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I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from

I know this article isn't great, but is there anyone on HN who lives in Germany who could explain why there's such a scepticism of Nuclear power there? I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear for one clear reason - there was no political appetite to spend a tonne of money on an expensive form of energy that wasn't likely to pay off in the current parliamentary term. The german response to Nuclear seems to have been far more extreme though.

guerrilla 5y ago
Who stands to profit the most from decommissioning them all? I mean besides Schröder and Russia.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://www.ans.org/news/article-1392/robert-anderson-antinuclear-financier/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-1392/robert-anderson-antinu...
okl 5y ago
Chernobyl disaster, fears stemming from nuclear weapons stationed in Germany, no viable solutions for waste disposal. Mostly that. Of course it's also not economically sensible if you factor in externalised costs. I'm also concerned about sloppy work and engineering, neglect and human mistake with catastrophic consequences. For example, there is one incident documentend where some idiotic fools drilled a hole into the containment to hang a fire extinguisher. [https://www.badische-zeitung.de/panne-in-leibstadt-arbeiter-bohren-loecher-in-sicherheitshuelle--87160425.html https://www.badische-zeitung.de/panne-in-leibstadt-arbeiter-...] However, if it would help to bring down the sick Putin regime in Russia I would support a limited extension. EDIT: Russian trolls be downvoting me. Idi nahui.
quattrofan 5y ago
raymond_goo 5y ago
We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have no state who wants to store the nuclear waste. We believe the future is renewables and we invest heavily into it.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).
  - rob74 5y ago
    From what I understand the current plan to store renewable energy is to convert it to hydrogen - this hydrogen can either be used to power vehicles, or in power plants (converted natural gas power plants or plants that have been designed from the outset to operate flexibly with hydrogen or natural gas)
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.
    - Dma54rhs 5y ago
      Pumped hydro has very specific geological restrictions and take because of ecological snd safety risks even longer to build than nuclear. Both way too long.
    - belorn 5y ago
      Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines. Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to replace all the gas plant capacity is unrealistic, and green hydro is almost 100 times more expensive than natural gas. Nuclear is expensive, but its not that expensive. There is a strange thing with hydrostorage. To my knowledge there does not exist a single example of a commercial operation that buys renewables to pump water and then generate energy to sell when the price goes up. There does exist one commercial operation that I know where an energy company uses storage to balance their fleet of (mostly) fossil fuel plants when they need to spin down/up. It keeps their operations more stable, and they said something to the point of "In the future we might use this to buy renewables when the price is low and sell when the energy is needed".
k__ 5y ago
After the Fukushima catastrophe, it was clear that the unknown unknows are worse than anticipated. Sad thing is, Germany should have pumped a whole lotta more money into renewables and their research.
- didericis 5y ago
  Fukushima was not a case of unknown unknowns. That style of reactor requires active cooling to prevent meltdown, and the cooling failed. The consequences of the cooling system failing were known, as were the vulnerabilities of the cooling system. They just didn’t add enough safeguards/didn’t account for the backup failing. There’s an argument that you can’t add enough safeguards to account for all possible ways an active cooling system could fail, which is perfectly reasonable/a good argument. Thats’s why next gen nuclear reactor designs don’t require active cooling. People citing Chernobyl and Fukushima strikes me as rhe equivalent to people citing the Hindenburg when talking about flying; I’m pretty sure both reactor designs could be thought of as the design equivalent to the hydrogen blimp. People’s minds are stuck on an image of a blimp on fire when thinking about flying even though modern passenger jets exist.
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    Clearly we think alike. Glad to see someone else pointing out to Luddites the folly of comparing modern nuclear tech to the tech of the 1970s. Using the Hindenburg vs airplanes is a perfect equivalent.
  - k__ 5y ago
    "consequences of the cooling system failing were known" So the problem isn't unknown unknowns, but people simply don't caring enough about potential consequences? That just makes it worse and nuclear an even less of an option.
- aaronmdjones 5y ago
  As my sibling comment describes, this wasn't unknown. TEPCO (the company operating Fukushima) themselves commissioned a report into the suitability of their emergency systems, came to the conclusion that a generator and switchgear room in the basement of a building next to the sea was a bad idea, and then did nothing about it for several years. They were also told this repeatedly by other agencies.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
We sat on our arses too long and essentially our skills for producing nuclear faded away and now we need to rely on Japan and France if we want nuclear but it seems like we're out of the loop. I thought w had a couple of new nuclear facilities in progress, Sizewell C [0] and somewhere else (and plans are afoot for an experimental fusion reactor which is the most forward thinking I've seen in the UK in a decade so perhaps that's being driven by EDF? [as well??]). [0] https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/sizewell-c https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/...
knbknb 5y ago
Off the top of my head : German multinationals (in the energy sector such as Siemens, Wintershall) have removed it from their strategies because Nuclear technologies inefficient and bear a lot of risks. New reactor types don't work as promised. Government does not want Nuclear Energy because it needs enormous amounts of subsidies, and still there are regular cost overruns just as enormous. And Consortias still demand price guarantees. Worldwide the number of operational reactors is decreasing anyway. Nuclear reactors need a lot of protection (physical security) . Instead a decentralised infrastructure is envisioned. The German general public does not want nuclear waste, and not even nuclear transports across the country. It's a form of NIMBYism, but the point is valid. The German anti-nuclear movement is very old, covers 2-3 generations. Germany is densely populated and the prospect of entire countries becoming inhabitable after a single disaster of a nuclear power plant is feared and despised by many people.
- belorn 5y ago
  Germany spends already around 1.5% of their GDP on energy subsidies, and is the 8th largest in term of subsidies per GDP, and in absolute numbers, the highest one by 200% to the nearest country. €50 billions is spent each year, with a bit over 50% going to renewables and around 30% going to fossil fuels. I can understand in some ways that they do not want to spend more than €50 billions a year on subsidies. It is already a lot of tax money. The question however is what they are getting for those €50 billions they are already spending, and if the result is a desirable one. Being dependent on Russian gas and oil is a pretty high price to pay, especially when it help fund invasion forces into EU. (Source: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the_state_of_the_energy_union_report_on_energy_subsidies_in_the_eu.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the...)
  - Azsy 5y ago
    Ukraine has a significant potential for gas and shale fields. One of the reasons the EU has been getting friendly with Ukraine. Putin knows his way of life, and the Russian budget to consider doing something like this, is gone when those become active. The thing that's a little crass to say right now, is that: Russia imploding to focus internally, Putin gone, Ukraine integrating further into the EU, is like a full bingo card of items that was strictly in the 'keep dreaming' section 3 months ago. Now it is the best outcome for the EU. Still unlikely, but not categorically impossible.
turbinerneiter 5y ago
It's associated with waste that no one wants and nuclear weapons that no one wants either. Germany had a SPD/Greens coalition. They decided to not renew the contracts with the nuclear power plants and phase them out (afaik they are allowed to run 25 years, then they need to renew that, sorry missing some vocubaulry here). The next government was CDU/FDP (Merkel 1), who decided to renew the contracts again and cancel the rpior government phase out plans. Couple of weeks later Fukushima happened. Merkel stood in front of parliament and said: "On a day like today, we can not say that nuclear power plants are safe. They are safe." That is a direct quote of her speech. In the de speech she annoinced that Germany will stop using nuclear power. Because they had just signed the renewed contracts, the power plant companies sued Germany for the lost profit. Funnily enough, when Merkel decided to renew the contracts, they also introduced a tax on nuclear fuel, however the law had mistakes which made it unconstitutional and Germany had to pay back the taxes. I still to this day believe that Schäuble messed up the law on purpose. It happened back during the economic crisis, when there were spending cuts on normal people stuff, and this tax was a part of the media circus of "the big corps also have to do their part". That first part is 100% fact, this last part is just my pet conspiracy theory tough :D
- rob74 5y ago
  Small correction: the CDU/FDP government was the second Merkel cabinet (of four), and the only one where the FDP was involved. In fact it was so "successful" that at the next elections the FDP fell below the 5% threshold and wasn't represented in the Bundestag for the next four years.
  - turbinerneiter 5y ago
    Thanks for the correction.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Yeah, nothing to do with russian gas, dirty money and lobbyists.... https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-schr%C3%B6der-to-join-gazprom-board/a-60664273 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-sch... https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancellor-schroder-gazprom-board-nomination/ https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancello...
maxhille 5y ago
German here, but I'll be a bit lazy and refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany . I quickly skimmed over it and I think it touches the history well. From my personal perspective, I can definitely relate being nuclear skeptic due to Chernobyl (I was 7 years old at the time) and basically constant demonstrations/problems with the end storage facility subject - for as long as I remember. Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition. Merkel (conservative) wanted to prolong the run times but when Fukushima happened all those plans quickly turned over. Happy to answer any questions about it.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  So how did plans to import natural gas via NS1/NS2 fit into these plans?
  - MobiusHorizons 5y ago
    My understanding was that Natural gas in Europe is used for house heat, and industrial processes that have never been electrified. I was not aware of using it (at a wide scale) for electricity generation. (definitely not an expert though)
    - Reason077 5y ago
      Natural gas is a major source of electricity in many European countries (and in some countries, the biggest source). Natural gas is considered preferable to burning coal because it creates significantly less air pollution and CO2 emissions for each unit of electricity. Here's a neat map where you can view the current electricity generation mix for countries in real-time: https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition. And yet, Germany has twice the emissions of France because it relies heavily on gas and coal. Very sad to see that global warming is considered more economically viable than nuclear energy.
BSVogler 5y ago
We still have not found a place to store the waste. No one wants to live near a reactor so there are not really any place to build them (NIMBY). It also turns out that it is quite expensive when considering all costs like dismantling and insurance. Germany also does not mine uranium any more since 2021, so needs to buy them from other countries so you will have again dependencies on other countries. And then there is the historical experience of Chernobyl.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
  - croes 5y ago
    https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-leaves-a-bitter-legacy/a-47420382 https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-l...
- SEJeff 5y ago
  The historical experience of Chernobyl is not remotely relevant to modern reactors that are (by design) unable to melt down. Look at the pebble bed reactors, or the smr reactors from nuscale, or the chinese molten salt reactor designs. These are all using new technology to make meltdown next to or completely impossible. Nuscale is calling their smr reactors "walk away safe" in that you could just abandon them and they're unable to melt down. Saying we shouldn't consider nuclear energy due to Chernobyl is equivalent to saying we shouldn't use airplanes because of the hindenburg. It entirely ignores the massive amount of materials and nuclear science improvements since Chernobyl was built in 1970. I'm ALL FOR solar power (and have 48 x 440W bifacial solar panels aka 21.1kW on my barn), but it is not a holy grail. Safe modern nuclear energy could massively improve Europe's energy situation and end Russian energy dependence.
  - croes 5y ago
    What about Fukushima? And modern reactors have to be built first. How long does it take if we look how long the berlin airport took or Stuttgart 21 will take.
Reason077 5y ago
> "I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear" While the UK's nuclear power capacity is well down on its 1990s peak, it's hardly correct to say the UK has "largely" transitioned away from nuclear. A major new nuclear plant (Hinkley Point C) is under construction, and two more (Sizewell C and Bradwell B) seem to still be moving ahead. If all three are completed, they would represent 8.6 GW of new nuclear capacity, significantly more than the combined capacity of all UK nuclear power stations today!
- krona 5y ago
  Not to mention recent funding for small modular reactors (SMR) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-backs-new-small-nuclear-technology-with-210-million https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-backs-new-small-nuclea...
rad_gruchalski 5y ago
It’s a knee jerk reaction to Fukushima. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-germanys-nuclear-phase-out https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...
- cinntaile 5y ago
  It's not. These plans have been in motion since way before that, as your link probably confirms. Merkel was going to delay the closing, but when Fukushima came along she couldn't do that anymore.
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    It is cemented by Fukushima. From wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany > Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.[7][8] Political writer David Frum characterized Merkel's decision as a political move to improve her approval ratings which had sagged after the post 2008 financial crisis bailout of southern Europe by Germany. Regardless if things were in motion before, the decision to phase out was for a political gain. The rest of the story one can write themselves. It put the country on the course we have today. It will be very interesting to see how the greens trot around that.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      Let me rephrase. They were supposed to close by 2022, Merkel delayed this by 12 years in 2010 but had to backpedal because of Fukushima. So the decision to close the plants was not a kneejerk reaction to Fukushima, it simply reverted back to the original decision.
jliptzin 5y ago
I’m not against nuclear power but can anyone explain why a similar sized investment in solar+wind+geothermal+battery storage would not work?
- winkeltripel 5y ago
  Because the land needed for equivalent solar and wind would be massive. There would be no room for NIMBY. Imagine someone you love would lose their home so that a windmill could be constructed. Every city park would need to have a huge windmill, and every roof would need solar panels. That is assuming that we can even locate the material and manpower needed to build so much. This would be at least 2 orders of magnitude more than equivalent power from nuclear.
  - onli 5y ago
    > and every roof would need solar panels That's already coming to Germany, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_Baupflicht https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_Baupflicht. Not legislated in the whole country yet, but that's just a matter of time now.
  - danhor 5y ago
    Are you sure about that? The general figures I see are that around 2% of land for wind energy should be very sufficient, which would not need displacing of existing housing and certainly no construction in city parks.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    There is absolutely no need to devote land to exclusively solar or wind use. Farm and pasture land shared with solar panels yield more than without. Wind turbines can also be placed in farm and pasture land, displacing very little production. As I understand it, Germany already has a great deal of wind power installed.
- tempestn 5y ago
  Interesting question. I had thought batteries were still orders of magnitude more expensive than nuclear, but just looked up some numbers to try and get an idea. Caveat, these are just numbers I've looked up; they look reasonable to me, but I'm no expert, so could well be making a mistake here. Also I'm just looking at capital costs, not operation. From what I can find, the capital cost of a new nuclear plant is somewhere on the order of $6M-9M/MW. On the other hand, a 3MWh grid battery from Tesla runs about $1M. So ignoring cloudy days and just considering providing power overnight (in the winter), you'd need about 14 hours of capacity, so about $14M to provide 3MW, or roughly $5M/MW. So, in terms of initial capital cost, just the battery portion to handle the overnight gap in solar production would be roughly equivalent to the cost of nuclear, but of course that doesn't account for the cost of the solar panels, nor for the fact that there will be other periods when generation is low. (Although these can be partially dealt with by over-building the renewable generation and using wind as well as solar.) However, the other issue is that the lifespan of grid-connected lithium ion batteries appears to be about 5-15 years, whereas nuclear plants should generally last several decades at least. So, batteries + renewables are more expensive in terms of capital than nuclear plants, which are themselves quite expensive, but I must admit I'm surprised that the difference isn't even greater. I expect part of the problem is production capacity. You can build a 1100MW nuclear plant, but I expect it would be nearly impossible to buy a 14GWh of grid batteries because the capacity to build them in that scale just doesn't exist, yet at least. Also, as others have mentioned, you'd need a lot of space. There are other methods of storage that are used, pumped hydro being the most common in large scale, but requiring specific geography. There are other options like gravitational storage with shafts and weights or carts on tracks or what have you, but they're all expensive and/or difficult to scale.
ComradePhil 5y ago
VisualPolitik EN has a take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYagGAgHfQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYagGAgHfQ0 (12 mins) And there is this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The movement was already strong before Chernobyl, and I don't know exactly why it was so much stronger in Germany than elsewhere (and couldn't find a clear explanation on Wikipedia either). Then Chernobyl happened. Germany was, and is to this day, directly affected by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. (Many of the boar hunted in Germany are considered unsafe to eat due to high radiation levels). People remember when they were wondering if they should abort their pregnancies because they weren't sure if they'd give birth to a child with three arms, or too afraid to drink the milk, etc. - most of these fears turned out to be unfounded, but that doesn't mean that people weren't affected by them and remember them deeply. The Green movement had also built its entire identity around it, making it hard to go back on it. Fukushima sealed the deal because nuclear power was advertised as safe, not "well it explodes sometimes but the actual damage is less than from coal", any thus the safety claims lost all credibility.
usrusr 5y ago
My take is this: after Chernobyl, the risk was talked down by proponents as "happened because communism". And the other side got even more entrenched in their positions. Then Fukushima happened and "because communism" proponents suddenly stood without pants.

guerrilla 5y ago

Who stands to profit the most from decommissioning them all? I mean besides Schröder and Russia.

fsflover 5y ago
https://www.ans.org/news/article-1392/robert-anderson-antinuclear-financier/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-1392/robert-anderson-antinu...

okl 5y ago

Chernobyl disaster, fears stemming from nuclear weapons stationed in Germany, no viable solutions for waste disposal. Mostly that. Of course it's also not economically sensible if you factor in externalised costs. I'm also concerned about sloppy work and engineering, neglect and human mistake with catastrophic consequences. For example, there is one incident documentend where some idiotic fools drilled a hole into the containment to hang a fire extinguisher. [https://www.badische-zeitung.de/panne-in-leibstadt-arbeiter-bohren-loecher-in-sicherheitshuelle--87160425.html https://www.badische-zeitung.de/panne-in-leibstadt-arbeiter-...] However, if it would help to bring down the sick Putin regime in Russia I would support a limited extension. EDIT: Russian trolls be downvoting me. Idi nahui.

quattrofan 5y ago

raymond_goo 5y ago

We still have mushrooms that radiate more than normal due to Chernobyl. Then we witnessed the Fukushima catastrophe from afar but with great shock. And we have no state who wants to store the nuclear waste. We believe the future is renewables and we invest heavily into it.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
The future is renewables but without storage (or fusion, which is realistically 40y out _if_ it works) then we're screwed and that's a couple of decades more development away. We need fission to bridge that gap or we're left relying on fossil fuels and missing our targets massively on GHG emissions (or we maintain Lockdown level restrictions .. and still have a short fall).
- rob74 5y ago
  From what I understand the current plan to store renewable energy is to convert it to hydrogen - this hydrogen can either be used to power vehicles, or in power plants (converted natural gas power plants or plants that have been designed from the outset to operate flexibly with hydrogen or natural gas)
- wongarsu 5y ago
  It's not like there are no options for storage, pumped hydrostorage works well in Germany, and building pumped storage plus solar makes more financial sense than fission. Nuclear plants just take too long to plan and build, and are extremely expensive to build and tear down.
  - Dma54rhs 5y ago
    Pumped hydro has very specific geological restrictions and take because of ecological snd safety risks even longer to build than nuclear. Both way too long.
  - belorn 5y ago
    Nothing stops Germany from building pumped hydrostorage rather than gas pipelines. Every time nuclear get discussed people jump between either hydrostorage or green hydrogen, but when people start discussing turning off the gas from Russia, there seems to be very little interests to actually replace gas with storage. The few calculations I have read over hydrostorage is that the amount of damns and land needed to replace all the gas plant capacity is unrealistic, and green hydro is almost 100 times more expensive than natural gas. Nuclear is expensive, but its not that expensive. There is a strange thing with hydrostorage. To my knowledge there does not exist a single example of a commercial operation that buys renewables to pump water and then generate energy to sell when the price goes up. There does exist one commercial operation that I know where an energy company uses storage to balance their fleet of (mostly) fossil fuel plants when they need to spin down/up. It keeps their operations more stable, and they said something to the point of "In the future we might use this to buy renewables when the price is low and sell when the energy is needed".

k__ 5y ago

After the Fukushima catastrophe, it was clear that the unknown unknows are worse than anticipated. Sad thing is, Germany should have pumped a whole lotta more money into renewables and their research.

didericis 5y ago
Fukushima was not a case of unknown unknowns. That style of reactor requires active cooling to prevent meltdown, and the cooling failed. The consequences of the cooling system failing were known, as were the vulnerabilities of the cooling system. They just didn’t add enough safeguards/didn’t account for the backup failing. There’s an argument that you can’t add enough safeguards to account for all possible ways an active cooling system could fail, which is perfectly reasonable/a good argument. Thats’s why next gen nuclear reactor designs don’t require active cooling. People citing Chernobyl and Fukushima strikes me as rhe equivalent to people citing the Hindenburg when talking about flying; I’m pretty sure both reactor designs could be thought of as the design equivalent to the hydrogen blimp. People’s minds are stuck on an image of a blimp on fire when thinking about flying even though modern passenger jets exist.
- SEJeff 5y ago
  Clearly we think alike. Glad to see someone else pointing out to Luddites the folly of comparing modern nuclear tech to the tech of the 1970s. Using the Hindenburg vs airplanes is a perfect equivalent.
- k__ 5y ago
  "consequences of the cooling system failing were known" So the problem isn't unknown unknowns, but people simply don't caring enough about potential consequences? That just makes it worse and nuclear an even less of an option.
aaronmdjones 5y ago
As my sibling comment describes, this wasn't unknown. TEPCO (the company operating Fukushima) themselves commissioned a report into the suitability of their emergency systems, came to the conclusion that a generator and switchgear room in the basement of a building next to the sea was a bad idea, and then did nothing about it for several years. They were also told this repeatedly by other agencies.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

We sat on our arses too long and essentially our skills for producing nuclear faded away and now we need to rely on Japan and France if we want nuclear but it seems like we're out of the loop. I thought w had a couple of new nuclear facilities in progress, Sizewell C [0] and somewhere else (and plans are afoot for an experimental fusion reactor which is the most forward thinking I've seen in the UK in a decade so perhaps that's being driven by EDF? [as well??]). [0] https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/sizewell-c https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/...

knbknb 5y ago

Off the top of my head : German multinationals (in the energy sector such as Siemens, Wintershall) have removed it from their strategies because Nuclear technologies inefficient and bear a lot of risks. New reactor types don't work as promised. Government does not want Nuclear Energy because it needs enormous amounts of subsidies, and still there are regular cost overruns just as enormous. And Consortias still demand price guarantees. Worldwide the number of operational reactors is decreasing anyway. Nuclear reactors need a lot of protection (physical security) . Instead a decentralised infrastructure is envisioned. The German general public does not want nuclear waste, and not even nuclear transports across the country. It's a form of NIMBYism, but the point is valid. The German anti-nuclear movement is very old, covers 2-3 generations. Germany is densely populated and the prospect of entire countries becoming inhabitable after a single disaster of a nuclear power plant is feared and despised by many people.

belorn 5y ago
Germany spends already around 1.5% of their GDP on energy subsidies, and is the 8th largest in term of subsidies per GDP, and in absolute numbers, the highest one by 200% to the nearest country. €50 billions is spent each year, with a bit over 50% going to renewables and around 30% going to fossil fuels. I can understand in some ways that they do not want to spend more than €50 billions a year on subsidies. It is already a lot of tax money. The question however is what they are getting for those €50 billions they are already spending, and if the result is a desirable one. Being dependent on Russian gas and oil is a pretty high price to pay, especially when it help fund invasion forces into EU. (Source: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the_state_of_the_energy_union_report_on_energy_subsidies_in_the_eu.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/default/files/annex_to_the...)
- Azsy 5y ago
  Ukraine has a significant potential for gas and shale fields. One of the reasons the EU has been getting friendly with Ukraine. Putin knows his way of life, and the Russian budget to consider doing something like this, is gone when those become active. The thing that's a little crass to say right now, is that: Russia imploding to focus internally, Putin gone, Ukraine integrating further into the EU, is like a full bingo card of items that was strictly in the 'keep dreaming' section 3 months ago. Now it is the best outcome for the EU. Still unlikely, but not categorically impossible.

turbinerneiter 5y ago

It's associated with waste that no one wants and nuclear weapons that no one wants either. Germany had a SPD/Greens coalition. They decided to not renew the contracts with the nuclear power plants and phase them out (afaik they are allowed to run 25 years, then they need to renew that, sorry missing some vocubaulry here). The next government was CDU/FDP (Merkel 1), who decided to renew the contracts again and cancel the rpior government phase out plans. Couple of weeks later Fukushima happened. Merkel stood in front of parliament and said: "On a day like today, we can not say that nuclear power plants are safe. They are safe." That is a direct quote of her speech. In the de speech she annoinced that Germany will stop using nuclear power. Because they had just signed the renewed contracts, the power plant companies sued Germany for the lost profit. Funnily enough, when Merkel decided to renew the contracts, they also introduced a tax on nuclear fuel, however the law had mistakes which made it unconstitutional and Germany had to pay back the taxes. I still to this day believe that Schäuble messed up the law on purpose. It happened back during the economic crisis, when there were spending cuts on normal people stuff, and this tax was a part of the media circus of "the big corps also have to do their part". That first part is 100% fact, this last part is just my pet conspiracy theory tough :D

rob74 5y ago
Small correction: the CDU/FDP government was the second Merkel cabinet (of four), and the only one where the FDP was involved. In fact it was so "successful" that at the next elections the FDP fell below the 5% threshold and wasn't represented in the Bundestag for the next four years.
- turbinerneiter 5y ago
  Thanks for the correction.
lm28469 5y ago
Yeah, nothing to do with russian gas, dirty money and lobbyists.... https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-schr%C3%B6der-to-join-gazprom-board/a-60664273 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-former-chancellor-gerhard-sch... https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancellor-schroder-gazprom-board-nomination/ https://www.politico.eu/article/outrage-germany-ex-chancello...

maxhille 5y ago

German here, but I'll be a bit lazy and refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany . I quickly skimmed over it and I think it touches the history well. From my personal perspective, I can definitely relate being nuclear skeptic due to Chernobyl (I was 7 years old at the time) and basically constant demonstrations/problems with the end storage facility subject - for as long as I remember. Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition. Merkel (conservative) wanted to prolong the run times but when Fukushima happened all those plans quickly turned over. Happy to answer any questions about it.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
So how did plans to import natural gas via NS1/NS2 fit into these plans?
- MobiusHorizons 5y ago
  My understanding was that Natural gas in Europe is used for house heat, and industrial processes that have never been electrified. I was not aware of using it (at a wide scale) for electricity generation. (definitely not an expert though)
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Natural gas is a major source of electricity in many European countries (and in some countries, the biggest source). Natural gas is considered preferable to burning coal because it creates significantly less air pollution and CO2 emissions for each unit of electricity. Here's a neat map where you can view the current electricity generation mix for countries in real-time: https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map
tsimionescu 5y ago
> Also, at least in my memory around ~2000 it became clear that nuclear was not economically viable vs going green and that was also when the Atomausstieg was sealed by the new Schröder government which had the Greens in the coalition. And yet, Germany has twice the emissions of France because it relies heavily on gas and coal. Very sad to see that global warming is considered more economically viable than nuclear energy.

BSVogler 5y ago

We still have not found a place to store the waste. No one wants to live near a reactor so there are not really any place to build them (NIMBY). It also turns out that it is quite expensive when considering all costs like dismantling and insurance. Germany also does not mine uranium any more since 2021, so needs to buy them from other countries so you will have again dependencies on other countries. And then there is the historical experience of Chernobyl.

fsflover 5y ago
https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
- croes 5y ago
  https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-leaves-a-bitter-legacy/a-47420382 https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-l...
SEJeff 5y ago
The historical experience of Chernobyl is not remotely relevant to modern reactors that are (by design) unable to melt down. Look at the pebble bed reactors, or the smr reactors from nuscale, or the chinese molten salt reactor designs. These are all using new technology to make meltdown next to or completely impossible. Nuscale is calling their smr reactors "walk away safe" in that you could just abandon them and they're unable to melt down. Saying we shouldn't consider nuclear energy due to Chernobyl is equivalent to saying we shouldn't use airplanes because of the hindenburg. It entirely ignores the massive amount of materials and nuclear science improvements since Chernobyl was built in 1970. I'm ALL FOR solar power (and have 48 x 440W bifacial solar panels aka 21.1kW on my barn), but it is not a holy grail. Safe modern nuclear energy could massively improve Europe's energy situation and end Russian energy dependence.
- croes 5y ago
  What about Fukushima? And modern reactors have to be built first. How long does it take if we look how long the berlin airport took or Stuttgart 21 will take.

Reason077 5y ago

> "I'm from the UK and we have largely transitioned away from Nuclear" While the UK's nuclear power capacity is well down on its 1990s peak, it's hardly correct to say the UK has "largely" transitioned away from nuclear. A major new nuclear plant (Hinkley Point C) is under construction, and two more (Sizewell C and Bradwell B) seem to still be moving ahead. If all three are completed, they would represent 8.6 GW of new nuclear capacity, significantly more than the combined capacity of all UK nuclear power stations today!

krona 5y ago
Not to mention recent funding for small modular reactors (SMR) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-backs-new-small-nuclear-technology-with-210-million https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-backs-new-small-nuclea...

rad_gruchalski 5y ago

It’s a knee jerk reaction to Fukushima. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-germanys-nuclear-phase-out https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...

cinntaile 5y ago
It's not. These plans have been in motion since way before that, as your link probably confirms. Merkel was going to delay the closing, but when Fukushima came along she couldn't do that anymore.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  It is cemented by Fukushima. From wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany > Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.[7][8] Political writer David Frum characterized Merkel's decision as a political move to improve her approval ratings which had sagged after the post 2008 financial crisis bailout of southern Europe by Germany. Regardless if things were in motion before, the decision to phase out was for a political gain. The rest of the story one can write themselves. It put the country on the course we have today. It will be very interesting to see how the greens trot around that.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    Let me rephrase. They were supposed to close by 2022, Merkel delayed this by 12 years in 2010 but had to backpedal because of Fukushima. So the decision to close the plants was not a kneejerk reaction to Fukushima, it simply reverted back to the original decision.

jliptzin 5y ago

I’m not against nuclear power but can anyone explain why a similar sized investment in solar+wind+geothermal+battery storage would not work?

winkeltripel 5y ago
Because the land needed for equivalent solar and wind would be massive. There would be no room for NIMBY. Imagine someone you love would lose their home so that a windmill could be constructed. Every city park would need to have a huge windmill, and every roof would need solar panels. That is assuming that we can even locate the material and manpower needed to build so much. This would be at least 2 orders of magnitude more than equivalent power from nuclear.
- onli 5y ago
  > and every roof would need solar panels That's already coming to Germany, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_Baupflicht https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_Baupflicht. Not legislated in the whole country yet, but that's just a matter of time now.
- danhor 5y ago
  Are you sure about that? The general figures I see are that around 2% of land for wind energy should be very sufficient, which would not need displacing of existing housing and certainly no construction in city parks.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  There is absolutely no need to devote land to exclusively solar or wind use. Farm and pasture land shared with solar panels yield more than without. Wind turbines can also be placed in farm and pasture land, displacing very little production. As I understand it, Germany already has a great deal of wind power installed.
tempestn 5y ago
Interesting question. I had thought batteries were still orders of magnitude more expensive than nuclear, but just looked up some numbers to try and get an idea. Caveat, these are just numbers I've looked up; they look reasonable to me, but I'm no expert, so could well be making a mistake here. Also I'm just looking at capital costs, not operation. From what I can find, the capital cost of a new nuclear plant is somewhere on the order of $6M-9M/MW. On the other hand, a 3MWh grid battery from Tesla runs about $1M. So ignoring cloudy days and just considering providing power overnight (in the winter), you'd need about 14 hours of capacity, so about $14M to provide 3MW, or roughly $5M/MW. So, in terms of initial capital cost, just the battery portion to handle the overnight gap in solar production would be roughly equivalent to the cost of nuclear, but of course that doesn't account for the cost of the solar panels, nor for the fact that there will be other periods when generation is low. (Although these can be partially dealt with by over-building the renewable generation and using wind as well as solar.) However, the other issue is that the lifespan of grid-connected lithium ion batteries appears to be about 5-15 years, whereas nuclear plants should generally last several decades at least. So, batteries + renewables are more expensive in terms of capital than nuclear plants, which are themselves quite expensive, but I must admit I'm surprised that the difference isn't even greater. I expect part of the problem is production capacity. You can build a 1100MW nuclear plant, but I expect it would be nearly impossible to buy a 14GWh of grid batteries because the capacity to build them in that scale just doesn't exist, yet at least. Also, as others have mentioned, you'd need a lot of space. There are other methods of storage that are used, pumped hydro being the most common in large scale, but requiring specific geography. There are other options like gravitational storage with shafts and weights or carts on tracks or what have you, but they're all expensive and/or difficult to scale.

ComradePhil 5y ago

VisualPolitik EN has a take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYagGAgHfQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYagGAgHfQ0 (12 mins) And there is this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

The movement was already strong before Chernobyl, and I don't know exactly why it was so much stronger in Germany than elsewhere (and couldn't find a clear explanation on Wikipedia either). Then Chernobyl happened. Germany was, and is to this day, directly affected by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. (Many of the boar hunted in Germany are considered unsafe to eat due to high radiation levels). People remember when they were wondering if they should abort their pregnancies because they weren't sure if they'd give birth to a child with three arms, or too afraid to drink the milk, etc. - most of these fears turned out to be unfounded, but that doesn't mean that people weren't affected by them and remember them deeply. The Green movement had also built its entire identity around it, making it hard to go back on it. Fukushima sealed the deal because nuclear power was advertised as safe, not "well it explodes sometimes but the actual damage is less than from coal", any thus the safety claims lost all credibility.

usrusr 5y ago

My take is this: after Chernobyl, the risk was talked down by proponents as "happened because communism". And the other side got even more entrenched in their positions. Then Fukushima happened and "because communism" proponents suddenly stood without pants.