5 ms·

> Germany's choice to phase nuclear out and leave coal on straight up Often repeated, but still wrong: Germany also phased out coal.

pjc50 7y ago
"Is in the process of phasing out", maybe, but it's absolutely not phased out yet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51133534 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51133534
acidburnNSA 7y ago
Incorrect. Here's some live data for you to gander at: https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org They still run over 40 GW of coal.
- bildung 7y ago
  Yeah, sorry, native German speaker here, I got the tense wrong. Germany is in the process of phasing out coal, just as with nuclear. https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-power-20190126-story.html https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-powe...
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    Yup. They promised to phase coal out later and phased nuclear out today. Literalling killing a few thousand per year by air pollution while they're at it. It's a great anti-scientific tragedy of our times due to fear of radiation and inability to judge actuarial statistics correctly.
    - bildung 7y ago
      I'm not at all disagreeing. The coal phase-out should have happened a) before the nuclear phase-out and b) decades earlier. Processes like these tend to be pretty sluggish, the political discussions for both date back to the 1970s. Chernobyl was a big thing in German politics, and there are still some species of mushrooms that can't be eaten in the country. The actual health problems were negligible, but this isn't how politics work.
      - acidburnNSA 7y ago
        Gotcha. Yeah the mental effects of Chernobyl melded with all the fears about nuclear weapons fallout, which Russians and American had been scaring people with for years at that point. The nuclear industry totally failed to recover from a PR point of view, and since then has hid under a rock rather than explained how low carbon and safe it is.

pjc50 7y ago

"Is in the process of phasing out", maybe, but it's absolutely not phased out yet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51133534 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51133534

acidburnNSA 7y ago

Incorrect. Here's some live data for you to gander at: https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org They still run over 40 GW of coal.

bildung 7y ago
Yeah, sorry, native German speaker here, I got the tense wrong. Germany is in the process of phasing out coal, just as with nuclear. https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-power-20190126-story.html https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-germany-coal-powe...
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Yup. They promised to phase coal out later and phased nuclear out today. Literalling killing a few thousand per year by air pollution while they're at it. It's a great anti-scientific tragedy of our times due to fear of radiation and inability to judge actuarial statistics correctly.
  - bildung 7y ago
    I'm not at all disagreeing. The coal phase-out should have happened a) before the nuclear phase-out and b) decades earlier. Processes like these tend to be pretty sluggish, the political discussions for both date back to the 1970s. Chernobyl was a big thing in German politics, and there are still some species of mushrooms that can't be eaten in the country. The actual health problems were negligible, but this isn't how politics work.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      Gotcha. Yeah the mental effects of Chernobyl melded with all the fears about nuclear weapons fallout, which Russians and American had been scaring people with for years at that point. The nuclear industry totally failed to recover from a PR point of view, and since then has hid under a rock rather than explained how low carbon and safe it is.