[https://www.salon.com/2023/07/16/abandoning-nuclear-power-was-a-mistake-germany-must-return-to-the-future-of-energy/](https://www.salon.com/2023/07/16/abandoning-nuclear-power-was-a-mistake-germany-must-return-to-the-future-of-energy/)

by ADRzs

7 comments

  1. Not with this government it won’t. Banning wood heaters takes priority.

  4. As so often, this is more an anti-renewable commentary than an explanation why nuclear would “be the future of energy”.

    It talks a lot about why renewables can’t support our energy needs, against all the evidence, and uses that as reasoning why everyone should *rather* do nuclear power. As if nuclear power is only to be considered if renewables are to be excluded.

    It’s also outright lying. Germany [is reducing emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=~DEU&Gas+or+Warming=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Production-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+country) (CO2 emissions peaked in 1979 and over the past decade reductions were faster than before, as tracked by the source the article itself is linking to).

    The increased fossil fuel usage last year [was more due to the special circumstances in Europe](https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electricity-review-2023/) last year than due to nuclear phase-out in Germany:

    >That means almost two-thirds (59 TWh) of the 96 TWh fall in France’s year-on-year nuclear and hydro generation was replaced by imported electricity from other countries. Coal generation in Spain rose by 3 TWh, but with 15 TWh more electricity sent to France than in 2021. Without France’s issues, it is highly likely that coal generation would not have risen in Spain. In Germany, coal rose by 17 TWh, but 11 TWh more electricity was sent to France than in 2021; France undoubtedly contributed to some of the rise in German coal generation.

    This bump is [already over again](https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/weathering-the-winter/). Germany [this year](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&source=total) used fossil fuels for less than half of its electricity this year so far again.

    Claiming that renewables don’t work is totally at odds with all the data. OWID also has a [direct comparison of renewables and nuclear power](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electricity) on the global scale. The net result of produced low-carbon electricity as share of total clean energy is shown in [this graph](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL).

    It shows nicely how renewables have grown consistently at a high rate over the last ten years since 2012, pushing the share of clean electricity to new record high levels since 2020, despite the slack of nuclear power, which peaked its share in 1996 and never produced more power than renewables.

    For [Germany](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-low-carbon?tab=chart&country=~DEU) there is a peak in low-carbon shares in 2020. With a decline afterward again, but the overall trend shows a steady improvement since 1985. With an increased improvement rate since 2013:

    Germanys low-carbon share in:

    * 1985: 30.18%
    * 2013: 39.55%
    * 2022: 49.22%

    Now of course Germany should have acted faster on climate mitigation (like most other developed nations), but this doesn’t mean that renewables don’t work, or that the Energiewende could be categorized as a failure.

    The future of energy is solar photovoltaic, which given current trends will be the largest low-carbon electricity provider before 2030 on the global scale and the German Energiewende helped kick-starting that development.

    I guess, we’ll see some more hysteric anti-renewable commentary, as their peak likely was in 2022 in the electricity sector, and they are now not only loose in terms of market shares, but also in absolute numbers, thanks to renewables. But all the screaming to slow this development down, won’t help the fundamentals that drive these trajectories now.

  5. I can only hope that nuclear power will not be the future of energy on this planet because this would mean that one day we will have hundreds of nuclear power stations in instable countries with questionable security measures and rampant corruption.

  6. Guess from where they’d have to buy the nuclear fuel… So No, not an option

  7. Thorium, molten salt, nuclear waste recycling as a priority…. meanwhile, expand renewables and bet on fusion 10-20 years out.

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