The article generalizes to a dangerous degree. It‘s really just an opinion piece. You can say the same thing about every single country. All you have to do is find one person who feels attached to combustion engines.
Except speaking as a petrolhead… the germans are historically really fucking good at it.
I dont think that in the history of the automobile if you were to ask “What was the best car of the year” that it wouldnt be a german dominated list every year. Yes the Japanese would occasionally sit them on their ass and the Americans and Italians might get one or two. But building world class cars has been a big part of the german identity globally for the past hundred years.
You’re right about climate change. But for Germany, nuclear power is not the awnser.
We don’t have a safe, final place to store the waste.
We would again be dependend on other countrys, to import uranium.
All nuclear power plants are offline and would take a lot of money to modernise / reopen them. To have a significant impact over all we would also need to build more. All of this will easily take more than 10 years.
For us, it is way more cost efficient, faster and safer to invest in solar, wind and battery’s.
I live in Germany. I don’t understand the “no space” argument. Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern at one of the known stable rock locations and dig down. The space is there. The footprint is small. Look at the Onkalo site. The above ground footprint is even smaller.
This being said I think long term storage should be a EU level agenda modeled after the Finnish Onkalo model with shared locations.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources. So importing uranium ore from Canada is no different. Except we would import from an ally. Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
As far as reopening closed plants yah. You are right. I don’t think that is easy to reopen them after such neglect. The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France while Germany continues its renewable path. Aka nuclear base energy by proxy.
Also german here, neighbour to the proud bavarians. Haha „just buy“ and open a site in the kingdom of Markus and the CSU? There may be a Endlager in Germany, but never in Bavaria.
You can not just dig down anywhere. You need the right kind of rock and in a formation large enough that you can dig down and be sure, that no water can ever touch the nuclear waste and transport the nuclear material to the surface. That geology is pretty rarer.
This is true and why I think it should be a EU sponsored agenda. This being said a small plot with the right type of rock/location is not so rare it can not be found in all of the EU. We know this for a fact.
I suspect such a site could also be found in Germany. I mentioned Bayern just because there has been a large study done already that found several durable candidates.
I’m afraid it is rather the opposite. Sometimes Germany exports electricity to France, but most of the time it is the contrary.
“ France has been an exporter on all its borders: a very strong exporter on the borders with Germany and Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Great Britain”
The ideal solution would be a EU wide low CO2 approach. All countries will experience issues. All countries should have low CO2 base and peak power solutions that can be exchanged in such times.
It’s not about the space it takes to store the waste. It needs to be stored safely for one million years for the radiation levels to be safe again. This timeframe is also required by law. It is very unlikely, that we will ever finds such place in Germany.
Using another countrys storage will most likely come at an even higher price, because they want to make a profit on it on top.
Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern at one of the known stable rock locations and dig down.
See argument above. And: I live in Bavaria. And no thanks, even if it would be possible to store it here, we don’t want it. I guess no one wants a nuclear waste facility anywhere near his home and I fully understand it. That’s another kinda unsolvable problem.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources.
Yeah, but just because things are going that way right now doesn’t mean they always have to. Quite the contrary. The Russian war clearly showed us that dependencies like these should be completely reduced as fast as possible. Why be dependent on someone, if you don’t have to.
Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
Yes, some raw materials and some parts I would guess. This is the same with nuclear. But the difference starts by operating them. We don’t need a “fuel” for solar panals or wind turbines to work.
We have known good locations in Germany that could be used. I only mention that location because a good amount of the sites are there. This all being said an EU policy based approach would be better than just Germany.
This is the study that shows the good locations in Germany.
Except we can’t handle the waste. At least not in Germany where we move it between temporary storage locations until we find a permanent one soon™️ and are shocked that due to improper storage the containers are rusting.
Our coal usage is at an all time low and continues to decline. In fact the decline in recent years is greater than the contribution of nuclear power has ever had to our energy mix (roughly 2% per year).
Let’s be honest here: The last nuclear plants in Germany (and most of the western world!) were build in the 70s and 80s. The last german nuclear plant was finished in 1989 and switched off in 2023 after 34 years. Every other reactor was even older. Even if other countries are running reactors that are old as fuck, that is not safe. So there was no way to keep them running into the 2030s or 2040s.
(and I know that other countries are running their old reactors and that is also not safe)
How do you know that? Are you an expert on nuclear power technology? I at least see absolutely no reason why proper maintenance wouldn’t allow reactors to work infinitely. That’s kind of the definition of “proper maintenance”.
There are several reasons: Those reactors were planned for a runtime of 30-40 years. And you can’t prolong those runtimes by “proper maintenance” due to some hard facts introduced by the radioactivity. The steel in the containment & pressure vessel will get radiation damage with time. That is something you can monitor - but the pressure vessel is the reactor and if that is damaged, you can’t simply replace it. So there is a hard limit on runtime. You might get a few years more out of them, you might be lucky, but that really is not a safe way to run a reactor.
You can take a look at what that actually means when you look at France: They have build nearly all of their reactors between 1977 and 1994 and that means that most of their reactors have reached those 40 years they were designed for. France totally failed to start building replacement reactors - Flamanville III is not enough and was extremely expensive and way late. And they need to run those reactors - if there are problems with too many reactors, they have not enough capacity. We already saw that a while ago when too many of those old reactors developed cracks. So if there is a big issue, french politics need to ensure that there is enough electricity generation. And that political pressure is something that is not compatible with a safe way of running nuclear reactors, esp. when you’re running old reactors.
I get that. But if proper maintenance means “replace the reactor pressure chamber”, then that’s what should be done. I’m sure building a new reactor pressure chamber every 40 years and replacing it creates less CO2 than 40 years of coal power generation.
And anyway, everyone seems to miss the part where I only said that coal should be phased out before nuclear, not that nuclear never needs to be phased out. Both coal and nuclear need to go, but overall, coal is worse. The only reason coal is kept for longer is because it’s cheaper than properly maintaining nuclear.
I’m not sure that oil companies are behind the various near and actual catastrophes of nuclear power plants. At least that’s what convinced me that it’s not worth the risk.
If you take into account every nuclear related death and even include potential/indirect ones from radiation exposure (cancer) it’s still killed less people than just the physical extraction of fossil fuels. That’s not even getting into the potential/indirect deaths caused by the burning of the fuels/pollution.
Not to mention modern day reactors are incredibly safe. Thorium reactors are pretty cool
Sure, on paper those are incredibly safe compared to older models. However, our current economic system has no incentive to keep these reactors in a top-notch state. Instead, companies in order to maximize profit will reduce maintenance to the bare minimum of what’s necessary to pass whatever laughable security standards are imposed on them.
That is, if there are going to be frequent and thorough inspections at all. I.e. it is well-known here in Germany that due to tax evasion roughly 20 billion Euros are missing from the federal budget. I do not believe this is going to change anytime soon, and neither do I believe it will be much different if we build new reactors.
Nuclear was supposed to be a stopgap until renewables and battery storage can handle 24/7. Nuclear by far produces much less CO2 than coal or gas. That matter much more in the long run.
The glow isn’t green, though, but more blue or violet. Real life is not the Simpsons.
Nuclear power isn’t (and never was) about cheap and clean power generation, but about having and maintaining a knowledge, equipment, and personnel pool for the military application of nuclear power.
Even if you have no military nuclear programme, if you have a civilian one that is set up correctly, you are within months of building yourself a workable nuclear deterrent. Politicians should simply stop lying about its purpose and it would be fine. Especially in a time where Europe needs to think hard about becoming independent from a nuclear deterrent provided by an outside country.
There is a difference between operating a technology on a comercial scale and having the capabilities to build on it. The university I went to had a reactor in one of it’s cellars. Granted, tiny compared to a comercial plant but enough to do research with and train people on.
Yes enough for research and limited training. But it doesn’t produce people nor facilities capable of handling and working with nuclear technology at any appreciable scale. In order to credibly have the ability to build nukes within half a year, you need more than a few nuclear scientists and engineers, you need a sizable trained workforce and the relevant facilities for processing and handling nuclear fuels.
Except usage of coal has been going down steadily and is at an all time low. The amount we use coal less is bigger than the amount of electricity nuclear has ever contributed to the German electricity mix.
Renewables aren’t enough but nuclear is not the solution. Emergency gas powerplants are the only economically sound way due to their flexibility.
The concept of “base load” will likely disappear within the next 20-30 years. And without a base load, nuclear powerplants are possibly even less economical than if you were to burn paper money to generate and sell electricity.
As a German, many of my countrymen and -women are rather embarassing.
On this front, Italians do not behave differently.
The article generalizes to a dangerous degree. It‘s really just an opinion piece. You can say the same thing about every single country. All you have to do is find one person who feels attached to combustion engines.
Except speaking as a petrolhead… the germans are historically really fucking good at it.
I dont think that in the history of the automobile if you were to ask “What was the best car of the year” that it wouldnt be a german dominated list every year. Yes the Japanese would occasionally sit them on their ass and the Americans and Italians might get one or two. But building world class cars has been a big part of the german identity globally for the past hundred years.
Germany has done a lot of good with green energy too, so it’s not all bad
Except for what they did with nuclear power.
Unlike what France wants us to think, nuclear power is not green. Unless you count that warm and fuzzy green glow.
The main threat here is climate change. Nuclear plants are an excellent low CO2 alternative to traditional baseline power.
We can handle the waste. We can’t handle a 3c climate change bump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
You’re right about climate change. But for Germany, nuclear power is not the awnser.
For us, it is way more cost efficient, faster and safer to invest in solar, wind and battery’s.
I live in Germany. I don’t understand the “no space” argument. Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern at one of the known stable rock locations and dig down. The space is there. The footprint is small. Look at the Onkalo site. The above ground footprint is even smaller.
This being said I think long term storage should be a EU level agenda modeled after the Finnish Onkalo model with shared locations.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources. So importing uranium ore from Canada is no different. Except we would import from an ally. Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
As far as reopening closed plants yah. You are right. I don’t think that is easy to reopen them after such neglect. The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France while Germany continues its renewable path. Aka nuclear base energy by proxy.
Also german here, neighbour to the proud bavarians. Haha „just buy“ and open a site in the kingdom of Markus and the CSU? There may be a Endlager in Germany, but never in Bavaria.
lol. Politically it may be difficult but technically should be easier. I only mentioned Bavaria because several of the known stable sites are there.
https://www.bge.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Standortsuche/Wesentliche_Unterlagen/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete_-_Englische_Fassung_barrierefrei.pdf
You can not just dig down anywhere. You need the right kind of rock and in a formation large enough that you can dig down and be sure, that no water can ever touch the nuclear waste and transport the nuclear material to the surface. That geology is pretty rarer.
This is true and why I think it should be a EU sponsored agenda. This being said a small plot with the right type of rock/location is not so rare it can not be found in all of the EU. We know this for a fact.
I suspect such a site could also be found in Germany. I mentioned Bayern just because there has been a large study done already that found several durable candidates.
https://www.bge.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Standortsuche/Wesentliche_Unterlagen/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete_-_Englische_Fassung_barrierefrei.pdf
The same France that constantly buys electricity from Germany because of constant issues with their nuclear powerplants?
I’m afraid it is rather the opposite. Sometimes Germany exports electricity to France, but most of the time it is the contrary.
“ France has been an exporter on all its borders: a very strong exporter on the borders with Germany and Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Great Britain”
https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/bilan-electrique-2024/echanges#Detailparfrontiere
The ideal solution would be a EU wide low CO2 approach. All countries will experience issues. All countries should have low CO2 base and peak power solutions that can be exchanged in such times.
It’s not about the space it takes to store the waste. It needs to be stored safely for one million years for the radiation levels to be safe again. This timeframe is also required by law. It is very unlikely, that we will ever finds such place in Germany.
Using another countrys storage will most likely come at an even higher price, because they want to make a profit on it on top.
See argument above. And: I live in Bavaria. And no thanks, even if it would be possible to store it here, we don’t want it. I guess no one wants a nuclear waste facility anywhere near his home and I fully understand it. That’s another kinda unsolvable problem.
Yeah, but just because things are going that way right now doesn’t mean they always have to. Quite the contrary. The Russian war clearly showed us that dependencies like these should be completely reduced as fast as possible. Why be dependent on someone, if you don’t have to.
Yes, some raw materials and some parts I would guess. This is the same with nuclear. But the difference starts by operating them. We don’t need a “fuel” for solar panals or wind turbines to work.
We have known good locations in Germany that could be used. I only mention that location because a good amount of the sites are there. This all being said an EU policy based approach would be better than just Germany.
This is the study that shows the good locations in Germany.
https://www.bge.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Standortsuche/Wesentliche_Unterlagen/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete_-_Englische_Fassung_barrierefrei.pdf
Except we can’t handle the waste. At least not in Germany where we move it between temporary storage locations until we find a permanent one soon™️ and are shocked that due to improper storage the containers are rusting.
Can you move a 3C temperature increase to a temporary storage location?
Mate, don’t ask me, ask those NIMBYs. For what it’s worth if the German state wants to rent the cellar below my flat I am fine with it.
Politically I agree it may be difficult.
We can handle the waste. We have built permanent locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
As for where we build locations I think a EU lead agenda modeled off the Onkalo approach would be best.
The second best would be for Germany to build its own long term storage facility under the same model at one of the several identified good locations.
https://www.bge.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Standortsuche/Wesentliche_Unterlagen/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete/Zwischenbericht_Teilgebiete_-_Englische_Fassung_barrierefrei.pdf
It is still absolutely stupid to get rid of nuclear power before coal, I guess that’s what they’re talking about.
Our coal usage is at an all time low and continues to decline. In fact the decline in recent years is greater than the contribution of nuclear power has ever had to our energy mix (roughly 2% per year).
Let’s be honest here: The last nuclear plants in Germany (and most of the western world!) were build in the 70s and 80s. The last german nuclear plant was finished in 1989 and switched off in 2023 after 34 years. Every other reactor was even older. Even if other countries are running reactors that are old as fuck, that is not safe. So there was no way to keep them running into the 2030s or 2040s.
(and I know that other countries are running their old reactors and that is also not safe)
Those reactors get refurbished frequently. The site may be 34 years old but the reactors and cooling are newer.
No, they are not. What gets refurbished is everything in there (pipes, cables etc.), but you can’t replace the reactor vessel and containment.
How do you know that? Are you an expert on nuclear power technology? I at least see absolutely no reason why proper maintenance wouldn’t allow reactors to work infinitely. That’s kind of the definition of “proper maintenance”.
There are several reasons: Those reactors were planned for a runtime of 30-40 years. And you can’t prolong those runtimes by “proper maintenance” due to some hard facts introduced by the radioactivity. The steel in the containment & pressure vessel will get radiation damage with time. That is something you can monitor - but the pressure vessel is the reactor and if that is damaged, you can’t simply replace it. So there is a hard limit on runtime. You might get a few years more out of them, you might be lucky, but that really is not a safe way to run a reactor.
You can take a look at what that actually means when you look at France: They have build nearly all of their reactors between 1977 and 1994 and that means that most of their reactors have reached those 40 years they were designed for. France totally failed to start building replacement reactors - Flamanville III is not enough and was extremely expensive and way late. And they need to run those reactors - if there are problems with too many reactors, they have not enough capacity. We already saw that a while ago when too many of those old reactors developed cracks. So if there is a big issue, french politics need to ensure that there is enough electricity generation. And that political pressure is something that is not compatible with a safe way of running nuclear reactors, esp. when you’re running old reactors.
I get that. But if proper maintenance means “replace the reactor pressure chamber”, then that’s what should be done. I’m sure building a new reactor pressure chamber every 40 years and replacing it creates less CO2 than 40 years of coal power generation.
And anyway, everyone seems to miss the part where I only said that coal should be phased out before nuclear, not that nuclear never needs to be phased out. Both coal and nuclear need to go, but overall, coal is worse. The only reason coal is kept for longer is because it’s cheaper than properly maintaining nuclear.
Ontario has this issue and we are building SMRs for this reason.
If every Nation capable switched to nuclear power in the 50s we wouldn’t be nearly as fucked as we are today.
Nuclear is insanely efficient and produces relatively little waste compared to the energy it produces.
Oil companies put a lot of money into making you believe its dirty and unsafe
I’m not sure that oil companies are behind the various near and actual catastrophes of nuclear power plants. At least that’s what convinced me that it’s not worth the risk.
If you take into account every nuclear related death and even include potential/indirect ones from radiation exposure (cancer) it’s still killed less people than just the physical extraction of fossil fuels. That’s not even getting into the potential/indirect deaths caused by the burning of the fuels/pollution.
Not to mention modern day reactors are incredibly safe. Thorium reactors are pretty cool
The propaganda around nuclear energy is insane
Sure, on paper those are incredibly safe compared to older models. However, our current economic system has no incentive to keep these reactors in a top-notch state. Instead, companies in order to maximize profit will reduce maintenance to the bare minimum of what’s necessary to pass whatever laughable security standards are imposed on them.
That is, if there are going to be frequent and thorough inspections at all. I.e. it is well-known here in Germany that due to tax evasion roughly 20 billion Euros are missing from the federal budget. I do not believe this is going to change anytime soon, and neither do I believe it will be much different if we build new reactors.
Nuclear was supposed to be a stopgap until renewables and battery storage can handle 24/7. Nuclear by far produces much less CO2 than coal or gas. That matter much more in the long run.
And guess what? That time is now. It’s just politics holding us back. The technology is here.
The glow isn’t green, though, but more blue or violet. Real life is not the Simpsons.
Nuclear power isn’t (and never was) about cheap and clean power generation, but about having and maintaining a knowledge, equipment, and personnel pool for the military application of nuclear power.
Even if you have no military nuclear programme, if you have a civilian one that is set up correctly, you are within months of building yourself a workable nuclear deterrent. Politicians should simply stop lying about its purpose and it would be fine. Especially in a time where Europe needs to think hard about becoming independent from a nuclear deterrent provided by an outside country.
There is a difference between operating a technology on a comercial scale and having the capabilities to build on it. The university I went to had a reactor in one of it’s cellars. Granted, tiny compared to a comercial plant but enough to do research with and train people on.
Yes enough for research and limited training. But it doesn’t produce people nor facilities capable of handling and working with nuclear technology at any appreciable scale. In order to credibly have the ability to build nukes within half a year, you need more than a few nuclear scientists and engineers, you need a sizable trained workforce and the relevant facilities for processing and handling nuclear fuels.
Yeah, I think we should rather stick to good old clean coal tbh. Nuclear is for the deranged.
Except usage of coal has been going down steadily and is at an all time low. The amount we use coal less is bigger than the amount of electricity nuclear has ever contributed to the German electricity mix.
Bad decisions of the past don’t make bad decisions of the present any less bad. Renewables are amazing and a must, but they’re just not enough.
Renewables aren’t enough but nuclear is not the solution. Emergency gas powerplants are the only economically sound way due to their flexibility.
The concept of “base load” will likely disappear within the next 20-30 years. And without a base load, nuclear powerplants are possibly even less economical than if you were to burn paper money to generate and sell electricity.
They are. Don’t let those fossil lobbyist tell you otherwise.
Nuclear is for the people who want to take the risk and don’t care about their neighbours they contaminate as well in case of a catastrophe.
Coal is for those who love radiation more than reactors do and don’t care about anything that breathes.
Yeah, that’s why it is being phased out, duh?
I think everyone is embarrassed by their fellow citizens