@notjustbikes The main centre-right political party was pushing nuclear power at the last election. So it also has some support as a culture war issue.

Both of the major parties accept large donations from the mining and resource extraction industries, so it is not just a fossil fuel thing.

@notjustbikes

Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because ...

They also abhor the idea of a decentralized grid, with local production, maybe even in the hands of the people who consume the power, because it threatens the structure of the current grid, with few well known producers and a lot of distributed consumers.

There is a tiny piece of truth in this, as a grid that also accommodates a lot of distributed producers requires a lot more digital control and modernization, and it also requires a somewhat different structure in cabling and power distribution, but on the other hand such a structure will be a lot more flexible and resilient, too.

Financially, some large scale fossil power producers (RWE in Germany, for example) are partially state owned and profits from them are being used to pay for state pensions or finance other parts of repeating state payments. These parts of the state resist ANY kind of change with an almost unsurmountable stubbornness, and these kinds of dependencies are also badly documented.

@notjustbikes This worked flawlessly in the last election in Sweden 4 years ago. The winning coalition bet EVERYTHING on this narrative and it did seem to be part of them winning the election. 4 years later the main outcome of this is almost all renewable projects have been cancelled due to the market uncertainty that was created.

Election coming up in September and they seem to bring back the favorite from last time, let’s see if it works twice. Polls indicate no.

@notjustbikes Solar on suburban homes is a funny thing. At the latitude of Amsterdam, it can lead to demand evaporation for 7-8 months of the year if the home has a sufficiently sized battery.

The solar from a typical suburban home can carry 10-15 kWp of solar, leading to 7-11 MWh production per year in east/west configuration and 13-16 MWh production in a south facing ideal deployment.

There is a 1:10 production difference between January and June, though, so the household likely needs to buy power Nov-Feb, but will likely break even or almost break even in Mar, and not consume any power from the grid in April to September, and begin to load from the grid lightly on October.

Heating with a heat pump will have them but 3-4 MWh during winter.

(Numbers based on our 75 kWh/(year and qm) home, and our demand, but they seem to be applicable on a more general scale, too).

For power producers this means they have to supply power to homes like ours only for winter.

Fortunately wind + battery can actually do that without CO2.

@notjustbikes as an Australian, I can assure you that the Australian base load thing is hot garbage designed to keep control of energy in centralised corporate hands.

So yup, perfect for arguing against renewable / distributed energy with an authoritative sound that is actually hollow nothing.

@notjustbikes

Lots of nuclear trolls/shrills.
Not all of them are real people.

Here in Australia, we have lots of mainly uncontrolled rooftop solar.

The sun shines and The commercial solar farms get pushed out.

The constant on "baseload" coal plants lose money with negative prices. They have started to learn to dance. Like the UK coal plants. Ramping their output up and down. But they have their limits. No longer baseload.

@notjustbikes that was literally what the conservative (Liberal & National Party coalition) opposition pulled at the last election here in Australia:

Cancel renewables.
Start up a nuclear program (despite multiple failed attempts).
Throw money at gas and coal.

They didn't win the election

@IcyPalm @notjustbikes I suspect it’s far more simple than that. Your average person likely has zero knowledge of the grid frequency or why it’s important. They don’t know about the duck curve. Transmission is how the electricity gets from their local power plant to their house.

What they do know:
* Solar turns the daylight into electricity
* We need electricity 24/7
* The sun doesn’t shine 24/7
* Batteries don’t last forever (and what if there’s a cloudy week, if …, if …, etc.)
* Therefore, we need a base load that gets us through the night and cloudy days. (What’s a base load? Idk I heard it)
* Nuclear is relatively clean and the scare factor was semi-artificially created by the fossil fuel industry, therefore it must be really good because they’re really bad

It’s the liberal equivalent of “why don’t we just drill more?”

I don’t think it’s some giant conspiracy.

@IcyPalm
Could be in some cases, but I've seen the "baseload" argument on German-language social media quite a lot and I'm very sure the fraction that knows about grid-momentum is even smaller than the fraction that knows what baseload actually means.

:)

@notjustbikes

@rood @notjustbikes

Talking about "China" without a year number attached to what is being said is really hard, because things change rapidly there.

In 2024, China has been deploying new coal plants at approximately the same rate as they have been decommissioning older, dirtier ones.

The new plants have very low utilization rates, and are built as swing capacity. They are also being paid as reserve, base money for the ability to jump in on demand, and then additional money if they are actually needed.