>The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations.This was a political choice, not technical. It was entirely possible to extend their lifetimes. They just chose not to.
The Green politicians and activists are the ones who spent decades hyping up the dangers of nuclear, they influenced a whole generation. The fact that it was a different party that implemented it is immaterial; they were the authors of the whole ideology. Fanatical minority parties force the hand of cowardly or indifferent moderates all the time. It would not have happened without them.
Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds, when Russia started the war and suddenly Germany couldn't rely on gas anymore. But they didn't. They chose coal.
It's completely preposterous to say it's not the Greens' fault.
---
Can't reply to other comment because of cooldown, putting my reply here:
>No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year.
Nope, nope, nope. Greens have continually lied about this. Inspections would not have taken years:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-...
>Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view.
>The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months.
Nor was there any problem of fuel availability. Westinghouse offered to make new fuel rods and could have delivered them by Q4 2022; Habeck just said no.
https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe
I repeat: there was no technical, safety, or logistical reason whatsoever that the plants couldn't have been brought back up. It was purely a political choice.
---
>Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions.
German reactors are inherently safer than Soviet RBMK reactors, in that they have containment vessels and are not shrouded in institutional secrecy. Literally nobody died from the Fukushima disaster. And there is no rigorously imaginable scenario where a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a 10 metre high tsunami could happen in Germany. If the plants were in a poor condition, then bring them to a better condition. There was no reason whatsoever for the Fukushima disaster to trigger outright decommissioning of Germany's nuclear fleet. It just doesn't rationally follow. No new relevant information was learned; people already knew what a meltdown was.
>The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 years where politicians from both parties were actively sabotaging the building of new wind and solar in favour for more coal. Sigmar Gabriel, being a prime example of that.
Hydroelectric power is neither safe nor environmentally friendly. You have to dam a river, flood thousands of acres of land, and a single dam failure can kill more people than all the casualties of any other power source put together, apart from coal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...
>1975 Banqian Dam failure: 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless.
By the Chernobyl/Fukushima doctrine, this one event should have made everyone else dismantle their hydroelectric dams, shouldn't it?
Barring new technical innovations, geothermal is marginal anywhere except Iceland. Wind and solar are safe but land-hungry.
When you say "advocated for safe and clean alternatives", that's just begging the question. Nuclear is already safe and clean, and hence needs no advocacy for an alternative on that basis.
>2 of the reactors, Neckarwestheim and Emsland, had only old fuel rods left over. Estimates suggest at best a continuation at 60% capacity for 80 days. Acquiring new ones isn't something you can just do. From order to delivery it takes 12-18 months. Since reactors were being shut down, they simply didn't have the personal to keep them running. There was also no planned upkeep since 2009, which is another major time and cost point. So at best, those reactors would have run for 80 days before having to power up coal again. Instead of spending all that money on mainting old infrastructure, we can just as well massively build and invest into green energy. That would produce more energy, for a lesser amount of money.
I've already addressed the parts about delays and fuel availability above. As for money: Germany has already spent half a trillion euros on the transition to renewables. Half a trillion! And they're still getting half their energy from carbon-emitting sources. What they're doing now is not cheap at all. They could have built several dozen brand new plants for that amount of money, and have rock-solid reliable zero-carbon electric baseload, enough to power all of central Europe.