| > 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. |
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.