[turbinerneiter]

Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article?

The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short term for all the gas used.

In hindsight I think the decision to get out of nuclear was wrong, especially before getting out of coal. But keeping the last 3 running for some more months isn't really a solution for anything.

[clemensley]

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement.

It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war.

The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

[Arnt]

It seems irrational because that's not what's happening.

Those power plants can't be run next winter.

Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023.

But that would still leave them them down precisely in the period that matters most: Next winter.

[kzrdude]

We don't know what Europe looks like in 2023 but the electricity will probably be useful then too.

[Filligree]

At the rate we're going, I'm not so sure. "Bombed-out wasteland" seems possible.

[411111111111111]

I'd be way more worried about the general populations ability to buy groceries and keep the house warm in the winter.

Globally a lot of harvests are falling through because of floods and heat waves. Combined with the inflation that's just starting to take off... Paying for life's necessities will be challenging for a lot of employed workers

[nathanaldensr]

Why would anyone bomb Europe when Europe is already digging its own grave with its energy policies?

[stjohnswarts]

A government is a law unto themselves. They have power to do what they need in times of war. Germany shouldn't be pulling a Chamberlain moment while Russia is hot to commit genocide in Europe and roll over whoever they want.

[Arnt]

The first person who said words like yours was probably a chieftain long ago who went to his smiths and said "I need my new sword NOW, hurry up with that hardening!"

[stjohnswarts]

Nah, this is like saying "we need more weapons for war!" and then breaking three perfectly good swords in front of the blacksmith.

[fulvioterzapi]

> Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown.

Sounds like a long list of lame excuses.

[jhgb]

"Excuses"? If you know that your company shuts down one year from now, why would you be ordering spare parts for five years into the future? Especially if you've known that date for twenty years like Germans did?

[fulvioterzapi]

Sure, sure, but I find difficult to believe that an industrial superpower such as Germany can't find a solution in a couple of months.

The the usual politicians' way of speaking. If there was the political will of having the nuclear power plants works, they would go and find the spare parts in a second. There's no political will (thank you Greens!) so they make up excuses.

[ivan_gammel]

Germany is an industrial superpower without military industrial complex and command vertical, meaning that the government is not set up to do such things quickly (in fact, I don’t think even China would be able to move that fast).

[DelightOne]

> shutting down secure

That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.

[clemensley]

There is no dispute about the safety of nuclear. We have statistics going back decades. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....

[Arnt]

Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster.

A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways.

Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear vote, after, against, because these people switched.

If you want to argue about safety, I think you might do well do focus on the safety issue that made the significant voter segment change their opinion.

[clemensley]

Did you know that most likely nobody died from radiation after Fukushima? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

[_ph_]

Well, people were evacuated in time. The big question is: can they come back, like ever? The threat isn't so much people dying from radiation if evacuated in time, it is that large regions of densely populated central Europe can become uninhabitable and not usable for agriculture.

[jhgb]

> Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster.

No, they're not. The shutdown decision was made (and put into binding law!) almost ten years before Fukushima.

[turbinerneiter]

AFAIK, the Union/FDP government reversed that decision, made new contract with the plants, changed their opinion again after Fukushima and we now have to pay breach-of-contract fines to the nuclear power plants.

[Arnt]

That law wasn't the last word… it didn't prevent extending the allowed lifetimes of the already-built reactors a year or so before Fukushima.

[_ph_]

Right. There is no dispute that the Bavarian forests are still strongly contaminated from the Chernobyl disaster and will be for many decades. You still have somewhat to be careful to eat mushrooms from there and especially wild boar.

[ivan_gammel]

The problem with nuclear is simply that it is irrelevant to the current situation. Won’t add enough energy to the grid, won’t solve the problem of gas demand at all, so it really doesn’t matter if Germany was right or wrong about it.

[clemensley]

France is produces 75% of its energy with nuclear. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

A German produces almost twice as much CO2 as a Frenchmen. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

[formerly_proven]

Yes, Germans have been wrong about nuclear.

No, nobody will admit to that or change their minds, the end of nuclear in Germany will be celebrated as a success for the environment.

No, changing the opinion now would not matter. Germany killed its nuclear industry decades ago. Being right about this would have mattered in the 80s and 90s. You don't get the CO2 or methane that has been emitted back into the ground or the people that died out of the ground by being right in 2022.

[kzrdude]

The second best time to change course is today.

[Faaak]

Careful: of it's electricity, not energy !

[ivan_gammel]

So what? I know the numbers too, how does this make them relevant to today’s crisis? It cannot be solved by building more nuclear.

[towaway15463]

It very much matters over the timespan of several decades. That is enough time in which many more nuclear power plants could have been brought online. Just because Germany made the gross error of not building out enough nuclear power to provide for their needs doesn’t mean it is impossible.

[jhgb]

No, it doesn't. The nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters and the chemical industry consuming copious amounts of natural gas. Any shortfall from the nuclear shutdown can be covered by the underutilized coal plants. It's temporarily inconvenient but doesn't necessitate gas imports in any way.

[avar]

> nuclear plants were never a substitute for residential gas heaters[...]

Yes they were, France uses around 40% electrical heating[1], Germany around 5%. Norway is almost entirely electrically heated.

1. From some quick online searching.

[jhgb]

Uh...are we still talking about Germany? Because in Germany they clearly weren't, unlike in case of France. And Norway's absolutely prodigious consumption of electricity (quadruple amount per capita) even underlines it: electrical heating is absolutely not the way to go forward -- efficient building codes are.

[rhn_mk1]

What is "enough"? If any solution has to solve all the problems to be considered at all, you're going to have trouble noticing solutions that chip away at the problem until it's solved.

[ivan_gammel]

Enough means sufficient to mitigate the consequences of today’s gas crisis. Other people in this thread explained it well enough.

[rhn_mk1]

If by "mitigate" you mean "completely solve", then you're committing an error of being blind to incremental solutions.

If by "mitigate" you mean "make less painful", then indeed it is enough, as it's a step in the right direction.

[_0w8t]

The answer for the war is coal and this is exactly what Germany is doing. It is simpler and cheaper to run the existing coal plants at the full capacity or even increase it than try to maintain the nuclear plants long past the original design lifespan and that were planned to be stopped for years.

In retrospect it would be better if Germany did not decide to shutdown the nuclear, but presently this is a rational decision.

[slenk]

I don't think there is any world where getting rid of nuclear power is better...it's one of the cleanest, least deadly forms of power generation.

[userbinator]

The biggest concern is that when things go wrong with nuclear, they really go wrong.

[littlestymaar]

It “really goes wrong” only because we've set a really high bar for safety when talking about nuclear risks compared to most other carcinogenic risks: air pollution, pesticides, alcohol, tobacco, etc. If people where living in Prypiat right now, most of their cancer would come from other sources.

Because of the cultural stigma associated with radiations (which itself comes from the very real fear of a world-ending nuclear war during the early cold war) most smokers would refused to live around a nuclear accident site, even though it's quickly (after the most radioactive elements, namely iodine, has decayed away) much less dangerous than the cigarette they knowingly smoke all day.

Fun fact: did you know that in Germany alone the area of what has been destroyed by coal mining is comparable in size to the exclusion zone of Fukushima. This is when things go alright with coal: https://nitter.42l.fr/autommen/status/1538496930262704128#m

viewed from space: https://nitter.42l.fr/KetanJ0/status/1383023566766096386#m

[userbinator]

A short immediate risk is called "danger".

A long sustained risk is called "life".

[towaway15463]

And yet we’re all still here and given the number of nuclear power plants and how long we’ve been using them compared to the tiny number of accidents it shows that it is truly the safest form of large scale power generation.

[palisade]

It is also a lot safer today if new reactors are built. The problem are the old reactors need to be shut down because they're based on older designs. We need to start building Pebble Beach reactors where even if there is a containment break, safe small carbon balls with a thin sliver of fissile material just spill out on the floor. These spread out and reduce their combined temperate averting a meltdown. Individually the balls themselves are not dangerous, they're lukewarm and could be held in the hand (not that you would). I think there are some even newer designs that go beyond this in safety. The problem with the anti-nuclear argument is that it is based on the old rod reactors like the one that failed in Fukushima prefect, Chernobyl or 3 mile island. Of course we shouldn't run those older models anymore. You need to start building the new safer reactors before you begin shutting down the old ones so you can logistically switch, however. Instead we're unfortunately heading for a future where we eventually just shut down these old reactors for safety without a real plan for replacing them. Or, we keep running the old models until they become the very cautionary tale that makes everyone nervous about nuclear.

[OtomotO]

Let's be fair: it's clean on the CO2 front, but the nuclear waste will be relevant for 100.000 years!

That is way, way longer than we have anything like civilization!

[rhn_mk1]

At the moment it seems that the CO2 problem is more pressing and of greater magnitude than the problem of nuclear waste. It sounds like a relevant tradeoff.

[slenk]

Nuclear waste, as far as I have been learning, is pretty "safe". Yeah, you need a place to deal with it, but it's mostly highly shielded solids.

A video I watched recently explaining a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

[OtomotO]

Yes, logically I agree. I'd rather the species sees another millenium to deal with this, than "go extinct" before.

Yet that is half the reason for the drama. The other half being Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Humans are not rational beings, hence we need to look at where their fear comes from, to find appropriate solutions.

[otikik]

Maybe when winter comes, 1% will make all the difference. We will see

[baxtr]

They could have tried at least. It’s just not a clever thing to do from a communication perspective.

[WJW]

Then communicate better, like turbinerneiter just did. Something not making intuitive sense for the uninitiated does not suddenly make it a good idea.

[baxtr]

That’s a good point. That said I wasn’t convinced by the 1% argument. Europe needs all power it can scramble for the next 2 coming winters.

[arrrg]

You are misjudging the mood regarding nuclear power in Germany completely. You would have to expend so much political capital to keep those running, it‘s simply not worth it. Not for the benefit they provide, not for any communication goals you might have.

[rasz]

It might take one cold winter to change their minds.

[nathanaldensr]

It appears that very well may happen. When the nature of the uncaring universe is made known to people, many delusions will be swept away.