>One irony: Germany has a large neighbor to the west called France, the poster-boy of nuclear energy, and another large neighbor to the east called Poland, the poster boy of coal-fired electricity. Germany will increasingly have to import from the EU grids these two markets’ electricity. So it’ll be importing nuclear power from France and coal-fired power from Poland. That’s the net result of this German policy. When this becomes a big thing, the irony, the absurdity, the perverseness of this will lead to some big political change.
It depends on how much the German political classes actually wish to ally themselves with Russia. At the moment it’s not looking great
Here we go again, the same story, nuclear lobby tried to tell once again
There are people who believe that we Germans predicted this entire situation in the late 90s and play some weird 40D chess with the goal to ruin our country.
Totally not insane.
This article and its journalism are kind of poor. This reads like the equivalent to discussing issues while in a pub. Decommissioning these German nuclear reactors was decided years ago, and a spike in energy prices will not suddenly invalidate years of planning. Another issue is this insistence that Germany will now import more electricity than it exports, which is false.
As for the new nuclear power plants. I hope they are a success, however we currently have no evidence of them being either cost-effective or scalable.
For reference, last year Nukular accounted for about 13,3% of all E produced.
Renewables had their share more than doubled form 23,3% in 2011 to 50,5% in 2020, mostly thanks to windmills being constructed all over the place. Wind alone had a higher share than Nukular before we flipped the switch.
Source: Fraunhofer ISE
You don’t have to feel regret if you can live in denial.
Today, Germany produces about the same amount of coal electricity as they did nuclear at the peak (2001).
In an alternate history they could have been climate leaders and free of coal this year and free of nuclear by 2030 or 2038. This would have saved more than a billion tons of CO2, equivalent to the total Carbon emissions of Belgium over a decade.
But now they will need coal until 2030 or 2038 and they missed their climate targets.
Meanwhile, since existing nuclear and hydro energy are the cheapest energy sources we have, they also pay 2.5x the price that French consumers pay for energy that is 4x as dirty.
But Germans can’t accept these facts, so they live in denial.
Nah they won’t regret it… they will just import cheap coal electricity and act like nothing happend instead of admiting a mistake.
Ok
Why don’t they shut down these plants after they finished switching to all renewables? Now they’re burning coal again
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My favourite passage:
>One irony: Germany has a large neighbor to the west called France, the poster-boy of nuclear energy, and another large neighbor to the east called Poland, the poster boy of coal-fired electricity. Germany will increasingly have to import from the EU grids these two markets’ electricity. So it’ll be importing nuclear power from France and coal-fired power from Poland. That’s the net result of this German policy. When this becomes a big thing, the irony, the absurdity, the perverseness of this will lead to some big political change.
It depends on how much the German political classes actually wish to ally themselves with Russia. At the moment it’s not looking great
Here we go again, the same story, nuclear lobby tried to tell once again
There are people who believe that we Germans predicted this entire situation in the late 90s and play some weird 40D chess with the goal to ruin our country.
Totally not insane.
This article and its journalism are kind of poor. This reads like the equivalent to discussing issues while in a pub. Decommissioning these German nuclear reactors was decided years ago, and a spike in energy prices will not suddenly invalidate years of planning. Another issue is this insistence that Germany will now import more electricity than it exports, which is false.
As for the new nuclear power plants. I hope they are a success, however we currently have no evidence of them being either cost-effective or scalable.
For reference, last year Nukular accounted for about 13,3% of all E produced.
Renewables had their share more than doubled form 23,3% in 2011 to 50,5% in 2020, mostly thanks to windmills being constructed all over the place. Wind alone had a higher share than Nukular before we flipped the switch.
Source: Fraunhofer ISE
You don’t have to feel regret if you can live in denial.
Today, Germany produces about the same amount of coal electricity as they did nuclear at the peak (2001).
In an alternate history they could have been climate leaders and free of coal this year and free of nuclear by 2030 or 2038. This would have saved more than a billion tons of CO2, equivalent to the total Carbon emissions of Belgium over a decade.
But now they will need coal until 2030 or 2038 and they missed their climate targets.
Meanwhile, since existing nuclear and hydro energy are the cheapest energy sources we have, they also pay 2.5x the price that French consumers pay for energy that is 4x as dirty.
But Germans can’t accept these facts, so they live in denial.
Nah they won’t regret it… they will just import cheap coal electricity and act like nothing happend instead of admiting a mistake.
Ok
Why don’t they shut down these plants after they finished switching to all renewables? Now they’re burning coal again