Summary
Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, called Germany’s decision to fully phase out nuclear power “illogical,” noting it is the only country to have done so.
Despite the completed phase-out in 2023, there is renewed debate in Germany about reviving nuclear energy due to its low greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaking at COP29, Grossi described reconsidering nuclear as a “rational” choice, especially given global interest in nuclear for emissions reduction.
Germany’s phase-out, driven by environmental concerns and past nuclear disasters, has been criticized for increasing reliance on Russian gas and missing carbon reduction opportunities.
This article doesn’t mention the most important part of all. Nuclear power only made up about 2% of the German energy mix. The power production lost by the loss of nuclear power plants was entirely compensated by renewable power and we also have the smallest coal consumption in about 60 years, so the shutdown had no effect on the German power grid.
The shutdown of our nuclear power plants was also planned since 2011 after the failure of Fukushima. Our government extended the running time by 1 year but it devinetively didnt had the power to just revert the shutdown.
Note that the 2011 plan was the reversal of the 2009 extension plan, that was a reactionary reversal of the 2002 plan to phase out nuclear power until 2022. So the issue was the reactionary “lets make more nuclear! Oh shit, a nuclear plant blew up, lets track back on our backtrack” move by the CDU/FDP coalition of the time. Incidently the parties that also now are also crying to want back nuclear.
Nuclear power only made up about 2% of the German energy mix
Like in 2023 right before the phaseout? What are you talking about?
To make this clear. Germany decided in 2011 that it finally wants to phase out nuclear(I’m not going into the details about it before 2011). This was 13 years ago. Since then Germany slowly shut down its nuclear power plants. The final shutdown was last year. Before the final shutdown it was about 2% of the total energy mix. Until the final shutdown none gave a fuck about Germany nuclear power plants shutshuting down. After the phase out was done everyone suddenly wants to return to nuclear, even if its not really an economically viable option(I’m not even talking about the waste problems) and even tho that we can’t just turn them on. There are only a few power plants left where the tearing down of them hasn’t started yet. It would take some time to certificate a lot of stuff(to make sure the plant is safe), get fuel and hire and maybe teach the new staff.
Yeah, 20 years ago. If you build more renewables the share of all other power sources goes down.
If you look at the total values in your source, you’ll see nuclear to decline since 2006. And from 2021-2023 then the full phase out happened. But the only plants that hypothetically could have ran a bit longer were only left to produce 2%.
To revert now, Germany first would need to invest billions to modernize the plants, which would take years to scale back into it. Also it would likely need to buy their fuel rods from Russia, defeating the whole purpose of sanctioning Russian Oil and Gas.
Yeah, 20 years ago. If you build more renewables the share of all other power sources goes down.
Exactly, who cares what it was last year when the phase out was almost done? Claiming that all nuclear was “replaced” by renewables is just a Milchmädchenrechnung to make you feel better. It could have replaced lignite instead.
Anyway, pointless to discuss this people from the feddit.org filter bubble. Let the ballots talk in February.
You realize that it takes money and workers to upkeep, repair, rebuild plants? Staying with nuclear costs money that instead is better invested in renewables. And you realize that maintaining that share against newly build renewables requires new plants right?
You understand that 20% of 100 are 20 and 20% of 200 are 40 right? Like when you look at the charts, you see that the total production capacity doubled, because of the exponential growth of renewables. So it would need new plants to maintain the share.
So unless the plants you demanded were already in planning in 1990, there is no way they would have been there in 2010. Seriously, with how bad at math and physics the proponents of nuclear power are it is all the more important to keep them away from such a dangerous technology.
Never understood what kind of an idiot you have to be to choose coal over nuclear. Absolutely bonkers.
Germany wanted to replace nuclear with renewables. This “replace with coal” bs is straight up misinformation.
We didn’t. We chose renewables over nuclear.
There is a larger usage of fossil fuels than there otherwise would have been. A certain portion of new renewables replaced nuclear power instead of fossil fuelled plants.
So yes, Germany did prioritize removing safe, clean energy over removing dirty, dangerous energy.
Safe like Three Missile Islands, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Clean like Murmansk.
Fun fact, just last week in a supposedly safe storage site in Germany contaminated water was found. Nobody knows where it comes from and where it goes.
You tried, but it didn’t work out as expected.
Also, on a side note, with nuclear you could export energy to other countries so that they don’t need to rely on coal gas & oil so much.
It actually worked better than expected. It’s simply a long process.
Snd until we have a good, permanent solution where to store nuclear waste that won’t be an issue for hundreds of future generations, it’s simply irresponsible to air for nuclear instead of renewables
That’s cool!
Yes restarting nuclear today seems stupid especially if it’s only for german consumption. Best case scenario is we plaster solar panels all over the world IMO but the production capacity isn’t there before another ten years or so, but that beats new nuclear too.
Shutting down nuclear today is a more complicated matter IMO.
We tried and it did and does work. Renewables are going up, fossils are going down.. We are burning less coal than ever. Any claims to the point of “replaced nuclear with coal” are disinformation and lies.
with nuclear you could export energy to other countries
We are exporting energy to other countries.
Nuclear is the most expensive form of power,. it’s unsafe and inflexible. It doesn’t make sense, it never did, and all those other kids jumping off the bridge don’t change that.
You could have exported more. It could have been a smother transition.
You are also trying to put words in my mouth, I did not say coal replaced nuclear.
Your fearmongering concerning nuclear makes me think that you are with the bridge jumping kids.
Such an attitude afflicts Australia too. We could have close to unlimited free energy, but instead choose to build more Coal since ‘Nuclear Bad’ and ‘Nuclear too much money’ (despite the same people decrying the idea of ‘too much money’ being applied to anything else)
Hmmmm, I don’t think nuclear makes much sense in Australia when we have an abundance of renewable resources available to us. Nuclear energy has never been known to be cheap and rapidly deployable. If we were going to go down the road of nuclear power we will have to start from the ground up given our utter lack of nuclear energy industry. This would take so much time and money. Why do that when we have sun baked deserts, are girt by sea and have every key mineral under the sun.
Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out it was a good thing, when the Greens phased out the last 3, it became a bad thing.
That’s literally all this discussion is about. Anyone who’s actually taken a look at the data knows that phasing it out was the right move and that there’s no point in bringing it back. There’s a reason the share of nuclear keeps going down in the EU. Germany is also not the only country that doesn’t use nuclear anymore.
Here are the sources for anyone interested:
It was a stupid idea no matter who conceived of or implemented it. Nuclear is the only viable clean baseload power generation option we have. Solar and wind can’t do it, coal and oil are filthy, battery storage is nowhere near where it needs to be yet.
Theres also power production from water and also using biogas plants. Those are two technologies being perfectly capable of supplying a base power.
Bro has been asleep for the past 10 years lmao
Baseload is an antiquated concept that doesn’t work with lots of renewables. Battery storage may be not completely feasible yet, but look at California to see that it has the potential to be ready faster than we can build new npps.
Baseload is an antiquated concept that doesn’t work with lots of renewables. Battery storage may be not completely feasible yet, but look at California to see that it has the potential to be ready faster than we can build new npps.
“Baseload” is still needed. Renewables are great but they are simply not there yet. There is a world between “potential” and “available”.
Yeah, right now. But not in 10 years when the first npps could be ready. And you would also need storage for npps when there is a lot of wind or sun, cause you can’t shut down the npps all the time or thermal stresses will cause damages to the pipes. And renewables are here now, it’s the storage that needs to catch up.
Baseload is still needed now. End of.
You can’t magically get npps now. End of.
Which is why it was stupid to start shutting them down! 🤣
Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out
LMAO. Completely false:
In 2000, the First Schröder cabinet, consisting of the SPD and Alliance ‘90/The Greens, officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear energy. The power plants in Stade and in Obrigheim were turned off on 14 November 2003, and 11 May 2005, respectively. The plants’ dismantling was scheduled to begin in 2007.
Fukushima forced the hand of the CDU afterwards.
It was a dumb idea in 2000, a dumber idea in 2011, and amongst the dumbest ideas during the war. Unfortunately, the anti-nuclear people shot us all in the foot with their “what about our children in 1000 years” crap. So concentrated on the far far future were they, that they ignored what impact it would have on the near and medium term. Sure, the children in 1000 years might not run into nuclear waste, but they’ll be living in a climate change wasteland. Good job!
The phase-out practically already started in the early 90s, latest when it became abundantly clear that building more reactors was not politically feasible.
The reason is distrust in anything being handled properly. See Asse (they just discovered irradiated water that they don’t have any idea how it came to be because it’s actually above the deposit), see plants running without functioning backup generators for decades, the list is endless.
I deeply wish that people would understand that this horse is deader than dead. There is no Frankensteinian experiment and no virus that will bring it back to even a zombie-like half-life. So would you, please, please, just stop beating the poor thing.
It doesn’t matter anymore how it died, it’s really time to get a new horse.
Edit: Instead of just down voting, could you explain to me:
- How should we get nuclear plants running in any time frame relevant to our current problems?
- Who is going to pay the billions of Euros to build new nuclear power plants? The energy companies are not interested.
- Where we should keep the waste, since we have not yet found a place for the decades’ worth of nuclear waste we already have.
- How this is making us independent of Russia, our former main source of Uranium
I just fail to see any way how this could right now solve our problem.
- Where we should keep the waste, since we have not yet found a place for the decades’ worth of nuclear waste we already have.
Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!
How should we get nuclear plants running in any time frame relevant to our current problems?
If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we’d have them by now.
Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!
I never said that. But there are ways we have to do neither. Why not concentrate on those, especially since they are magnitudes cheaper.
If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we’d have them by now.
That might be true, but how is that helping us right now? That’s why I said it doesn’t matter how the horse died. It’s dead now. There are many faster solutions, why take the one that takes longest?
It’s dead now
But what if it turns out we do need it in 10 years?
All renewable everything is cool, but that’s also going to require a lot of storage for the days where it isn’t so windy or sunny. I think having nuclear to cover (some of) the base load on the grid will be very helpful.
And I think, you have absolutely no idea how incredibly expensive nuclear power is.
Solar power is literally free during the day in Germany right now. Investing a few hundred million in storage is much much much cheaper and easier to scale than building a nuclear power plant that will only start producing energy in 20 years or so.
And I think, you have absolutely no idea how incredibly expensive nuclear power is.
Less expensive than whatever the fuck we’ve been doing with our climate these last 100 years. But those aren’t direct costs, so who the hell cares.
But still more expensive than renewables + storage, so what’s your point?
And that refutes what argument?
The costs of climate change are costs the people and our governments have to bear; just look at the billions in damage done by the recent hurricanes.
Those costs are a subsidy to the “cheap” fossil fuels we’ve been using. In fact, fossil fuels receive a ton of subsidies upfront too. Nuclear can be subsidised too.
I don’t have faith our governments will switch to 100% renewable, and any fossil fuel is too much fossil fuel given how far we have already gone. We need to actively start scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere, and we’re going to need as much power as we can generate for that.
Nuclear is expensive because it’s relatively rare. Economies of scale don’t apply to it as is. If we start building, it will become cheaper. Not cheap, perhaps, but cheaper. And it’s a cost worth paying. We are already paying the price for the “cheap” fossil fuels.
But what if it turns out we do need it in 10 years?
That’s the point, we likely wouldn’t have any new nuclear power plants in ten years, even if we started planning them now. The one they are building in the UK was started somewhere around 2017 I think and maybe, fingers crossed, it might be finished by 2029. Right now the estimated cost is around £46 billion, up from originally about £23 billion.
That’s one plant. We need many more for any relevant effect. Not even starting on the fact that nuclear energy is very inadequate for balancing out short term differences in the grid since you can’t just quickly power them up or down as needed.
I never said that. But there are ways we have to do neither. Why not concentrate on those, especially since they are magnitudes cheaper.
FSS I hate discussions with people… You can do more than one thing. You could have concentrated on both nuclear AND renewables and stopped burning COAL - but no, instead Germany had a fucking uptick in coal power while dropping the much cleaner nuclear.
This was so foreseeable it hurts. Renewables simply aren’t up to the task of baseload generation yet in the way that nuclear is.
but no, instead Germany had a fucking uptick in coal power while dropping the much cleaner nuclear.
You have a source for that?
Actually coal consumption is down to the level of the 1960s.
Actually coal consumption is down to the level of the 1960s.
Yes, it’s down since the 1960s. If this is your level of understanding I don’t expect this to go well… 🙄
It shot up between 2020 and 2023 (4th chart here): https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
Yes other things were happening, yes other values are moving up (renewables - yay!). But with no nuclear to fall back on Coal plants had to fire up to bear the burden of pressure on other fuels.
Nuclear is clean. Coal is certainly not clean.
How much of that is due to French nuclear reactors shutting down, both during summer (to not turn the rivers that cool them into fish soup) as well as all that maintenance stuff they had going on lately.
Germany is an electricity exporter.
Also: You’re looking at generated power. Not coal consumption. That doesn’t completely erase the bump but it’s quite a bit smaller, they shut down some very old plants and replaced them with more efficient ones.
The current biggest chunk is oil, mostly used in transportation, and gas, for heating. Those will need to be electrified and replaced with what 25% of their Joule-value in electricity production, gas will stay longest because it’s used for peaker plants and, once the grid is completely renewable, that will be done with synthesised gas.
Had the original plan to phase out nuclear and coal been followed we’d already be there but the CDU insisted on knee-capping renewables because the likes of RWE were asleep at the wheel and hadn’t shifted their investments fast enough, electricity production in Germany suddenly wasn’t an oligopoly, any more, can’t have that.
You’re making excuses for burning coal. I’m saying they shouldn’t be burning it at all.
Why the hell did they ban nuclear before coal anyway? That was just stupid.
I also hate discussions with people who miss my point and argue against things I never claimed.
why do nuclear diehards always pretend it’s nuclear or fossil fuels only, like renewables are nonexistant? it smells bad faith as fuck. nobody arguing against nuclear fission power plants are arguing for fossil fuels. absolutely nobody.
FSS I hate discussions with people… You can do more than one thing. You could have concentrated on both nuclear AND renewables and stopped burning COAL - but no, instead Germany had a fucking uptick in coal power while dropping the much cleaner nuclear.
Relevant comment from this thread.
But still false, because we had a short, small uptick while switching away from russian gas. Now Germany burns less coal than ever in the last 50 years.
The point is his claims "why do nuclear diehards always pretend it’s nuclear or fossil fuels only, like renewables are nonexistant? " is compleltly bollocks in the first place. I’ve never seen any one pro nuclear arguing against renewables. That’s the ideal combo.
And this could have been easilsy debunked by just scrolling a few comments down. Was just point out the blantent lack of good faith of the previous commenter.
why do nuclear diehards always pretend it’s nuclear or fossil fuels only, like renewables are nonexistant?
Is not the same as
pro nuclear arguing against renewables
They mostly don’t argue against it (only sometimes on reddit) but they always ignore its existence and accuse everyone who is not a nuclear fanboy on wanting more CO2 emissions.
Propagandist propagandizes.
More news at 11
Because being addicted to the teat of Russian fossil fuels has worked out so well…
Russia also has one of the largest reserves of uranium in Eurasia as well, only behind Kazakhstan.
Also Germany would only trade one teat for another. Energy indepences is only possible by using renewables.
Lastly every energy corporation has said they won’t touch nuclear with a twelve feet pole because it is too expensive and there is no insurance agency willing to back them up.
The nuclear horse IS dead.
Unless you’re ready to fill the country with a thousand battery farms, you need some sort of steady base supply that solar and wind cannot provide. Hydroelectric is not really a big option in Germany, so that leaves you with coal, gas, and nuclear energy.
Unless you’re ready to fill the country with a thousand battery farms,
Oh I am totally ready to do that. A third of these batteries will be actually farms, a third will be sitting stationary in everybodies cellars and sheds and the other half will be rolling on the streets in form of electric vehicles.
Top off your own batteries and EV with surpluses during excess production and drain them during dry situations. Most people seem to forget that EVs can work both ways.
There is literally not enough minable lithium on this planet for that to be a viable option worldwide. Somewhere, somebody is going to have to use an alternate source.
sodium. gravity. carbon capacitors. lead acid. molten salt. air pressure. flywheel.
there’s alllll kinds of battery storage solutions, and for grid storage just about anything other than lithium can be used because lithium is really only useful for power density applications where weight and size of the battery matters like cars and planes.
nuclear fission is dead. fusion is the only nuclear worth talking about and that’s still years, probably decades away from being actually useful.
so then: solar, wind, wave, hydro, geothermal, and all kinds of batteries is what we have now and can do cheaply and do everywhere and do it now.
It’s really hard for me to understand where all that hate against renewable energy and batteries is coming from. I find it so magical to be able to run our entire house from a battery the size of some shoe boxes charged by our own roof. I’ve just learned that there are even affordable sodium batteries available now. How cool is that?!
Here’s some Lemmy Premium for that post. ;)
Not all batteries in the world have to be made of lithium. Depending on the use case other materials cab be even superior.
Maybe you should read up on the topic and not just repeat baseless falsehoods.
That would be so nice…
By all means, correct me then. What power delivery system out there doesn’t have a base load?
Come on, don’t be that guy…
Never ever ever. Mainly because Germany is sooo bad with new tech, we don’t need more juice :)
We can get more bang for our buck with renewables+storage.
No, we won’t. A certain dude in the government made sure to cut 99% of the funds pertaining to the study of storing energy (i.e., batteries). It is the same dude who accused the Green Party for only making ideological policies. This is the state of stupidity in this country.
We won’t get batterys developed and built in Germany, but we can still buy them from others. But yeah, fuck the FDP and triple Fuck Linder, May his Porsche always be broken.
I’m under the impression that large scale energy storage is a bit of an unsolved problem at this point, is that not the case?
According to a 2024 article in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy, Germany could have saved hundreds of billions of euros and reduced its carbon emissions by as much as 70% by embracing nuclear energy rather than rejecting it.
Good job German Greens! Well done! 👏👏👏
They are like the right wingers: ideology over facts. I bet if the conservatives win in the next election, fuck some other parts of the country but manage to introduce nuclear again, the next green government will go about undoing nuclear, regardless of its benefits.
Ok you’ll have to explain how exactly that’s the German greens fault. They were not in power when the decision fell to stop relying on nuclear power. Even if they really wanted to there are no plants that are operational right now. We’d need to renovate old ones for a lot of money or build new ones for even more money.
Additionally the specialized workforce needed to operate these plants isn’t available. We stopped training new people for obvious reasons and it’s not like we currently have a lot of skilled people in unemployment that could be recruited on short notice.
And again, nothing of that has been implemented by the greens. This is the result of conservatives being in power.
The results of that article are at least highly questionable or straight up wrong though. The Fraunhofer Institute had a look at it, found wrong data and calculations and ended their response with
However, it does not seem expedient to make a detailed analysis of the data due to the fundamentally flawed method.
