Thread by @TFF1618

I would just like to share with you some pictures and some figures

below, a giant excavator (Bagger 288), only one of these machines is able to mine 240 000 m3 of lignite per DAY, enough to emit 1 million tons of CO2

here is the home of this kind of monster, here, the Garzweiller mine (you can see six such machines on the first picture)

the surface occupied (or devastated) by one of these mines represents tens of km², the equivalent of a large city, and they continue to grow,

some villages are paying the price for it

the surface devastated by the 9 mines below exceeds 500 km² (200 sq mi)

to give you a scale, the yellow line is 10 km (6 miles) long

To give you an idea, here is the thermal power plant of Niederaußem, with a capacity of 3800 MW, and fed by the Hambach mine.

It alone emits about 25 million tons of CO2 per year, which is more than the entire French aviation sector

and this, of course, without considering the other pollutions

all the German coal-fired power plants produce about 200 million tons of CO2 per year

the result is one of the most polluting electricity in Europe (600 g/kWh or 1.3 lb/kWh of CO2 when I write this thread)

Not to consider this ecological disaster as a first priority, and to congratulate oneself for having closed the nuclear power plants while this thing is still running, while claiming to be an ecologist, is at best hypocritical, at worst incredibly stupid

To make the point, here is the nuclear power plant of Blayais, in France

this 3600 MW plant is able to produce about as much electricity as the one in Niederaußem above, while emitting less than 4 g/kWh (0.15 oz/kWh) of CO2

by doing this, each year it will consume about 350 t of uranium (700,000 lbs), or a few tens of thousands of m3 of ore at most, and will produce about 50 packages of vitrified waste and about 150 packages of structural waste, or about the volume of a container

with that, I don't see how you can prefer the first one to the second one

The german nuclear phase-out is a complete shame, and to see environmentalists celebrating it makes me really angry, and that's why I'm writing this thread

thank you for reading me, you can draw the conclusions you want

#nuclear #coal #climate #Germany