Why Germany Is Rapidly Digging Europe's Largest Hole

Why Germany Is Digging Europe's Largest Hole

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[moreadrenalin]

In germany, by law, a Wind wheel has to be at least 1000 Meters away from a Residential area while a Coal powerplant only has to bee 400m away. you might see a small problem here

[qonra]

A nuclear plant on a mountainous island with limited area for urban development, constant earthquakes, and freaking tsunami's is so insanely different from Germany's situation that I don't get how it was ever even under consideration to phase it out

[MauriceM.]

As a German I can only say:
We also don‘t understand wtf our politicians are doing 🤷🏻‍♂️ Most are completely incompetent and don’t bring any experience or expertise to the table. You can be Minister for families and youth in the first year, become minister of defense the next. After that you get voted president of the European Commission even tho you’re not even one of the candidates… it‘s a sad joke.

[YKM]

I live like 10-20 kilometers away from it, and a friend of mine lived in a village right next to it, back then I was visiting him many times by bike, but the whole village, including his home was wiped out in 2016 or 2017, I remember the last months of the village, houses were literally boarded up after most residents left to prevent other people from going inside or stealing, they even tear off a historic church that was there since decades… it’s so strange when I drive by it and just see that big hole, everything is just gone except memory’s. People here say that the hole will be filled up with water at 2050 like all the other mining holes that closed here

[neon-kitty]

The funny thing is that getting a wind park built in Germany requires you to jump through loads of bureacratic hoops, takes ages and there's a good chance it won't get built in the end because local residents will mobilise against it. But tearing down entire villages to mine brown coal is a-okay (partly thanks to corrupt politicians with ties to the coal industry). Brown coal was not the only alternative after we decided to abandon nuclear power. Sure, we wouldn't have been able to plug the entire hole in our energy mix with renewables right away but we could have a lot more renewable energy and a lot less coal in our mix today if our governments had chosen to properly subsidise and support renewable energy. They didn't and here we are.

[tobyk.]

4:20 : Acid rain was a problem in Germany about 30 years ago ... but since a lot of years, the coal power plants have smoke filters which filter a lot of pollution, like e.g. sulfur oxides, out of the smoke. So, yes the coal contains a lot of sulfur, but the large majority of it isn't emitted.

[bryanbarnard]

In the magical fantasyland of Germany, lignite coal and biomass are cleaner then nuclear.

[medicfromtf]

The first english youtuber, who doesnt completely fail in pronouncing german words

[JulianNagano]

Wow! I live in this area of Germany and found this giant hole on the map recently. I had no clue, now I know, thanks to you.

[PalmTheFirst]

From what I recall, it were the climate activists whom were against nuclear power in germany, and also the reason why the government there abandon it. Which seems ironic in my mind.

[RS-cswf]

I mean, nuclear is technically non-renewable, but it has a vast amount of fuel with a low impact, and btw 1% of all nuclear waste is the 20k year isotope, whereas a vast majority aka 70% is level 1 waste and can safely be put in a landfill without issue in a non-populated area, basically Germany fell for the fear mongering rather than the numbers.

[kundbalint]

So this is basically the difference between taking action and taking action. You can either do something, that is popular and on the surface, looks like something that makes a lot of sense in achieving your goal (in this case, becoming a green country), without second thought and make everything significantly worse, or you can maybe just think for a couple of minutes and conclude if an idea is rubbish. The irony is, that this whole coal mine, was nearly entirely caused by the greens themselves. Even if you want to remove nuclear (I can see quite a lot of logical arguments in that), maybe you should do it, when you've already phased out carbon completely and can be sure, that it will be replaced by renewables, and not lignite...

[diegoskater]

Regarding the acid rain, actually in Germany when they started cutting down the sulfur emissions into the atmosphere, they stopped having acid rain, but they realized that their agricultural lands were not producing as much yield as before. Turns out that the acid rain was contributing to the availability of S and other metal micronutrients in their soils, and from then on, farmers had to start using fertilizers with an increased proportion of S.

[Agrarvolution]

Interesting video. One thing you didn’t mention in your video and is important for their decisions imo is that Germany has a decades long hot potato game with their nuclear waste, because they can‘t find a good long term solution for its storage place. (That‘s is contested by way too many reasons that find in this comment.)

[wernerheenop]

Mining companies spend A LOT of money to compensate people for their property: They don't "throw" them out of their houses, as you mention. A strip mine like this is quite easy to rehabilitate as well: yes, the landscape is "completely destroyed" but returned to its previous state at the end of the mine's life. Afterwards you wont even know there was a mine.

[napoleonmarkus]

7:40
Well first of all, the familys that had to leave their homes were paid really, really well. The Government paid them nearly 3x the worth of their homes, and they were offered newly build homes just a couple km away. Yeah it probably sucks to leave your home and move, but you get a much newer and bigger home and still live in the same area.
2nd the "totally destroyed" landscapes are destroyed for now, but the coal companie has to rebuild the area they were digging in. You can see their plans for the "holes" on their internet platform: what they will build there is 20x better then what was there before. They are building a freaking sea inside of them and a big nature reserve around it.
Yeah we can discuss the hole coal burning thing till 2030, i dont appreciate that either.... but you are ignoring a couple of very important facts in this matter.

[Kal-Zakath]

Just a small correction: French nuclear power plants produce 70% of the electricity and not energy, electricity only represents about 25% of the total energy consumption. French nuclear power plants provide about 18% of the energy in 2019

[Skyrimfan]

As a German, you got one thing slightly wring at the start.

German politicians, especially of the CDU mostly don't see carbon emissions asbthat big of a problem. We have a serious lobbying problem in this country and the coal industry loves throwing cash at conservative politicians, so they can keep their business going. They just pretend like they care a lot, which is why they had the 2038 goal set. This appeases the population that cares about climate change a little while also keeping the coal industry as their backer. The only reason why the goal is 2030 now, is that the CDU was voted out and we now have a new more liberal coalition taking power (which you also didn't mention).

[youqqwheniq]

There is a highway right next to that giant hole in cologne and driving by it really gives me goosebumps everytime. Seeing this with your own eyes really gives it a whole new perspective. This hole is something that makes me seriously question our way too early exit from the nuclear industry. Stuff like this shouldnt exist in a first world country, we're literally ruining families lives when we break down their homes for something so irresponsible and its horrible.

[bigsmoke]

i lived right next to it! the air is so dirty that wet towels will emit brown soup over time. (i put them over my radiator to humidify my room).