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> "Green" Germany... Germany managed to have dirty electricity with nuclear energy, too. Why do people point at Germany and pretend it's a green energy failure

> "Green" Germany... Germany managed to have dirty electricity with nuclear energy, too. Why do people point at Germany and pretend it's a green energy failure, when Germany had a conservative government for 16 years that never cared about green energy? Green energy was never a policy*, what makes Germany the poster-child of a green energy failure? The conservatives said renewables drive electricity prices up and set out to stop them, and around the time they shut down nuclear power plants, they considered it an achievement to have prevented new photovoltaic installations. * Germany had exactly one government that put their faith in renewables and that was a noble goal, considering that renewables were at the very bottom of the S-curve, which also means that one could only make babysteps towards green energy. Now we're in the middle of the S-curve and countries can add GWs of renewables to their grid, which makes Germany's early attempts look pathetic, but you simply can't move at that pace at the bottom of the curve.

ncruces 3y ago
Germany closed NPPs while extending open pit coal. That's reason enough to criticize them.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Germany decided, or rather re-decided, to close NPPs after Fukushima. Hence, operators didn't invest in maintenance, saftey upgrades, repairs or new fuel. Rather, they did thenminimum necessary to get them to the agreed (operators and the government agreed on dates, surprising, I know), closure date. The result: There was no way to keep German NPPs scheduled for closure running any lomger without massive, and financially uninteresting, investments and a lot of time (refits, repairs, maintenance, recertification, procurent and delivery of new fuel rods, testing, reactivation...). That coal was increased instead of renewbles was a really bad devision. One driven by a strong lobby and (mostly) conservative politians with a vested interest in coal.
- V__ 3y ago
  They closed nuclear plants, but the decision to close them down was made ten years ago. To extend them now would be prohibitively expensive and not even the owners wanted to keep them online. You can fault Germany for not building new modern reactors, but the old ones had to be shut down.

ncruces 3y ago

Germany closed NPPs while extending open pit coal. That's reason enough to criticize them.

hef19898 3y ago
Germany decided, or rather re-decided, to close NPPs after Fukushima. Hence, operators didn't invest in maintenance, saftey upgrades, repairs or new fuel. Rather, they did thenminimum necessary to get them to the agreed (operators and the government agreed on dates, surprising, I know), closure date. The result: There was no way to keep German NPPs scheduled for closure running any lomger without massive, and financially uninteresting, investments and a lot of time (refits, repairs, maintenance, recertification, procurent and delivery of new fuel rods, testing, reactivation...). That coal was increased instead of renewbles was a really bad devision. One driven by a strong lobby and (mostly) conservative politians with a vested interest in coal.
V__ 3y ago
They closed nuclear plants, but the decision to close them down was made ten years ago. To extend them now would be prohibitively expensive and not even the owners wanted to keep them online. You can fault Germany for not building new modern reactors, but the old ones had to be shut down.