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by V__ 253 days ago
> the worst political decision of German politics since WW2

Except the shutdown had no negative effect. There was no supply shock and prices keep trending down since (Though that of course doesn't mean because of). Let's keep it real. I can probably name worse German political decisions from this week.
1 comments
JamisonM 253 days ago
"Except the shutdown had no negative effect."

Three things here:

* Didn't the diversion of natural gas to electricity generation end some German industrial production completely?

* Are there not large electricity subsidies in place via subsidies for US imported LNG?

* Isn't the alternate reality where there is a surplus of electricity in German due to nuclear power a better world where Germany has more opportunity? (the AI datacentre boom is built on excess electricity, isn't it?)

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V__ 253 days ago
* I would have dig deeper on that, but regarding the timeframe when the shutdown occurred, there wasn't a big effect on gas prices. That happened before due to the war with Ukraine and the reliance on Russian gas in general. [1] The idea once was to use cheap gas from Russia and at the same time build out renewables. The latter didn't happen, resulting in the mess Germany is right now.

* There were multiple tax reductions and I think some are in the talks now. Those were independent (and before) the nuclear shutdown.

* Probably. Nuclear should have been shutdown after gas, coal etc. I am with you on that. But the ship had already sailed long ago, before the last three plants were shut down.

[1] https://www.iwh-halle.de/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/...

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JamisonM 251 days ago
Fair enough on the immediate consequences.. but shutting down these plants was a long term decision, so the long term consequences are still consequences. It is certainly true that no one predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine when Fukushima happened but Germany's over-reliance on Russian gas was well understood at the time. Which I raise only to point out that the bad things that did happen were foreseeable, the German energy system was subject to systemic risks and those risks were made worse by these choices.

It seems like the statement "No negative effect" is probably not well supported by subsequent events.

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