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Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

• cuillevel3 5y ago
  What most of these articles don't get, is how unpopular nuclear was among Germans. It was not just the Greens party, the rejection was more wide and in the end a majority. Nuclear power financing, accidents, storage and disposal discussions fueled major civil unrest for decades. Also most of the Russian gas is used in the heavy industries, you can't simply switch those factories to electrical heating. As for electrical heating of households, yeah that was a thing until maybe the eighties? Nobody does that anymore. Not sure our power grid, which is being decentralized, could handle that?
• nmehner 5y ago
  This article is just wrong. The premise is: * About 35% of Germany’s gas is used to generate electricity. * Eliminating German electricity from gas would thus nearly eliminate Germany’s purchase of Russian gas. But Germany only uses 12% of gas for electricity: https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-des-erdgasabsatzes-deutschland/ https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-d... this usage has gone down another 15% in January/February 2022 before the war even started: https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/stromerzeugung-erdgas-deutschland/ https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/stromerzeugun... The author seems to have taken the 35% figure from https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Germanys-Growing-Gas-Demand-Shows-No-Signs-Of-Slowing.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Germanys-Growing-Gas... where is is labeled "Power" in the chart. Whatever that is supposed to mean. But it is not electricity. I could not find any public information about this on: https://www.rystadenergy.com/energy-themes/commodity-markets/gas-lng/gas-market-cube/ https://www.rystadenergy.com/energy-themes/commodity-markets.... Also some gas plants are used for electricity/heat co-generation so you cannot simply replace them with nuclear. Gas peaker plants have a completely different usage from nuclear plants.
• stefantalpalaru 5y ago
• sitkack 5y ago
  The EU should pay France to host and run more French nuclear reactors. The Nordic countries should run pumped energy storage using their dams. Solar from the Mediterranean should be supplied across the whole EU grid.
• trizuz 5y ago
• tomohawk 5y ago
  > ...Russians could sabotage nuclear reactors. They use such a remote possibility as an argument against all nuclear, seemingly forgetting that: Germany is surrounded by other countries with nuclear power. Russian sabotage would be an act of war. If Germany is at the point where Russia is attacking its nuclear power plants, I sure hope it’s not in a position where it depends on Russian gas. This is a deeply unserious policy direction.
  • Retric 5y ago
    Russia recently attacked a nuclear power plant not that far from Germany, which happened to survive without serious issue. So, this isn’t meaningless speculation even if you personally don’t view it as a major issue. In the end designing a nuclear power plant to survive shelling might not mitigate that much risk, but it is something being seriously considered in many circles.
    • _jal 5y ago
      This is pattern-matching taking the place of reasoning. Even if you don't, I promise you Putin understands the difference between attacking a plant in Ukraine and attacking one in Germany.
      • Retric 5y ago
        Assuming war will never happen is at best wishful thinking. At the point where people are attacking something in Germany that line becomes meaningless.
        • _jal 5y ago
          You seem to be replying to something I didn't say. > At the point where people are attacking something in Germany that line becomes meaningless. Exactly my point. I'm not saying desperation and ego won't drive him (along with everyone else) into the abyss, I'm saying he's savvy enough to know that right now, that line is protecting him.
• choeger 5y ago
  Being anti-nuclear is deeply engrained in the DNA of Germany's green party. Even more so than climate change. In fact, when the anti-nuclear movement started, climate change wasn't even a topic. In other words, the only thing that needs to happen is the German green party to admit a mistake in fighting nuclear power harder than fossile fuels...
  • omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
    There have been concerns about the risks of flooding to nuclear plants in Germany. https://energytransition.org/2013/06/german-nuclear-plants-flood/ https://energytransition.org/2013/06/german-nuclear-plants-f... Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia. Unfortunately, many plants across the world have not had accurate risk assessments done, both for natural disasters and economic risks.
    • andbberger 5y ago
      > Restarting nuclear isn't a bad idea, but it needs to be approached systematically and cautiously such that the risks from natural disasters and economic impacts are minimized, while also weighing the risks of continuing to support Russia. smells like $$$ and more delays. nuclear is already by far the safest method of power production, and emits far fewer radionuclides than coal, and those numbers are the old generation more dangerous pressurized water reactors. water's lapping at our feet
      • Retric 5y ago
        That’s not completely accurate. Nuclear is less safe than grid solar, it slightly beats rooftop solar because standing on roofs is dangerous and most solar installs are new. Hydroelectric vs nuclear is tricky because large dams save lives and by reducing flooding etc, and installing hydroelectric when building a dam is much safer than building the dam in the first place. Which makes calculating the deaths from hydroelectric power tricky. Low head dams on the other hand are dangerous, but are largely abandoned technology.
• outside1234 5y ago
  Let's be real - they just don't care about anyone but themselves.
  • chaostheory 5y ago
    “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” — Lord Palmerston This is apt description of nearly every nation, if not all of them.
  • sprash 5y ago
    No they are a US vassal state. If they only cared about themselves they would have zero sanctions and Nord Stream 2 would be pumping cheap gas in vast quantities.
    • KarlKemp 5y ago
      Germany has a considerable interest in the concept of not changing any international borders by force, as has any other civilized nation.
  • galooomot 5y ago
    Well, in terms of money, germany is among the biggest supporters of ukraine since the war started in 2014, donating several billion euros. https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/aussenpolitik/laenderinformationen/ukraine-node/ukraine-support/2510752 https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/aussenpolitik/laenderinfo...
    • partiallypro 5y ago
      This is very much a puff piece from the German government to cover their gross negligence in helping to fund the very regime that is trying to wipe Ukraine from the earth. Also leaves out how reluctant Germany was to provide arms, despite providing arms to much more questionable countries.
      • 5y ago
• V__ 5y ago
  > According to the text, they might even need a constitutional amendment. I am no expert in German law, but this strikes me as an unlikely requirement that would nevertheless be doable. A 2/3 majority is needed in both the Bundesrat (senate) and Bundestag (house). Not happening. > This is what they say: The existing nuclear reactors should have passed a lengthy security inspection in 2019, which they didn’t pass since they would close at the end of 2022. They would need to pass such an inspection, and it takes a long time. > ... > Yes, of course Germany can afford to take some more time to pass these inspections! The author makes it sound like those are cars which can be easily refitted, upgraded and certified. This would take enormous amounts of time and money for the three plants which are still online, and who knows how much for the ones which are offline. Let's say it would just take a year (very optimistic), it wouldn't have any effect on the conflict. It's simply not worth it, when the money could be spent on other technologies. It would probably be easier and much cheaper to build new nuclear power plants (like ThorCon which was on HN a few days ago).
  • renewiltord 5y ago
    Is security there the same as what we'd call security or is it like `securité` in French which is safety? I'm pretty sure the former is not that hard, and you can bypass it if there is a real national need. The real thing is that Germany has NS and NS2 and so they're happy to just guzzle gas.
    • formerly_proven 5y ago
      Safety.
    • V__ 5y ago
      They mean safety. > The real thing is that Germany has NS and NS2 and so they're happy to just guzzle gas. NS2 is dead. They stopped certification, dismissed all employes and it's sanctioned by Germany/EU and the U.S. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that Germany just had a major political shift after the election last year. The new government now has to work around the failures of the last 16 years, in which nothing really got done. It really is a rock and a hard place. Stop all Russian imports and kill the economy, or try to find other sources (LNG from Qatar) and switch as fast as possible. Both options are bad, and the minister is also not happy but has to make it work somehow.
• smsm42 5y ago
  The arguments against turning back on the nuclear reactors in Germany sound so fundamentally unserious that you are forced to choose between "these people are paid by Russians" and "these people have a phobia about nuclear energy and won't consider any rational arguments". I'm not even talking of the moral position of "we'd better sponsor a genocidal maniac to the tune of a billion euros per week than temporary suffer a minor inconvenience that may require some small investment and a bit of work to solve".
  • fmajid 5y ago
    Not mutually exclusive. The USSR did a lot of covert funding of Western anti-nuclear activists during the Cold War. In fact that was probably one V. V. Putin’s job descriptions when he was posted in Dresden.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• galooomot 5y ago
  Nuclear waste anyone? Case closed. That alone should be reason enough to sympathize with the german position.
  • andbberger 5y ago
    not to feed the troll but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
    • gostirig 5y ago
      Nuclear waste is, from my perspective, one of the most discussed aspects of turning off nuclear power in germany. It's a complicated matter, that sparked a lot of controversy between german states. For example Bavaria doesn't want it in their back yard, despite being geologically suited. This is an active research field with many aspects. Unfortunately this wikipedia-link-thing won't do.
      • dathinab 5y ago
        It's also as far as I can tell a mostly solved question from a purely technical point of view. Honestly the main reason it ever became that big topic in Germany this because of some catastrophically bad decisions about nuclear storage done in both east and west Germany. Worse at least in West Germany it was _known_ (by the people involved in making it) to be a idiotic decision and seem to have been done mainly to spite eastern Germany...
      • andbberger 5y ago
        it's not a complicated matter, you dig a deep hole and throw it in. don't portray a political problem as a technical one
        • bcrl 5y ago
          Ah, new superfund sites. Just what the world needs.
• Gwypaas 5y ago
  As long as you rely on the fallacy that nuclear is cheap to operate any initial costs can be handwaved away. Today renewables are cheaper than the marginal cost of nuclear, steam turbines and all machinery around them is simply that complex. They are a relic of an bygone era which tech enthusiasts for some reason continue clinging to as the magical solution to all our energy needs. Even in the face of reality. A dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have much more effect invested in renewables instead. https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png
  • GamerUncle 5y ago
    In the face of reality nuclear is the only realistic way to address the majority of the issues that most renewables cannot realistically face: https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-environmentalists-climate https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-par... All this talk about "a bygone era" seems to stem from a place of hatred but what is perceived as "old" if anything most techbros and minimalist wannabes seem to hate nuclear. But if you stop watching the Simpsons and look at the data, you will soon realize that renewables are not able to provide enough reliable energy and this has been proved time after time. nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
    • kdbeall_ 5y ago
      Depends on what tech comes out. If lithium-sulfur batteries and perovskite solar cells go into mass production I think nuclear will be one of the smaller contributors. Nuclear works best where there's limited hydroelectric, wind, and solar but minimal chance of earthquakes.
  • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    > dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have much more effect invested in renewables instead. The real world is made of atoms and people, not dollars. To illustrate: if starting tomorrow, every car produced was electric, it would take 20 years to replace all the cars. Given unlimited money, we could not convert all production of cars to electric in 5 years. The earliest possible switch to all electric cars is like 2050. We have limited capacity to produce batteries and renewables, and a limited speed at which that production can be expanded. We also have existing manufacturing capacity for nuclear and staff with skills to build / operate them, and it should be used. It should not be wasted.
• verisimi 5y ago
  Germany - the only country that still makes things in Europe really - is making decisions to jeopardise its industry and place in the world. It will surely end up as a basket case country if it carries on like this!
• ivan_gammel 5y ago
  What I read in this article is that German government did a thorough analysis, but the author dismisses the conclusions of it because the tolerated risk level there is too low and because it’s done by a minister from the Greens party. If this was written by an expert, that could make some sense, but it is not. Nuclear plant is not a startup, where you can just skip the QA part to release faster or put a not working cookie banner for few months, because nobody really checks compliance. You have to conduct safety tests, there should be enough staff and replacement parts, fuel supply must be secured, waste disposal must be planned in advance. Calling to accept risks of not doing this properly is not exactly what German public supports. The polls are tricky thing to do. If you ask certain questions you will get whatever results you want. I’m sure it was not explained to the public in the poll that they will have to accept higher risks of nuclear disaster if reactors will be allowed to operate. Everyone thinks that it is as safe as it was in the past - no wonder majority would support it to help Ukraine. The thing is, this majority also includes supporters of Greens and the party itself is not the same as it was in 80s. Greens are no longer unconditional pacifists and anti-nuclear hippies. They are the biggest supporters of sending heavy weapons to Ukraine now. They would extend nuclear if possible, because it advances the more important agenda of reducing emissions and helps Ukraine. They were ready to wait 20 years to phase out nuclear in 2000s, and it wasn’t Greens who accelerated shutdown after Fukushima. It was pro-business CDU with Merkel as a head of the government. This is why I would rather trust Habeck with his report than some random guy from the Internet with a political message.
  • silexia 5y ago
    Major PR investments are made by oil dictators to undermine the only real competition they face: nuclear. Nuclear has killed a few hundred people in it's whole history while oil pollution kills millions a year and is controlled by the most evil humans on our planet.
  • hedora 5y ago
    You're repeating some of the excuses the article addresses. - The author says they studied nuclear in grad school, and are probably therefore an expert. - They quantify the additional risk of meltdown due to delaying new safety regulations. It's negligible compared to operating plants according to the new regulations. - Their proposal would increase Germany's stockpile of nuclear waste by 3%, which is surely within engineering tolerances, ignoring the fact that the disposal facilities were planned before they decided to prematurely close the plants. I don't see how it matters which political party made which political decisions in the past. Conditions have changed.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• fabian2k 5y ago
  Shutting down the current reactors has been planned for a while, and that is simply not a decision that is trivial to reverse. You can disagree with that initial decision, but this does have significant effects and if you are in the process of shutting down everything it does get much more complicated to suddenly reverse course. The article seems rather dismissive towards many real problems like availability of nuclear fuel and personnel. The report also clearly states that due to the lack of fuel the nuclear power plants would only be able to supply additional power in late 2023. And it does not mention at all one of the conclusions in the report, that if it comes to a situation where the gas supply from Russia is shut off Germany would compensate with coal power plants.
  • merb 5y ago
    the article also doesnt mention france's gas consumption, which was mostly about electricity, while german uses the gas 50:50 (heat and electricity). basically nuclear won't replaces gas and gas won't replace nuclear. if we want to discuss about electricity generation, coal is the thing that germany could reduce with nuclear, but not gas. it's always the same thing about these articles, blame germany for a mistake (shutting down nuclear too early) but than just blame it on the bad gas, which is basically needed for nuclear operations anyway... and no german citizens won't replace their gas heating because of the war, that will simply not happen (of course some people do reduce gas heating but a lot of people just can't).
    • fabian2k 5y ago
      The sentence about simply replacing gas with heat pumps is almost delusional. You can't just switch out the main heating system for an entire country. Heat pumps require quite a lot of conditions that simply are not met by many older buildings. And even if that weren't an issue, there is still the sheer scale of the problem.
      • diordiderot 5y ago
        > require quite a lot of conditions that simply are not met by many older buildings. Such as?
• mantenpanther 5y ago
  I went to school in Austria in the 80s/90s. The anti-nuclear stance was a big part of education (I assume similar to Germany). We had to read stories like Die Wolke (The Cloud) and were terrified and somehow traumatized in a young age. We discussed this stuff for hours. Also a final deposit site was planned in the mountains in my area, so after Chernobyl there was a big activism against it - thousands of people connecting the mountain peaks in a long human chain (Menschenkette). The site was abandoned. I do not want to take sides, for our prosperity as humans I tend to agree that nuclear may be a big part of the solution. On the other hand realistically almost no area is safe from disaster (naturally, politically). Risk management is key here, you can not assume that everything works out as planned.
  • michaelgrafl 5y ago
    I went to school in Austria in the 80s/90s, too. I remember reading "The Children of Schewenborn" in school and being really disturbed by it. Pretty sure I wasn't alone in that. Good times!
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • dathinab 5y ago
    I went to School in German, and at least where I went to School in the 2000s discussion of pros and cons of nuclear power where covered a lot but where rather objective. Most strong anti nuclear movements in my generation (and local area) came from associations outside of school, e.g. parents. As far as I can tell there was a very strong anti-nuclear movement in the generations which are now 50-70 or so, i.e. the Generation which currently probably has most influence in the politics. Through in defense of the Green party it was not them but the CDU (~moderate conservative party) which did speed up the shutdown of nuclear power after (somewhat?) reassessing the safety of German power plans after Fukushima. Given that the CDU is very business orientated and this wasn't good business this says a lot about the state of the remaining nuclear power plants IMHO. EDIT: As a side note IMHO the German Green party are hypocrites, don't think of them as a strongly environmental focused party. They pretend to be one but in the end aren't really that. (Through environmental protection still matters for them anyway.)
• zxspectrum1982 5y ago
  The best moment to start building a nuclear plant was 10 years ago. The next best moment is today.
  • danamit 5y ago
    There isn't enough nuclear fuel in the world, nuclear energy is at best experimental sandbox hobbyist sciency stuff. It will not scale in the world, the moment we start all building them it will be hella expensive.
    • akvadrako 5y ago
      There is enough Uranium in the Earth's crust to power the whole planet for about 92 million years. - 65e15 kg = Uranium in Earth's crust - 709000 MJ/kg = energy density of natural U² - 500e12 MJ = 500 million TJ annual global energy usage - 92e6 = 65e15 × 709e3 / 500e12 It's actually very common and it's only a small cost component anyway. Including all processing, it accounts for less than one cent per kWh.
      • freemint 5y ago
        Let's keep it down there in case we need it if we are flung out of the solar system or something like that. The sun will not send us a bill.
      • kdbeall_ 5y ago
        These are both pretty bad takes. We as a civilization do not mine the crust for uranium. We mine high-grade ore deposits. I think with our current resources and technologies we could sustain demand for about 100 years. Nuclear energy is used at scale. Nuclear energy supplies ~70% of French electricity production. What's more important is the development of nuclear technology. Not all uranium is used in current reactors. The majority of uranium is U238. If breeder reactors were developed, our existing resources could be utilized far more effectively.
• dathinab 5y ago
  One core assumption of this article is that the nuclear reactors would have passed safety inspections if they would have taken them in 2019. But I doubt this, many of the reactors have already been operating beyond what they where designed for. Like from what I know about them I honestly wouldn't be surprised if previous safety inspections wouldn't already have slightly looked away to allow them to pass.
• avl999 5y ago
  > Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open Because of dogma and stupidity
• throw93232 5y ago
  EU has common energy market. If Germany does not have enough plant capacity, it will buy electricity from other countries, driving up price.
• incomingpain 5y ago
  >Since the Bucha massacre was made public, Germany has financed the Russian government by paying nearly $1.5B for its gas1. What's the number for since the war began? It's higher right? That's a lot of coal per year... 20 years to get 20% wind and solar. Tesla just opened their factory. VW has a nice selection of EVs; Taycan is beautiful! Don't fathom how they could fix their situation. Too bad they didn't have someone tell them exactly what they should do only 4 years ago. "We're supposed to protect you against Russia but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia?" Nobody-At-All asked. "I think that's very inappropriate."
  • fmajid 5y ago
    The US kept telling them not to get in bed with Russia. France kept telling them not to ditch nuclear to appease the irrational Greens. It was cynical political calculation to go for the cheapest energy source, global warming be damned.
    • wewxjfq 5y ago
      > It was cynical political calculation to go for the cheapest energy source, global warming be damned. Are you talking about the US who went all in on gas for its electricity production or Germany that replaced nuclear power with renewables? And France, the Hacker News nuclear energy utopia, is struggling year-round with its electricity production, but that is easy to ignore if you have no clue what you are talking about. Also, let me give you a brief history lesson, because Americans like to rewrite it: The US was never tough on Russia. Bush was a Putin fanboy like Schröder. When Schröder called Putin a "perfect democrat", Bush looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. And speaking of good advice: That was a time when Germany and the rest of Continental Europe asked the US not to start Iraq war. The US did not appreciate that kind of advice and considered Continental Europe some terrible allies. These were the early 2000s, there was a thing called the war on terror. Now Americans claim that it was clear as a day that Russia (who also opposed the war and seemed to steadily prosper) was the real enemy back then, and Germany should have bought more ethically-sourced oil and gas from the region with the lack of human rights, the never ending wars and the state-sponsored terrorism, and not from the guy who speaks of brotherhood in fluent German - that would have been the right decision of course! Anyway, after Bush came Obama, who also treated Russia with baby gloves. The US had no shame to give Lavrov the symbolic reset button months after Russia resetted Georgia - a country that hoped for US support. Remember Obama's "Let me do you favors in my second term" mic leak with Medvedev? Was any of that controversial in America? Not at all. Americans laughed at Mitt Romney when he called Russia the enemy. Biden summed it up in 2015: > All of us, we all invested in a type of Russia we hoped - and still hope - will emerge one day: a Russia integrated into the world economy; more prosperous, more invested in the international order. And it doesn't stop here. Americans went and elected the biggest Russian puppet in history. The guy who publicly said he trusts Putin more than his three-letter agencies. Now Putin enjoys a popularity among Americans that would make the old red-scare republicans spin in their graves. On top of that, the US had an ever increasing oil trade with Russia - after they annexed Crimea. But one time Donny with his "America first! Screw NATO and screw the EU!" stance (which totally doesn't benefit Russia) told German diplomats in one of his incoherent speeches that they are too reliant on Russian gas, after they banned US companies from fracking in their densely populated country and can you believe it, the diplomats laughed!?
• lispm 5y ago
  Sure we wouldn't buy Uranium from Russia, wouldn't we? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/us/politics/russia-uranium-nuclear-power.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/us/politics/russia-uraniu... https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-buying-uranium-from-russia-putin-war-crimes-bucha-energy-oil-gas-nuclear-power-plant-imports-jcpoa-2015-iran-deal-sanctions-11649792544 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-buying-uranium-from-russia...
  • freemint 5y ago
    And buy it from Rosatom that company that sells uranium and builds nuclear weapons. Oh, wait there is no profit in building nuclear weapons so they finance it with selling uranium. France payments enable Russia to stay a nuclear power.
• 99_00 5y ago
  I used to think that Germany was foolish to buy Russian natural gas and fund the Putin regime which is a threat to them. And that Trump was right to tell them so to their faces. Now I see that the Germans were right. Russia is not a threat. Putin is a paper tiger. The Russian military is nothing compared to NATO. And Germany gets NATO protection less than cost. They are acting in their own interest which they understand very clearly, and are succeeding. Also, I used to think that allowing Germany to remilitarize was desirable. Now I think it would be a mistake. Germany knows what's in its own interest. It will act in its own interest without shame or regret even if it hurts its neighbors (buying energy from Russia helps Germany and Russia but hurts other countries like Ukraine). Allowing the to militarize increases geopolitical risk and doesn't with little reward.
  • lispm 5y ago
    The US imports energy from Russia, too. Increasingly under Trump. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIM_NUS-NRS_1&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... Ukraine bought energy from Russia, too. They ended gas imports from Russia some time ago, now importing it from other countries, which import it from Russia.
    • 99_00 5y ago
      Of course the US imported oil from Russia. Why wouldn't they? There was no embargo. You seem to be suggesting that a direct pipeline is equivalent to buying from the global market. It isn't.
      • lispm 5y ago
        > Why wouldn't they? You were claiming that Germany is funding the Putin regime. The US does that too. It bought oil and are still buying uranium from Russia. > You seem to be suggesting that a direct pipeline is equivalent to buying from the global market. It isn't. For funding the Putin regime it is not interesting where the US was buying Russian energy. The US funded Putin, too. Trump did that, too.
• MauranKilom 5y ago
  So the entire article, and also the discussion here skips over a very simple point: Nuclear power plants provide baseline loads because they can't be turned on and off at a whim, while gas power plants can scale up and down quickly to handle daily load peaks. Looking at yearly consumption graphs completely ignores the reality of the grid. Where do you get electricity from for the peaks in the morning and the evening, when solar is still weak and wind may or may not be blowing? Not nuclear, for sure. Maybe coal, but even those plants have response times measured in hours (whereas gas is more in the tens of minutes). And there's only so much hydro you can build.
  • bozhark 5y ago
    That’s not at all correct. You’re stating nuclear cannot handle load distributions. Why.
    • KarlKemp 5y ago
      Nuclear power plants can adjust output by about +- 5 percentage points per 15 minutes. That allows reacting to demand and other producers on the timescale of daily fluctuations. Gas can be regulated +- 100 % within minutes, and +- 15 % almost instantaneously, allowing you to react to sudden unexpected changes.
    • Filligree 5y ago
      Commercial nuclear plants are designed to handle baseload, because the marginal cost to a nuclear power plant of producing power is near-zero, so this is where they have the biggest comparative advantage—or the smallest disadvantage, depending. The technology certainly can be used for peaker plants. But at grid scale? That would be an entirely novel design. I don't think any such plants exist outside of warships.
    • akvadrako 5y ago
      It's not that Nuclear can't handle variable loads, it's that once you have the plant running the fuel cost is negligible. So unless the price of electricity goes negative it doesn't make much sense to reduce the output.
• dathinab 5y ago
  > Germany could replace gas boilers with heat pumps Given that burning gas in modern electricity gas plants (like Germany has) to power modern decent quality heat pumps is more efficient (and flexible, and future proof) then burning Gas for heating that would be the best solution. It's also completely unrealistic. Given how common gas powered house central heating is, and given that some houses have worse constructs (like gas heater per apartment for warm water) I would guess that we would need 1 heat pump per 100 people or more. That would be 800_000 modern decent quality heat pumps. Which all need to be produced, build, shipped and installed. We already have a shortage of craftsman in Germany, even if we ignore everything up to installation that would be a major problem. And that's under the assumption that houses can be retrofitted to use heat pumps. But for many houses, especially apartment blogs this would be a problem as there is no good way available to montage/connect the outside-of-house parts of a heat pump on many typical German apartment blogs (living in apartment in apartment blogs is normal in Germany). (You still can do it, but even more cost and time involved). There are other problems, too. So I guess the optimal solutions is practically not possible.
  • Pxtl 5y ago
    AFAIK,IANAHVAC, but burning gas to power heat pumps is actually more efficient than directly hearing homes with gas heat. Heat pumps are unreasonably efficient.
  • hedora 5y ago
    You just need to run compressor lines (or cold air exhaust) from the heat pump to outside. All gas powered heaters have chimneys to exhaust carbon monoxide. I suspect there's a solution there for worst-case scenarios. Most of the time, you just punch a small hole in an exterior wall, and run the compressor lines through that. Edit: regarding supply, millions of heat pump hot water heaters and millions of air to air heat pumps are sold each year: https://www.iea.org/reports/heat-pumps https://www.iea.org/reports/heat-pumps They generally cost under $10,000, so some military could jusy buy the world supply for $10-100B and ship them to Europe. The US military could find that in its couch cushions. However, Germany usually only installs 10,000's per year; more installers would be needed.
• lampenrad 5y ago
  The whole argument hinges on the claim that 35% of electricity in Germany is generated by gas. This seems very high and I couldn‘t find a source for this claim in the article. According to [1], it‘s 14% (for consumers). This includes a large number of CHP (combined heat and power plants), which produce district heat and cannot be replaced with nuclear power. Then there‘s 36% of industry usage , of which 1/5 [1] is used for power generation in industry power plants. I‘d assume that quite a few of these on-site power plants do other things too, like CHP, and cannot be replaced with nuclear power. Ignoring this, it’d be 14% + 36%*21% = 21,56% of total Gas used for power, in reality, much less would be replaceable with nuclear. The EU economic think tank Bruegel claimed [2]: A technically and politically difficult decision to delay the closure of German nuclear power plants in operation until the end of 2021 could free up another 120 TWh of gas Germany used 945,3 Twh in 2020[3], of which 94,8% was imported[4] That’s 816,14 Twh. In 2020 55,2% of the imported gas came from Russia [5], so 494,7 Twh. So, according to Bruegel, a respected European think tank, Germany could replace 24,3% of the Russian gas it imported in 2020, if it managed to re-open its power plants closed in 2021. (the ones put out of use years earlier are being demolished[6] [1] https://www.springerprofessional.de/erdgas/produktion---produktionstechnik/wofuer-die-industrie-erdgas-braucht/20257708 https://www.springerprofessional.de/erdgas/produktion---prod... [2] https://www.bruegel.org/2022/01/can-europe-survive-painlessly-without-russian-gas/ https://www.bruegel.org/2022/01/can-europe-survive-painlessl... [3]https://www.weltenergierat.de/publikationen/energie-fuer-deutschland/energie-fuer-deutschland-2021/energie-in-deutschland-zahlen-und-fakten/ https://www.weltenergierat.de/publikationen/energie-fuer-deu... [4] https://www.bveg.de/die-branche/erdgas-und-erdoel-in-deutschland/erdgas-in-deutschland/ https://www.bveg.de/die-branche/erdgas-und-erdoel-in-deutsch... [5] https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_91790568/was-ein-importstopp-von-russischem-gas-fuer-deutschland-bedeuten-wuerde.html https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_... [6] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deutschland https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_D... edit: corrected an error
• Cynddl 5y ago
  I'm surprised no one here or in the original comments points out the sheer violence of that first photograph, depicting the dead bodies of three Ukrainians. I find it deeply unethical to use such war photographs for a paid newsletter, without showing respect to the families and memories of these people.
• this_user 5y ago
  a) Because it's no longer technically feasible not to shut these plants down. b) Because it's not politically tenable. c) Because nuclear energy has long since been a minor part of electricity generation, and it wouldn't make much of a difference now. d) Because it has nothing to do with imports of Russian gas and oil, which is overwhelmingly used for heating, fuel, and industrial purposes. Gas (not just from Russia) only makes up less than 10% of electricity generation. Oil is virtually not used at all for that. e) Because it's by far the most expensive way of generating electricity, and would not be economically viable without massive subsidies. France's EDF is tens of billions in debt and would be bankrupt without the government backstopping them. f) Because long-term storage of nuclear waste is still not properly solved. g) Because mining nuclear materials is an ecological disaster. Also, guess who's a big exporter of uranium in Europe? Russia. h) Because our long-term plan to switch to renewable sources of energy has been in full swing for over 20 years, and is coming along nicely with fossil fuels more and more getting phased out. Bonus point: It's incredibly funny how the people who complain about us shutting down our nuclear power plants pretty much always come from countries that have a substantially lower share of renewable energy than we do (ours is at around 45% now) and often import more gas from Russia at least on a per-capita basis then we do, too.
  • zemvpferreira 5y ago
    Well I'm from Portugal, where renewable power generation percent swings between the low 60's and the high 80's depending on the month and where we don't have any need for gas heating whatsoever. I also personally own and tend to 70 hectares of forest so I'm pretty willing to bet my carbon footprint is way way better than yours. According to your nonsense standard I should be a credible person to make this comment: How will Germany solve base load generation for power and heating without nuclear or fossil fuels in a country with weather as shit as Germany? Some of your points are reasonable but they are mostly silly, especially without any discussion of the elephant in the room. Anything else is greenwashing garbage. (lived in Frankfurt for a spell and will never go back. Nuclear-neutral, I dig it but whatever's cheapest is ok for me. Techno-positive on climate change. If you want to be ecological move somewhere tropical, live simple and never leave)
• felixc 5y ago
  Content warning: Be aware that the linked article opens with a large photo of bodies of killed civilians. It is not explicitly "gory" but it is upsetting. If the author happens to read this: Please consider not putting that front and centre without a warning. If a mod happens to read this: Please consider adding a content warning or similar to the link title or somewhere else prominent.
• Barrera 5y ago
  From the article: 1. Legal hurdles. "The previous law was changed to close the nuclear power plants after Fukushima." 2. Safety. "To keep the reactors open in 2023, Germany would need to accept accelerating the risk assessment and maybe living without some retrofittings." 3. Fuel. "The reactors would then need new fuel, which would take 12-15 months to arrive, and would require a doubling of manufacturing capacity." 4. Spare parts. "They also fear that some spare parts would be lacking because there is no further market in Germany for them." 5. Personnel. "People have been retiring and no new ones have been trained, so it would be hard to get the people." 6. Economics. "With lack of clarity on spare parts and personnel, how can we commit to a reliable delivery or energy? We can’t be 100% confident." 7. Energy replacement. "Until the new nuclear fuel is in place, we would make up for the shortage with more electricity coming from coal and gas."
  • makotech221 5y ago
    lol completely wrong, the guy in charge of the energy policy in Germany is a major benefactor of GAZPROM so he made Germany entirely dependent on it.
    • freemint 5y ago
      Can you name him?
      • makotech221 5y ago
        https://twitter.com/0ddette/status/1499486726259101702 https://twitter.com/0ddette/status/1499486726259101702
        • danhor 5y ago
          Gerhard Schröder ("affectionately" called Gasherd) was the chancellor until 2005, not specifically in charge of energy policy. He also hasn't been politically in charge of anything for the last 15 years. The nuclear shutdown now in place (after a few reversals, exiting the exit started by Schröder) was triggered by Merkel, who isn't involved (at least yet) with russian gas money. The current minister in charge (Robert Habeck) is part of the greens, who were one the most parties most opposed to russia and it's energy (staunchly against North Stream 2) and Habeck shares these views according to his public mentions.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Gas and nuclear have one very important difference: Gas is among the technologies that allow adjusting generation the fastest, nuclear is the slowest. To mix it with renewables, you need at least some reasonably fast capacity. How much of the gas generation capacity is baseload capacity that could be replaced with nuclear?
  • kdbeall_ 5y ago
    Nuclear is not suited for peaker plants. It probably never will be. The fuel is a small part of the cost of a nuclear plant. This is why battery tech is key to energy transition. If lithium-sulfur batteries can be produced at scale, we won't have as much of an issue with the intermittent nature of solar and wind.
    • freemint 5y ago
      Why Lithium Sulfur?
      • kdbeall_ 5y ago
        Energy density and availability of materials. Li-S ballpark is 550 Wh/kg while conventional lithium-ion is around 200 Wh/kg. Using nickel, cobalt, and other expensive metals is not scalable.
        • freemint 5y ago
          Newer Battery Electric vehicle of similar size are not really much heavier then combustion cars of the same size. That boost in weight savings (and poorer duty cycles) would make such more sense for airplanes than cars. The Nickel and Cobalt parts have been declining for decades and are low percentages of *-ode material, especially in cars which are no volume constrained. Only smartphone batteries or similar appliances have high amounts of those. In fact there some EVs which have less cobalt then normal cars because cobalt steel is used in many parts of the motor and transmission.
• cycomanic 5y ago
  Here [1] is an interview with the German president of the BASE (Bundesamts für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung) essentially the nuclear safety administration. He essentially calls the arguments about extending the nuclear powerplants difficult to comprehend. He lays out quite clearly why it doesn't work, and while the article addresses some of those points it does not back up any of the assertions with evidence. I am also quite doubtful about someone asserting we could just use nuclear powerplants for substituting gas peakers, that's not how things work. [1] https://www.heise.de/news/Atomkraft-Befuerworter-fuer-BASE-Praesident-intellektuell-schwer-nachvollziehbar-6659639.html https://www.heise.de/news/Atomkraft-Befuerworter-fuer-BASE-P...
  • skewbone 5y ago
    I agree with you on the gas peakers comment. Peaking power plants are typically used to provide the extra electricity needed when the supply of renewables start to fall off in the evening and the increased demand from HVAC and other loads coincide. They ramp fast (or start in a spinning reserve mode) to supply power in 5 to 10 mins. Nuclear plans can ramp but they're not really designed to ramp to replace all of the gas peakers. Another issue is that the grid requires a certain amount of connected inertia in order to resist changes in frequency. Imbalance between generation and loads will lead to frequency changes. Frequency changes can affect motors, fans, negatively (over fluxing leading to premature failure), so there are typically protection systems that disconnect loads or generation outside of a nominal frequency band. Renewables compound this problem because they are variable (generation fluctuates), and because they are inverter based and provide no physical inertia. Therefore, as you increase renewables only, you see greater problems with frequency stability. To combat the frequency issues today, you use more agile generators (typically gas) that can provide some inertia but also do fast power changes to arrest changes in frequency and restore system frequency (see primary frequency response). It's hard to see how turning off all gas and displace it with nuclear will work unless you expect nuclear to provide all of the primary frequency response, which includes needing to both increase AND reduce power to stabilize frequency. Large nuclear plants with high inertia generators on their steam turbines do help keep frequency more stiff though, so that's helpful. If you were to use nuclear to replace gas, you'd also need to make them fast ramping to manage variable renewables. Or you could retain some gas to be the variable load management units, but then you'd basically be keeping gas peakers. Alternatively, if there is greater adoption of energy storage to help make renewables more dispatchable with more predictable power, that solves part of the frequency issue. I believe gas peakers typically run for under 4 hours a day, so 4 hour duration energy storage would be effective at retiring a lot of the gas except for that kept available as emergency power plants during disasters or weather events. Part of the frequency and inertia problem will also get solved in the next decade or so. Generators provide an electrical response to the rate of change of frequency that serves to stabilize frequency called the inertial response. Essentially, the change in kinetic energy from one rotational velocity to a lower one results in an uncommanded power injection into the grid. This power injection then counteracts the lack of generation that led to the initial drop of frequency. Inverters are starting to get deployed with grid forming capability in which they can provide synthetic inertia, and over the next decade could reduce the need for synchronous inertia. It's not an easy problem to solve so I always take sweeping recommendations with a grain of salt. (I have been doing control system design for gas turbines, batteries, and renewable/thermal/battery hybrid systems for 15 years).
• KarlKemp 5y ago
  Yes, nuclear is so easy. Just chose it from the "power plant" options on the right, find a 4x4 empty square, and place it. Then, connect it to your power grid. For those not playing Sim City, it's a bit more complicated. Governments don't get to do whatever they want, for example. They are bound by law just like everyone else, a principle known as the rule of law. Sure, it was a German guy by the name of Carl Schmitt that came up with some ideas about "emergency laws". And from that moment, it took ten years until democracy was done for (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt#Law_of_emergency_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt#Law_of_emergency_...).
• raphaelj 5y ago
  > I’m lucky to understand the risks that they’re talking about > since I studied them in grad school. They’re talking about > a baseline risk of serious accident of around 0.001%, or > one in 100,000 years Why are people still referring to these numbers when talking about nuclear safety? They are obviously off by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude. We build about 250 nuclear plants over the past 50y, and we had two disasters that displaced thousands of peoples and made huge area inhabitable for centuries.
  • hedora 5y ago
    Accident one (Chernobyl): The plant manager disabled multiple safety overrides (including the one that would provide power to drop the rods if the turbines went into emergency shutdown), then ran above rated capacity to see how far he could push it. This caused the turbines to stop generating power. Without backup power, rod control shut down. I argue this is not the fault of the plant designer or technology. With enough effort, almost anything can be turned into a bomb. Accident 2 (Fukushima): Plant designers ignored tsunami warning signs in the area, and also put the backup generators underground in a costal area. This was a screw up in the risk model's input. Ignoring that, 250 * 50 = 12,500, so the prediction is within an order of magnitude. The choice is between running 6 plants for a year or two with those odds, or actively funding ongoing genocide. This isn't a particularly difficult instance of the trolley problem.
    • danamit 5y ago
      Judging by your numbers, is if we had 12,500 plants in the world we will have a disaster every year. Also considering human error, I don't see more plants equaling less human errors, needing more workers my drop the quality of workers. No one wants Homer Simpson running their local plant.
      • hedora 5y ago
        We know how to build plants that are physically incapable of melting down. The numbers only work looking backwards at this point.
• legulere 5y ago
  > Green is good, but it’s also more focused on the environment than on geopolitics. Shows how little the author understands about German politics. Greens are also ideologically against delivering weapons into crisis areas, however they were the ones pushing for weapons delivery the strongest. Also they gave up on getting out of coal earlier which was their main goal in this government. Why? Because they are doing Realpolitik. They do what’s best possible in those circumstances. It’s not just the politics that say no to a prolongation of nuclear power, but the companies running nuclear as well. Just like shutting down nuclear power plants needs years of planning ahead running them needs as well. In the end it’s now not just cheaper and more practical to build up renewables than building new nuclear, but even more than keeping the old crumbling ones running.
  • spupe 5y ago
    And if there is no wind or sun for an extended period of time, I guess we just shut down our factories then? The fact that the Greens have been flexible in some elements of their politics doesn't mean they are committed to a realpolitik approach when it comes to energy generation. They absolutely are not. In fact their record when it comes to science is really spotty, as they also oppose transgenics and even animal experimentation to a certain degree. They are clouded by preconceptions that are dangerous to us all.
    • legulere 5y ago
      That’s what you have a grid for. It’s not cloudy and windstill at the same time all over Europe. Also you can have similar problems with nuclear too. In the last 4 months Germany has been exporting a lot of electricity to France because several nuclear reactors of the same type had to be shut down because they may have a common flaw.
      • spupe 5y ago
        Wind energy is currently responsible for about 15% of the energy produced in Europe. So relying on wind is absolutely impractical even if we invest 10x more than we do, and you would have to prepare for days with low wind availability in the whole continent as well, because they do occur. The problem you describe is serious, but I would guess over 90% of nuclear power generation in the continent remains unaffected, if not more. So a grid here makes a lot of sense, and works as a reliable alternative. It is also pretty easy to design a grid that does not rely on the same types of reactors.
• Borrible 5y ago
  As a primer on the German anti-nuclear stance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa... At the bottom of the heart, it's just: 'Please, not in my backyard.'
• oska 5y ago
  This is a highly biased article. It makes assertions that are unproven and have been highly propagandised. > Since the Bucha massacre was made public There is no proof that the people killed in Bucha were killed by departing Russian troops. The Russians are suggesting that the killings were of 'Russian friendly' Ukrainians, killed after the troops left. We won't know what actually happened until a proper inquiry has been done; not feverish reporting from a highly biased US/European press based on Ukrainian govt. claims. > While Putin and his army destroy Ukraine and commit genocide There has been no genocide committed in Ukraine. This is a clearly false claim.
  • cracker_jacks 5y ago
    > The Russians are suggesting that the killings were of 'Russian friendly' Ukrainians, killed after the troops left. Satellite imagery taken before Russian troops left shows massacre happened before withdrawal. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1511060668610457612 https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1511060668610457612
    • oska 5y ago
      This isn't the place for such a debate. There needs to be a proper legal inquiry into the massacre; not trial by media. I wasn't making any assertions of my own as to who was responsible; I was just pointing out that responsibility has not yet been properly determined and thus should not be asserted as fact as Pueyo is doing here. And I'm not being pedantic; this is an extremely important point. Many propagandistic stories are pushed during a war. We should be careful not to buy into them.
• robd003 5y ago
  If you want to be green then nuclear power is the only logical option. Wind farms kill birds and solar destroys landscapes.
  • _ph_ 5y ago
    No, wind farms kill little number of birds compared to cars and plain windows. Not counting cats which kill order of magnitudes more birds than wind farms. Solar doesn't destroy landscapes either. Germany has enough rooftop surfaces unused to power itself easily with solar. On top of that, if the solar panels are mounted with some distance in between, plants grow happily below them, the additional shade does not hurt them - quite the contrary in times with higher temperatures.
• Proven 5y ago
• bayesian_horse 5y ago
  That reads like a nuclear-fan-boy article. No, we can't just waive security requirements to modernize the old plants and keep them save. No, I don't see where you could eliminate all the Russian gas just with those reactors already standing. The war in Ukraine remains us of one thing: You don't want unpredictable things to happen around a nuclear plant. Nuclear power can be relatively cheap. If you subsidize it heavily. If you scale it up (and thus the risks) to drive down costs. If and only absolutely nothing goes wrong. No unforeseen natural catastrophes. No other "impossible accidents" of the kind that keep happening. Absolutely no possibility for ill intentions... Stopping the import of Russian gas now instead of allowing more time does absolutely nothing for Ukraine except for a little bit of moral support, while tanking the German economy. Russia is already in a downward spiral.
  • Toine 5y ago
    Honestly, I would gladly take 10 major Chernobyl-style accidents each year than what's coming with climate change. It's way, way worse.
    • encryptluks2 5y ago
      I don't think that either is good, but what you think is coming could potentially be delayed or stopped still. Once there is a nuclear meltdown the long-term damage is basically irreversible, not to mention the people that could die or have their lives changed which has a very real impact
    • bayesian_horse 5y ago
      Nuclear power is just not that scaleable when you think through the implications. To stop climate change, you'd need a huge multiplication of nuclear industry. You'd need plants everywhere. All major cities in the industrialized world. And in developing countries. All of them, including those you wouldn't trust to officiate a child's birthday party without corruption and mismanagement. All of that assumes none of those countries start using their new nuclear industry to get nuclear weapons. The world is unsafe as it is with some rogue/rogue-ish states having them. And dirty bombs are even easier, especially with all the nuclear waste being produced and stored... somewhere.
• ximm 5y ago
  > Green is good, but it’s also more focused on the environment than on geopolitics. Maybe it’s biased more towards the environment than it should be in a geopolitical crisis? I think the author has this backwards. Climate change will cause more and more crises. Those will distract us from fighting climate change and therefore accelerate it further. Keeping a cool head and not forgetting about the environment during war is exactly what I expect from a serious politician. It is not about prioritizing one over the other, it is about seeing them in context.
• hawos 5y ago
• satellite2 5y ago
  The author first show that gas is mostly used for heating and then claim it can be substituted by turning the centrals back on this year. He skips over the fact that everyone would have to replace their heating infrastructure. He also skips over the fact that heating with electricity is much more expensive than with fossil fuels. Even at a war inflated price.
  • jpfr 5y ago
    No. With heat pumps electricity is way cheaper for heating. Only on nights with temperatures below -5 Celsius gas is cheaper. The problem is that most vendors are sold out.
    • 12baad4db82 5y ago
      I think is true for single detached housing, is it also true for larger apartment complexes? I bring this up because in Germany I believe most of the population does not live in detached housing or semi-detached housing. With larger apartment complexes it may be economically feasible to pursue geothermal heat. In this case a more efficient solution could be a heating arrangement using hydronic heating combining geothermal heat, waste heat, topped off with an efficient large-scale boiler (the apartments need hot water anyway), and then pumped into radiators or underfloor heating. And naturally the most efficient solution of all could be district heating.
      • Xylakant 5y ago
        Our apartment complex uses a gas micro power plant to produce electricity and uses the waste heat for heating/warm water. It’s a building of its own on a compound with 20 or so apartment buildings. Replacing that with a heat pump will require some very serious planning efforts - apart from the requirement that like 1000 individual parties in 20 home owner associations would approve the change. Not going to happen this year.
• panick21_ 5y ago
  Its simple, the German population has a very strong anti nuclear bend going back to the Cold War. That is why no politics have the will to oppose this total idiocy. They rather burn more coal and gas while pretending that renewables will do it all.
• lifeplusplus 5y ago
  I used to play strategy game and I loved it when players made powerplants next to important infrastructure. Even better when nuclear plants.
• captainmuon 5y ago
  The Germany voters made the concious decision of trading a small amount of abstract wealth (economic growth) for more nuclear safety. I find it strange that the strongest proponents of capitalism and parlamentarism have most trouble understanding this. We can choose with our wallets and our votes to produce less nuclear power, and we will not get brownouts, but the market will "swallow it up" and companies will just produce less energy intensive stuff, and more other stuff. Also, the biggest problem is not random nuclear meltdowns. The problems are: Nuclear is very centralized, which is something we are trying to get away from. It has not been profitable without subsidies for a long time. It produces nuclear waste, which we still don't know what to do with. And as you can see with the recent events around Chernobyl, it is a liabilty in times of crisis. It is just not worth it.
• varispeed 5y ago
  Why don't they call things for what they are - corruption? It's been known for years that Gazprom and Russian financed eco organisations to ensure Germany is not energy independent. It's shows how weak Germany is in terms of their internal security forces.
• mreiner 5y ago
  Starting an article with an emotional war picture makes me sceptical of the authors intentions. IMHO he shrugs of the main issues without discussing in on the technical level you would expect for the risks involved here. He basically argues politics should trump engineering realities to cut corners. While this is usually fine in a startup environment, it's a bad idea for environments like space, healthcare, aviation or nuclear. We all know how it worked out for Boeing recently. I would really like to see the numbers if you remove some of the heavy industry we don't need to keep running in Europe. This load removed, how much of the remaining base load throughout the hole year is really provided by gas, as this is the true load that could possibly be replaced by nuclear, from 2023 onwards if I may believe other comments. I'm curious, but I find it hard to believe this would do anything for our friends in Ukraine NOW, so if this is our concern we should probably talk about other levers instead of recycling the nuclear debate.
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  There's a simple reason Germany is moving away from nuclear and it has nothing to do with safety: cost. It's stupidly expensive to build new plants. It's, by far, the most expensive option in the market. Building new nuclear plants makes no sense from a cost perspective. So, combined with its unpopularity for environmental reasons (nuclear waste basically), which is a deeply ingrained in Germany, shutting down the handful of remaining nuclear plants was a foregone conclusion. It was a popular and uncontroversial decision and a likely concession by conservative parties so they could keep their brown coal plants open a bit longer. Which is something the new government looks to be fixing anyway. I live in Berlin. Unpopular decisions cause people to protest. They protest for/against just about anything you can name. Germans love protesting. Berliners doubly so. It's a good way to gauge how they feel about things. As far as I can recall, nobody took to the streets to prevent a nuclear shutdown. That did not happen. Protests against coal and for the environment on the other hand are very frequent. And lately there have been a lot of anti-vaxers out with the inevitable counter protests happening as well. And of course the Ukraine brings out the crowds. Nuclear, not so much. The only nuclear related protests would have been against it. There are a few people in the press arguing it. Politically, it's been a dead topic. Politicians don't like to associate themselves with unpopular topics and they distanced themselves from nuclear years ago. There are exceptions of course but by and large even conservative parties stopped pushing that agenda. They could have delayed shutting down plants of course. But they've added more renewable capacity in the last few years than they ever had nuclear capacity. And of course they just doubled down on investing in more renewable energy until 2030. There's 200 billion allocated for that. Compared to that the remaining 8GW of nuclear simply does not matter. Contrary to the popular belief, gas based generation barely grew in Germany after the nuclear shut down started happening more than a decade ago. Neither did coal. Coal has actually been declining; except for lignite/brown coal. Fraunhofer has some numbers for 2021: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2022/public-net-electricity-in-germany-in-2021-renewables-weaker-due-to-weather.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2022/publi... Wind production was actually down due to poor performance of wind turbines that year apparently (weather basically). The slack was mostly picked up by brown coal. An issue with wind is actually the lack of cable capacity in Germany. A lot of coal production in the south is needed because they lack the ability to import cheaper wind from the north. A lot of the times when the wind mills are not spinning, they are not broken but deliberately turned off. Over capacity is a problem if you can't move power to where it is needed. Another issue is that rooftop solar is hard to measure in these statistics. That's very popular in Germany and domestic setups of course feed into the local grid. However, how do you account for that? One thing is certain, rooftop solar continues to be very popular and is growing rapidly. Same for batteries. Both effectively remove demand from the grid. Hard to measure but it must be having some effect. The bit of solar showing up in these statistics would be solar plants; not rooftop solar. A likely outcome of the Ukrainian conflict is an accelerated move away from gas based heating and power generation. You can see some early signs that governments are starting to think about that. Regardless of whether the Russians go back to something resembling peace, I think many countries have gotten the message that they simply can't be depended on loud and clear. At cop26 last year, countries were talking about 2040-2060 time frames for going carbon neutral. Gas was a big part of those plans. I think Russia single-handedly accelerated the ambition level by about 10-15 years in the last month. Until a few months ago, the German plan basically was to switch from coal (also exported by Russia) to (Russian) gas by 2030. The remaining nuclear (2 or 3 plants) capacity is not enough to matter here. Restarting already decommissioned plants is unlikely to happen and probably would require a sizable investment as well in addition to probably being not popular. Besides, it would not be enough. But you could argue that keeping the few remaining plants going for a few years is not going to hurt anyone in the grander scheme of things. Either way, the Germans need a plan and nuclear is extremely unlikely to be any part of that plan. Building new gas plants is now a lot less likely. The only real alternative is more renewables. Hence the announced 200 billion budget for that.
• dsq 5y ago
  With no nuclear weapons program there is not enough national impetus to maintain a reactor program, especially in face of determined Green opposition. I think only Japan has a large civilian nuclear capability without dual use.
• nforgerit 5y ago
  Sorry to say, but this article is crafted weakly and doesn't even deserve to be discussed this much. It was written with a theory in mind ("Irrational German Angst of Nuclear") and only points out things in favor of this theory, sprinkled with some nice diagrams here and there and, to make it appear scientific, a list of footnotes and citations. It's clearly missing out describing the components of the German Energiemix and the areas of usage for gas (i.e. NOT just for electrical power as nuclear is but VERY important as a commodity to the German chemical industry and for heating in civilian housing which cannot be quickly replaced by sth else). Even worse, it is parroting stereotypes about the Greens party the German conservatives have been busy spinning for decades for political reasons. I'd really like to have a good conversation about this topic but this just reads like a cheap trolling attempt.