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The heart of the issue in Germany right now is that the conservatives (coal) and the social democrats (gas) had sabotaged the switch to renewable energies durin

The heart of the issue in Germany right now is that the conservatives (coal) and the social democrats (gas) had sabotaged the switch to renewable energies during the last decade – which was otherwise well on it's way. This entire discussion about nuclear is just a propaganda trick by the fossil fuel industry, which knows that nuclear can't be build in time. So people will rely on fossil fuels longer because they wait for nuclear while renewables and storage are presented as unattractive. Just like Elon did with his hyperloop adventure to sabotage high speed rail.

AlmostAnyone 4y ago
Oh please. There's no "time" until when nuclear must be built or something fails. And it's slow only because of the anti-nuclear sentiment. It's very much possible to build it quickly - just look across the border.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Look where? Even China takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant.
  - AlmostAnyone 4y ago
    ... And that's supposed to be bad? Even a solar project takes 10 years in Germany.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      China can do a solar EV project in 3 months. So if it takes China 40X times as long to do nuclear than solar, how long would nuclear take in Germany if solar takes 10 years?
      - AlmostAnyone 4y ago
        Fortunately it's all about the red tape, not actual construction time. Reduce it and you can build nuclear quickly.
        bryanlarsen 4y ago
        Or you can reduce the red tape and build solar in 3 months or wind in 6 months. 10 years is not quick.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        AlmostAnyone 4y ago
        Solar/wind combined can never replace fossil fuels used by industry/for heating/as vehicle fuel. By several orders of magnitude. So we need both.
        bryanlarsen 4y ago
        Renewables supply approximately 25% of Europe's energy. Are you telling me it's impossible to quadruple the amount of renewable power generation in Europe? If Europe switches to heat pumps & EV's etc it'll need to double again. Still less than a single order of magnitude increase.
        AlmostAnyone 4y ago
        25% of electricity, definitely not 25% of all energy including heating and ground transportation, much less if you also include plane and ship traffic. We'd need to build 800 more average nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels in EU. That's like millions of average solar parks. Impossible.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>the conservatives (coal) and the social democrats (gas) had sabotaged the switch to renewable energies during the last decade – which was otherwise well on it's way. Why did they do that?
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  When many of your leaders on the boards of gas companies, Koch funded organizations, banks with massive fossil fuel investments, and are 'close personal friends' of Putin why would they not? 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... (he declined after the massive backlash, but is still on the board) https://www.thelocal.de/20221013/merkel-says-no-regrets-over-germanys-russia-gas-deals/ https://www.thelocal.de/20221013/merkel-says-no-regrets-over... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Merz#Other_activities_(selection) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Merz#Other_activit...
tormeh 4y ago
I think whether we should build new nuclear plants is a question that can be discussed between reasonable people. On the other hand, shutting down nuclear plants while there are still fossil fuel plants in operation seems ill-advised to me.
- dathinab 4y ago
  Note that most nuclear power plants are so old that they _need_ to be shut down or they will become a risk. After Fukushima the shutdown of some of them was pulled up by a small amount of years, undoing that decision does make sense and should be done (and somewhat had been done in a roundabout way where the one side can pretend they didn't do it and the other side can complain they didn't do it but should it matter its basically as if the did it). The problem is that they use the situation as an excuse to push other things which are neither necessary nor sane.
- cauch 4y ago
  The situation is of course more complicated than that. The grid is like a big Tetris board, and nuclear power plants are big multi-prong pieces: they can be good to cover a large surface, but sometimes, they block situations were a better configuration (which is at the end cleaner) is possible. For example, the evolution of the grid may make a specific nuclear power plant not totally needed (because this region can now get cheap import, because the heavy industries in this area have changed, ...) while still expensive to maintain. In this case, shutting it down is a good idea. Another example, if you say "yeah, maybe we will built a nuclear power plant there, maybe, who knows", the risk of investing in a renewable power plant that would replace a dirty power plant may be not attractive to investors, and the dirty power plant will continue for years. But if you say you will exit the nuclear, then the renewable power plant is suddenly very attractive and the dirty power plant can, at the end of the process, be replaced. Another example, the grid needs a balance between production and demand, but demand is not flat during the day, there are peaks. Nuclear power plants, especially the not recent ones, may not efficiently produce non-flat production. In this case, the grid can evolve in a situation where too much "flat production" exists, and where a "flat production" power plant is the one that is not competitive anymore due to the maintenance costs. ...
- 4y ago
bpodgursky 4y ago
> This entire discussion about nuclear is just a propaganda trick by the fossil fuel industry, which knows that nuclear can't be build in time All you have to do is not turn them off, man. Or recommission the ones that were turned off a year ago. This isn't a conspiracy.
dathinab 4y ago
not sure why you are down voted it pretty much sumes the situation up Nuclear makes _financially_ no sense, only undoing the decision for a earlier shutdown done after fukushima makes sense. But building nuclear power plants takes at least decade a so it's not even an option to consider for short term handling of shortages in the next years and nuclear power was only ever cheap because of it being highly subvention. It also makes geo strategically no sense as it's a sigle point of failure and a rather catastrophic point of failure, too. Germany had a budding promising solar and wind industry which was basically killed of by politicians from CDU and SPD. Worse it's more then obvious that the politicians behind it have tight connections to the coal and gas industry to a point you could call it corrupt.
munk-a 4y ago
If every decade we say "Welp, we can't start building nuclear plants now because they won't be done for a decade" then it'll never happen. That long startup time has been the ongoing boogieman against nuclear since the 90's and it is certainly a real cost - but we can't stop-gap our way to a solution forever. Building out more coal power today while investing in nuclear is fine - it's not fine to just accept that if we can't do it in five years it's not worth doing.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Money is fungible. Money spent building nukes is money not spent build out renewables that produce much more power for the money, and start producing immediately. The amount spent on fossil fuels over the decade or two waiting for the nuke to come online would have bought that much renewable capacity, the which would have been displacing CO2 the whole time.
  - vagrantJin 4y ago
    Isn't a nuke a nuclear bomb? If that is the case why call a power plant a bomb?
    - pencilguin 4y ago
      Bombs are also nukes. And apparently US Navy reactor engineers are, too. No one is confused.
      - vagrantJin 4y ago
        Or just call it a nuclear power plant to avoid confusion?
        pencilguin 4y ago
        No one is confused. As I said.
- 4y ago

AlmostAnyone 4y ago

Oh please. There's no "time" until when nuclear must be built or something fails. And it's slow only because of the anti-nuclear sentiment. It's very much possible to build it quickly - just look across the border.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Look where? Even China takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant.
- AlmostAnyone 4y ago
  ... And that's supposed to be bad? Even a solar project takes 10 years in Germany.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    China can do a solar EV project in 3 months. So if it takes China 40X times as long to do nuclear than solar, how long would nuclear take in Germany if solar takes 10 years?
    - AlmostAnyone 4y ago
      Fortunately it's all about the red tape, not actual construction time. Reduce it and you can build nuclear quickly.
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        Or you can reduce the red tape and build solar in 3 months or wind in 6 months. 10 years is not quick.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        AlmostAnyone 4y ago
        Solar/wind combined can never replace fossil fuels used by industry/for heating/as vehicle fuel. By several orders of magnitude. So we need both.
        bryanlarsen 4y ago
        Renewables supply approximately 25% of Europe's energy. Are you telling me it's impossible to quadruple the amount of renewable power generation in Europe? If Europe switches to heat pumps & EV's etc it'll need to double again. Still less than a single order of magnitude increase.
        AlmostAnyone 4y ago
        25% of electricity, definitely not 25% of all energy including heating and ground transportation, much less if you also include plane and ship traffic. We'd need to build 800 more average nuclear power plants to replace fossil fuels in EU. That's like millions of average solar parks. Impossible.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>the conservatives (coal) and the social democrats (gas) had sabotaged the switch to renewable energies during the last decade – which was otherwise well on it's way. Why did they do that?

Schroedingersat 4y ago
When many of your leaders on the boards of gas companies, Koch funded organizations, banks with massive fossil fuel investments, and are 'close personal friends' of Putin why would they not? 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... (he declined after the massive backlash, but is still on the board) https://www.thelocal.de/20221013/merkel-says-no-regrets-over-germanys-russia-gas-deals/ https://www.thelocal.de/20221013/merkel-says-no-regrets-over... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Merz#Other_activities_(selection) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Merz#Other_activit...

tormeh 4y ago

I think whether we should build new nuclear plants is a question that can be discussed between reasonable people. On the other hand, shutting down nuclear plants while there are still fossil fuel plants in operation seems ill-advised to me.

dathinab 4y ago
Note that most nuclear power plants are so old that they _need_ to be shut down or they will become a risk. After Fukushima the shutdown of some of them was pulled up by a small amount of years, undoing that decision does make sense and should be done (and somewhat had been done in a roundabout way where the one side can pretend they didn't do it and the other side can complain they didn't do it but should it matter its basically as if the did it). The problem is that they use the situation as an excuse to push other things which are neither necessary nor sane.
cauch 4y ago
The situation is of course more complicated than that. The grid is like a big Tetris board, and nuclear power plants are big multi-prong pieces: they can be good to cover a large surface, but sometimes, they block situations were a better configuration (which is at the end cleaner) is possible. For example, the evolution of the grid may make a specific nuclear power plant not totally needed (because this region can now get cheap import, because the heavy industries in this area have changed, ...) while still expensive to maintain. In this case, shutting it down is a good idea. Another example, if you say "yeah, maybe we will built a nuclear power plant there, maybe, who knows", the risk of investing in a renewable power plant that would replace a dirty power plant may be not attractive to investors, and the dirty power plant will continue for years. But if you say you will exit the nuclear, then the renewable power plant is suddenly very attractive and the dirty power plant can, at the end of the process, be replaced. Another example, the grid needs a balance between production and demand, but demand is not flat during the day, there are peaks. Nuclear power plants, especially the not recent ones, may not efficiently produce non-flat production. In this case, the grid can evolve in a situation where too much "flat production" exists, and where a "flat production" power plant is the one that is not competitive anymore due to the maintenance costs. ...
4y ago

bpodgursky 4y ago

> This entire discussion about nuclear is just a propaganda trick by the fossil fuel industry, which knows that nuclear can't be build in time All you have to do is not turn them off, man. Or recommission the ones that were turned off a year ago. This isn't a conspiracy.

dathinab 4y ago

not sure why you are down voted it pretty much sumes the situation up Nuclear makes _financially_ no sense, only undoing the decision for a earlier shutdown done after fukushima makes sense. But building nuclear power plants takes at least decade a so it's not even an option to consider for short term handling of shortages in the next years and nuclear power was only ever cheap because of it being highly subvention. It also makes geo strategically no sense as it's a sigle point of failure and a rather catastrophic point of failure, too. Germany had a budding promising solar and wind industry which was basically killed of by politicians from CDU and SPD. Worse it's more then obvious that the politicians behind it have tight connections to the coal and gas industry to a point you could call it corrupt.

munk-a 4y ago

If every decade we say "Welp, we can't start building nuclear plants now because they won't be done for a decade" then it'll never happen. That long startup time has been the ongoing boogieman against nuclear since the 90's and it is certainly a real cost - but we can't stop-gap our way to a solution forever. Building out more coal power today while investing in nuclear is fine - it's not fine to just accept that if we can't do it in five years it's not worth doing.

pencilguin 4y ago
Money is fungible. Money spent building nukes is money not spent build out renewables that produce much more power for the money, and start producing immediately. The amount spent on fossil fuels over the decade or two waiting for the nuke to come online would have bought that much renewable capacity, the which would have been displacing CO2 the whole time.
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  Isn't a nuke a nuclear bomb? If that is the case why call a power plant a bomb?
  - pencilguin 4y ago
    Bombs are also nukes. And apparently US Navy reactor engineers are, too. No one is confused.
    - vagrantJin 4y ago
      Or just call it a nuclear power plant to avoid confusion?
      - pencilguin 4y ago
        No one is confused. As I said.
4y ago