The energy thread - Page 27

mapuc · 02-27-24, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Like any AI model, it doesn’t really understand what it’s doing on a deep level – but it doesn’t need to. The team fed the program data about real-time plasma characteristics from previous experiments and set it the challenge of predicting – and, crucially, avoiding – tearing instabilities.

https://www.iflscience.com/ai-just-c...n-energy-73107

Markus

Skybird · 04-25-24, 04:25 PM

[Neue Zürcher Zeitung]

It has now been proven that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was ideology

Internal correspondence shows that at the height of the energy crisis, the Green ministries ignored warnings from their experts. They pushed through the nuclear phase-out, whatever the cost. The result is an energy policy tragedy.

Even at the height of the energy crisis, it was remarkable how stubbornly the Greens stuck to the shutdown of the last German nuclear power plants. Not even a geopolitical earthquake of the greatest magnitude could dissuade them. Everything had to be subordinated to the nuclear phase-out: energy security, electricity prices, even the climate.

Other countries decided to keep their nuclear power plants running for years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Germany, it took a decisive statement from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to keep them on the grid for a few months.

At the time, there was a suspicion that the Greens were arguing primarily on ideological grounds. But there was no definitive proof of this. There was no evidence that the Green-led federal ministries knowingly ignored facts or reinterpreted them to suit their own purposes. This evidence now seems to have been provided.

The magazine "Cicero" and its editor Daniel Gräber have meticulously traced how the Green-led Federal Ministry of Economics and the Federal Ministry of the Environment behaved in the dispute over the operating time extension. To do this, they sued the internal correspondence of all parties in court and then evaluated it. The result is devastating.

High-ranking Green ministry officials ignored their own experts. In some cases they twisted their arguments into the exact opposite. Suddenly it was no longer justifiable for safety reasons to continue operating the reactors. The experts had previously had no concerns about keeping nuclear power plants on the grid for years longer. And in one case the information is said not to have even reached Federal Minister Habeck. If that's true, then he was being kept in the dark.

You have to be clear about the situation Germany was in at the time: the whole country was discussing how to replace Russian gas. The Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, recommended that citizens wash themselves with a rag instead of taking a shower.

Apparently, "every kilowatt hour" of electricity counted, at least according to Habeck. But at the same time, the ministry was pushing through the nuclear phase-out, whatever the cost, and jeopardizing the country's supply situation. This proves that it was very much about ideology.

Strictly speaking, this is hardly surprising. Few Germans are aware of it, but the real goal of the energy transition was never climate protection. It was about getting rid of nuclear energy. You only have to look at the genesis of the term.

It first became known to a wider public through a 1980 publication by the Öko-Institut, today one of the most powerful green environmental research institutes in the country. It was entitled: "Energy transition. Growth and prosperity without oil and uranium". The authors argued that Germany could be completely self-sufficient, half with renewable energies - and the other half with coal.

Climate protection was not yet an issue at the time, even if oil was abandoned. The authors were more concerned that petrol could become scarce at some point. But the most important thing for them was the nuclear phase-out. They spent pages and pages on the technology, which they considered expensive and dangerous. They were only happy if Germany burned domestic coal instead.

The same people who had been involved with the Öko-Institut in the 1980s founded the Green Party a little later. The nuclear phase-out remained their most important project over the years. That is why they erected barricades, why they allowed themselves to be beaten by police officers, why they later began the march through the institutions.

Today we can say that the pioneers of the energy transition have achieved their goals. Germany uses coal and gas power plants to generate electricity on cloudy and windless days. And the hated nuclear power plants have finally been shut down.

The result is an energy policy tragedy. It takes years to build nuclear power plants, and it is expensive. That is why it would have been so important to keep as many of them as possible. It is difficult to say whether that is still possible today. The dismantling has begun, and in some cases it could be irreversible. And whether it will be possible to build new nuclear power plants in Germany in the future is at least questionable.

In February, the former president of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, Wolfram König, made a suggestion. The Green and staunch opponent of nuclear power recommended in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" that nuclear power plants should be turned into monuments.
Ostensibly to honor the engineers and workers who worked there. But subconsciously, the text was also about reminding Germans of their supposed misguided path. The nuclear ruins were meant to show them the futile hopes that were once associated with this high technology.

Well, the nuclear power plants have become monuments. However, they remind us of a completely different misguided path. That of an energy supply that relies exclusively on renewables, and which no other major industrial nation other than Germany follows. They remind us of who first took this misguided path, the Greens, and who prevented the Germans from leaving it even during the energy crisis. The decommissioned nuclear power plants are memorials to a green misguided path.

https://www.nzz.ch/der-andere-blick/...gie-ld.1827929

Skybird · 04-25-24, 04:34 PM

Adding to the above ^:

Exit from nuclear power: Internal papers put Robert Habeck's ministry in a difficult position to explain

According to a media report, experts from the German Energy Ministry are said to have spoken out early in favor of extending the operating life of the nuclear power plants. But the information apparently did not reach the Green politician.

Senior employees of the German federal government apparently ignored and suppressed concerns from their own experts in the spring of 2022 in order not to jeopardize the politically desired and planned exit from nuclear energy. This is evident from internal memos and correspondence between ministry employees, which the magazine "Cicero" reports on in its new issue.

Central to the affair is the role of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, whose department is also responsible for energy. In spring 2022, the management of his ministry commissioned a specialist department in the house to examine the extent to which a three-month extension of the operating life of nuclear power plants could help to secure the country's energy supply.

Because Germany's gas supply was in danger because of Russia's attack on Ukraine, the ministry's experts came to a clear vote. Ultimately, it is unclear whether sufficient natural gas can be stored for next winter to enable gas-fired power plants to operate in addition to consumption in industry and for heat supply, the "Cicero" quotes from the note. "An extension of the operating life of the nuclear power plants until March 31 can help to defuse this situation," the ministry employees wrote.

Continuing to operate the reactors could also help to reduce the high electricity prices. The ministry officials referred to the so-called merit order principle. This is a mechanism whereby the price formation on the major energy exchanges is always based on the most recently connected, most expensive power plant on the market. "This could cause electricity prices to fall in many hours," Cicero quotes from the ministry's memo.

The Green politician Habeck is said to have not received the assessment of his own experts. At management level, it was only available to his then state secretary and party colleague Patrick Graichen, the ministry told Cicero upon request. Graichen, for his part, had to vacate his office a year later, in May 2023, following allegations of nepotism.

But Graichen is said to have not only withheld important information from his minister, but also provided him with false facts. This is what "Cicero" reports on the basis of its access to the files, which was only granted to the magazine after a lawsuit that lasted two years.

In March 2022, Graichen, together with his counterpart in the Federal Environment Ministry, Stefan Tidow, also run by the Greens, wrote his own additional memo on "examining the continued operation of nuclear power plants due to the war in Ukraine". The result: After "weighing up the benefits and risks", an extension of the operating period is not recommended.

Although Tidow's employees identified serious legal errors in the document and demanded corrections, this did not stop Graichen from forwarding his memo (uncorrected) to Minister Habeck. The Green politician subsequently used the document for his official communication, and it was also published in a revised form on the ministry's website.

The ministerial officials from the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of the Environment were ultimately unable to prevent a three-month extension of the operating period with their maneuvers - Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave binding instructions for the so-called stretch operation in October. In April 2023, however, the last three remaining German nuclear power plants were taken off the grid.

And this was probably due to false assumptions and misleading facts, as the "Cicero" research now shows. The publication is therefore causing displeasure among the liberal coalition partner. "The Habeck papers show that Germany was knowingly led astray when it came to phasing out nuclear power," said Michael Kruse, energy policy spokesman for the FDP in the Bundestag, on Thursday. "I am disappointed in Robert Habeck because the citizens of this country and his coalition partners were kept from the truth."

The opposition even sees the events as a reason for the Green politician to resign. "Robert Habeck deceived the country when it came to shutting down the nuclear power plant. Either he lied or he doesn't have his own energy ministry under control," said CSU Secretary General Martin Huber to "Focus Online." A minister whose department, against his better judgment, causes such great damage to the German economy and energy supply is no longer acceptable.

https://www.nzz.ch/international/so-...kst-ld.1827925

----------------

Immediately after the shutdown, there was already evidence, over one hundred documents, that the internal motto in the ministry was that any supposedly open-ended examination of the nuclear issue must necessarily lead to the desired result of rejecting a nuclear extension. This was also reported at the time, albeit only briefly, before the government exerted massive pressure to prevent further reporting. I posted about it back then. I therefore consider the current claim that Habeck was deceived by his own people to be completely implausible. In addition, he has personally installed the ideological clique from which this action stems in the ministry, more than doubling the ministry's staff for that and recruiting from his close social circle. These are leading names in the international anti-capitalism movement and avowed friends of the destruction of the market economy.

It is also remarkable that the two main German news programs "Heute" and "Tagesschau" on the two state propaganda channels ARD and ZDF did not mention this criminal, conspiratorial scandal, which is of the most serious, destructive significance for Germany, with not a single word.

04-25-24, 04:25 PM	#392
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,496 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	[Neue Zürcher Zeitung] It has now been proven that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was ideology Internal correspondence shows that at the height of the energy crisis, the Green ministries ignored warnings from their experts. They pushed through the nuclear phase-out, whatever the cost. The result is an energy policy tragedy. Even at the height of the energy crisis, it was remarkable how stubbornly the Greens stuck to the shutdown of the last German nuclear power plants. Not even a geopolitical earthquake of the greatest magnitude could dissuade them. Everything had to be subordinated to the nuclear phase-out: energy security, electricity prices, even the climate. Other countries decided to keep their nuclear power plants running for years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Germany, it took a decisive statement from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to keep them on the grid for a few months. At the time, there was a suspicion that the Greens were arguing primarily on ideological grounds. But there was no definitive proof of this. There was no evidence that the Green-led federal ministries knowingly ignored facts or reinterpreted them to suit their own purposes. This evidence now seems to have been provided. The magazine "Cicero" and its editor Daniel Gräber have meticulously traced how the Green-led Federal Ministry of Economics and the Federal Ministry of the Environment behaved in the dispute over the operating time extension. To do this, they sued the internal correspondence of all parties in court and then evaluated it. The result is devastating. High-ranking Green ministry officials ignored their own experts. In some cases they twisted their arguments into the exact opposite. Suddenly it was no longer justifiable for safety reasons to continue operating the reactors. The experts had previously had no concerns about keeping nuclear power plants on the grid for years longer. And in one case the information is said not to have even reached Federal Minister Habeck. If that's true, then he was being kept in the dark. You have to be clear about the situation Germany was in at the time: the whole country was discussing how to replace Russian gas. The Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, recommended that citizens wash themselves with a rag instead of taking a shower. Apparently, "every kilowatt hour" of electricity counted, at least according to Habeck. But at the same time, the ministry was pushing through the nuclear phase-out, whatever the cost, and jeopardizing the country's supply situation. This proves that it was very much about ideology. Strictly speaking, this is hardly surprising. Few Germans are aware of it, but the real goal of the energy transition was never climate protection. It was about getting rid of nuclear energy. You only have to look at the genesis of the term. It first became known to a wider public through a 1980 publication by the Öko-Institut, today one of the most powerful green environmental research institutes in the country. It was entitled: "Energy transition. Growth and prosperity without oil and uranium". The authors argued that Germany could be completely self-sufficient, half with renewable energies - and the other half with coal. Climate protection was not yet an issue at the time, even if oil was abandoned. The authors were more concerned that petrol could become scarce at some point. But the most important thing for them was the nuclear phase-out. They spent pages and pages on the technology, which they considered expensive and dangerous. They were only happy if Germany burned domestic coal instead. The same people who had been involved with the Öko-Institut in the 1980s founded the Green Party a little later. The nuclear phase-out remained their most important project over the years. That is why they erected barricades, why they allowed themselves to be beaten by police officers, why they later began the march through the institutions. Today we can say that the pioneers of the energy transition have achieved their goals. Germany uses coal and gas power plants to generate electricity on cloudy and windless days. And the hated nuclear power plants have finally been shut down. The result is an energy policy tragedy. It takes years to build nuclear power plants, and it is expensive. That is why it would have been so important to keep as many of them as possible. It is difficult to say whether that is still possible today. The dismantling has begun, and in some cases it could be irreversible. And whether it will be possible to build new nuclear power plants in Germany in the future is at least questionable. In February, the former president of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, Wolfram König, made a suggestion. The Green and staunch opponent of nuclear power recommended in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" that nuclear power plants should be turned into monuments. Ostensibly to honor the engineers and workers who worked there. But subconsciously, the text was also about reminding Germans of their supposed misguided path. The nuclear ruins were meant to show them the futile hopes that were once associated with this high technology. Well, the nuclear power plants have become monuments. However, they remind us of a completely different misguided path. That of an energy supply that relies exclusively on renewables, and which no other major industrial nation other than Germany follows. They remind us of who first took this misguided path, the Greens, and who prevented the Germans from leaving it even during the energy crisis. The decommissioned nuclear power plants are memorials to a green misguided path. https://www.nzz.ch/der-andere-blick/...gie-ld.1827929 __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.

04-25-24, 04:34 PM	#393
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,496 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	Adding to the above ^: Exit from nuclear power: Internal papers put Robert Habeck's ministry in a difficult position to explain According to a media report, experts from the German Energy Ministry are said to have spoken out early in favor of extending the operating life of the nuclear power plants. But the information apparently did not reach the Green politician. Senior employees of the German federal government apparently ignored and suppressed concerns from their own experts in the spring of 2022 in order not to jeopardize the politically desired and planned exit from nuclear energy. This is evident from internal memos and correspondence between ministry employees, which the magazine "Cicero" reports on in its new issue. Central to the affair is the role of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, whose department is also responsible for energy. In spring 2022, the management of his ministry commissioned a specialist department in the house to examine the extent to which a three-month extension of the operating life of nuclear power plants could help to secure the country's energy supply. Because Germany's gas supply was in danger because of Russia's attack on Ukraine, the ministry's experts came to a clear vote. Ultimately, it is unclear whether sufficient natural gas can be stored for next winter to enable gas-fired power plants to operate in addition to consumption in industry and for heat supply, the "Cicero" quotes from the note. "An extension of the operating life of the nuclear power plants until March 31 can help to defuse this situation," the ministry employees wrote. Continuing to operate the reactors could also help to reduce the high electricity prices. The ministry officials referred to the so-called merit order principle. This is a mechanism whereby the price formation on the major energy exchanges is always based on the most recently connected, most expensive power plant on the market. "This could cause electricity prices to fall in many hours," Cicero quotes from the ministry's memo. The Green politician Habeck is said to have not received the assessment of his own experts. At management level, it was only available to his then state secretary and party colleague Patrick Graichen, the ministry told Cicero upon request. Graichen, for his part, had to vacate his office a year later, in May 2023, following allegations of nepotism. But Graichen is said to have not only withheld important information from his minister, but also provided him with false facts. This is what "Cicero" reports on the basis of its access to the files, which was only granted to the magazine after a lawsuit that lasted two years. In March 2022, Graichen, together with his counterpart in the Federal Environment Ministry, Stefan Tidow, also run by the Greens, wrote his own additional memo on "examining the continued operation of nuclear power plants due to the war in Ukraine". The result: After "weighing up the benefits and risks", an extension of the operating period is not recommended. Although Tidow's employees identified serious legal errors in the document and demanded corrections, this did not stop Graichen from forwarding his memo (uncorrected) to Minister Habeck. The Green politician subsequently used the document for his official communication, and it was also published in a revised form on the ministry's website. The ministerial officials from the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of the Environment were ultimately unable to prevent a three-month extension of the operating period with their maneuvers - Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave binding instructions for the so-called stretch operation in October. In April 2023, however, the last three remaining German nuclear power plants were taken off the grid. And this was probably due to false assumptions and misleading facts, as the "Cicero" research now shows. The publication is therefore causing displeasure among the liberal coalition partner. "The Habeck papers show that Germany was knowingly led astray when it came to phasing out nuclear power," said Michael Kruse, energy policy spokesman for the FDP in the Bundestag, on Thursday. "I am disappointed in Robert Habeck because the citizens of this country and his coalition partners were kept from the truth." The opposition even sees the events as a reason for the Green politician to resign. "Robert Habeck deceived the country when it came to shutting down the nuclear power plant. Either he lied or he doesn't have his own energy ministry under control," said CSU Secretary General Martin Huber to "Focus Online." A minister whose department, against his better judgment, causes such great damage to the German economy and energy supply is no longer acceptable. https://www.nzz.ch/international/so-...kst-ld.1827925 ---------------- Immediately after the shutdown, there was already evidence, over one hundred documents, that the internal motto in the ministry was that any supposedly open-ended examination of the nuclear issue must necessarily lead to the desired result of rejecting a nuclear extension. This was also reported at the time, albeit only briefly, before the government exerted massive pressure to prevent further reporting. I posted about it back then. I therefore consider the current claim that Habeck was deceived by his own people to be completely implausible. In addition, he has personally installed the ideological clique from which this action stems in the ministry, more than doubling the ministry's staff for that and recruiting from his close social circle. These are leading names in the international anti-capitalism movement and avowed friends of the destruction of the market economy. It is also remarkable that the two main German news programs "Heute" and "Tagesschau" on the two state propaganda channels ARD and ZDF did not mention this criminal, conspiratorial scandal, which is of the most serious, destructive significance for Germany, with not a single word. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 04-25-24 at 04:52 PM.