> In 2021 the remaining (!) 6 power plants produced more electricity than all installed solar capacity.
How does that matter? Solar is not the only source of renewable energy for Germany. 2021, Germany got 42% of its energy from renewable sources, 2022 it already grew to 46%, and 2023 it grows even more. And those numbers are only so "low" because of political reasons and stupid people.
For over a decade the conservative and corrupted sabotaged the progress of renewable energies in Germany. This changed, partly because the government shifted, but to a strong part also because of Russia becoming a problem that not even the corrupted could ignore anymore. The progress since last summer in Germany is incredible, and it won't stop.
I'm not sure what you mean. Solar power has significant shorter emission amortization than 20 years. I think ATM we are at 2-3 years? And solar plants can usually run far longer than 20 years. And still, how does solar relate to nuclear, when solar is not the only solution for replacing nuclear?
Politicians are accountable by voters and voters object to have nuclear waste stored near their homes. Even those who don't think it's a problem and believe the scientists who say "this will never be a problem" (and they don't exactly say that, do they?) know that their property values will suffer.
Putting coal as the alternative to nuclear power is not just a mistake, it's an entirely dishonest argument trying to fool people.
I grew up very close to a coal power plant. Guess what, that is many times more dangerous than storing nuclear waste. I don‘t think I have ever heard anyone say they would rather live close to a coal plant.
Why is it a mistake or dishonest? That is the reality: Germany already powered many coal plants back up to replace gas and nuclear. Now it will take even longer to get rid of coal.
Yeah that‘s because there is a policy not to build one until after exiting nuclear power. Finland did it within a few years. Germany has a very good geology for nuclear waste.
> The site was selected after a long process, which started in 1983 with a screening of the whole Finnish territory.
> The facility is expected to be operational in 2023.
I bet there where not many demonstrations in Finland.
It will take Germany 40 years just to find a site. And then the demonstrations start.
Because the Finns are pragmatic while the Germans are just idiotically idealistic and will protest against any change, even if it's for the greater good.
Also doesn't help that most recent German chancellors form Schroeder to Merkel were in bed with the Kremlin for whom nuclear was a threat to their gas business so spreading anti nuclear propaganda through the media to the gullible German public was a necessary move.
Finland is a small country with a small population. It is futile to compare small countries with large countries. Small countries are much more likely to get lucky in certain regards, for example with a selection of suitable storage sites nobody lives close to. Or with a political climate that is amenable to such things. Also nuclear power was seen as an advantage because Russia is right next door. Finland is just in a much different position than Germany.
We had a nuclear storage site picked out long ago. Then it turned out it wasn't suitable. That's at least as much bad luck as "lack of foresight" or anything else. Finland didn't have that problem. If their storage site turned out to be unsuitable after decades of preparation, maybe they wouldn't continue with nuclear power either.
Last: You accuse others of propaganda but use a phrase like "in bed with the Kremlin" and spout conspiracy theories. You don't understand German politics. Mistakes were made. Presuming malice is convenient and lazy.
> Because the Finns are pragmatic while the Germans are just idiotically idealistic and will protest against any change, even if it's for the greater good.
Exactly, which why nuclear is not the best option for Germany.
Sorry to be blunt and snarky but check your energy bill. You pay twice per kwh what Finns pay while breathing in more coal fine-dust and therefore having a shorter lifespan. Nuff said.
Then learn to read a chart. You are either lying or getting your facts wrong. Less coal plants have been reopened than have been shut down before.
Yes, the plan was to get rid of coal sooner, the Ukraine war made that harder. Actually some more lignite coal got burned last year in order to compensate. But we're going to get rid of those coal plants a lot sooner than if we were to build a couple new nuclear power plants which would commit us to a few more decades of that technology and all the associated problems.
„Um die akute Gaskrise im vergangenen Sommer zu bekämpfen, sind insgesamt 14 Steinkohle-Kraftwerke und ein Mineralöl-Kraftwerk wieder reaktiviert oder entgegen ursprünglicher Pläne nicht stillgelegt worden. Das geht aus einer Übersicht der Bundesnetzagentur hervor. Alle betroffenen Kraftwerke sind nach wie vor am Markt“
Yes, doesn't negate my point. Coal is not the alternative to nuclear power and saying so is a big fat lie, the correlation is just not in the data.
People like you dishonestly want to fool people into believing each terawatt hour not generated by nuclear power is compensated by one terawatt hour generated from coal. Because it's lazy and convenient and some people are stupid enough to believe it.
You are dishonest here. It‘s without a question that we would need far less coal if we still had our remaining 6 nuclear power plants running. We could be pretty much out of coal by now if we would have phased out of coal before nuclear.
Now you are switching around the argument. Of course you could replace coal with nuclear power. But that wasn't what you are lying about. Your lie is that nuclear is getting replaced 1:1 with coal power. Not the same thing.
That was my argument from the very beginning, you are doing a lot of interpretation and talk about lies and dishonesty, which is frankly typical German Energiewende talk that led us into this disaster.
That's just a big fat lie. Even in Germany, the country you malign so much, coal power generation did not increase in the last few years. Not even when transitioning from Russian natural gas.
Yes, I'm slightly wrong on a three-month time period last year. The numbers I had were for complete years...
Still doesn't negate my point that coal is going to be phased out and that coal generation wasn't ramped up as nuclear power was ramped down. There is just no clear relation.
> Note that nuclear plants only contributed to about 5% of all the electrical power in Germany.
And how much of that is coal?
Nuclear power plants provides stable power regardless of weather, wind and climate, and serves as a necessary baseline which can be complimented by renewables.
Eliminating this without having any replacement, any stable baseline power is knowingly making the power-grid and power-supply of your nation unstable. In lack of better words, I would call it malicious.
The fraction that is generated from coal was relatively stable, even declined a little. It only very recently, like end of last year went up a little again - because of the natural gas transition. But that's still a far cry from "nuclear power is replaced by coal".
> Fukujima was essentially the event that made the government speed up the whole plan.
It's wild to me that Fukushima was held up as a reasonable justification to accelerate nuclear decommissioning in Germany. Even ignoring the extent to which the disaster in question could have been mitigated, was anyone expecting a tsunami to suddenly manifest over Bavaria?
"was anyone expecting a Tsunami to suddenly manifest over Bavaria?"
No, the thinking or sentiment was, see, even high tech japan cannot securly operate nuclear plants(they know they have earthquakes and tsunamis), so there are surley things we overlooked as well. So nuclear is not totally safe.
And there are a few things, as far as I know. For example the plants were not build taking into account, terrorists crashing a plane into them.
I have it from someone who actually ran finite elements calculations on this very thing, that you can crash a plane on a French plant all you want, it won't leak. You'd need a well placed JDAM, and even then the damage would be quite local, much less than the Chernobyl graphite fire.
one argument that was repeated over and over by pro fission folks was that an accident like chernobyl could not happen in a "good" country like france, german or japan.
seening how one of the most technologicaly advanced countries suffered a contaminating incident that is comparable on scale with chernobyl was a shock to most germans and blew the mentioned agument away.
if you were old enough to remember not being allowed to go outside as a child, to see your playgrounds demolished and the sand exchanged, you may be thinking differently about it.
for decades it wasnt safe to collect mushrooms in the woods, something germans are or better were quite fond of. i am honestly not sure if its even safe today.
nuclear may be safe for the most part but when it goes wrong it goes wrong in such a dramatic way that it is traumatizing.
Fukushima was not Chernobyl: it killed nobody, polluted very little. Much less than a coal plant does in any case, even in terms of radioactive particles put up in the air ..
Fukushima was another reminder that you don't know what you don't know. And with nuclear power, if you don't know something, a whole chunk of your country needs to get evacuated and cleaned up at a stupendous cost.
You are writing something that is not true: in no way can a modern plant cause a large evacuation. Can you explain with an example what you mean? The UNSCEAR has the documentation you need to read in order to graduate from being a green-identity-affirming anti-nuclear commenter into an actual ecologist.
So you count the Fukushima plant as not modern enough, because it caused a large evacuation right? And what counts as modern? Certainly nothing that has ever been built in Germany.
And how fast can we build them? They need to start to come online in the next few years to do anything to stop global warming.
The evacuation was precautionary, killed one person in an accident, only direct loss of life from the Fukushima accident. Not building adequate flood protection and building so close to sea was inane and not something you will find in other sea-shore plants, for example Diablo Canyon in California.
Fukushima was absolutely not a reminder of that. The investigations have shown that not only was Fukushima forseeable, it was in fact foreseen by TEPCO's own risk assessments, but they ignored them.
Well, I didn't know about it and most of the world didn't know about it, and anyone who did know about it didn't do shit about it.
For me that qualifies as unknown unknown. Just a question of perspective. Japanese society, government, maybe even their nuclear regulatory agency (whatever that is) trusted TEPCO to know this shit.
I'm not worried about the exact same thing happening in a German plant. I'm worrying about something else happening WE didn't know or care about. Compare commercial aircraft accidents. Every time a passenger plane crashes, there's a big investigation, lessons are learned and thus safety is improved. Still, crashes happen again and again for new reasons, often not anticipated, sometimes Human error of pilots or other personnel, sometimes of engineers, sometimes other causes. But: At most one plane full of people died. If every time the plane went up in a nuclear mushroom cloud or contaminated a couple square kilometers worth of inhabited real estate, I guess we'd rethink air travel altogether.
Ah yes. And you trust your government to do a perfect job stopping power companies from any such intentional miss-management, especially given such dire consequences? I don't, even though I trust my government quite far.
Because the Japanese government's failure to stop TEPCO from this miss-management is just as bad as any engineering oversight. And Japan isn't a third-world country. Japan runs a tight ship in most regards, tighter than the US and many EU nations. Other countries with a nuclear industry are far more troublesome: Iran, Pakistan, India, Ukraine, Russia, China... But if Japan can fail so spectacularly, all risk estimates around nuclear power are futile.
It started with Chernobyl but Fukujima was essentially the event that made the government speed up the whole plan.
Plus: the still unclear situation on how and where all the nuclear waste will be stored for the next thousands of years.
Note that nuclear plants only contributed to about 5% of all the electrical power in Germany.