth’s ecosystems tens of millions of years to reach stability. We as Human Beings, and our insatiable appetite for greed, are what is already ripping the ecosystems apart. If we hadn’t of found sources of cheap excess energy, we would still be living within the confines of a stable natural environment. Our population would have been kept in check, and we wouldn’t be facing a manmade, mass extinction event. Expecting more excess energy to solve the very problems that we created with them, to begin with, doesn’t make any sense.

“Next we need time, time to figure out how to deal with those 400 nuclear piles/waste pimples that are ready to spew hell on us.”

We have had all of the time necessary, to figure out how to live in harmony with the Earth. Like Germany, we have the ability to shut down all of these nuclear sites right now, we don’t need more excess energy to do so. Instead, we are trying to come up with a new way to produce more energy, which I strongly suspect, will create even more insurmountable issues for the future. I doubt very much that “this time it will be different”.

“We also need more time to figure out how to make this all work, us and the eco-system.”

Our population is in overshoot, to the tune of some 6 billion people. The only way that this will work, is to allow natural balances to be restored. The longer that our populations exceed the carrying capacity of the planet, the more irreversible damage that will be done to the Earth’s ecosystems. Our populations WILL be drastically reduced, one way or the other. The longer we attempt to prop our populations up, the bigger the cull will be. It is becoming increasingly more apparent that human survival on this planet may no longer even be possible.

If we stop what we are doing now, there is a small chance that we might survive as a species. If we keep doing what we are for much longer, we are done, and much sooner than the end of the century, which was originally thought.