Taig

I'm seeing a huge union jack overlaying the page when I open it in Safari

There is a lot wrong here. But my favorite messed up detail is how my cursor changes to text mode when I hover the hamburger button on the top left.

`import Y from X` is a terrible language design decision, established by the JavaScript ecosystem. It should be along the lines of `import X.Y` or `from X import Y` so that autocomplete tools can assist you.

I couldn't figure out what this is about without diving into the docs. The landing page left me mostly clueless.

That is true, but it is also not the goal to achieve 100% secured power output, nor is it necessary. The calculations that determine the necessary electricity production to cover Germany's needs at all times are more complicated than just looking at the installed secured power output and involve factors, such as the likelihood of unavailable renewable energy production. And even if the worst case happens, there are solid strategies in place to avoid a blackout, including backup power plants and coordination with high energy consumers to reduce or shut down their consumption.

And all of this still ignores the fact, that there is a highly connected international electricity market, that large scale storage solutions are being prepared, and that the grid is becoming more decentralized.

Some of them are emotional, sure. But what is fake about them?

Germany has more energy generation capacity installed than it had last year. I certainly wish there would be a push for even more renewable and storage capacity, though. The fact that Germany is generating less energy has nothing to do with the phase out of nuclear though.

The European electricity market is working quite well, imports and exports are expected to happen. Countries prefer to import electricity when it is cheaper than producing it themselves. Germany has more than enough capacity installed to handle its energy needs (even if a lot of this is still fossil). Germany does not have an "often unstable electricity grid", not at all. That information is simply wrong.

A few reasons why people might be pushing against nuclear:

  - high electricity generation costs
  - "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant"
  - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can?
  - Unsolved long-term waste storage location
  - Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society
  - We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the energy needs of a couple generations, even though there are more sustainable and cheaper alternatives

> It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest).

I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.

And what conclusion do you draw from this, or rather, how is this relevant to this thread?

Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy from its production and one big step towards a fully renewable and modern electricity grid.