Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal–and why it won't go back | Hacker News Reader

Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal–and why it won't go back

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10 pointsBrajeshwar32 comments

The whole article is ideological tainted and tries to make the move away from nuclear look good. That's all there is to it, especially in the light of the recently made public documents that show that the decision was taken by an ideologically blinded minister for economic affairs against the better judgment and suggestions by the experts.

The damage to Germany's economy is already visible and will become worse as this goes on while the minister for economic affairs stated in a speech that this was anticipated and is part of the plan.

Whatever that plan is.

No mention of the fraud involved in pushing Germany to phase out Nuclear? https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/27/new-document-release-rev...

Amazing what people will write.

The minster asked the nuclear operators whether they could operate the plants longer, and the operators said (paraphrasing) "we'd need more fuel, and even if we were to order fuel today it wouldn't be delivered in time" and that was the end of the story. Two years later, "fraud!" Amazing.

They actually wrote and I'm paraphrasing as well:"It's not a problem and it would also lower the overall power prices as the cheaper nuclear power would push the gas plants out of the merit order system." But this was never communicated to Habeck (Minister for economic affairs) [1]

And in the department of the environment a report was completely altered from "can run for years" to "is impossible to use them at all" by a single person that shares the ideology... [2][3]

Interesting how official documents that have been made available clearly show how experts have been ignored and their reports have been altered to fit a political and ideological scheme.

[1] - https://assets.cicero.de/2024-04/2022-03-03_BMWKFachreferat.... [2] - https://assets.cicero.de/2024-04/2022-03-01_Atomaufsicht_Ver... [3] - https://assets.cicero.de/2024-04/2022-03-03_Atomaufsicht_Ver...

Apart from the other replies… I find the use of phrasing quite clever, and interesting in a way.

There were reasons to not extend the lifetime by a few weeks/months (e.g. contracts had been terminated, and calling vendors back for one month would be unreasonable). There were also reasons to not extend the lifetime by much more (e.g. fuel rod availability). The two sets of reasons were largely disjoint.

But by deemphasising how long the extended operation would last, extension is made to look much more reasonable. The reasons against a long-term extension clearly don't apply (to a short-term extension) etc. Rhetorically quite clever.

Ref [1] says that extending the use of the plants until March 31. could help reduce prices by the Merit-order effect. This extension is exactly what Habeck did: The life time was extended! So this is complete bullshit and already debunked completely by more serious German media.

What makes this rather obvious bad-faith attack targeted at the gullible idiots is that the nuclear exist was decided years ago by conservative government (Merkel after Fukushima). Now to pretend that finally shutting down the last three plants as planned by others a long time ago was some evil doing of the new minister (after all other plants were shut down a long time ago and the remaining operators said it makes no sense form them to continue at this time because it is too late to change course) makes no sense and this should make it obvious that there is no scandal here.

No, it's not Habeck that did it. it's the German chancellor that had to step in and enforce it...

And how is telling the truth a bad faith attack?

What truth exactly? As far as I can remember Haback was willing to extend the run time of two reactors and the chancellor then decided for all three for the interest of piece.

Refresh your memory. The German chancellor had to enforce the extension.

And the real bad-faith attack here is to make it look like there weren't any new circumstances that made it necessary to reconsider the runtime of the plants.

Seeing how three public servants modified a document to change its meaning from 'possible' to 'not possible' so that it looks to Habeck like there is no other option available is highly alarming.

When you alter a document to reflect your ideological views instead of going with its content and by this going against the public/greater good of the German people with intent to present false information to Habeck then this could be considered nothing short of treason.

Please spell it out: What exactly was changed from "possible" to "not possible"? By looking at the document, this does not hold up. Sorry.

This is a lot of nonsense debunked widely in German press.

One sided informed activist.

The decision was made a long time ago by a conservative government. The Merkel government shut down 6 nuclear plants after Fukushima. When the current government with what you call the came to power only three nuclear plants were still running and the decision to shut them down were made a lot earlier and the companies operating them did not want to continue. Those remaining nuclear plants produced only 6% of electricity in 2022 and prices did not go up after shutting them down.

Basically this. The electricity bill went far higher for citizens while at the same polluting more the environment with wind mills and solar panels as far as the eye can see. The impact on nature and citizens is far worse but this socialist-inclined government continues the decade-long USSR-sponsored propagand against nuclear power to handicap western nations. USSR is long gone but this propaganda is well alive, unfortunately.

Without irony, France keeps building nuclear generators close to the german borders. Guess to whom we are buying energy surplus? Yep, this is just awful and the article avoided mentioning these critical details.

France does not keep build nuclear generators close to the german border. Electricity trade between France and Germany was pretty balanced in 2023. For example, Germany imported more from Denmark, which does not have nuclear plants.

I do not think that there is USSR-sponsored propaganda against nuclear power in western nation. In fact, Russia earns a lot of money by exporting nuclear fuel and Rosatom is one of the few companies not embargoed.

Instead of "thinking", just try learning more about history.

On this case from the Cold War interests that western Europe wouldn't grow energetically independent: https://warontherocks.com/2017/09/russian-active-measures-in...

Facts are facts.

I do not doubt that russia spreads fake news. I doubt they would do it to hurt their own business.

> Without irony, France keeps building nuclear generators close to the german borders.

Which one? The only one they have under construction which has gone 6x over budget and was supposed to be completed in 2012?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Not my fault that your google-fu needs improvement.

14 new nuclear generators by 2050: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-buil...

Now do the homework to learn where some of these will strategically located.

Where no investment decisions are taken and EDF has publicly said they can’t self finance any new construction without direct state aid.

It is simply a ploy to hide military spending since the French army can’t fund the nuclear industry in their own.

> "Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power; and without military nuclear power, no civil nuclear power," the president had said, praising a sector that employs 220,000 people in France.

https://www.dw.com/en/do-frances-plans-for-small-nuclear-rea...*

Also not exactly close to the German border....

I think this article looks for sense and a plan where there is none.

I think it's simpler: Fukushima changed the political landscape so that there no longer was a majority in favour, and the use-by dates on the existing power plants expired. Coal also hasn't a majority in favour, but the use-by dates are different, so it's fading out of use in a different manner, rather slowly.

This is the correct answer. There were upcoming elections, and the acting government was afraid of loosing votes to the Greens due to the shift in public opinion. The decision was made, nobody wanted to reverse it. Additionally, it turned out, that the extension was unnecessary while costing millions.

The fact is, that nuclear in its current form has no future. It's too expensive, takes too long to build, and it's unpopular. Maybe SMRs or other new forms will change that in the near future.

And it's hugely expensive decommissioning isn't even factored into the business model (because then it would be even less viable), the state is left cleaning up the mess.

The article makes it sound like it was ultimately a great decision, because now coal use is at historically low levels while renewables have been increasing. What it neglected to mention is that if nuclear had remained there, the share of coal would have directly and proportionally decreased. To achieve a 5% switch from very dirty to clean energy would be a spectacular feat, and the Germans achieved the opposite when closing their still perfectly usable nuclear plants very recently.

Germany did not achieve "the opposite". Use of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions are constantly decreasing. But it is true that keeping existing nuclear plants running longer would have been good idea. But if one wants to complain about the past, why not complain that we collectively did not invest more in renewables earlier? In contrast to nuclear power, which did not become cheaper despite substantial investments, investments in renewables brought prices down substantially.

Here's an update and added context to the Cicero Magazin article about Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck: "Top German Greens officials accused of deception in nuclear phase-out advice" - After months of obstructions, a German high court forces the German government to disclose key internal memoranda regarding a nuclear phase-out following the Russian attack of Ukraine at the end of February, 2022. By Gene Nelson, Ph.D. April 28, 2024 https://tinyurl.com/Greens-fraud There will be additional developments in this story.

Germany, unlike France, the UK or the US, has no nuclear wrapons program. Therefore there is no dual use incentive to keep the civilian program running.

Japan, it is true, also has no (active) weapons program, but has kept its civilian program going so far.

Japan has the capability to spin up such a program within months, and ability to further enrich uranium. And because it has this ability, with tensions in Southeast Asia rising, I think it’ll use it in the coming decade. You don’t maintain your own ultra expensive space industry for any other reason.

> You don’t maintain your own ultra expensive space industry for any other reason.

Except the kind of rockets they've been designing would make for terrible ICBMs. Take for example the recent H3 a hydrogen powered booster. For weapons you want solid or maybe hypergolic propellants that can be stored and ready to fire for long time periods. Liquid hydrogen would be an awful choice for that.

Yes, but the gap between that and ICBMs is much narrower than between no rockets at all and ICBMs. Japan can’t have ICBMs at all, their armed forces are entirely defense oriented by treaty. So they build what they can, because no treaty lasts forever.

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