Comments by "Jiri Slavicek" (@jirislavicek9954) on "Why Germany Is Rapidly Digging Europe's Largest Hole" video.

I remember this well. We had the same problem in the Czech Republic. The communist governments in Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany and Poland cared little about environment, the air pollution from the lignite power plants was insane. The acid rain they caused completely destroyed large areas of forest within a really short time frame (1970s-90s). The whole Ore mountains (Erzgebirge) and Jizerské hory (Isergebirge) basically dried out. It was extremely sad and the recovery will take many more decades. In 1990s all the plants were desulphurated and fitted with particle filters and the air quality improved dramatically. The desulphurating process still uses large quantity of lime and produces gypsum as a byproduct (some of it is used as a building material). Mercury and other heavy metals are hard to tackle. It's far from ideal.
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The problem is that Germany closed those plants prematurely. And burns dirty coal instead. Renewables are currently not yet ready to power the whole country (if they ever will be). You are basically destroying steam locomotives at the time when electric locomotive exists in few prototypes and infrastructure for them is not in place. Nothing to pull trains with.
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Thank to your politicians and their "Energiewende". Get rid of clean and stable nuclear and use dirty coal instead. 🙈
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Uranium is mined in similar way as any other mineral. You can do it in a civilised way or be reckless. Mining of lead, silicon sand and rare earth elements for renewables is not exactly the prettiest either.
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@schwarz8614 German activists are CAVEs. Citizens against virtually everything. 🙈
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@sagichdirdochnicht4653 You need a LOT of storage to power country like Germany. It is difficult enough to store energy for few hours and balance the supply and demand in one day. You can optimize the energy usage and big fleet of electric cars can act like a giant battery (VTG). But to power country from batteries for few days or weeks is a total sci-fi. That includes your "weight on crane", flywheels, chemical batteries, hydroelectric schemes, all known methods of storage. Windless weeks with snow cover do happen in Germany, renewables produce close to nothing and energy demand soars. Some form of base load will be needed.
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@ronaldgreene5733 Absolutely! 👍 Real environmental problems that our world is facing is poor water management leading to desertification, deforestation and overheating of continents. Destruction of natural habitats. Overfishing and plundering of oceans. Pollution of water, air and soil. Overpopulation. Nobody cares too much about them, there's no money to be made. On the other hand, effects of CO2 are grossly exaggerated. It is a multi-trillion global business promoted by big companies and their political cronies. World's population is being misled on a colossal, unprecedented scale.
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It's called fracking not freaking 😁😁😁
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This happens every time government listens to activists rather than engineers and experts with technical education 🙈
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Britain is being "cancelled " 🙈🤣😁
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The biggest mistake is to listen to activists instead of engineers and experts. Feelings instead of facts. The rational way is to have an energy mix that would include optimum combination of sources to provide for the country's energy needs in the most economical and environment friendly way. Ideally solar + wind + hydro + storage + smart grid + fast acting gas + nuclear.
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@calvinnyala9580 Spot on 👍 Nuclear waste: tens or hundreds of tons per plant per year. Few containers basically, extremely well secured and under strict state / international supervision. Activists swarming around like bees. Coal waste: hundreds of thousands of tons of ash per plant per year, basically whole train loads being dumped usually in artificial lake / former mine. Containing tars, heavy metals and other goodies. Also massive air pollution, depending on level of filtration. Supervision slack.
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@Monkey We were never part of the USSR. And the acid rain problem is now fixed. Technical problems have technical solutions.
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@thanos7691 No, they did in the west. Cars had catalytic converters, coal burning factories filters to capture soot and sulpur dioxide. It was not perfect, but the shift towards cleaner environment was there. In the Eastern block nobody cared.
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In real life, "environmentalists": We don't want nuclear We don't coal We don't want (Russian) gas We don't want more wind turbines We don't want more power lines We don't like hydro We don't want imports from "dirty" countries We want cheap energy for everyone and "social justice" Oh, there's not enough energy. Surprised Pikachu 🙈🤣
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Yes, former (coal) mines often create valuable and sought after landscape if revitalised properly. Most common would be flooding and creation of artificial lakes. Look at Berzdorfer See near Görlitz, a former lignite mine became a tourist attraction. We have a number of lakes in the Czech Republic, on our side of the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge). Milada near Ústí nad Labem (Aussig) is almost completed, Barbora and ČSM near Teplice (Teplitz) are in public use for years. Many other still active mines will be flooded later. Water quality is usually very good as these mines are flooded in a controlled way and water doesn't contain much of organic compounds to cause growth of algae and bacteria.
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Germany is country of excellent engineers, great universities and massive industrial base. But for some reason, I cannot understand, nobody listens to them and public opinion and policies in Germany are dictated by left wing mob. 👎 Closure of nuclear plants is one of the implications.
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@jeanyluisa8483 Try to live in a cold winter without heating, light and hot water. You may change your opinion. Plenty French and Belgians have nuclear plant on their "backyard" and it works no problem for them. I'd far rather had that then a chemical factory/ refinery.
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