The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
Nope. Merkel was a scientist but she caved to the green's pressure to keep her coalition. Also she spent a decade of surplus in millions of refugees from Middle East and neglected infrastructure.
"Merkel obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel
"Policy Reversal: In May 2011, just months after extending reactor lives, Merkel's government announced a total phase-out of all nuclear plants by 2022."
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
Shutting down nuclear reactors means you lose a source of plutonium that can be diverted to weapons manufacturing. You also lose nuclear engineers and workers with skills and knowledge to fabricate with fissile materials which you need to manufacture those weapons.
Similarly, the reason so many countries have a civilian rocket launching program in spite of having no chance in hell in beating SpaceX economically is to have scientists and engineers who can build missiles if needed.
These are just insurance policies. Both Japan and Korea have them for instance. As recent events have shown, countries without nuclear weapons are essentially defenceless against and dependent on those with them.
For better or worse there is zero chance that Germany starts a nuclear weapons program. The public sentiment just won't allow that unless we are already at war, in which case it is too late. Besides that, nuclear weapons are stationed in Germany already. France and the UK are next door, so I am also not sure if it would actually benefit Germany at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90/The_Greens#Energy_...
> After the Chernobyl disaster, the Greens became more radicalised and resisted compromise on the nuclear issue.
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
Same like any bullcrap Söder comes up on any given day, no matter how absurd.
From a distance, it seems like the whole world agreed it'd be a good idea to only come up with ragebait over and over again :(
So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
It wasn’t that hard to see that energy needs were only going to increase rather than diminish. And not because of ai datacenters, but (to make a simple example) for example because of the already ongoing at the time push for the electrification of the automotive industry.
It’s also crazy that the initiative was supposed at all by environmentalists.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow.
Do you think companies who couldn’t built a safe airport or train station can suddenly built something more complex like a nuclear power plant without massively going over budget, construction time and safety?
And I guess nobody fears Russian drone flying over WECs instead of nuclear power plants
That‘s the thing. Everyone knew it was costly, nobody ever thought it was good strategically. If he now says it’s a „strategic mistake“ that‘s laughable, did he think it was strategically clever before? If so he was the only one.
The whole issue is that Germany overestimated its own resilience and economic power, which is deteriorating. Of course environmentalists knew that this is not good for the economy but the Green Party is mostly left aligned they were ok with incurring some damage to the economy for their cause, after all that’s their whole point. But they thought well we are such a economic powerhouse anyway, we can do it. So the real strategic mistake was arrogance. And saying that particular action was a „strategic mistake“ instead reflecting on the whole self-image of the country, shows that exactly this arrogance persists
The Green party had the goal of de-nuclearization from the beginning, at that time the Soviet Union was still in existence. When the Green party came to power and negotiated the nuclear exit, they did not need any external motivation to do so.
The only way I can see this being Russian meddling would be the Green party being infiltrated from Russia from the beginning.
If you have sources that point to the Green party being undermined by Soviet/Russian espionage or some such, please point me torwards them.
The right was never anti-nuclear, but they were more pro-gas and pro-coal.
Fun fact, the ministers of the federal states that are most in favor of nuclear power do not want a final waste storage.
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
And France (nuclear powered, no particular huge investment in a green transition) beats them easily in both price and carbon.
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
France keeps upping estimates for their refurbs and Ontario just announced price hikes to refurb theirs and mess around with SMRs.
I remember in a train 1971 passing some Nuclear Towers and whole train expressed displeasement at the scenery. Kinda scary actually, because they started staring at me for not joining the crowd.
The "Atomtöd" (Atomic Death) Campaign (1950s) Before civil nuclear power even existed, West Germany had a massive "Ban the Bomb" movement. In the late 1950s, the government considered allowing U.S. nuclear warheads on German soil. This sparked the Kampf dem Atomtod (Fight Atomic Death) movement.
The Result: The German public learned to associate the word "nuclear" with total destruction and the Cold War arms race long before they ever saw a power plant.
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
> decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes
If you do the math you will see Germany could have actually saved money if they had build nuclear in the 2000s.
> solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else
Only if you look at levelized dispatch cost, not if you actually look at is as a system for sustainable reliable power for a whole industrial country.
Could you share this math?
Electricity in Germany can look expensive at first sight if you're quoting legacy household tariffs that many existing customers are still on, because they never switch provider / tariff. But that's not representative of what people pay if they sign a new contract today: the market for new contracts is typically several cents/kWh cheaper than those old existing tariffs stuck at their higher prices.
So "Germany has the highest electricity prices" is at best an incomplete claim, it depends heavily on which tariff cohort you refer to (legacy vs new contracts, default supply vs competitive offers), and people on the internet somehow always fall for this, often picking the worst bucket to make a political point.
Sources: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
Unfortunately it's in german but my point stands: for new customers in germany the price per kwh is even lower than what france pays on average.
Hawaii 41.55 $200/mo
California 30.70 $155/mo
Connecticut 30.63 $192/mo
Rhode Island 28.12 $163/mo
Cheapest residential states for electricity
State Average Electricity Cost (¢) Average Monthly Bill
Idaho 11.71 $110/mo
North Dakota 11.79 $114/mo
Nebraska 12.09 $119/mo
Louisiana 12.29 $150/mo
Utah 12.59 $96/mo
One must conclude the problem lies not in splitting the atom, but educating physicists.
You're a scientist, right? Can you think of any evidence that even in principle might prompt you to change your mind on nuclear?
Sure, we want to elect good people. But relying on their goodness invites moral hazards like this. Everything that makes them an effective politician also makes them an effective criminal, so the question is hardly academic.
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
The fact that these threads are always full of lies with all these twisted narratives show you who's doing the talking in all of them really. This thread was a few minutes old when someone had to mention that "The US blew up the pipeline" and this shit doesn't even collect downvotes or gets flagged, it rises to the top.
I clicked on two accounts posting lies and saw Russian software companies mentioned in their scant posting history, which in itself is not a crime, but also a fitting signal.
The greens were funded this was and everybody clapped at the time. Huge mistake.
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
From CBC:
> Current estimates are that it would cost five to 10 times more to distribute electricity to a big city via underground cables, and that not all of nature's problems would be alleviated even if that were done.
How does that compare to building above ground towers to support cable weight in all conditions?
I'd assume / guesstimate that route planning, community advisement, actual cable length, etc. costs are more or less the same in either case.
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
Involuntary XKCD:
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.
Fusion is unlikely to be cheaper anytime soon, even if somebody could build a plant that makes positive energy.
Except China, who is good at building them.
Why?
> The mistake was not building new ones to replace them.
Why not keep the old ones, as long as they are still save and profitable, _and_ build new ones?
Younger reactors Germany left running until they also reached around 35 years.
