[pthreadses]

The problem here is that you seem to be arguing a point I’m not making. I’m speaking only to the decisions regarding prioritizing decommissioning nuclear over coal. Let’s ignore the future and deal only with what has already happened, because it requires no suppositions. The German public and politicians have decided to prioritize the phase out of nuclear over coal, both before and after the accident in Japan. This is a fact, it’s not up for debate. It’s supported both by public policy positions, public sentiment, and by looking at the percentage of energy coming from each production method. This has negative consequences for climate change.

That’s all that I’m saying here. I’m an overall supporter of the Energiewende, I’d be happy for renewables to replace both coal and nuclear. The issue is as renewables become a bigger share you can shutter coal or you can shutter nuclear capacity that renewables are replacing. Germans chose to prioritize shuttering nuclear, and that’s the wrong choice.

[lispm]

> Germans chose to prioritize shuttering nuclear, and that’s the wrong choice.

Actually it was not. There was no choice.

The problem is that you neglect the context. There are a bunch of actual problems which made getting rid of nuclear faster than coal the only way.

1) there was no choice. No one asked what should we replace with renewable. The renewable energy movement developed out of the opposition to a full Atomstaat (a nuclear state) and the risk of nuclear accidents in a densely populated country/europe.

2) there was no way it could have been decided to replace coal first. Coal is the only large primary energy source in Germany. By far. Hard coal and lignite. The whole industrialization of Germany was based largely on coal. Thus whole regions were living from that. And some still are. There is much larger opposition to replace coal than nuclear because people earn(ed) their living from it and there was (and still is) a large political lobby for it. This lobby is not from the greens. it took decades to close hard-coal mines and it takes decades to close lignite mines. Basically when the workers retire. Not because renewable energy fans like that, but because the opposition from some political parties and the industry is strong. Remember when environmentalists were recently protesting against lignite mining in Germany? Political impact: not much. In the current federal government are conservatives and social-democrats - both with large coal lobby groups.

3) Technically fossil fuel plants are slightly more flexible than nuclear power plants and mix better with renewable energy.

4) since coal is the only large domestic primary energy source at that time (very little natural gas, very little oil, uranium mining was dirty and on the way out, not much hydro, very little renewable deployed, ...) it was seen helping with energy independence.

5) France went in into nuclear technology early because that was a side effect of the creation of nuclear technology for the military. Germany didn't have military nuclear infrastructure, was late to the nuclear build-up and does have no ambitions for its own production of nuclear weapons - though that was featured when conservative politicians and technology fans decided to build up nuclear technology. Thus nuclear power was also an easier target to break up the grip of the four big electricity companies on their monopolistic market (each exclusively owned distribution and production in a large area of Germany). If you look at France, they haven't build-up similar large amounts of non-hydro renewables.

So the claim that Germany did make the wrong choice is completely neglecting the actual history: there simply was no choice and we are lucky that we were able to start the replacement of at least one of the problematic technologies and that this gave us an idea of the path to further reduce coal. There are still areas where we have even less progress: traffic and heating.

[pthreadses]

1.) of course there was a choice. That’s what all of this was, a concrete plan, none of this was organic. A choice was made to be nuclear-free, and not coal free. This is what set the stage for larger reductions of nuclear than coal as renewables grew. This was absolutely a choice.

2.) this absolutely may be what’s underpinning the preference. I’ve never really made a claim about why the choice was made, only pointed out it was the wrong choice from an environmental perspective. But let’s not pretend this was some nefarious lobbyists, the German people were behind prioritization of closing nuclear as well.

3.) Sure, although we both know this doesn’t justify the decision as it’s not a big enough issue to really matter.

4.) Right but we aren’t talking about plans to build new nuclear plants, we are talking about what that already exists gets decommissioned, coal or nuclear. So this is irrelevant.

5.) Again, not relevant to which of existing power generation capabilities you phase out.

You really seem unwilling to engage on the point being made here.

[lispm]

There was no choice. There was no question at that time what to phase out and there would have been no political majority to exit coal. The most important goal of the environmental movement (and which lead to the red/greens government and to the exit decision) was to exit nuclear and to find an alternative to that.

> You really seem unwilling to engage on the point being made here.

Same. You are trying to rewrite history.

2) + 4) + 5) are not irrelevant: these were jobs, industry, tradition, political influence, etc.

You seem to think that decisions on energy politics exists in a vacuum, independent of reality and historic context.

The political discussion to exit coal in Germany only started to get traction a few years after 2010.

It's like asking why the US didn't fly to the more interesting Mars instead of the Moon. There simply was no choice when that decision was made. Constructing a choice in hindsight is just rewriting history.

[pthreadses]

This isn't really going anywhere, so I'll say my last bit on this and you can feel free to have the last word on the subject if you'd like.

You seem to be identifying the constituencies that exist for the outcome that happened, and seem to be saying that because they existed it simply couldn't have been any other way. This is sort of tautological - in a sense yes, it couldn't have been any other way because it happened the way it did. Nobody made an arbitrary decision on this, nobody flipped a coin. But of course those constituencies weighed various factors, and made choices. That they made a choice does not mean it couldn't have been any other way or was correct. That's a bizarre way to look at history. It would essentially render all analysis and criticism of past decision-making moot. "Well it had to be that way, because the people who made the decisions made the decisions because factors existed that influenced them to do so!" I mean yeah, welcome to every subject in the history of the world.

But the specific question being replied to here was, "how does nuclear energy help with climate change?" from OP, obviously specifically in the context of the article. In that context, it's completely fair and correct to critique the decisions made as I and others have done, and it's frankly completely irrelevant what other constraints there were politically or practically.

And even if we do take those into account, it's fine to be critical of the decisions. You are right, there wasn't a huge appetite to take on coal in Germany until well after there was one to take on Nuclear. And that's something that's rightly criticized. Nobody forced people to embrace their goofy "Atomkraft, Nein Danke" crap.

[lispm]

> how does nuclear energy help with climate change?

and the answer is: it doesn't. Simply because it does not scale to make anywhere near of the needed impact in the next 50 years. Nuclear production will struggle to keep it's current levels for the next two decades. Renewable does expand rapidly.

Draw the trend curves for energy consumption, deployment of production and you'll see that nuclear is a costly mistake. That's just basic mathematics.

"Atomkraft, Nein Danke" was the rational reaction to investing billions into the wrong energy landscape.