Coal in Germany will end in 2030 anyway and the renewables are built at a pace to support that.
Remember: renewables are not actively good for reducing CO2. They don't suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, they are at best neutral. Renewable are good insofar as they allow us to move away from fossil fuels.
Moreover a single nuclear unit costs billions to build, billions to maintain, billions to dismantle, all under control of a single entity/company. Whereas renewable costs are much more spread, can be managed by many different companies, etc.
Yes, agreed.
> Moreover a single nuclear unit costs billions to build, billions to maintain, billions to dismantle, all under control of a single entity/company. Whereas renewable costs are much more spread, can be managed by many different companies, etc.
The government should ask nuclear power companies to post a bond upfront to pay for the dismantling.
I don't think the whole 'single entity' thing is that bad. Nuclear power plants are still relatively small compared to the whole power infrastructure of a country. They are not more concentrated than eg hydro-electric generation from dams.
Just to be clear: I'm not arguing against renewables here. I'm arguing against turning off nuclear power plants that are already running, and have modern-enough safety features.
(Though I would argue against giving direct subsidies to both nuclear power plants and renewables. You should tax emissions, and let the market sort it out. You can even re-distribute the take from that tax to all voters, so that the average person doesn't have any extra tax burden.)
Germany had so little nuclear power left that leaving them running had no impact in the roadmap for green energies and energy prices. They had to be shut down anyway soon since they were old and insecure.
Renewables /are/ good for reducing CO2, as every kW produced by renewable is not produced by CO2-emitting alternative. Plus, they make you independent from foreign energy sources.
More pertinently: those nuclear power plants they shut off were already running. Keeping a plant running takes exactly 0 years.
(You can't really blame German politics here: they just deliver what German voters want. Democracy working as intended.)
> Renewables /are/ good for reducing CO2, as every kW produced by renewable is not produced by CO2-emitting alternative.
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote?
> Plus, they make you independent from foreign energy sources.
That's a separate discussion. Wind energy in Germany and burning German coal is independent of foreign energy sources. Burning Russian oil or importing electricity from photovoltaic in the Sahara are both foreign energy sources as far as Germany is concerned.
As long as you make sure that your foreign imports come from a wide variety of friendly countries, that's not too bad. Eg Germany importing nuclear power from France or wind power from British off-shore farms doesn't seem very concerning to me.
(I'm just using Germany as an example here.)
The decision to decomission them is a political one, made directly after Fukushima, and fully completed last year. Nothing to do with building them, public was against them and the government listened.
My point being when Germany says they're gonna stop using coal and go all in on renewables, there's historical evidence that they'll follow through. It's just gonna take some years to complete.
The "it takes decades" argument was used as the reason for not significantly renewing nuclear in the UK - over a decade ago.
So either you follow one approach (= mix between imports and solar/wind) or the other (=import until 2032, then import and produce with nuclear energy), with the first approach being oriented to the long run (=independent from other countries, less co2 emissions, etc.).
The largest owner of wind power installations in Sweden is China. The 5 largest producers of electricity from wind power, 3 of them are foreign (Finland, Germany and Norway).