Germany be like - let's do exactly opposite of what makes sense in today's world
Green party is really ruining and I'm amazed people still give them votes
Green party is really ruining and I'm amazed people still give them votes
> Yet the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 caused German sentiments to shift strongly against atomic energy once more, and Ms. Merkel abruptly reversed course. Her government passed a law to phase out Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors by the end of 2022.
Similarly in the neighbouring Austria, nuclear power is prohibited in the constitution, not by a political party.
Which is funny, because we actually built a pretty much complete nuclear power plant, Zwentendorf. It‘s now a unique museum.
A vote of just 50.47 % ruined our radiant future...
Also we do have one research reactor left right in the city. I was blessed enough to visit it once.
There really should be a rule that important decisions can't pass with a tiny majority
There are at least two major problems with such a rule:
(1) On an important question, “yes” and “no” are both important decisions.
(2) Who decides what is “important”?
You can make a rule that is closer to “you can’t make specific kinds of deviations from the status quo without a supermajority vote”, but that’s…very different from “important decisions”.
Bad politicians ask people how they should do a thing, then do that thing.
It's been awhile since Germany has had good politicians where energy is concerned.
Then they did away with a big component of "Plan A" in nuclear after Fukushima, which promoted Russian gas to an essential component of their transition energy mix.
At the end of the day, if Germany hadn't stopped building nuclear or decommissioned reactors, Ukraine probably wouldn't have been invaded.
Russia surely nudged, but if Germany hadn't already been trending in that direction then it wouldn't have stuck.
Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to, and Germany had nothing to do with that.
The belief that Germany would rather sacrifice Ukraine than lose Russian gas would have been less plausible if 30% nuclear energy had been retained.
Russia didn't make a rational decision: we know that Putin hid the plan from most of his subordinates, ignored concerns presented by the rest, and the system withheld important facts from him likewise. He made a huge gamble with his "3-day special operation".
Also, the nuclear plants would have provided only a partial backup for the Russian gas, as electricity from the plants couldn't replace the direct use of gas in German houses and industry anyway.
A bad one, because their facts were wrong, but one based off calculations rather than rolling dice:
+ Russian Cold War-era (and refits of same) military materiel is reaching obsolescence and end of life. Russia can't afford to modernize its military at scale (hence the obsession with announcing prototype superweapons)
+ US and European ties are at a low point, as a consequence of the Trump presidency
+ US is focused on China as a peer threat
+ Germany is uniquely diplomatically vulnerable to gas energy pressure, but only until additional renewables come online, transmission infrastructure is upgraded, and efficiency measures implemented (see the Nord Stream bombing whodoneit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sa... )
+ Remaining ex-Warsaw Pact / non-NATO countries are likely accede to NATO in the next few years (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO#Current_... )
... ergo, there was no better time to make the attempt than now. Everyone just assumed Putin wouldn't be stupid enough to try.
But that calculation looks very different without the energy vulnerability, as Russia understands the economic difference between themselves and Germany.
It's incredibly naive, but it's the same mentality in present day nuclear opponents. They still fail to see that a no to nuclear is often a yes to coal, oil and gas.
The thing is, this was a widely supported decision that has by and large gone through without a lot of opposition in a country that reliably votes for conservatives and moderates to lead them. Also, none of the bad stuff that people predicted would happen has actually happened. No blackouts. No massive increase in coal/gas usage. None of that seems to be happening.
I agree with this, but this in no way absolves the CDU. If they try to undercut another parties support and pass legislation with negative effects, it's their fault, not the fault of the party they undercut.
> But ultimately this is on the German voting public, a large portion of whom have had an irrational aversion to nuclear for a long time.
Aside from whether I agree with the aversion being irrational, this is definitely true. The CDU was following public sentiment.
Actually not every way though.. nuclear waste has to go somewhere.
Nuclear waste has killed possibly a few hundred people at best.
Take into consideration the burning of fossil fuels over a very long period of time. Billions.
Not if we store it properly, like we already do.
I don't understand your argument; of course waste must go somewhere. Nuclear power, with its waste, is still cleaner than fossil fuels in every way.
My stock comment for that is: bury it deep and with signs; if we've lost the ability to read the signs, we've lost the ability to dig deep and endanger ourselves.
No, we've got a pretty good idea.
>So I don't think it's demonstrably cleaner "in every way".
It is, objectively.
yes, and it's so dense that it fits in a ridiculous amount of space, unlike coal that will put cancer-causing dusts everywhere in the air for decades to come. Enjoy.
Clarification: I'm not German. I'm talking globally and long term. What's happening right now in Germany is just a blip. The big picture:
> Clean power growth is likely to exceed electricity demand growth in 2023; this would be the first year for this to happen outside of a recession. With average growth in electricity demand and clean power, we forecast that 2023 will see a small fall in fossil generation (-47 TWh, -0.3%), with bigger falls in subsequent years as wind and solar grow further. That would mean 2022 hit “peak” emissions. A new era of falling power sector emissions is close.
https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electrici...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/10/28/the-iron...
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/03...
That does not mean the plan has to be followed through without amendment today - in fact, it cannot be, unless restarting lignite-burning generators was part of the original plan. Responsibility for this development lies squarely on all those who chose this path today (and regardless of party affiliation.)
So they were populists?