You can’t start and stop a commodity like a light switch

Apparently the German government (one of the coalition parties is ironically the Green party) is now clearing the way to fire up the coal power plants again in order to save natural gas for the winter.

For whatever reason, they cannot seem to get their nuclear power plants up again, so barring that option, coal is a reasonable policy option. Apparently opening up more solar and wind farms wasn’t on the docket.

However, there are considerable logistical issues to solve. Perhaps the internet has caused most people to think that you can start and stop things with a switch. Physical markets take a much longer time to start and stop than most think.

Let’s take some basic facts from the EIA and run some simple math.

It takes 1.12 pounds of coal to generate a kilowatt-hour of energy. This is the energy equivalent of one kilowatt of power during an hour. Most standard microwaves, when running, consume 1.2 kilowatts. Most hot water kettles use 1.5 kilowatts.

If you wanted that kilowatt of power for an entire day, you need 26.88 pounds of coal.

If you wanted that kilowatt of power for an entire year, you need 9,811 pounds of coal. To give some perspective of what 9,811 pounds is, think of three Toyota Corollas with a couple average-sized passengers each.

A kilowatt is not a large amount of power in the grand scheme of things. Power plants run into the hundreds of megawatts of capacity. Viewing the coal power map of Germany, say they wanted to re-start a 800 megawatt plant. This would replace 52 billion cubic feet (yearly) of natural gas. How much is 52 billion cubic feet? It is about the amount of natural gas that can be carried by 10 large LNG tankers.

An 800 megawatt coal plant would require the daily consumption of 21,500,000 pounds of coal and yearly consumption of 7,840,000,000 pounds of coal. These numbers, when written out wholly, are a bit ridiculous, so we say 10,700 tons and 3.92 million tons, respectively.

Over land, coal is typically shipped by rail. A coal rail car carries 116 tons of coal. Thus, your typical 800 megawatt coal plant needs approximately 92 rail cars of coal to operate, daily.

Needless to say, this is a gigantic amount of mass for one coal power plant. You need specialized machinery and the people with the appropriate training to haul it out of the ground, transport it, and get it into a boiler furnace.

When you tell an entire industry for over a decade that they are no longer needed, competent managers will operate the business on a run-down mode. Capital investment is minimal, and worker training programs are halted. Unions tend to prefer seniority, so younger people in the business go elsewhere. Know-how gets lost and things start to atrophy.

Now the message is “get started, but after you’re done bridging the gap while we solve the problem with our LNG capacity issues we’re going to shut you down again after a few years”, it is hardly confidence-inspiring. Nobody will want to invest time and energy into the industry unless if there is a huge financial incentive to compensate for the blade that is still over the necks of the coal mining industry.

There will still be a huge lack of capital, both monetary and knowledge, to ramp up an operation to produce 7,840,000,000 pounds of coal yearly in the name of saving natural gas. An entire industry cannot be turned on and off like a light switch.

The result is that the domestic price of coal will skyrocket.

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Phasing out those nuclear plants while fully relying on gas supply from eastern dictator was, perhaps, the biggest mistake by Merkel government.

Seems like everyone is talking about nuclear as a rescue from energy problems and dependence on Russia’s gas.
Where does fuel for nuclear plants is coming from?
According to wiki, 41% comes from Kazakhstan, another eastern dictatorship.

Well, a key difference here that Kazakhstan haven’t proclaimed its energy supply a “soft weapon” against key clients, haven’t militarized and grew hate in respect of whole world…
Not all dictatorships are the same.

Dictator is dictator, can change their mind anytime without asking anyone (country’s population), plus Kazakhstan has close ties with Russia, even though not so close as, let’s say, Belarus.

“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”
– Warren Buffett

Last edited 2 years ago by A true newbie

That’s not what we are discussing here, Sacha!
Dmitry’s point is that Germany closed nuclear plants and now rely on Russian gas too much, which I absolutely agree.
My argument is that by keeping those nuclear plants open and building more might cause Germany to rely on another dictatorship, Kazakhstan. All of the Uranium cheerleaders seem to ignore this.

If you are a Chancellor, what would you do to make Germany energy independent?

I think the cost of raw nuclear fuel is a small percentage of the total cost of nuclear energy produced. Also, I think Canada has decent amount of uranium available to mine if prices go higher. Nuclear is a good idea!

I understand that Kazakhstan is not exclusive, Russia is also not exclusive producer of NG/oil, but Germany and Europe has a problem now.

Anyway, as usual, there is no silver bullet here and every solution has it’s drawbacks.

Nuclear is good idea, but it looks like it doesn’t have the political backing for long-term success. Then there are the logistical issues. e.g. waste management. France is the poster child for nuclear power, but they still haven’t figured out the disposal question. Another one is the massive capital costs for plant construction. And good luck trying to get a plant built in anything under a decade. Maybe SMR tech will ride to the rescue…but that’s a bird in the bush.

TECK.B

I’m not sure that for Germany’s coal plant reopening is a question of a light switch. I agree German domestic price of coal is going to go up, but they also have a “ready-to-go” coal mining/production industry. They produce 31M tons of lignite a year. Perhaps it could be a challenge though if the mines are at capacity?