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At least in Germany, they shut down the nuclear plants before the coal plants. When you shut down or decline to maintain, upgrade and expand nuclear, in favor o
by idlehand 4y ago
At least in Germany, they shut down the nuclear plants before the coal plants. When you shut down or decline to maintain, upgrade and expand nuclear, in favor of renewables which do not yet exist, fossil energy (coal, oil, or natural gas) tends to fill the gap.
Just look at Germany. Imagine how much better things would have been today if they'd shut down their fossil power plants before the nuclear plants.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoOr, how much better things could have been if they'd not only considered 2 options, but instead built more solar, and more wind, and more interconnections, and installed heat pumps, and had their car industry not pointlessly fought the inevitable EV transition for so long. Sorry, I forgot, you only want me to choose between nuclear and coal. Well, coal is definately worse than nuclear, so if everything else was equal I'd definately choose nuclear as the better option. But, since they intend to phase both of them out, and since the Greens got some power recently they've accelerated the coal phase out by nearly a decade, and they have a carbon tax and emmission controls which mean they won't actually run the coal plants as much as they otherwise would and it's mostly an insurance policy, I'm not really that fussed. I'm still annoyed that it took them so long to get on the EV bandwagon though, but they did a lot of good work with solar so I guess it evens out.