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Comment by cptaj | Hacker News Reader

Germany is irrationally closing down their completely green nuclear plants and installing gas and coal. I don't think that was the plan.

Blackballing nuclear has been the worst environmental decision our society has ever made. We would've solved this problem by now if we had just gone all in on nuclear energy

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Something they don't tell you about Germany: there's loads of corruption that is so normalized that nobody even recognizes it as such. Siemens is one of the big pushers of gas technology in Germany. One of the excuses they use is that eventually they will switch to a hydrogen mix and eventually to pure hydrogen. It's all just an excuse to build more gas turbines and grow/maintain/protect their business.

I think it is interesting that people accuse Germany of being "irrational" while if it was Italy for example, people would immediately call out the corruption.

This is kind of a lame explanation. Siemens is one of the biggest international players in renewables and used to be one of the biggest in nuclear until the German government basically forced them out of it.

They would be just as happy to sell Germany whatever technology the government wanted - it's just Germany's very strong green movement was vehemently anti-nuclear. If anything, it was their political entrapment with Russia that created their reliance on cheap natural gas.

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