[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.

[avar]

They weren't because of Germany's energy policy, not because nuclear is a bad fit for residential heating. We're talking about "[nuclear on] the timespan of several decades".

[jhgb]

Germany has neither a nuclear military-industrial complex like the French do nor the opportunity to waste copious amounts of energy the way Norwegians do, so I fail to see how references to those countries are in any way relevant for Germans' situation. No amount of energy policy will compensate for their different circumstances to the extent of turning Germany into a second France or a second Norway.

[avar]

Even if you think that's insurmountable problem there's an easy solution: Pay the French to build and operate them, they already do that for other foreign customers.

But look at France's portion of nuclear at the start of the 70s, then the 90s. There's no reason except political will that Germany couldn't do the same.

[jhgb]

Perhaps. But saying with 20/20 hindsight of the 2020s that people of the 1970s should have made momentously different decisions for the future of whole national industries for decades to come doesn't feel any less arrogant to me. And that's even assuming that the international situation decades ago was the same as one of today, which it wasn't either.

[avar]

I'm talking about what should be done today, not crying over the milk spilt in the 70s. I only mentioned the 70s to show how rapidly nuclear could be built to replace other energy sources.

If you look at any longer term projections on the German or EU energy mix in the next 10-30 years, natural gas will still be critical to the energy mix in 2050 if current plans continue. E.g. [1] shows a nice summary of that.

Thus arguments like "efficient building codes" are a red herring. You'll still need to heat your efficiently insulated buildings.

The current plans for doing that are fundamentally still those spearheaded by Germany and others before 2014. If the EU has a serious commitment to longer term sanctions on Russia those plans need to change.

I don't think they will. I think we'll still be buying Russian gas then, and that Germany et al will find some way to sell out Ukraine in the next couple of years. But one can always hope for better.

1. https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...