[ThorsBane]

They shouldn't be shutting down nuclear. Build more nuclear reactors. That will provide more clean energy and a lot of jobs. Modernize the grid. Make it a smarter grid that is more resilient to harm. These projects pay for themselves quickly and are easy to finance with how much wealth Germany has.

[jonp888]

What is about HackerNews and the obesession with the decision to remove Nuclear Power, which was only a minority component at it's peak, from the German energy mix, as somehow being the dominant factor in the entire German society and economy?

A while back someone unironically described Germany's nuclear power policy as "the single most catastrophic decision ever made by any government in peacetime".

[starbugs]

> A while back someone unironically described Germany's nuclear power policy as "the single most catastrophic decision ever made by any government in peacetime".

German here. Accurate description if you ask me. It's one of the dumbest and most irrational decisions ever made in energy politics. It's completely inexcusable.

[HDThoreaun]

The great leap forward? Holodomor? These decisions directly killed tens of millions of people.

[paulddraper]

Devil's advocate: It was completely irrational, but how much difference did it actually make?

[starbugs]

Right. I should have mentioned that Germany should have decided to ramp up investments in nuclear power as well. A long time ago. My bad.

[ThorsBane]

The French regret their decisions on this front. It took a war for them to realize their huge mistake regarding energy independence.

Germany is repeating the same mistake because of pride. If there are still talks about needing to use fossil fuels to bridge the gap introduced by eliminating nuclear, then eliminating nuclear was clearly the wrong move. The reactors should be maintained, upgraded, and worked on so that there's a lot of employment and a lot of clean, independent energy.

[nforgerit]

Afaik the main reason for the Western world to not sanction Rosatom, the russian nuclear supplier, is France because they frantically need their supplies..

[slightwinder]

Fossils are not used to bridge the elimination of nuclear, that's already done by renewables. Fossils are used for industry and heat, where nuclear never added anything in the first place. And while technically it's possible to use the heat from nuclear plants to replace the heat-usage from fossils, the German plants were not designed for this, and probably not even in useful locations for this. AFAIK for using heat of plants, they need to be located near the places there it's used. And I kinda doubt many people would like to build nuclear plant in big cities.

[slightwinder]

There is a good deal of misinformation, astro turfing, and I think also nerdy love for fancy toys. And there is also the problematic trend of the right wing to demonize environment- and green politics. It seems it has reached a level of conspiracy theories now.

[erur]

How's advocating for nuclear power related to demonizing environmentalist politics? Shouldn't it be an obvious fit to help reduce CO2 - which is the currently the biggest topic of the green movement?

[slightwinder]

Nuclear plants are not green, just greener than fossils. And they have no real benefits overall, but bring many problems to the table. So yeah, while they technically would reduce emissions, other options will reduce them even more, with significant less problems and more flexibility.

But the actual point is that people who rage about shutting off nuclear plants, usually don't bring these arguments, and don't care for the environment. Many of the more vocal ones somehow have adopted the mindset that environmentalists aim to destroy modern society, because they are against cars and harmful industry, so they want to reset everything into a medieval state. And nowadays, they seem to drift very hard into arguments of the "Great Reset" conspiracy and the like. And one result of this thinking is to be against everything which their enemies want, and support all of what their enemies hate, like nuclear plants.

So, what I mean to say is, there is a loud group of people who support nuclear plants, because they hate environmentalist for whatever reason, not the other way around. And while not all supporter of nuclear plants are from that group, it seems to be at the moment the msot vocal group.

[paulddraper]

Is nuclear not green?

[mrguyorama]

The tinfoil hat theory is this: Nuclear is expensive and takes forever to build. Right now there is a lot of effort and money pushing for renewable energy sources, and it has been immensely successful at proving its viability. Certain groups make a lot of money off fossil fuels, and even though they know that will eventually end, every year they can delay that end is billions in their pocket.

The push for "we shouldn't do renewables, because they can't do the job, so we should invest in nuclear" is about taking the wind out of renewable's sails. Even if we turn around today and start building a hundred nuclear plants all over the world, it will take decades for them to come online and start displacing fossil fuel energy production, meaning a long delay until fossil fuels stop putting billions into the pockets of certain people. They do this because even at the half assed effort we have now, renewable power generation is increasing by tens of terawatts per year in germany alone.

This is why the same people who DGAF about all the carbon we release into the atmosphere and all the pollution we dump into rivers suddenly "care" about "windmills kill birds", why conservative states like Florida, with ample sun, continue to push for laws that screw over home solar.

Nuclear is mostly carbon neutral energy, which is great, but if we wanted to solve climate change with nuclear energy, we needed to start building it in the 70s, when all the pushback happened. Unlike most other situations, the second best time to build nuclear is not today. Maybe it will be good to have it in the mix in the future, but we can't let it distract us from the renewable energy sources that have the potential to decarbonize our world before even the first new nuclear plant could come online.

It also might not even be cost competitive anyway.

[paulddraper]

> Even if we turn around today and start building a hundred nuclear plants all over the world, it will take decades for them to come online and start displacing fossil fuel energy production

A. Construction start to finish is well under a decade.

B. This concern is true of any alternative energy source.

> The push for "we shouldn't do renewables, because they can't do the job, so we should invest in nuclear" is about taking the wind out of renewable's sails.

The push against nuclear is to line the pockets of renewable companies, and exploits the layman's misunderstanding about environment impact of nuclear and its alternatives.

There are just as many manipulative, disingenous arguments by Big Oil as by Big Renewable.

[mrguyorama]

Name "Big Renewable".

[slightwinder]

Not really. Building the plant, and mining+refining the nuclear fuel involves a significant amount of emissions. Far more than most renewables have on the list. Overall it's greener than fossil fuels, but less green than renewables. And we are at the point where such differences matter. And that is not the only problem with nuclear. The high costs and the political problems are another things. Russia has their hands deep in nuclear fuels too.

[paulddraper]

"Green" has nothing to do with costs/politics.

[barbazoo]

There's no way that's gonna happen unfortunately. The greens have absolutely dropped the ball in terms of big picture goals. We've been brainwashed into thinking nuclear power is dangerous and the problem of waste is bigger than the problem of having non renewable, oil based, energy. In hindsight I wouldn't be surprised if the oil lobby had a hand in that.

[mschild]

The greens haven't been part of the national government for decades until 2021. I disagree with their decision to not keep the nuclear reactors running, but if you want to point fingers at people it's not them that unilaterally decided to stop building new reactors.

[foxtacles]

That's technically correct, however much of the Greens' ideology has been gradually adopted by essentially all other political parties over the past 10-15 years, most likely since it's rather popular with the voters here.

There's no political party left you could vote for if you are in favor of nuclear.

[mschild]

Right and their ideology is to build more solar and wind. Which, even when factoring in the cost of batteries, is cheaper than nuclear or almost any other form of energy.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

[barbazoo]

All true. In hindsight though I wish the political debate had considered climate change more seriously in plans how to phase out coal and nuclear.

[nforgerit]

Well the plan was created >20 years ago but depended on the lifeline to actually develop enough renewables which got almost completely blocked by conservative governments in the last decade who still phased out nuclear. Don’t blame the Greens for that.

[mrguyorama]

Solar and Wind power was completely blocked up by conservative governments all over the globe for the past 50 years. Consider Reagan, who removed solar panels from the roof of the white house just a few years after they were installed and not long after multiple oil supply crises in the 70s. Even if the solar panels being installed in the first place was only symbolic, removing them was also purposefully symbolic.

America at least had a great chance to invest in nuclear energy and completely end dependence on the middle east for it's energy, but it chose Reagan instead.

[slightwinder]

> I disagree with their decision to not keep the nuclear reactors running

It wasn't their decision, the reactors had to shut down anyway for at least some years, as they are lacking fuel and an up-to-date operating permit. The remaining reactors were already running on their last ounce, and it would take some years to produce new rods at Russia, even if we ignore the political problems.

And that's even ignoring the billions(?) of euro for penalties that Germany likely had to pay in that case, because the whole shutdown was executed somewhat shaky from the old government.

[mmiliauskas]

It needs a recession first though. Unless they manage to "wash-off" all the idiots, solutions that attempt to walk on hands will persist.