Germany is proving that you can go without nuclear without going back to coal. Instead they went into renewables. Im not sure if any other country in Europe/on continent did it. Love them for that.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec...
The plan to eliminate nuclear by 2022 and coal by 2038 should have been swapped. And lignite should've been banned a decade ago.
That's correct, but more relevant is when the build started. There are likely all sort of legal reasons why they could not stop the plant going into operation at this stage. Saying that Germany is going back to coal based on this is a bit factitious though. Germany was in fact planning more new coal plans previously, most of them did not get built. https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleauss...
> They are still claiming a victory because they are opening one and shutting down multiple. Of course those four were going to shut down anyway, but by any normal meaning of words this is "going back to coal".
No it is not. They put into operation a plant that was planned 15 years ago (im not arguing that they should have done this, but they did) . Should they instead have kept operating one of the older plants just to say "we haven't build a new one"?
> The plan to eliminate nuclear by 2022 and coal by 2038 should have been swapped. And lignite should've been banned a decade ago.
Completely agree on lignite, and they should (and likely could) have phased out both coal and nuclear by now.
We have wasted an entire decade offsetting our drop in nuclear power and a minute amount of nuclear waste with renewables, when we could have kept nuclear on to offset coal and gas instead. Germany "proving that you can go without nuclear without going back to coal" is not a reality-based opinion. Nuclear waste is a problem, but we have chosen one of the few paths even worse than that.
What have you got, ten year old hope?
https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radio...
And only 200g per person per year of total radioactive waste has half life of more that 30 years.
I know this might be a bit challenging knowledge for someone with strong beliefs, but it's worth it to realign your beliefs with reality.
Talking about reprocessing (recycling is a complete misnomer), did you know that reprocessing greatley increases the amount (volume) of nuclear waste? And that it is not really economical, unless you want to make nuclear weapons.
The Merkel government was just a unprincipled opportunistic one, although I do credit her for having the guts to say "Syrian refugees can stay"; she took the morally correct decision, not the politically expedient one. But her previous steps before that like championing austerity (anyone remember the PIIGS problem?) ensured that her populace got really pissed off, imagine seeing your conservative government stripping away money for social programs for decades (while the elite get richer), and then suddenly saying "we can afford to host refugees"...