(maps https://www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/cross_border_projec... - it's an odd area, mostly beautiful in that stark empty way a lot of Scotland is, but there's really not a lot of human use already there apart from marginal sheep farming because the land is too steep to till.)
> It cooperates with a 53-hectare ground-mounted PV system operated by Solizer in direct proximity, which is supposed to deliver a peak output of 72 MW (MWp). Due to changes in tender conditions, large solar power projects and battery storage systems are increasingly being planned together.
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As obliquely referenced with the "changes in tender conditions", solar overproduction now causes negative midday electricity prices on a near daily basis in Germany from April through to October so long as it's not super cloudy.
Therefore, anyone with a solar installation that doesn't get a special constant feed-in rate for their electricity (no longer available for commercial entities) would actually pay money to feed their solar into the grid.
Therefore it's absolutely vital for new solar in Germany to have batteries on-site so they can sell later in the day, otherwise they're simply unprofitable.
For solar as well, the time you need the battery is usually when the solar ain't solarin
With batteries one could argue building them in a more distributed way might make more sense for overall resiliancy.
A fleet of like 70 nuclear plants at maybe 50 location could likely power all of Germany. For batteries you would likely go to 100 to 1000s of locations.
But that said, using the existing connections in some places does make sense.
But, there are other issues: Atomic power keeps rising in cost. The plant was decomissioned and to turn it back on, you would basically have to rebuild it from the ground up - with people and knowledge that does not exist. Also, you would need the fuel from some place - as with oil and gas, you are depended on that place, since you can't easily switch uranium.
We would need about 55 power plants in Germany. At its height, Germany had 38 plants, all of that trash is still not solved. And we are not even thinking about the lawsuits that the reactivation or building of new plants would entail. People are suing against solar farms, what do you think a Nimby would be triggered by a nuclear plant?
In addition, none of these plants can be insured, all the risk is with the tax payer. As russia currently shows, you are also creating about 50 targets that to destroy a country. You don't even have to send a rocket, a few drones with grenades will make sure the plant has to shut down.
Personally, I do not want them. I remember Tchernobyl and the fallout afterwards. We have alternatives, like these battery storages, and can use water, wind, solar and hydrogen to not create potential nuclear issues, i am fine with that.
< For batteries you would likely go to 100 to 1000s of locations.
Yes, ideally de-centralized and build where power is generated. A battery park can be set up almost anywhere, a power plant not so much.
Nevertheless, I like the idea of using these old plant sites for storage, they have pretty good connections to the grid, so it makes a lot of sense. Can't use that space for anything else, really.
Sourcing uranium is not an issue. In fact per kwh nuclear requires least amount of materials and hence, imports https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-... Heck Germany can even extract it from seawater in worst case. Nowadays it's not that much more expensive vs land mining. But soon Sweden will be a player too, along Canada/Australia
Npp in germany were insured by law with insuring pools. On top, operators had full asset liability, again, per law. Closest catastrophe event would be TMI. Cleanup there is merely 1bn...
Russian war shows nuclear is great regardless. Ukraine's grid still has power even though most ren infra got destroyed/captured because most was deployed in south with better weather. Germany is in similar situation with northern offshore parks
You remember chernobyl which is expected to kill at most 4k ppl or much less per UNCSEAR but you are probably fine with german car industry which kills same amount of persons in merely 2y from impacts, right? You are fine with coal still operating which killed even more? You are fine with gas being used for firming? (habeck, reiche, fraunhofer) Phaseout was a terrible decision https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z
France has decentralized grid with centralized multiunit locations. This reduces heavily grid investment needs. There's a reason Germany spends 10x vs France on transmission and curtailment
I mean it wont. it only stores power. The problem for germany is that they still have shitty coal plants. If they'd kept the nuclear and yeeted the coal, they'd have a much cleaner grid. they could have been able to turn off half thier gas and entirely oil free
Which it can only do if it consumes more power than the plant was going to deliver. They don't supply power, they can only displace time of use against generation.
> Atomic power keeps rising in cost.
Why? And why won't those same factors increase all energy generation and delivery costs?
> You don't even have to send a rocket, a few drones with grenades will make sure the plant has to shut down.
Batteries are immune to grenades?
> A battery park can be set up almost anywhere
You know, the thing you want next to a battery, or any energy generation and storage system, is going to be a Fire Department.
A small number of large plants are much easier to target during war than distributed wind, solar, or batteries. It’s not that batteries are immune to grenades. It’s that you’d need to put grenades in orders of magnitude more places to get to all the batteries as compared to large nuclear plants.
Batteries do pose a fire risk, but so do petrol cars. We pump flammable gas into our homes in large parts of the west and have designed ways of keeping ourselves safe. I see no reason why batteries won’t follow the same path.
Ren infra has own risks too. For example concentration in best weather areas. Most ren infra in Ukraine was in the south and was either captured or destroyed by Russia. There are similar risks in for north sea/offshore projects
How did UK and France solve it? Just ask them and do what they did?
> People are suing against solar farms, what do you think a Nimby would be triggered by a nuclear plant?
Simple. You make it against the law to sue a giant energy projects because energy is a national/existential issue like defense. There, problem solved.
Why do we act like there isn't a switch we can flip when needed to make our problems go away, and instead need to succumb to the whims of a few anti-intellectual nimbys who got brainwashed by anti nuclear propaganda, because "they can sue"?
>Personally, I do not want them. I remember Tchernobyl and the fallout afterwards
Do you also remember the other power plants in the world that didn't blow up?
Imagine if prehistoric humans stopped using fire because someone burned his house down once and "they remember the fire".
Remove the fuel elements, reprocess what's useful, and store the reprocessed materials and nuclear waste somewhere "temporarily" that isn't really suitable for long-term storage.
Remove intermediate and low level waste from site and also store it "temporarily".
Remove any non-contaminated plant and sell for scrap.
Punt the main part of the problem (scrapping the main reactors and reactor buildings) down the road for a hundred years or so until radiation levels are acceptable for demolition to proceed.
Re-use other parts of the site for projects that can use the existing HV connection, like another reactor, or battery storage.
That's essentially all you can do unless you want to risk a radiological accident.
That's one of the features of a free country. What you propose is close to tyranny.
Even if it is possible I have no confidence that Germany is able to come up with a solution to nuclear waste. The federal states that are proponents of nuclear energy like Bavaria refuse to even examine whether a nuclear waste repository could be located in their territory.
Not that far away from the former nuclear plant in the article the "Schacht Asse" [1] is located where the problem of nuclear waste im Germany becomes painfully obvious.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
Edit: Grammar
Nuclear waste storage is politically killed centrally. Look even at formulation in the law which demands "best" location. Germany could solve this problem in a second if it allowed storing waste in facilities where toxic chemicals are stored like Herfa Neurode.
Asse was an experimental facility that didnt have a plan of what to do if experiment goes sideways. It has nothing to do with final repositories like Onkalo. Still, it killed noone. Nor will it. Most of the waste there is from medical and research sectors and is LLW.
Nuclear 'waste' has plenty of solution and all these 'but the repositoy' is just what anti-nuclear people use to scare people that don't know any better. Nuclear 'waste' doesn't need a repository, its perfectly fine to just store it above ground for as long as needed.
The Asse mine is completely irrelevant to the discussion as this is not how anything is done anymore for a long time and many countries have proven capable of managing waste fine, including Germany since then. The fact is, basically nobody has died from waste managment.
Asse risk is overplayed, even if nothing was done, the likelyhood is that in the next few 100 years nobody would die because of it it. They are removing it because maybe in a few 100 years there could be a slight impact on ground water. Even the is if you make some worst case assumtions. Spend the billions it would cost to empty the mine on gold and put it into the ground. People in few 100 years can dig up and spend on what they think is their most important problem. In the incredibly unlikely case that its radiation, they can use their technology to do what they think is best.
What are the costs (without omitting storing radiactive waste securely[1] above ground for some thousand years ? Are they less than batteries + solar + wind?
[1] think terrorism, drone strikes, ...
It can be turned on by pursuing refurbs like Darlington in Canada which would be closest conceptually since a lot of stuff got replaced there. Refurbs would be cheap vs building anything new providing same TWh/year. Germany needs much more than just batteries. It needs gas firming on top (coming from Habeck, Fraunhofer and now Reiche)
Great if there would be no way for terrorists to get into just one of these facilities in this timeframe and get their hands on radioactive material to build a dirty bomb.
Great if this would be cheaper than just build solar, wind and batteries without the liability of radioactive waste.
Well, you were replying to a reply of me to panick21 where he said:
Nuclear 'waste' doesn't need a repository, its perfectly fine to just store it above ground for as long as needed.
If there are easy and cheap longtime-solutions to the radioactive waste problem - fine with me. In Germany we certainly don't have them at the moment.
I think it will be easier and cheaper to avoid this kind of waste altogether and use batteries, wind and solar.
The cheapest way in Germany would be either to allow storing in Herfa Neurode or to send waste to la Hague for recycling, sell the recycled part and isolate only the leftovers.
Renewables don't isolate you from this problem. Germany still needs a repository for medical and research waste. Germany also needs repositories for toxic chemicals (arsenic, cadmium, lead- byproducts of various industries including renewables)
Even more, Germany can't get by with solar+wind+bess alone. Fraunhofer ISE recommends massive gas expansion to 80+GW to firm renewables. I'd rather see any fossils infrastructure erased from existence. France doesn't need a parallel fossils firming grid. Nor Sweden.
Here [1] is an example for planned transports of 152 CASTOR casks containing around 300,000 fuel element pebbles from Jülich to Ahaus: The lowest estimate (excluding security) is 150 Million Euros.
So electric energy in the past was cheap by using NPPs. The energy companies made massive profits. Now, decades later we have to pay for it and will have to continue to do so for centuries. (As always: privatize profits, socialize the costs)
I would like to take these 150 Million and buy some batteries...
[1] Sorry, german language: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-03/radioaktiver...
Germany could recycle all that waste at la Hague, build a repository Like Onkalo and still have leftover money. If for some reason KENFO isn't enough, chiefs of BMUV and BASE should be investigated For treason and wasting public money. Germany could even deal with this cheaper by allowing storing the waste at facilities like herfa neurode. This would also solve storing waste from medical and research sectors
I certainly wouldn't have expected that someone would propose to shop around for refurbished parts (including to try to get permission to create a german-canadian-chimera-npp).
I'm sure Framatome will be more than happy to help with manufacturing of necessary parts. Great carenage is already undergoing in France which helped in this regard but Framatome is involved in manufacturing for other suppliers too
Given how much renewable is already deployed, battery makes sense.
So I think both would be best.
Sure if it's the same price.
An NPP doesn't benefit that much from a battery. They're generally used to provide base load which fits their constant supply profile. Peaks and quick variations can be supplied by more flexible renewables together with a battery to buffer it.
Of course these days, you can feed the pumped hydro or batteries with much cheaper renewables.
I don’t understand why people keep spreading this nonsense.
Just stop it, it’s simply untrue!
Look at this picture [0] of the German grid. Same for France [1]. Why would you store any of the nuclear output when all of it is guaranteed to be absorbed by the grid real time, day or night? You can, but it doesn't make economic sense. Batteries shine where they can smoothen peaks, like solar and wind.
The big reason to put batteries next to NPPs is the existing grid infrastructure. You can't supply GW-level power from just anywhere. It's like building a large warehouse next to a major transportation route.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#/media/File:Renewabl...
[1] https://www.rte-france.com/en/data-publications/eco2mix/powe...
“Increases costs” for who, the producer, the consumer, the distributor? If you have data on that I’d love to read about it.
I think the article mentions that recently batteries are always together with renewables. The reason this battery was built there has nothing to do with the NPP but with the proximity to the already developed power distribution infrastructure. You can assume they’ve all done the math when choosing to not build batteries next to working NPPs.
What a strange assumption. Batteries have become financially viable within the last ~2 years. Nuclear power plants were mostly built in the 70s and 80s.
I have a solution: higher energy prices for those opposing NIMBYs and cheaper for YIMBYs .
So many issues in politics would be solved if the voters of certain policies were the only ones affected by them instead of writing cheques everyone else has to cash.
Must have a lot of grants and government money for this one to pencil out.
For a good chunk of the year (April through to October), the prices even go negative at mid-day most days of the week. This will pay itself off very quickly
My main point is that its a very large asset so you can't external forces come and mess up the financials (such as policy, regulatory changes, or large infra jump in that area) to make good on that bet. Certainly some public dollars being put to work to de-risk the bet.
If it is straight up privately financed even more of a big bet.
6 GWh is approximately 5 kilotons of TNT equivalent.
Would make a big bang should it go off.
Or for that matter the average petrol or natural gas storage facility? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire ("Europe's largest peacetime explosion")
It's not without risk, but as far as power plants go it's pretty low risk
https://www.propublica.org/article/michigan-solar-farms-heal...
We have been pumping oil out of the ground for lifetimes and still have little concern for all the leaky dead wells across the country but these solar panels, that’s the real problem.
That's why I think voting shouldn't be a universal right to everyone, but a privilege you gain after clearing certain bars, one of them being basic education and an IQ test.
Giving every dumbass the same voting power as an academic, to grind national development to a halt and make life shit for everyone else just because they don't understand 5th grade physics, is a recipe for disaster and we're living proof of it.
If you ever worked in public rations and interacted with the gen-pop off the street on a regular basis, you'd see my point eye-to-eye. The masses are too stupid to be entrusted with national decisions, and the only reason they are allowed to, is because they are easily manipulated into voting the way the elites want them to, because they're stupid.
It's exactly why Plato opposed democracy arguing the same faults.
>Plato argued that democracy gives power to the masses (the demos), who are often ignorant, emotional, and easily manipulated by skilled speakers (rhetoricians and demagogues). >Plato believed that ruling is a skill that requires deep knowledge, wisdom, and training in philosophy — not something that should be decided by majority vote or popularity. >He famously compared democracy to a ship where the sailors (citizens) vote on navigation, instead of letting the trained captain (philosopher) steer. The result, according to him, is chaos.Indisputable fact. ;-)
Now are you saying only whites will be able to understand 5th grade physics and nobody else? Or that whites can't be stupid too?
Personally I don't care about your skin color, or other factors, if you're THAT stupid, I don't want you deciding the future of our country, period, since you're putting everyone in danger.
If you can't pass 5th grade physics, you're not fit to be voting on the country's nuclear energy policy, simple.
That already exists in our current system. Whoever's parents reproduced the most, now has majority of votes. Home owners are majority and decide housing policies for those who don't owe property.
Are these more fair, or just another form of mob rule we got accustomed to out of centuries of inertia, like fish in the water? When did we decided that rules from 300 years ago shouldn't be touched to be updated to reflect current challenges?
>There is no such thing as an "objective test" for your case, because someone somewhere would need to determine it is objective.
Currently it's our legal system that decides what is fair and objective, that's how it works today in most countries. And that's not set in stone, but can always be changed on a dime if the majority of the population decides to, or in case of national catastrophes like war, since all laws are made up and only enforceable as long as the majority of the society with support of the military agree with them.
>Who verifies that person, and who verifies the people who verify them?
Who verifies the judge is fair? Who verifies that person who verifies the judge? And so on. Same principles here.
The concern is that the current power structure will use this as a convenient way to bias the voter pool in its favor through strategic selection of questions.
Also going back on this comment. What country are you from? I have always found that the US gets the short stick when in reality these problems have happened everywhere. Usually the countries that think they have no problems are because they are homogenous.
The world is messy and one of the reasons I am such a believer in markets on average is because they help align outcomes in the world we live in.
People are stupid and vote with their emotions or what the pastor told them to. It would be lovely to ensure that votes came from well informed voters.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/households-near-new-pylon...