Metal ZealotSep 4, 2023

Why has the world started to mine coal again?

https://lemmy.ml/post/4373489

Why has the world started to mine coal again? - Lemmy

With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again. Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?

Show threadDasRubberDuckSep 4, 2023
Why “going back to it” have we ever stopped?
Show threadErtebolleSep 4, 2023
No. Among other things it remains the linchpin of energy security for industrial countries like China and Germany that lack adequate domestic oil or natural gas reserves to power their economies with those.
Show threadnicktronSep 4, 2023
Germany had plenty of nuclear energy but decided they wanted to shut them all down. Now they have to use coal and LNG.
Show threadErtebolleSep 4, 2023
Yes. And even before the Russia mess they were going to replace nuclear with LNG, which is still pretty bad.
Show threadluk3th3dud3Sep 4, 2023
While in hindsight not all the decisions of the German energy policies seem right and it would have been better to keep the nuclear power plants operating for a few years, there was never the plan to replace nuclear with coal. All of the nuclear power generation has been replaced by wind and solar power generation. In fact the plan was to phase out nuclear and replace the remaining coal generation with natural gas power plants. This definitely got more difficult in the time of LNG. The plan in anycase ist to phase out coal as well and with 56% renewable generation in 2023 Germany is on track to do so.
Show threadCybranMSep 5, 2023
Why replace nuclear and not coal though, seems like a pretty stupid choice
Show threadluk3th3dud3

While I agree that it would have been better to phase out coal before nuclear power plants, I also think that those decisions have to be viewed in context and are more nuanced than ‘pretty stupid’.

For example, as other in this thread pointed out, nuclear power plants can be pretty safe to operate IF there is a good culture of safety and protocols in place. Which of course need to be followed and supervised by a strong regulatory body. Two of nuclear power plants in Brunsbüttel and Krümmel were missing this kind of safety culture in the opinion of the regulatory body. They were both operated by Vattenfall. If you lose trust in the operator of such critical infrastructure, then a decision to shut down nuclear power plants has to factor in all the arguments at hand.

Sep 5, 2023 at 12:10pmWeb
Show threadCybranMSep 6, 2023
That’s a fair point