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German rejection of nuclear might go down as one of the most self destructive non war related choice by any government. Even if you are gone say not to build a

German rejection of nuclear might go down as one of the most self destructive non war related choice by any government. Even if you are gone say not to build anything new, just maintaining what they had would have resulted in significantly more energy then all energy they are getting from LNG now.

philliphaydon 4y ago
It still makes me laugh that trump called them out and they called him an idiot and now it’s one of the few things he got right.
- readams 4y ago
  Trump would often get things right but for the wrong reasons. I call this the "Donald Trump stopped clock principle"
  - bionade24 4y ago
    Sadly, many people don't understand that. Either because the refuse everything said & done by him or because they don't see the actual motivation he had to act in that way. Applies to many other entities, too.
  - bluetangflan 4y ago
    What was the “wrong reason” he got it right here for? The reasoning is dead-simple obvious - becoming reliant on a nation-state which does not share your values and shared-future is a foolish idea. Further even, “the haters” for lack of a better term - spent his term calling him a Putin-Puppet so why would he be suggesting folks decouple from Russia? The only thing coming to mind on that note would be a they-do-the-opposite level 33rd Dimension Chess move a la the Obama-Republican skit from Key & Peele. Uncharitably, this just reads like cope. A grade school inability to admit your rival has the ability to be intelligent and correct with their own legitimate belief system. Again, like the K&P skit.
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    You assume Trump is special here in comparison to other politicians? Why?
- Pigalowda 4y ago
  Russians and Prussians doing something together for their own benefit and to the detriment of Europe? I’m shook my good sir! Shooken right up.
- LightG 4y ago
  Why does it make you laugh?
  - nceqs3 4y ago
    Because the German's laughed at him at the UN general assembly when he called this out.
    - LightG 4y ago
      I think you'll find that the Germans weren't laughing at Trumps criticism of their energy policy, they were just laughing at Trump. Period. I can provide citation if needed.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Eh, we have to look at what rationale was behind a call, not just that they got the result right. And in Trump's case, I doubt there was much consideration of it beyond it being a good rhetorical jab in line with his general contrarian antics.
  - hcurtiss 4y ago
    Why would you say that? His speech specifically referenced energy security and Russia’s increasing ability to blackmail Europe.
    - tsbinz 4y ago
      His speech also came after Europe already realized that in 2014 when the Crimea was annexed [0], and countries didn't want to go too hard with sanctions cause of the dependency. The obvious motive for the speech was a desire to sell US gas to Europe. [0] For example see a policy brief from the european parliament in 2014: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2014/536413/EXPO_STU(2014)536413_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2014/5364...
      - hcurtiss 4y ago
        Yet Germany insisted on proceeding with Nordstream 2 anyway. And the US has now spent a hundred billion pushing back an emboldened Russia.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    And given the total portion of German energy needs that came from Nuclear it wasn't even right, just less wrong.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  Who called Trump an idiot for his criticism of German energy policy? He's not even the first US president to criticize German reliance on Russian gas--both Obama and Bush before him were critics of it. And there's been a lot of criticism even within Europe about the policy. By the time you get to Nord Stream 2, basically even not named Germany or Russia was screaming at the top of their lungs "this is a bad idea" (and Poland, not the US, being the loudest of all). I will grant you that Trump did get this right... but it was by no means a policy that he was an architect of, and the degree to which he was invested in this policy was questionable (US sanctions were driven largely by Congress, not the president).
  - oaiey 4y ago
    The problem was also, that everyone had secondary motives in that conversation. Poland and Ukraine earned money by passing gas through from Russia, the US and UK sell LNG and oil and would benefit from it. And do not forget, Germany is historically twice in the situation to keep the balance between east and west. Once after WWII and once in 1990 after the reunification. pumping money into Russia was also part of a global appeasement politics. That geopolitical game is well understood. As a German, that is what I remember of that screaming. And now, some months in, we still have no clear statement who blew up the pipelines. This whole pipeline game is far more complex than just "bad reliance of Germany from Russia"
  - Natsu 4y ago
    > Who called Trump an idiot for his criticism of German energy policy? You're right that this was a pretty easy call made by tons of people for a very long time before & after Trump. Also, GP is a little off, they didn't actually call him an 'idiot', they just smirked and said that they knew better: Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accused-germany-becoming-totally-dependent-russian-energy-un-germans-just-smirked/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accuse... > German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas could be seen smirking alongside his colleagues. ... > Trump’s attacks haven’t changed that calculus. After his July remarks, Merkel responded that she may be in a better position to judge her country’s dependence than the current U.S. president. > “I’ve experienced myself a part of Germany controlled by the Soviet Union, and I’m very happy today that we are united in freedom,” she said at the time.
this_user 4y ago
You clearly have no understanding of German energy consumption. Natgas is being used by the industry and for domestic heating. Nuclear power plants were used for electricity generation. Even if we had 100% in spare nuclear capacity above baseline consumption, we would still be building these LNG terminals. Absolutely nothing would have changed regarding the current gas and oil situation.
- _visgean 4y ago
  gas plants are used for short term electricity generation. If there is more demand than production can sustain the transmission operator will buy the extremely expensive electricity from gas sources. This price will be shared by everyone.. https://clouglobal.com/european-merit-order-energy-trading-obsolete/ https://clouglobal.com/european-merit-order-energy-trading-o...
  - foepys 4y ago
    France (which built out nuclear power like no other country) is a big importer of this electricity because their nuclear power plants are largely shut down due to urgent maintenance work. Paris is in the process of doing exercises to prepare for blackouts in the coming months.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Energy use in the form of Natural gas for heating and industrial use dwarfs all electrical energy consumption in Germany - something like 8-10x at least if you measure it in joules. It’s not an uncommon situation in northern climates. Natural gas has a LOT of thermal energy, is pretty cheap per BTU/joule, and thermal energy is very useful.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      > is pretty cheap per BTU/joule Was pretty cheap.
      - bionade24 4y ago
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Nope, there never was that much nuclear in Germany and most of that is gone now. Maintaining what is there was never going to matter a whole lot. And building new nuclear plants takes way too long for that to be relevant as well. The problem is now, not in a decade from now. Nuclear power is just not very useful when you need it in a hurry. And there are plenty of cheaper alternatives if you have a few decades to spare. All of which are being considered right now. The issue with gas in Germany is not generating electricity but using it for heating and industry. Nuclear cannot really help with that. There were a only a few GW of nuclear left at the beginning of the year. I believe some of that is being kept online a bit longer. Or they are considering to. But it's just a few GW. All little bits help of course but accelerating the tens of GW of wind coming online in the next few years is much more productive to obsess about keeping the few GW of nuclear power. Not actually against that but it's just not enough to matter much at all.
- erentz 4y ago
  This is untrue. 20GW of nuclear shut down over the past 20 years. That is almost as much as the coal that is being burned at the moment. Coal and gas are currently providing 66% of demand (40GW). Wind+solar only 7%. If that 20GW of nuclear were still available it would replace half of the coal and gas currently burning at this very moment. You can follow along at electricity maps anytime you’re curious to see just how dirty and broken the German grid is in reality.
  - crote 4y ago
    Do you have a source for that? As far as I can tell, in 2020 over 50% of German electricity came from renewable sources. The market share of fossil fuel has also been rapidly dropping over the last few years.
    - erentz 4y ago
      As mentioned taken from a snapshot at the time of Electricity Maps, check it out: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
jamil7 4y ago
The ship has sailed on nuclear for Germany no matter where you stand on the topic and there’s not a lot of valuable discussion left to warrant trotting this point out at every opportunity.
- steeve 4y ago
  It was a bad decision nonetheless and it's always worth pointing imho.
  - tlamponi 4y ago
    That really isn't as objective fact though. Just check how good France, the nuclear power country in Europe, is doing and how much they have to import energy from e.g., Germany and also nuclear fissile material from Russia (rosatom). Nuclear power needs a massive amount of water and constant maintenance, iow., not really climate-change proof and once neglected - and most HN users will know that infrastructure might sooner or later get neglected if its running anyway ("why should I pay for you if everything works" mentality isn't only a thing in IT), and getting those plants then up and repaired again is a huge work and may reduce power production on some sites close to zero for months to years. So, no, it's not worth pointing something out that isn't as black as white as a lot of armchair energy experts would like it to make, especially done in such a gloating manner it rather seems just for fishing for upvotes or confirmation, but really adds nothing to the discussion.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
      France is in the same boat because of the same calls to bring down our nuclear fleet. Every government for the past 10 years has been anti-nuclear. Our current president told the industry to shut down 15 nuclear reactors like two years ago. So nuclear in France is a failure in the sense that it's made us the greenest country in Europe (along with hydro-rich Sweden) for the past 40 years, one of the largest exporters of energy, and that despite calls to bring it down we're basically in the same state as Germany right now except we don't produce 50% of our energy from coal and gas.
  - 4y ago
Barrin92 4y ago
>German rejection of nuclear This isn't really a German thing although Germany has some peculiar domestic reasons for its nuclear distaste that go back many decades. The nuclear energy industry collapsing is a secular trend globally with share of energy production steadily falling. The one country somewhat buckling that trend is China, but only due to heavy state intervention and even in China the industry is in slow decline. The biggest contributor to this is not politics but simply the extremely fast falling share price of renewables. ""Nuclear energy's share of global gross electricity generation continues its slow but steady decline from a peak of 17.5% in 1996 with a share of 10.1% in 2020," states the report. The comparatively cheap cost of renewables is at the heart of the problem. The WNISR confirms that new renewable electricity investment was above $300 billion (€256 billion) in 2020, which is 17 times higher than the reported global investment commitments to nuclear power." https://www.dw.com/en/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-climate-renewables/a-59338202 https://www.dw.com/en/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-c...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > This isn't really a German thing although Germany has some peculiar domestic reasons for its nuclear distaste that go back many decades. Believe me, I know. Having lived in Berlin the amount of anti-nuclear propaganda there is just mind blowing. > but only due to heavy state intervention And no state intervention was used in any of the other sectors of energy. Solar for example was just this totally market driving thing where no state intervention was needed. To talk about the energy market in Europe and Asia as 'heavy state intervention' is ridiculous, its simply totally driven by states. Its states that decide what they want to build, its states that lay out their long term strategy. > The biggest contributor to this is not politics but simply the extremely fast falling share price of renewables. Nuclear declined because governments decided they didn't want nuclear, solar and wind were successful because governments bet all out on solar and wind even before they made financial sense. They had good arguments like, yes its more expensive now but prices will come down once we produce more and it will make our grid green. And this was correct, but its just as correct for nuclear. Its not difficult to understand. Had Europe spend the last 20 years collectively embracing nuclear and deployed a few 100GW hours of nuclear building 100s of plants, investing 300 billion $ in it, with a well trained workforce for and the same few models over and over again it would also very also be very cheap. To act like this has anything to do with markets is silly. And this is without even mentioning all the 100s of nuclear research projects that were killed up, all the nuclear plants that were scheduled to build that were prevented by protestors. In France an insane Swiss politician from the Green party literally crossed the border to shot the nuclear reactor with an RPG. All the nuclear research and education that was removed from universities as well. There is no reason, non what so ever that we could be deploying 10 new GenIV nuclear reactors every year in Europe, had this been our policy for the last 20 years.
KarlKemp 4y ago
And yet it's France that is bracing for rolling blackouts this winter, and has been importing electricity from Germany all year.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  France had clean energy for 40 years but somehow nobody cares about that. In reality CO2 saved then is far more valuable then saved now. So people over and over bring up this one year where France has some maintenance problem but somehow 40 years of brown coal in Germany is just considers unimportant, not to mention the still extensive use of coal now in Germany. So how about instead of constantly shitting on France and Nuclear we look at the basic facts of what was actually good for humanity and what was a disaster. Also, most nuclear plants should be back by then, some already, they are 'bracing' themselves in case of emergency and because anti-nuclear people have hyped this issue to a frenzy on social media. And the French problems with nuclear now are 95% related to the last 20 years of anti-nuclear politics and specially the outright attack on nuclear by the Holland government where critical maintenance was ignored because they lived in a fantasy world where renwables were just gone do everything. This has been well documented. Even before that France just stopped building new plants and started to use more and more LNG because of the opposition to nuclear and now they are eating the fruits of that. Not to mention canceling amazing projects like the Superphénix reactor. France is still living of the glory days of nuclear from the 70/80s. Its ridiculous, 20 years of sensible energy policy with 1960s tech is all that is required and yet most governments can't figure it out.
KarlKemp 4y ago
Chart: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2021.png?itok=k2BK48jz https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Whatever the merits, the most salient point on the issue is that nuclear power, by and large, doesn't matter. It's below 5 % of total now and was at about 15 % at its highest.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  20GW of nuclear instead of 20GW of coal actually matters quite a lot. Also capacity is a dumb thing to look at. There can be week long streches where solar has like 5% utilization. Of course Germany could have done what France did, there the graph looks quite different if you go back to the 1960 to now.
jonp888 4y ago
"The most destructive non war related choice by any government"(in the history of human civilization, presumably). I am genuinely baffled when I read such histrionic statements. Can you explain what has been destroyed? Nuclear was never a big part of power generation and the shutdown has been compensated by renewable. LNG is compensating for the shutdown of Russian pipelines. Prices for energy have gone up in Germany, but they are going up everywhere. There have been no power blackouts or bankruptcy of major industries. And I don't believe for minute that Russia somehow would not have invaded if Germany had more nuclear.
- thomascarney 4y ago
  Nuclear was 30% of the electricity generation back in 2000. The Nordstream projects were conceived to allow Russia to exert force on Eastern European countries without endangering supply of gas to Germany. Our energy policy has been incredibly short-sighted, focused on maximizing certain sector's economic interests at the expense of national security and EU security.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I mean more in the context of modern European infrastructure policy. Literally Germany made the choice to replace nuclear rather then coal. That was literally their choice. Do you know about all the bad effects of burning coal at large scale? > And I don't believe for minute that Russia somehow would not have invaded if Germany had more nuclear. That is not an argument I made.
arez 4y ago
and how does frances choice of going all in on nuclear but having higher electricity prices than germany go down? It really doesn't make much sense of speaking is superlatives, sure Germany did a mistake here with relying on russian gas and so did most of europe. Problem is, you have to rely on someone, is russia better than saudi-arabia? Irak? You have to rely on something and europe sees now the consequences
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I'm so fucking sick of this argument. Read my other comments where I already explain that. France had clean energy for 40 years so how are they doing, fantastic compared to all the coal the Germans have been breathing. They had a few maintenance issue because in the last 10 years anti-nuclear energy ministers deferred maintenance. Most of these issues however should be fixed before winter. We are seriously comparing one year of a few maintenance issue with 50 years of clean energy production. How can anybody be critical of that? > It really doesn't make much sense of speaking is superlatives I think 40 years of breathing incredibly dirty coal smoke is kind of big deal. > Problem is, you have to rely on someone You can source uranium from Australia or a number of other countries. Or mine it in Europe if you want to. You can actually have a number of suppliers, so there really isn't a problem. In fact, a really clever policy for Europe would have been to invest in nuclear for electricity. Then go a step further and invest in high-temperature reactors for the next generation and also use them to produce methanol and mix that into fuel supply and eventually mostly replacing it. This is likely no longer necessary because we are switching to electric cars now, but still, would have been a good policy back then. That was the logical next step for the DeGaul policy in France but they gave up on it and sadly by the time the EU happened France had largely turned its back on nuclear.
  - arez 4y ago
    france can probably fix their maintenance issues with their nuclear power plants, but I don't think they're able to fill the rivers with enough cool water to keep running their plants and that's not the only problem. We didn't even start talking about nuclear waste. Germany tried to find a good place for that for decades without luck and most containers start to leak after a couple of years already.
RandomLensman 4y ago
Why single out nuclear? You could also say that banning fracking in Germany was a bad decision - could have provided a lot of gas now.
- eloff 4y ago
  Why don't we say shutting down nuclear, banning fracking, and increasing reliance on Russian gas were all terrible decisions in hindsight.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Because banning use of CO2 intensive things is good and banning clean energy is bad. Simple put with the right policy, the German 'Grünewende' could be mostly done by now and very little LNG would be required.
rob74 4y ago
Well yes, Germany maintained the reactors they had until they reached the end of their useful lifetime (the three reactors that are still in use have been built in the late 1980s, so are currently a bit more than 30 years old), and now they're shutting them down. It's not like you can use a nuclear power plant considerably past its designed lifespan, so even with an extension, we would be talking about a few years max.
- Raydovsky 4y ago
  A 30 year old reactor is hardly an old one. You can use them for 50-70 years
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > Well yes, Germany maintained the reactors they had until they reached the end of their useful lifetime Except that is simply a lie that anti-nuclear people spread. Nuclear plants can reach 80 or 100 years and we honestly don't even know the max lifespan. Almost the German plants could have continued to run. 30 year is nothing for a nuclear plant. Yes, it requires maintenance and partial replacement of subsystems, but that's just the reality. We are talking about replacing fucking coal, I just don't understand why people don't care about that.
jagermo 4y ago
Sorry, I don't agree. Nuclear is not the magic solution. Look at France. A big part of Germanys problems are the nuclear power plants there - they simply don't work and France needs to import terawatts of power. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-europes-largest-net-power-exporter-2022-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-e... In fact: "Germany was the second largest net exporter at 15.4 TWh, double the levels recorded halfway through 2021, as power generation in the country responded to the import demand from France, the data showed." And no, building new powerplants is not the solution. None of these plants were constructed on time or within the budget. They need room, they need to be connected, they need trained workers, they need massive oversight (because the owners will do just enough around security to fulfill the letters of the law, never the spirit of the law). Nuclear reactors are also not fit for the coming climate change, especially not the ones now being turned off. Almost all of them needed to be shut down in the last summers, because the water intake from rivers was either to warm or there was simply not enough water available. In addition, nuclear is only viable, because it gets supported by tax money. Nobody will ensure these things against accidents, the companies are not responsible for transport/storage of the waste and get price guarantees. ' And despite all of that, the price for nuclear power rises - while the prices for all others forms of energy drop. From a market standpoint, it makes no sense to invest billions (face it, it will be billions, even if companies responsible tell you it will "only be millions") into a technology that is more expensive than others, harder to control, and not flexible enough. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...) Investing these billions into decentralization of the power grid and renewable energies (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Storage capacities) will yield a way better return with less complications and more stability. But, what I will agree with you is that exit plan for nuclear by Merkel and her CDU/CSU was shitty done. They did not have a strategy and, in parallel, they destroyed the German solar industry (which could have been a powerhouse now but was basically sold do China by the CDU). And yes, it would have made more sense to first bring down coal and then nuclear. Or that the grid needed to be meshed more to support distributed energy generation. But nuclear was never a (good) option in a country so densely populated.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > Look at France. You mean the nation that in 15 years decaronized most of the grid? Yeah how horrible to have 40 years of clean power. The reason France has problems and has to import, is because since the early 1990s France has stopped building new nuclear reactors. Even worse, since then leftist governments, specially after 2014 when they basically wanted to copy Germany and get ride of all nuclear. They essentially stopped with vital maintenance. Unfortunately, they built so many plants in the same period, and those are getting in to their mid years and need maintenance. Because they have largely stopped building new plants, some of the knowlage is now lacking. Overall, the issue in France is not enough nuclear, not nuclear itself. France even had really awesome advanced nuclear projects, that were all killed off often by Green/Left governments. Don't you think its kind of funny to point at the only large industrial nation with a green grid and say 'look at the issues those people have'. If I was German I wish we had those kinds of problems. > And no, building new powerplants is not the solution. None of these plants were constructed on time or within the budget. They need room, they need to be connected, they need trained workers, they need massive oversight (because the owners will do just enough around security to fulfill the letters of the law, never the spirit of the law). Actually new plants is the solution. Yes, they need time, that's why building shouldn't have been stopped. Nuclear plants don't need that much room, and there are already train lines most places, adding a branch line isn't that hard. Yes, training workers for those jobs is actually good. Energy is mostly government driven anyway, and so it is in France. > Nuclear reactors are also not fit for the coming climate change, especially not the ones now being turned off. Almost all of them needed to be shut down in the last summers, because the water intake from rivers was either to warm or there was simply not enough water available. Saying all of them need to shut down because of water is just wrong. Most nuclear reactors continued to operate in most places in Europe. The hardest energy problems are in winter, all you need to make sure is that you build new plants in places where you can cool them even under worst case assumptions for future climate and it will be fine. > In addition, nuclear is only viable, because it gets supported by tax money. Nobody will ensure these things against accidents, the companies are not responsible for transport/storage of the waste and get price guarantees. ' In the European context saying only because tax money is nonsense. The 'markets' are so strongly regulated and often lots of it is state owned. Wind and Solar were only made viable by tax money. Massive government projects to push these drove the economics of scale. The same could have been done for nuclear for the same price. Had Europe built 100 new nuclear reactors in the last 30 years, the economics of nuclear would be way better. Had Europe not invested massively in wind and solar, the economics there wouldn't be as good. Even going back to 1970, Jimmy Carter killed nuclear project and focused research on solar. And many of the same trends were happening in Europe. If you prioritize one group of technologies and demonize another you can't then act supersized decades later with the results you get. And even those project just use the grid as balance, if base load and intermittency were correctly priced, a lot of those economics aren't as good. But governments didn't want to do that, because they wanted more solar/wind even at the cost of later dealing with intermittency. > And despite all of that, the price for nuclear power rises - while the prices for all others forms of energy drop. From a market standpoint, it makes no sense to invest billions (face it, it will be billions, even if companies responsible tell you it will "only be millions") into a technology that is more expensive than others, harder to control, and not flexible enough. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...) Investing these billions into decentralization of the power grid and renewable energies (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Storage capacities) will yield a way better return with less complications and more stability. The economics are not nearly as clear as you make it out to be. If you build large nuclear project with many of the same reactors multiple times it look pretty good. It also requires far less investment in terms of updating the grid, because usually you can just locate reactors where coal plants were before. Nuclear build cost are dominated by learning cost, if you build many then they get massively cheaper and you can built them far faster. Look at France in the 70/80s as a good example. You also solve the intermittency issue because nuclear don't have that. So had we just invested in nuclear, rather then wind and solar, we wouldn't have to do all those investments into intermittency mitigation a problem that still remains unsolved. Even worse, because intermittency was not price correctly, the base load had to suffer and that made their economics worse. Often nuclear also didn't receive the same subsidies as solar and wind. There are many examples of that. And this is before we even talk about GenIV reactors. Because all research and development was stopped and often made borderline impossible, we have not progressed. Newer reactor designs have massive amount of potential to be cheaper. They can also solve problem such as heat production for industrial heat. But over the last 30 years there was comically little investment in that. So what you see as 'economics' and 'market' I see as governments 30 years ago deciding that solar/wind were the future and simply going with it. Had the EU fixed on a single reactor design, even Gen3 design, and had said we will de-carbonize by nuclear it would have been far cheaper and we would be further along by now. In fact, such a standard nuclear plant would have been an amazing thing to export to other nations as well. And then have a GenIV reactor in the pipeline after that. Nuclear isn't the future because 'we' didn't want it to be the future. But it could have been, and it would have been far better future then what we have now. P.S: Let me give you an example. France had the GenIV Superphénix. They had finally worked out all the issues (including somebody shooting an RPG at it) and could have started to seriously think about building then in larger numbers but by that point they had little interest in building new reactors and the left/green govenrment wanted to kill as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix Had France simply started building 5-10 of a next generation of these in the 2000s they would now be a net energy exporter with reactor that had super low fuel cost (because of breeder) and the per plant cost would likely be a fraction of the PWR designs they are currently planning. You can see how small this reactor is compared to PWRs. So the overall cost when in production at scale would be amazing.

philliphaydon 4y ago

It still makes me laugh that trump called them out and they called him an idiot and now it’s one of the few things he got right.

readams 4y ago
Trump would often get things right but for the wrong reasons. I call this the "Donald Trump stopped clock principle"
- bionade24 4y ago
  Sadly, many people don't understand that. Either because the refuse everything said & done by him or because they don't see the actual motivation he had to act in that way. Applies to many other entities, too.
- bluetangflan 4y ago
  What was the “wrong reason” he got it right here for? The reasoning is dead-simple obvious - becoming reliant on a nation-state which does not share your values and shared-future is a foolish idea. Further even, “the haters” for lack of a better term - spent his term calling him a Putin-Puppet so why would he be suggesting folks decouple from Russia? The only thing coming to mind on that note would be a they-do-the-opposite level 33rd Dimension Chess move a la the Obama-Republican skit from Key & Peele. Uncharitably, this just reads like cope. A grade school inability to admit your rival has the ability to be intelligent and correct with their own legitimate belief system. Again, like the K&P skit.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  You assume Trump is special here in comparison to other politicians? Why?
Pigalowda 4y ago
Russians and Prussians doing something together for their own benefit and to the detriment of Europe? I’m shook my good sir! Shooken right up.
LightG 4y ago
Why does it make you laugh?
- nceqs3 4y ago
  Because the German's laughed at him at the UN general assembly when he called this out.
  - LightG 4y ago
    I think you'll find that the Germans weren't laughing at Trumps criticism of their energy policy, they were just laughing at Trump. Period. I can provide citation if needed.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Eh, we have to look at what rationale was behind a call, not just that they got the result right. And in Trump's case, I doubt there was much consideration of it beyond it being a good rhetorical jab in line with his general contrarian antics.
- hcurtiss 4y ago
  Why would you say that? His speech specifically referenced energy security and Russia’s increasing ability to blackmail Europe.
  - tsbinz 4y ago
    His speech also came after Europe already realized that in 2014 when the Crimea was annexed [0], and countries didn't want to go too hard with sanctions cause of the dependency. The obvious motive for the speech was a desire to sell US gas to Europe. [0] For example see a policy brief from the european parliament in 2014: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2014/536413/EXPO_STU(2014)536413_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2014/5364...
    - hcurtiss 4y ago
      Yet Germany insisted on proceeding with Nordstream 2 anyway. And the US has now spent a hundred billion pushing back an emboldened Russia.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And given the total portion of German energy needs that came from Nuclear it wasn't even right, just less wrong.
jcranmer 4y ago
Who called Trump an idiot for his criticism of German energy policy? He's not even the first US president to criticize German reliance on Russian gas--both Obama and Bush before him were critics of it. And there's been a lot of criticism even within Europe about the policy. By the time you get to Nord Stream 2, basically even not named Germany or Russia was screaming at the top of their lungs "this is a bad idea" (and Poland, not the US, being the loudest of all). I will grant you that Trump did get this right... but it was by no means a policy that he was an architect of, and the degree to which he was invested in this policy was questionable (US sanctions were driven largely by Congress, not the president).
- oaiey 4y ago
  The problem was also, that everyone had secondary motives in that conversation. Poland and Ukraine earned money by passing gas through from Russia, the US and UK sell LNG and oil and would benefit from it. And do not forget, Germany is historically twice in the situation to keep the balance between east and west. Once after WWII and once in 1990 after the reunification. pumping money into Russia was also part of a global appeasement politics. That geopolitical game is well understood. As a German, that is what I remember of that screaming. And now, some months in, we still have no clear statement who blew up the pipelines. This whole pipeline game is far more complex than just "bad reliance of Germany from Russia"
- Natsu 4y ago
  > Who called Trump an idiot for his criticism of German energy policy? You're right that this was a pretty easy call made by tons of people for a very long time before & after Trump. Also, GP is a little off, they didn't actually call him an 'idiot', they just smirked and said that they knew better: Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accused-germany-becoming-totally-dependent-russian-energy-un-germans-just-smirked/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accuse... > German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas could be seen smirking alongside his colleagues. ... > Trump’s attacks haven’t changed that calculus. After his July remarks, Merkel responded that she may be in a better position to judge her country’s dependence than the current U.S. president. > “I’ve experienced myself a part of Germany controlled by the Soviet Union, and I’m very happy today that we are united in freedom,” she said at the time.

this_user 4y ago

You clearly have no understanding of German energy consumption. Natgas is being used by the industry and for domestic heating. Nuclear power plants were used for electricity generation. Even if we had 100% in spare nuclear capacity above baseline consumption, we would still be building these LNG terminals. Absolutely nothing would have changed regarding the current gas and oil situation.

_visgean 4y ago
gas plants are used for short term electricity generation. If there is more demand than production can sustain the transmission operator will buy the extremely expensive electricity from gas sources. This price will be shared by everyone.. https://clouglobal.com/european-merit-order-energy-trading-obsolete/ https://clouglobal.com/european-merit-order-energy-trading-o...
- foepys 4y ago
  France (which built out nuclear power like no other country) is a big importer of this electricity because their nuclear power plants are largely shut down due to urgent maintenance work. Paris is in the process of doing exercises to prepare for blackouts in the coming months.
- lazide 4y ago
  Energy use in the form of Natural gas for heating and industrial use dwarfs all electrical energy consumption in Germany - something like 8-10x at least if you measure it in joules. It’s not an uncommon situation in northern climates. Natural gas has a LOT of thermal energy, is pretty cheap per BTU/joule, and thermal energy is very useful.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > is pretty cheap per BTU/joule Was pretty cheap.
    - bionade24 4y ago

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Nope, there never was that much nuclear in Germany and most of that is gone now. Maintaining what is there was never going to matter a whole lot. And building new nuclear plants takes way too long for that to be relevant as well. The problem is now, not in a decade from now. Nuclear power is just not very useful when you need it in a hurry. And there are plenty of cheaper alternatives if you have a few decades to spare. All of which are being considered right now. The issue with gas in Germany is not generating electricity but using it for heating and industry. Nuclear cannot really help with that. There were a only a few GW of nuclear left at the beginning of the year. I believe some of that is being kept online a bit longer. Or they are considering to. But it's just a few GW. All little bits help of course but accelerating the tens of GW of wind coming online in the next few years is much more productive to obsess about keeping the few GW of nuclear power. Not actually against that but it's just not enough to matter much at all.

erentz 4y ago
This is untrue. 20GW of nuclear shut down over the past 20 years. That is almost as much as the coal that is being burned at the moment. Coal and gas are currently providing 66% of demand (40GW). Wind+solar only 7%. If that 20GW of nuclear were still available it would replace half of the coal and gas currently burning at this very moment. You can follow along at electricity maps anytime you’re curious to see just how dirty and broken the German grid is in reality.
- crote 4y ago
  Do you have a source for that? As far as I can tell, in 2020 over 50% of German electricity came from renewable sources. The market share of fossil fuel has also been rapidly dropping over the last few years.
  - erentz 4y ago
    As mentioned taken from a snapshot at the time of Electricity Maps, check it out: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

jamil7 4y ago

The ship has sailed on nuclear for Germany no matter where you stand on the topic and there’s not a lot of valuable discussion left to warrant trotting this point out at every opportunity.

steeve 4y ago
It was a bad decision nonetheless and it's always worth pointing imho.
- tlamponi 4y ago
  That really isn't as objective fact though. Just check how good France, the nuclear power country in Europe, is doing and how much they have to import energy from e.g., Germany and also nuclear fissile material from Russia (rosatom). Nuclear power needs a massive amount of water and constant maintenance, iow., not really climate-change proof and once neglected - and most HN users will know that infrastructure might sooner or later get neglected if its running anyway ("why should I pay for you if everything works" mentality isn't only a thing in IT), and getting those plants then up and repaired again is a huge work and may reduce power production on some sites close to zero for months to years. So, no, it's not worth pointing something out that isn't as black as white as a lot of armchair energy experts would like it to make, especially done in such a gloating manner it rather seems just for fishing for upvotes or confirmation, but really adds nothing to the discussion.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    France is in the same boat because of the same calls to bring down our nuclear fleet. Every government for the past 10 years has been anti-nuclear. Our current president told the industry to shut down 15 nuclear reactors like two years ago. So nuclear in France is a failure in the sense that it's made us the greenest country in Europe (along with hydro-rich Sweden) for the past 40 years, one of the largest exporters of energy, and that despite calls to bring it down we're basically in the same state as Germany right now except we don't produce 50% of our energy from coal and gas.
- 4y ago

Barrin92 4y ago

>German rejection of nuclear This isn't really a German thing although Germany has some peculiar domestic reasons for its nuclear distaste that go back many decades. The nuclear energy industry collapsing is a secular trend globally with share of energy production steadily falling. The one country somewhat buckling that trend is China, but only due to heavy state intervention and even in China the industry is in slow decline. The biggest contributor to this is not politics but simply the extremely fast falling share price of renewables. ""Nuclear energy's share of global gross electricity generation continues its slow but steady decline from a peak of 17.5% in 1996 with a share of 10.1% in 2020," states the report. The comparatively cheap cost of renewables is at the heart of the problem. The WNISR confirms that new renewable electricity investment was above $300 billion (€256 billion) in 2020, which is 17 times higher than the reported global investment commitments to nuclear power." https://www.dw.com/en/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-climate-renewables/a-59338202 https://www.dw.com/en/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-c...

panick21_ 4y ago
> This isn't really a German thing although Germany has some peculiar domestic reasons for its nuclear distaste that go back many decades. Believe me, I know. Having lived in Berlin the amount of anti-nuclear propaganda there is just mind blowing. > but only due to heavy state intervention And no state intervention was used in any of the other sectors of energy. Solar for example was just this totally market driving thing where no state intervention was needed. To talk about the energy market in Europe and Asia as 'heavy state intervention' is ridiculous, its simply totally driven by states. Its states that decide what they want to build, its states that lay out their long term strategy. > The biggest contributor to this is not politics but simply the extremely fast falling share price of renewables. Nuclear declined because governments decided they didn't want nuclear, solar and wind were successful because governments bet all out on solar and wind even before they made financial sense. They had good arguments like, yes its more expensive now but prices will come down once we produce more and it will make our grid green. And this was correct, but its just as correct for nuclear. Its not difficult to understand. Had Europe spend the last 20 years collectively embracing nuclear and deployed a few 100GW hours of nuclear building 100s of plants, investing 300 billion $ in it, with a well trained workforce for and the same few models over and over again it would also very also be very cheap. To act like this has anything to do with markets is silly. And this is without even mentioning all the 100s of nuclear research projects that were killed up, all the nuclear plants that were scheduled to build that were prevented by protestors. In France an insane Swiss politician from the Green party literally crossed the border to shot the nuclear reactor with an RPG. All the nuclear research and education that was removed from universities as well. There is no reason, non what so ever that we could be deploying 10 new GenIV nuclear reactors every year in Europe, had this been our policy for the last 20 years.

KarlKemp 4y ago

And yet it's France that is bracing for rolling blackouts this winter, and has been importing electricity from Germany all year.

panick21_ 4y ago
France had clean energy for 40 years but somehow nobody cares about that. In reality CO2 saved then is far more valuable then saved now. So people over and over bring up this one year where France has some maintenance problem but somehow 40 years of brown coal in Germany is just considers unimportant, not to mention the still extensive use of coal now in Germany. So how about instead of constantly shitting on France and Nuclear we look at the basic facts of what was actually good for humanity and what was a disaster. Also, most nuclear plants should be back by then, some already, they are 'bracing' themselves in case of emergency and because anti-nuclear people have hyped this issue to a frenzy on social media. And the French problems with nuclear now are 95% related to the last 20 years of anti-nuclear politics and specially the outright attack on nuclear by the Holland government where critical maintenance was ignored because they lived in a fantasy world where renwables were just gone do everything. This has been well documented. Even before that France just stopped building new plants and started to use more and more LNG because of the opposition to nuclear and now they are eating the fruits of that. Not to mention canceling amazing projects like the Superphénix reactor. France is still living of the glory days of nuclear from the 70/80s. Its ridiculous, 20 years of sensible energy policy with 1960s tech is all that is required and yet most governments can't figure it out.

KarlKemp 4y ago

Chart: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2021.png?itok=k2BK48jz https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Whatever the merits, the most salient point on the issue is that nuclear power, by and large, doesn't matter. It's below 5 % of total now and was at about 15 % at its highest.

panick21_ 4y ago
20GW of nuclear instead of 20GW of coal actually matters quite a lot. Also capacity is a dumb thing to look at. There can be week long streches where solar has like 5% utilization. Of course Germany could have done what France did, there the graph looks quite different if you go back to the 1960 to now.

jonp888 4y ago

"The most destructive non war related choice by any government"(in the history of human civilization, presumably). I am genuinely baffled when I read such histrionic statements. Can you explain what has been destroyed? Nuclear was never a big part of power generation and the shutdown has been compensated by renewable. LNG is compensating for the shutdown of Russian pipelines. Prices for energy have gone up in Germany, but they are going up everywhere. There have been no power blackouts or bankruptcy of major industries. And I don't believe for minute that Russia somehow would not have invaded if Germany had more nuclear.

thomascarney 4y ago
Nuclear was 30% of the electricity generation back in 2000. The Nordstream projects were conceived to allow Russia to exert force on Eastern European countries without endangering supply of gas to Germany. Our energy policy has been incredibly short-sighted, focused on maximizing certain sector's economic interests at the expense of national security and EU security.
panick21_ 4y ago
I mean more in the context of modern European infrastructure policy. Literally Germany made the choice to replace nuclear rather then coal. That was literally their choice. Do you know about all the bad effects of burning coal at large scale? > And I don't believe for minute that Russia somehow would not have invaded if Germany had more nuclear. That is not an argument I made.

arez 4y ago

and how does frances choice of going all in on nuclear but having higher electricity prices than germany go down? It really doesn't make much sense of speaking is superlatives, sure Germany did a mistake here with relying on russian gas and so did most of europe. Problem is, you have to rely on someone, is russia better than saudi-arabia? Irak? You have to rely on something and europe sees now the consequences

panick21_ 4y ago
I'm so fucking sick of this argument. Read my other comments where I already explain that. France had clean energy for 40 years so how are they doing, fantastic compared to all the coal the Germans have been breathing. They had a few maintenance issue because in the last 10 years anti-nuclear energy ministers deferred maintenance. Most of these issues however should be fixed before winter. We are seriously comparing one year of a few maintenance issue with 50 years of clean energy production. How can anybody be critical of that? > It really doesn't make much sense of speaking is superlatives I think 40 years of breathing incredibly dirty coal smoke is kind of big deal. > Problem is, you have to rely on someone You can source uranium from Australia or a number of other countries. Or mine it in Europe if you want to. You can actually have a number of suppliers, so there really isn't a problem. In fact, a really clever policy for Europe would have been to invest in nuclear for electricity. Then go a step further and invest in high-temperature reactors for the next generation and also use them to produce methanol and mix that into fuel supply and eventually mostly replacing it. This is likely no longer necessary because we are switching to electric cars now, but still, would have been a good policy back then. That was the logical next step for the DeGaul policy in France but they gave up on it and sadly by the time the EU happened France had largely turned its back on nuclear.
- arez 4y ago
  france can probably fix their maintenance issues with their nuclear power plants, but I don't think they're able to fill the rivers with enough cool water to keep running their plants and that's not the only problem. We didn't even start talking about nuclear waste. Germany tried to find a good place for that for decades without luck and most containers start to leak after a couple of years already.

RandomLensman 4y ago

Why single out nuclear? You could also say that banning fracking in Germany was a bad decision - could have provided a lot of gas now.

eloff 4y ago
Why don't we say shutting down nuclear, banning fracking, and increasing reliance on Russian gas were all terrible decisions in hindsight.
panick21_ 4y ago
Because banning use of CO2 intensive things is good and banning clean energy is bad. Simple put with the right policy, the German 'Grünewende' could be mostly done by now and very little LNG would be required.

rob74 4y ago

Well yes, Germany maintained the reactors they had until they reached the end of their useful lifetime (the three reactors that are still in use have been built in the late 1980s, so are currently a bit more than 30 years old), and now they're shutting them down. It's not like you can use a nuclear power plant considerably past its designed lifespan, so even with an extension, we would be talking about a few years max.

Raydovsky 4y ago
A 30 year old reactor is hardly an old one. You can use them for 50-70 years
panick21_ 4y ago
> Well yes, Germany maintained the reactors they had until they reached the end of their useful lifetime Except that is simply a lie that anti-nuclear people spread. Nuclear plants can reach 80 or 100 years and we honestly don't even know the max lifespan. Almost the German plants could have continued to run. 30 year is nothing for a nuclear plant. Yes, it requires maintenance and partial replacement of subsystems, but that's just the reality. We are talking about replacing fucking coal, I just don't understand why people don't care about that.

jagermo 4y ago

Sorry, I don't agree. Nuclear is not the magic solution. Look at France. A big part of Germanys problems are the nuclear power plants there - they simply don't work and France needs to import terawatts of power. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-europes-largest-net-power-exporter-2022-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-e... In fact: "Germany was the second largest net exporter at 15.4 TWh, double the levels recorded halfway through 2021, as power generation in the country responded to the import demand from France, the data showed." And no, building new powerplants is not the solution. None of these plants were constructed on time or within the budget. They need room, they need to be connected, they need trained workers, they need massive oversight (because the owners will do just enough around security to fulfill the letters of the law, never the spirit of the law). Nuclear reactors are also not fit for the coming climate change, especially not the ones now being turned off. Almost all of them needed to be shut down in the last summers, because the water intake from rivers was either to warm or there was simply not enough water available. In addition, nuclear is only viable, because it gets supported by tax money. Nobody will ensure these things against accidents, the companies are not responsible for transport/storage of the waste and get price guarantees. ' And despite all of that, the price for nuclear power rises - while the prices for all others forms of energy drop. From a market standpoint, it makes no sense to invest billions (face it, it will be billions, even if companies responsible tell you it will "only be millions") into a technology that is more expensive than others, harder to control, and not flexible enough. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...) Investing these billions into decentralization of the power grid and renewable energies (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Storage capacities) will yield a way better return with less complications and more stability. But, what I will agree with you is that exit plan for nuclear by Merkel and her CDU/CSU was shitty done. They did not have a strategy and, in parallel, they destroyed the German solar industry (which could have been a powerhouse now but was basically sold do China by the CDU). And yes, it would have made more sense to first bring down coal and then nuclear. Or that the grid needed to be meshed more to support distributed energy generation. But nuclear was never a (good) option in a country so densely populated.

panick21_ 4y ago
> Look at France. You mean the nation that in 15 years decaronized most of the grid? Yeah how horrible to have 40 years of clean power. The reason France has problems and has to import, is because since the early 1990s France has stopped building new nuclear reactors. Even worse, since then leftist governments, specially after 2014 when they basically wanted to copy Germany and get ride of all nuclear. They essentially stopped with vital maintenance. Unfortunately, they built so many plants in the same period, and those are getting in to their mid years and need maintenance. Because they have largely stopped building new plants, some of the knowlage is now lacking. Overall, the issue in France is not enough nuclear, not nuclear itself. France even had really awesome advanced nuclear projects, that were all killed off often by Green/Left governments. Don't you think its kind of funny to point at the only large industrial nation with a green grid and say 'look at the issues those people have'. If I was German I wish we had those kinds of problems. > And no, building new powerplants is not the solution. None of these plants were constructed on time or within the budget. They need room, they need to be connected, they need trained workers, they need massive oversight (because the owners will do just enough around security to fulfill the letters of the law, never the spirit of the law). Actually new plants is the solution. Yes, they need time, that's why building shouldn't have been stopped. Nuclear plants don't need that much room, and there are already train lines most places, adding a branch line isn't that hard. Yes, training workers for those jobs is actually good. Energy is mostly government driven anyway, and so it is in France. > Nuclear reactors are also not fit for the coming climate change, especially not the ones now being turned off. Almost all of them needed to be shut down in the last summers, because the water intake from rivers was either to warm or there was simply not enough water available. Saying all of them need to shut down because of water is just wrong. Most nuclear reactors continued to operate in most places in Europe. The hardest energy problems are in winter, all you need to make sure is that you build new plants in places where you can cool them even under worst case assumptions for future climate and it will be fine. > In addition, nuclear is only viable, because it gets supported by tax money. Nobody will ensure these things against accidents, the companies are not responsible for transport/storage of the waste and get price guarantees. ' In the European context saying only because tax money is nonsense. The 'markets' are so strongly regulated and often lots of it is state owned. Wind and Solar were only made viable by tax money. Massive government projects to push these drove the economics of scale. The same could have been done for nuclear for the same price. Had Europe built 100 new nuclear reactors in the last 30 years, the economics of nuclear would be way better. Had Europe not invested massively in wind and solar, the economics there wouldn't be as good. Even going back to 1970, Jimmy Carter killed nuclear project and focused research on solar. And many of the same trends were happening in Europe. If you prioritize one group of technologies and demonize another you can't then act supersized decades later with the results you get. And even those project just use the grid as balance, if base load and intermittency were correctly priced, a lot of those economics aren't as good. But governments didn't want to do that, because they wanted more solar/wind even at the cost of later dealing with intermittency. > And despite all of that, the price for nuclear power rises - while the prices for all others forms of energy drop. From a market standpoint, it makes no sense to invest billions (face it, it will be billions, even if companies responsible tell you it will "only be millions") into a technology that is more expensive than others, harder to control, and not flexible enough. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...) Investing these billions into decentralization of the power grid and renewable energies (Wind, Solar, Hydro, Storage capacities) will yield a way better return with less complications and more stability. The economics are not nearly as clear as you make it out to be. If you build large nuclear project with many of the same reactors multiple times it look pretty good. It also requires far less investment in terms of updating the grid, because usually you can just locate reactors where coal plants were before. Nuclear build cost are dominated by learning cost, if you build many then they get massively cheaper and you can built them far faster. Look at France in the 70/80s as a good example. You also solve the intermittency issue because nuclear don't have that. So had we just invested in nuclear, rather then wind and solar, we wouldn't have to do all those investments into intermittency mitigation a problem that still remains unsolved. Even worse, because intermittency was not price correctly, the base load had to suffer and that made their economics worse. Often nuclear also didn't receive the same subsidies as solar and wind. There are many examples of that. And this is before we even talk about GenIV reactors. Because all research and development was stopped and often made borderline impossible, we have not progressed. Newer reactor designs have massive amount of potential to be cheaper. They can also solve problem such as heat production for industrial heat. But over the last 30 years there was comically little investment in that. So what you see as 'economics' and 'market' I see as governments 30 years ago deciding that solar/wind were the future and simply going with it. Had the EU fixed on a single reactor design, even Gen3 design, and had said we will de-carbonize by nuclear it would have been far cheaper and we would be further along by now. In fact, such a standard nuclear plant would have been an amazing thing to export to other nations as well. And then have a GenIV reactor in the pipeline after that. Nuclear isn't the future because 'we' didn't want it to be the future. But it could have been, and it would have been far better future then what we have now. P.S: Let me give you an example. France had the GenIV Superphénix. They had finally worked out all the issues (including somebody shooting an RPG at it) and could have started to seriously think about building then in larger numbers but by that point they had little interest in building new reactors and the left/green govenrment wanted to kill as soon as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix Had France simply started building 5-10 of a next generation of these in the 2000s they would now be a net energy exporter with reactor that had super low fuel cost (because of breeder) and the per plant cost would likely be a fraction of the PWR designs they are currently planning. You can see how small this reactor is compared to PWRs. So the overall cost when in production at scale would be amazing.