Comment on rollin' coal
itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months agoYou know what, I actually agree on that. Countries that currently have running nuclear plants should keep them running until they’ve eliminated coal (and gas, although their use not really overlaps - base load vs peak), but then shut them down.
realitista@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Then we can totally agree. It’s not what Germany did though.
itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
Yes, but it’s too late to reverse that course. Germany’s nuclear plants are out of operation, and refitting and restarting them would take many years (most of them were at their end of life when they were shut down), and involve costs better spend towards the long term by building up renewables directly, and shutting down coal.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
No, because Germany didn’t replace nuclear power with coal.
realitista@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Shutting down a nuclear plant while keeping coal ones open is replacing nuclear with coal.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
No, it’s going down. There was a sharp decline in 2019, in 2020 it was even lower due to the pandemic and then went up again to the level of around 2019. 2022 was a little worse because of lower gas consumption due to the war in Ukraine, gas was partially replaced with coal. The last nuclear power plants were shut down in April 2023, yet 2023 also saw lower coal consumption than even in 2020, which strongly suggests that nuclear isn’t replaced by coal.