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Germany was in between a rock (dependency on energy imports) and a hard place (popular opposition to nuclear energy) and sadly is now going to get crushed betwe
by hunglee2 4y ago
Germany was in between a rock (dependency on energy imports) and a hard place (popular opposition to nuclear energy) and sadly is now going to get crushed between them. The consequences will be felt by the Germans, by Europe and in the end, everyone on the planet.
It takes min 10 years to get nuclear on grid (even if you had the industry to do it), so absent Russian gas it's either US LNG (of course much more expensive, and also foreign) or back to burning coal. It's going to have to be the latter, in order to keep the energy intensive manufacturing economy going.
More carbon in the air, and it probably won't work anyway as German manufacturing goods will be more expensive, less competitive compared to East Asia than they are today. Multi-decade decline on the cards for Europe's biggest economy - which will in turn find expression in the politics of democratic systems
- Archelaos 4y agoThe real problem was the extremly slow introduction of renewables due to the lobbying of Germany's coal and gas industry, which is more or less identical with its (former) nuclear industry. They feared the shift, because they were not prepared. Much of the world's nuclear sector is highly dependent on Russia and Russia-dependent states, both for uranium and technology. This was the reason why the USA at first shied away from sanctions against the Russian nuclear industry after the invasion of Ukraine. For more information see the article: "The Rosatom Exemption: How Russia's State-Run Nuclear Giant Has Escaped Sanctions" (Radio Free Europe) at: https://www.rferl.org/a/rosatom-russia-nuclear-giant-escapes-sanctions/31899192.html https://www.rferl.org/a/rosatom-russia-nuclear-giant-escapes...
- hunglee2 4y agovery interesting. I knew about the global dependency on Russian uranium. Good share on the link, will check out