Germany to Bring Back Coal-Fired Power Plants
Yeah, we could instead reduce coal to a historic low while building renewables...
Oh, wait. That is what is actually happening. But people keeping lying and pretend that there is an increase in coal instead because that's what propagandists pay for.
Because it is. You are brainwashed by the nuclear lobby trying to tell the fairy tale of how every plan without nuclear will fail and the fossil fuel lobby telling the tale of how it's hopeless and reducing coal isn't working. And both just tell you the same lie about some magical increase in coal use in Germany that doesn't exist.
The idea above is basically the epitome of cluelessness and just parroting narratives. Nobody is freezing in winter because there isn't enough electricity. Because the amount of heating via electricty is low and nobody is heating with coal either. That what gas is mainly used for and why people are talking about gas storage... and no, that doesn't have much to do with electricity either as gas use in electricity production is also low and only used as a peak burner to adapt to quick changes in demand.
It's one big ball of lies while conflating primary energy, heating and electricity to disguise that the underlying facts are already false.
See the linked actual stats above.
Germany increased renewables while decreasing nuclear and coal. When they shut down the last reactors that had to this point contributed less than 1,6% of the produced electricity coal instantly decreased more. Because those reactors contributing basically nothing still got renewables shut off at times. Germany's coal use is at an historic low.
And at the same time everyone tells the fairy tale about the insane Germans trying to kill the planet by using more coal. That's bullshit but it's very well paid bullshit. Because the nuclear lobbyists pay to promote the story of how there is no alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel lobbyists promote the story of how reducing coal isn't working and you should stop trying.
PS: Also every country is restarting reactors in autumn as a reserve (and barely running) should they be needed in winter at some point. France for example did restart coal power plants last year at the same time as they weren't sure they can get everything nuclear in order until winter (after they burned massive amounts of gas and forced neighbours to do the same to keep their grid stable... in the middle of a gas crisis). But that isn't reported, because it's not the desired narrrative.
For Reference:
Germany power production 1990-2020
That's the reality.
But hey... Germany is increasing coal use! They are insane! Cheer for me for parroting our most popular lie about the evil Germans!
And some fun facts for good measure:
Germany's nuclear power production at its peak was never above 30% and given the increase in electricity demand in those 30 years even if they kept all those reactors forever it would still be irrelvant low today. But it's good for propaganda to pretend otherwise
Germany while actively exiting nuclear power reduced nuclear power generation by less than France in the same time frame, just because they couldn't keep all old their old reactors alive.
France today has not nearly enough nuclear power just to cover the minimal required base load of projected demand by 2050. (They also will need 14 completely new big reactors -not the 6 with optionally another 8, but the full set- to get there.) That's the actual amount necessary to invest in nuclear.
Which also means basically any single country claiming to go for a nuclear solution is bullshitting you. Because they all don't plan to build even remotely enough to ever cover base load. Why aren't they? Because nobody has a clue how to foot that bill.
Also every nuclear model is actually a nuclear base load plus renewable model. Yet for some reason the exact same countries talking loudly about nuclear also lack the necessary renewables. Totally not caused by propaganda of course...
And at the end the not-so-fun fact: There is actually one thing you can criticise. The priority of reducing hard coal before lignite. But that's caused by geopolitical factors (it's domestic) and the fact that we inherited East Germany where lignite is sadly a big economic factor in some regions. One of the few relevant economy factors remaining in Eastern Germany. Just like cutting off Russian pipeline oil wasn't a problem of oil per se but of Eastern German industries who build their existence on those deliveries even before the reunion.
We would probably know by now but... oh, look which countries are blocking an investigation...
Obviously not as all the assholes here who cry about Article 5 at every chance were also proudly proclaiming how obviously it was that \ destroyed German infrastructure.
No, they didn't. But as this lie needs to be parroted at least twice a week you are at least in good company and having friends that tell the same lie is always more important than the truth.
Yeah, more death and misery for civilians. That will totally show the people why not to support the only ones fighting for them, even if it's a fucking terrorist group like Hamas. Just like Dehousing worked against Germany in WW2, shooting Ukrainian schools and kindergardens works in Ukraine today, and more than a dozen similiar examples in between those two totally worked...
Then you should probably point out to OP which VPNs are independently audited and not keeping data or not operating in any country requiring access by law enforcement. As everything else would totally defeat your "but government actors"-argument from above.
Yes, given OPs question (triggered by VPN Ads even) and way of asking there is no reason to believe in any scenario where a state-sponsored actor "on the same network" is intercepting data (like "transmitted passwords") because it's only secured by https. That's "can I login safely from a public wifi?"-level.
As you seem to be passionate about these security issues I'm sure that you are familiar with the concept of threat assesment first. Do you believe that a random user asking publically about information seen in advertising is the target of government-level actors wanting to steal his login passwords used on https sites and that breaking the encryption is the easiest measure here?
As I read this question "high-layer sifting by ISPs" (and providers of open wifi) is exactly the threat scenario here.
Do you understand how reality works? You know this strange thing were coal usage in Germany is going down constantly while everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs how Germany is burning more coal?
That's an interesting headline... what did they expect instead? "After 18 months of only giving Ukraine a fraction of what we can spare for laughs and giggles we now probably need to actually support them for once to replace the missing US aid"?
No, they actually can't, they can make a drone that can parkour a know course. On a good day an unknown course strictly comprised out of known parts. The more autonomous the task, the harder it gets.
Contrary to public believe A.I. isn't actually intelligent but really dump. They can only work well with permutations of known things but are still rather helpless when confronted with unknown factors.
These were not stored because they are great, but as a kind of emergency-reserve because proper disposal costs more than letting them rot on some shelf.
You could have clicked the link above and read it yourself (for example here). It's about a study from 1978 with data often much older from plants in Tenessee and Alabama (known for their magnicicient regulations, especially at that time cough)
To quote from that article:
"The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities."
"Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds, "are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants."
"According to USGS calculations, buying a house in a stack shadow—in this case within 0.6 mile [one kilometer] of a coal plant—increases the annual amount of radiation you're exposed to by a maximum of 5 percent. But that's still less than the radiation encountered in normal yearly exposure to X-rays."
You will not find any mention of nuclear waste in there because the actual only number they used in that study is radiation living next to running nuclear power plant... as a base line to compare against.
EDIT: As for the increasing levels of radiation. The UN has a lot to say about that:
"The main man-made contribution to the exposure of the world's population has come from the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, from 1945 to 1980. Each nuclear test resulted
in unrestrained release into the environment of substantial quantities of radioactive materials, which were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and deposited everywhere on
the Earth’s surface"
Yes... here we can actually talk about nuclear waste. It's still less harmful then nuclear testing was.
The production also increased much more than in the whole US. Basically Europe's goal was at least a million shells until the end of the year. And even when they might fall a bit short on that goal, the US -by it's own account- is still in the we can probably produce 20k per month from 2024 and onward stage of ramping up production.
the German Leopard 1 tanks currently in Ukraine are partially the second line of defense for the Bundeswehr
Yeah, that's bullshit. They had to find people (most of them many decades past their jobs in military) to even do the training because Leopard-1s were simply not a thing for a long time. The ones they are sending to Ukraine are refurbished trash sitting in some yard for decades, mostly out of Germany even.
The only still existing Leopard-1s in operation are found in Greece. Then there are engineering vehicles because they were still sufficient for their job. And when they weren't anymore (because tanks they would need to tow got too heavy) that's when Wisent1 were invented. Which is a commercially developed upgrade for Leopard-1-based engineering vehicles to improve their power to a level where they can handle modern Leopard-2s again. And before the Ukraine war there was only a single buyer: the danish army.
Same reason Russia did it. The allmighty leader gets older and wants to see it happen before he dies as some stupid form of legacy.
No it isn't and it will never be. Doesn't matter how many time you repeat that lie.
The actual fact (very clearly told in the studies that are then brought up to justify the rediculous claim) is: Coal power plants 60 years ago (that's how old the study is) spread more radioactivity via fly ash, then escapes through the massive concrete walls of a running reactor. That's it. No mention of actual waste or anything else.
So coal power is more radioactive than nuclear power only if nuclear power would not create any waste at all and also not contaminate anything that has to be build back and cared for. So basically in a computer game where we you just click on it to remove it from your map, not in any reality.
Seriously has anyone actually read the shit you parrot or is there really a fundamental lack of ability to read beyond clickbait headlines?
PS: Also that radioactivity by fly-ash is based on the natural radioactity contained in earth and stone. Can you imagine the difference in radiation spread by you compared to the world around you? Yeah, there is none... with very small variations by which layer of earth you look at.
So basically you can also pretend that picking up a rock and throwing it at your head is me radiating my surroundings...
Actually that isn't even true. Because decades of nuclear testing has actual incresed the radiation in our natural surroundings, so layers of earth buried for quite some time actually contain lower radiation. If they had done the same study just two decades later then that fly-ash would not even have registered against the normal radiation level around us.
And another thread of "oh no! they fuck the environment and us all" when the reality is the lowest coal use in Germany for decades. With a hike in reduction the moment these shitty nuclear reactors providing basically nothing (2% in the months they were still running) but getting renewable energy shut down were finally gone
Reactivating coal power plants for winter in case they should be needed is not the same as actually burning coal. Not that any of your favorite propagandists would ever tell you that secret.
Yes... since WW1. After exactly any war people where eager to proclaim the end of tanks as warfare had obviously adapted and they were far to expensive and ineffective. Every single time. But the reality is: no one cares about the cost or efficiency as long as there isn't a replacement that can fullfil their vital role. And so the tactics and some details were adapted instead.
The same is true for drones. It doesn't matter what they can do. They can't fullfill the same role as infantry so they will not replace infantry but will be adapted for more use cases by infantry instead.
PS: I'm obviously speaking about land based warfare here. Air combat is a different thing and much easier to adapt drones to (traversing terrain is one the most obvious issues of a drone -even more so when it has to identify all terrain for autonomous operation- that mostly does not exist in wide open spaces). So you will see a dozen pilots being replaced by 2 and a swarm of drones carrrying weapons and equipment or carrying out objectives. But you will not see the same for infantry for a very long time because somewhat autonomous operation in the chaotic terrain of ground combat is still science fiction. And non-automonous drones will be defeated by infantry using EW, not by anti-drone drones.
Germany power production 1990-2020
"The amount of electricity generated from fossil and conventional energy sources decreased by 12.2% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year. The largest decrease, 22%, was measured for electricity generation from coal."
2022 vs. first half fo 2023
So every one using the same public data is wrong but the BBC... Got it.