By Robert Grünfeld, EIKE
(Translated/edited by P. Gosselin)
Af Jan Ainali – still picture out of File: Greta Thunberg i Bryssel.webm, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75565690
German talk show host Sandra Maischberger interviewed climate activist Greta Thunberg in her native Sweden. The interview aired on Wednesday.
Many climate policy critics see Greta Thunberg (19) as a puppet of interest groups who can’t possibly have any motivation of her own due to her young age and lack of education. It is noticeable, however, that she occasionally makes recommendations that can generate downright hatred, especially in Germany, among Green and Fridays for Future circles.
In 2019, Greta already classified nuclear power as a “small part of a big new carbon-free energy solution” – even citing publications from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
She was harshly criticized for this and avoided the topic for three years. Since the Greens began in the mid-1970s as scattered citizens’ initiatives against nuclear power plants – which only later also turned to various aspects of nature conservation – energy generation from nuclear fission has become considered as a high-risk technology, and not only in left-wing educated bourgeois circles.
The fact that the civilian use of nuclear power has resulted in far fewer deaths and injuries than, for example, modern traffic or conventional power generation, is often overlooked or deliberately not communicated. The factual situation therefore no longer plays a role here, but only its political usability.
Nevertheless, Thunberg has ventured forth once again with the topic of nuclear power – albeit cautiously – and compares it to coal power, which is also maligned. In words: “If they [the German nuclear plants] are already running, I think it would be a mistake to shut them down and turn to coal.”
In FfF circles, this can already be called courageous because Greta’s popularity is especially large in the rich and populous German-speaking countries where a green-loaded media landscape made Thunberg’s idol figure possible in the first place. Next to Stockholm, Berlin is her main field of activity and here she is always received effusively and with much attention.
From the point of view of the inclined EIKE reader, the above quote is of course at best pragmatic over the short-term, yet it does not show an attitude favorable to a sustainable economic and social welfare development. However, since Brussels redefined nuclear power as a “green” technology months ago, it can be assumed that increasingly parts of the FfF movement are also losing interest in the German government’s misguided energy policy. Perhaps in the near future Greta will already recommend the inherently safe new breeder and DFR reactor types, which already theoretically can no longer be called risky.
The fact that Greta got anointed as an expert without any objective reason is now being questioned from the point of view of nuclear power despisers.
Some in Berlin are trying to denigrate her view. The taz points to approval of Greta’s remark by the CDU conservatives and the FDP free democrats. In addition, lobbyists such as the brother of Eckart von Hirschhausen or Armin Simon are quoted:
“Greta Thunberg is mistaken when she implies that nuclear power plants could help in dealing with the current gas crisis.” (Simon)
“Nuclear power cannot be an instrument of climate policy”, (Hirschhausen, Scientists for Future).
Completely wrong – the more nuclear power plants are on the grid, the more electricity there is, and the cheaper the energy is, which is old familiar market logic. And if there is more electric power, less gas has to be burned to generate it, which benefits the bankruptcy-threatened metal and food industries. Hirschhausen is an economist and thus, in contrast to Greta, an expert. How can it be that the activist without a degree knows more about economics than the economics professor?
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Greta : “If we have them [nuc power plants] already runing I feel it’s a mistake to close them down in order to focuse on coal”.
She’s almost spot on on this one, contrary to the UE, French and German morons in charge since 20 years, who’s suicidal “run to unreliable” policy led to the suppression (or “sub optimal” maintenance to say the least) of nuc and hydro power plants and – due to the gas pseudo-crisis they created themselves – led to focuse on coal plants (some being already dismantled btw) and is now causing a devastating energy, health and impoverishment crisis.
The only problem is that nuc – with a slowly varying production – can’t be used as a back-up of the unreliable random unicorns production nor to adapt in real time its production to the consumption of electricity, so coal/gas/fuel or hydraulic plants are actually a must have but shutting down most of the useless unreliable will allow to use less of the thermal power plants and thus save – in addition to forests and territories – some fossil fuels.
PS : I don’t know who are the two clowns mentioned above, but they are ignorant, corrupt or both.
Almost all nuclear reactors currently functioning are able to perform a flexible production. A clear example is once again France! Majority of the energy in the grid comes from NPP and they are flexible and can keep up with the daily changes in demand.
Actually this claimed flexibility is rather a fairy tail. I know, it’s even claimed by Electricité de France, but that’s an “effet d’annonce” to preserve NPP construction in the future by telling that they are “unreliable electricity production” compatible : that’s not the case.
Perhaps for future NPP generations this will be technically and economically possible, but not with the actual French NPP.
French NPP have low adjustment speed – and very expensive maintenance if adjustment done too quickly. They simply weren’t designed to work that way and using them that way would even be an economical nonsense :
http://energie-developpement.blogspot.com/2017/10/flexibilite-nucleaire-integration-renouvelables.html
I said that they are able to perform that task (older models clearly not)… The question of it being economically balanced is another story!
But since we enjoy so much to “waste” billions (in some cases trillions) in stuff way more moronic than energy production we wouldn’t had much to lose using NPP in that manner.
power consumption can be forecast 24 hours ahead quite accurately. If a non-carbon response is needed, Hyrdo can respond quickly for small adjustments (4% of total).
Under today’s REALITY this statement is absolutely FALSE.
Since the Monetary System and the terrorists “financial markets” are at play that simple relation “more” vs “cheaper” is simply NOT TRUE.
Just look at France historical price of energy… Flat since 2011 and since January 2021 it went hockey stick without any major changes in the nuclear energy production!
The sharp increase since 2021 is mainly due to the increase in gas prices and because by design the energy price is roughly based upon the spot energy market real-time price which is given by the marginal (last) exchanged MWh, mainly gas, fuel or coal.
To be fair, we have also some maintenance issues with our NPP (some 50% are still out of production but things are to be improved in the coming months).
Why gas, fuel or coal and not nuc (and evidently not wind nor solar) ? See my other post on real-time adjustment.
Anyway, you are right :
– this spot market is a nonsense since it does not reflect a fair energy price (by means of production) but most of the time a pricer one, and some times, a ridiculously expensive one.
It is a fraud to the detriment – in France – of Electricité de France (which must sell its energy at low prices to players in the spot market, some 42€ per MWh) and of electricity consumers (who have to buy it from these players – some of whom do not product anything – at the spot market price, sometimes 10 or even 20 times more expensive than the base price.
All this absurd mess inducing the current energy disaster is imposed by the EU commission after our politicians accepted it years ago.
Without the spot market, the energy price in France would have increase by only some 15-20% taking into account the gas and coal crisis.
Backlash time !
The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
https://www.theartofannihilation.com/extinction-rebellion-training-or-how-to-control-radical-resistance-from-the-obstructive-left/
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Why does anyone bother to listen to this imbecilic little shit?
Even worse, including a HUGE picture of Greta with this article.
Greta “thundering” Thunberg, science perfesser
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I sense she is saying wait until next summer to turn them off, and meanwhile build more wind and solar.
In any case, the climate won’t care.
How dare Greta suggest the use of nuclear power! What a duplicitous hypocrite, shame on her.
Well, she does actually focus on coal, a useless resource that nobody wants around anymore. You have to rant and rave on and on about how destructive coal mining is everywhere on earth.
You have to do an analysis to determine what the content of anything is. Nobody knew water had hydrogen and oxygen to create its physical form until Josef Priestly found the solution, pun intended. The elements are out of their element!
In 1968, Union Carbide burned 50,000 tons of coal in a rotary kiln just to collect the ash which had known uranium content in the trace elements of the coal ash. You have to have knowledge of chemistry, the ash was shipped to a lab to extract the uranium.
Union Carbide focused on coal long before anybody thought about it.
It is declassified information ca. 2010 CE.
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