I'm not German nor do I live there, but I would have thought the legacy of Habeck would be more negative due to his opposition to nuclear.
Even from an environmental standpoint, France is doing much better than Germany and that is thanks to nuclear.
Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...
Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions and effect on the water temperature in rivers (every summer more and more plants need to shut down because of this), etc. Even if this would be done right, there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance. In the end I would say it is always a bad idea to rely on only one technology to a large degree. Only a well done mix makes you resiliant.
I agree on this point, me not being anti-Nuclear doesn't mean I am anti-wind or solar. Every country has different circumstances, I live in a landlocked country with mild mountains, temperate climate and modest rivers. In our case nuclear energy seems like the most reliable and scalable option. For countries with huge coastline off-shore wind absolutely makes sense, simialrly with solar.
> Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions.
I think this point is overestimated. Based on a brief search, studies show nuclear carbon intensity around 6-12g, and the building emissions just around 13% of total lifetime emissions [1].
> there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance.
Valid point but the 2022 French nuclear "disaster" hasn't repeated at that scale so far. In recent years France is a net exporter to Germany. I can imagine that as with many problems in renewables having technical solutions the water temperature problem is also solvable technically.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/article...
Looking at Denmark, their export and imports have little correlation to neighboring countries demand or supply. They will try exporting if the wind farms produce excess energy, and they will try importing energy when demand exceed supply. Neighboring countries demand will mostly only have impact on export price.
Ironically that was France which needed to shut down a lot of its nuclear reactors in 2022 and 2023 due to repairs. So according to your own logic France "weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most."
Here in Switzerland the reason given for the "energy crisis" was also mostly France as Switzerland usually imports a lot of energy from France.
France's total nuclear generation was ~ 361.7 TWh in 2024. It is expected to be even above that in 2025.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-marke...
France is currently the nation that exports the MAXIMUM electricity in Europe.
In 2011 ~25% of Germany's electricity came from their nuclear reactors [1]. Germany closed their last nuclear reactor in 2023.
[1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2019/ph241/noland1/#:~:tex...
Any opposition you do hear on this from within Germany is usually opportunistic. People are against the Greens so they just take the opposite position on their policy. A good example of this is Markus Söder (CSU) who flip flopped on this multiple times.
Realistically speaking there is no serious politician or party with a pro-nuclear position in Germany that has a plausible plan for leveraging nuclear power at meaningful scale in an economical way. Any such plan would realistically invite massive opposition because nobody wants nuclear facilities in their vicinity.
Anti-nuclear lobbying by German foundations in France and Poland https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00217...
Edit: Actually should be plural - Chancellors. Merkel, big cog in NordStreams, went on some podcast last week to blame Poland for the war in Ukraine. See if only Poles didnt object so much she would placate putin with even more money.
Recent governments merely organized a shutdown that was effectively decided in the last century at the end of the cold war. The importance of Merkel, Fukushima etc. in these discussions are completely overrated imo.
As an aside Germany got fuel for nuclear reactors from Russia.
There was nothing to mitigate. The nuclear plants deliver electricity, which was never a problem in Germany.
> he even accelerated the shutdown and sold it as inevitable.
That's a lie. They even prolonged the usage for some months to appease the fearmongers. But without fuel, there was a limit on how they could run anyway.
> unless he wanted to hurt German industry on purpose, which is not even unthinkable.
Ah, you're from the conspiracy-bubble...
Except the shutdown had no negative effect. There was no supply shock and prices keep trending down since (Though that of course doesn't mean because of). Let's keep it real. I can probably name worse German political decisions from this week.
Three things here:
* Didn't the diversion of natural gas to electricity generation end some German industrial production completely?
* Are there not large electricity subsidies in place via subsidies for US imported LNG?
* Isn't the alternate reality where there is a surplus of electricity in German due to nuclear power a better world where Germany has more opportunity? (the AI datacentre boom is built on excess electricity, isn't it?)
* There were multiple tax reductions and I think some are in the talks now. Those were independent (and before) the nuclear shutdown.
* Probably. Nuclear should have been shutdown after gas, coal etc. I am with you on that. But the ship had already sailed long ago, before the last three plants were shut down.
[1] https://www.iwh-halle.de/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/...
It seems like the statement "No negative effect" is probably not well supported by subsequent events.
This was one of the biggest factors in the shutdown. Even if the plants stayed open, multiple reactors needed maintenance (and thus shutdown of those rectors).
Remember, they kept the open even longer then the planned shutdown (what was already extended before).
And the issue with the prices was not nuclear. By the time those plants shutdown, market prices already stabilized to pre-war levels. I remember this clearly as my renewal of my electricity contract came up, and ironically, my electrical price was even 2 cent/kwh lower then my 2021 contract.
The biggest issue for the German industry was not nuclear energie, it was the gas. And not because of power generation but because gas is used in several chemical reactions, with basf moving their production to the US. And thus more costs because supply chain changes. The LNG that we import is more expensive then the ultra cheap Russian gas we got.
And THAT is a issue for the German industry. And even more so with the US pushing to be the sole EU supplier for LNG (aka to replace Russia and use their leverage on the EU).
Anyway, a lot of your opinion is based upon the wrong conclusion.
On top of that, NL govt is investing 10B EUR to prepare the construction of several new nuclear power plants, less than 300km from one of the abandoned German ones (Emsland). In conclusion the nuclear exits of BE and DE are some of the most stupid and hypocritical decisions in EU energy policy. Both countries will continue to depend on nuclear energy (from FR and NL). The only difference is that it is now produced <200km outside of their borders, in neighbouring countries.
Solar + battery storage on the other hand is super fast and easy to build, costs virtually nothing and leaves no toxic waste which can’t be recycled.
Nuclear fuel is also mostly only available from Russia, which no one wants as a trade partner.
They had > 95.4% unit capability factor in 2022 per https://pris.iaea.org/pris/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsUnitCapab... . It doesn't sound like they were being run into the ground, rather things were operating very efficiently.
> Keeping the plants open will have resulted in a ton of money to maintain the safety of the plants going forwards.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-data-animation-nuc... stated LCOE "associated with the long-term operation of a nuclear power plant generally falls in the range US$ 30-40 per MWh, for typical refurbishment costs for Light Water Reactors and a lifetime extension of 20 years".
That is not the issue. Let me give you a example. Belgium decided to extend the life on several nuclear reactors, that originally had plans for decommissioning.
So they started to do actual deep maintenance for the extended life. Then they ran into issues of cracks in the concrete, issues with cracks in metal storage tanks, and a whole lot of other issues.
Reactors down for a long periode for the repairs, AND a ton of extra costs. These costs of those repairs, i can not find them no matter where i look. Its interesting how hidden those are.
For the 2025 extension, the initial estimated 1.5 billion for the life extension. And still the whole issue about the reactors issues their full fix cost price is unknown. In other words, they did a patch job and for the next extension, they need to do a major maintenance / repair.
The extension of the German reactors was estimated at 3B+ if i remember correctly. And that does not include if any issues are found.
That is the problem... This type of deferred maintenance start to stack up over time, when you have a phase out time for reactors. So issues becomes a big black money hole when you already committed to the extension.
https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/reports/restarting-german... is for restarting the German reactors, with buckets of < 1B EUR and < 3B EUR for quicker restarts.
Same goes for alot of industry, there also were industrial processes that BASF et al. were running that just required LNG as a reagant.
The irony is, at this point even many environmentalists don't oppose Nuclear anymore. But there's still the lack of a coherent plan. Where should the fuel come from? How is EOL of a power plant handled? How is it paid? The answers changed a lot in the last decades.
Apart from this the last 5 years were a PR disaster for the Greens. Protesters (Last Generation) have been connected to them although the LG is even protesting against the Greens. When there were these massive floods the Greens actually lost votes instead of gaining those.
Edit: I just rechecked China and wow! $0.08 per kWh. Can anyone confirm?
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-industrial-power-...
Yes, it is in the ballpark of $0.08/kWh. It varies a little bit across regions. Also in some places the price is only half during the night. But as you consume more power, you may see the price rise to $0.12/kWh.
In 2024, cost of renewable + storage was 0.52-0.88 CNY/kWh($0.08-$0.12). Advancement in storage is expected to drive that cost down by more than 50%.
The consumer price is about 0.3 €/kwh currently, depending on the deals you are getting. The difference between wholesale and consumer price is made up of transmission costs, taxes and markups of various middlemen.
Shutting down nuclear power had 0 impact on electricity prices, as wholesale prices are set by the most expensive producer needed to satisfy demand. That is usually a natural gas turbine. All producers get paid the rate that this marginal producer demands.
It really just doesn't seem in good faith. It's been going on for a decade at least. Every win, every positive story, every bit of evidence that just maybe this part of the climate puzzle is actually being solved[1] gets met not with celebration, but with indignant tut-tutting that it was done with boring stuff and not Nerd Friendly power.
When does it stop?
[1] Doesn't take too much Googling to find coverage claiming that ~90% of new electricity generation capacity globally is renewable. This problem is solved folks. It's time to start looking at the higher hanging fruit.
Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear today. Those who have always warned against fossil fuels are usually the ones who recommend a complete switch to renewable energies. That should give one pause for thought.
Solar panels and windmills are low density sources - we need a LOT of them to get the job done, and even then you still need base load somehow.
That means a huge amount of extra powerlines and future landfill of defunct panels. Not to mention the very sturdy windmill foundations scattered around the landscape.
Say what you will about nuclear, but all of its negatives are concentrated in a small mass and volume.
The optimal, nom-ideological solution is probably a mix of nuclear, gas, and solar panels.
Power line capacity is designed around the maximum power that must be delivered. Solar power by itself reduces the mean, and possibly the minimum as well, but never the maximum.
That's why I think we should end up with:
- gas plants: easy and cheap to spin up, can provide district heating
- nuclear: squeaky clean, issues are concentrated in one spot, district heating
- solar panels: super cheap, decentralized, and there are lots of opportunities like rooftops and carparks where we are wasting sunlight right now
I just re-read Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez (great book if you like hard near-future sci-fi) and that has the idea of solar stations in geostationary orbit and beaming power to where it's needed with a phased-array microwave transmitter on the station, and rectennas where you need them on the ground. We can't do this economically any time soon, but that would be clean, and require no power lines
One interpretation is that solar adds variability to the generation side of the equation and managing that variability is currently a question without a clear answer.
Concentration of power production is just one of the problems that renewables / distributed power generation systems solves.
You do need dispatchable power sources (which you can pair with solar/wind/nuclear/...). Recently that has mostly been in the form of gas peaker plants. Today, in most places, the most affordable form of new dispatchable power is batteries paired with excess solar generation.
The real estate costs for solar and wind are not hidden, you pay those costs up front when you install the projects.
Both forms of generation want to be paired with something dispatchable, either gas turbines or energy storage. A mix of renewables and nuclear is a mix that is weaker than the sum of its parts, not stronger.
I‘m sorry but this is just absolute nonsense.
Nuclear energy is the most dense energy type humanity ever produced. To put it in one line with coal and oil is not serious. Not to mention it’s far less hazardous to human health, again compared to fossil fuels. Here is a basic comparison:
> With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal.
https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/
edit: typo
I live in a part of Canada with mostly nuclear energy and i am thankful that my electricity rates are low. This helps me reduce emissions via heat pumps and EVs. I don't need solar panels and most people do not either.
You are correct, the future is mostly renewable energy where feasible, with a combination of nuclear and hydro.
It’s also massive cherry-picking to just look at refined fuel. For example, H how many tonnes of ore do you need to mine and process to produce that 1kg of uranium (at least 2.5 tonnes, that is 2500 kg from one random source from a quick google).
But to use your metric, I did work out and find it interesting that the solar panels on my roof, per kg of silicon have produced over 1,400 kWh of electricity (multiply your figures by 0.3 to take into account efficiency from kWh of heat to compare) so far. I estimate almost 28 kg of silicon in my whole array, which has generated over 38 MWh so far, and I expect they will generate at least three times that over their life.
So 4000-5000 kWh(e) per kg of silicon sure comes in a hell of a lot of better than the 2.4 odd for coal or 4 for mineral oil (assuming your figures are correct).
Everyone. If you don’t, then you need to scale. Case in point with renewables. It’s also not cherry-picking, but a well-known fact in physics. Do yourself a favor and look at the source link I posted above.
The thing about blowing up things I will just skip, because it’s not serious. If things go that far, there will be far greater problems than just that. Besides, if that’s your worry why don’t use SMRs then? Russia does.
To your 4000-5000 kWh point, you are not burning silicon here, are you? And a PV is not energy fuel, it’s a device composed of many different materials. I don’t understand your point and I can’t say more than that - my reply to GP was about fossil fuels and nuclear anyway. Not sure why you decided to jump into renewables here.
See Hualong One nuclear project that's operating at ~90% capacity and is ~1/3 of the price of solar, and 2/3 price of wind when comparing the same operation % capacity and taking into consideration the max life length of each technology.
Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage. Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.
Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy. But not matter what we do, we should target using less energy, because the only clean energy is the one we don't have to produce. I think that's the thing people miss (volontarily I think) when they answer anti nuclear discourse. Insulating homes and and designing cities so that people don't have to use cars, rather than producing more and more nuclear reactors doesn't seem dumb to me, no matter what's your opinion on nuclear itself.
People barely use A/C in France by the way.
> Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy
Storage is a short term solution. Batteries are ok to manage intra-day variation, two days at most. Long term storage of electricity plainly doesn't exist. Saying some storage solution will somehow at some point solve the issue of intermittency is at best wishful thinking, at worst a dramatic lack of risk management.
Before someone asks how China is doing it, I will answer the question: they are not. Despite China being much larger and thus being able to somehow compensate variation by having more production sites, they are using battery storage for short term variation but have to rely on expensive and polluting small thermal power plants when energy is lacking. It's a stop gap while they build a ton of nuclear power plants.
I'm not sure what I said is incompatible with being a net exporter? There was a lot of sun and heat, they had to shutdown some nuclear power plants, but the overall electricy production was doing fine, because they did not have to shutdown all the plants (but how about in a few years with even hotter weather?) and obviously solar was doing well.
And yes, I agree we don't have good storage yet, but then we can decide to invest in finding solutions or to try to re-learn how to make nuclear power plants in less than 12 years. Personally my intuition is that more distributed / local energy and also which doesn't have to rely on a state monopoly is better and more resilient (ask Ukraine) so I'd put my money on storage.
Things don’t magically stop at some point. Not in 2030, not in 2050, not even when we reach net zero.
The question now is do we think it’s easier to reach and sustain net zero using a grid composed of renewable which we have no idea how to scale, don’t know how to manage and have no good solution for the inter-seasonal variation or using nuclear for which we already know how to do all that and we just need to scale up construction.
Well, personally, I think the rational answer is clearly obvious.
If anything, this only showed that renewables and nuclear actually work very well together and relying on just one of both is shortsightedness and bad planing.
0 - https://www.rte-france.com/actualites/france-battu-record-ex...
"Several commentators, business leaders and academics have identified that 1970 deal as a significant fork in the road of the Cold War, as it established a mutual basis for economic cooperation between Russia and western Europe." There are certainly different opinions on that. Gas imports started long ago and in the cold war that approach was working to some extend.
Only 13% of gas is actually used for electricity ("Stromversorgung"): https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/erdgas-absatz... most of it was used as cheap energy source for chemical plants and other industry.
> Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
That statement is plain wrong: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... In 2013 about 300TWh of electricity came from fossil fuels, 92TWh from nuclear. In 2024 153TWh from fossil fuels and 0 from nuclear. So fossil fuels declined by 147TWh while nuclear only by 92TWh. Claiming that fossil fuels replaced nuclear is ridiculous, even after repeating it hundreds of times.
You can claim that keeping nuclear could have sped up the transition, but the inflexible nuclear plants could also have prevented people from investing in renewables, since the economics are worse if there is energy that is supplied permanently regardless of the price. Nuclear and renewables don't mix well.
The ratios you quote are meaningless. The issue is that it can’t scale so as to fully decarbonise the grid. Thankfully the current German government seems to finally have seen the light.
It’s far from obvious to me.
There are literally no exemple of one ever running and some of the technological challenges are still open questions at the moment.
I generally think proponents of renewables are overselling the idea and significantly minimising the challenges they pose at scale. They definitely have a place in the energy mix but I don’t personally believe they are the solution.
In December 2021, South Australia set a new record for renewable energy generation and resilience, after running entirely on renewable energy for 6.5 consecutive days.
In 2022, it was stated that South Australia could soon be powered by only renewable energy.
70 per cent of South Australia's electricity is generated from renewable sources.
This is projected to be 85 per cent by 2026, with a target of 100 per cent by 2027.
https://h2-global.org/the-h2global-instrument/
And gas plants are what is closed to H2 and can be switched over easiest. But H2 is only viable once renewable production exceeds demands during long stretches of time. Otherwise it is always better to use the energy directly or use short term storage (batteries) which are also growing exponentially: https://battery-charts.de/battery-charts/
Sorry, you are all emotion and provide wrong statements. What I wrote directly contradicted your statements and proved them wrong, but now you say they are missing the point? Reducing fossil fuel consumption by 50% within 10 years is an achievement. There are always things that could be done in a better way. But let's be real here.
And yes Germany imports electricity from France: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
That is kind of the point of having an integrated grid.
But 19TWh. While producing 470TWh. 4%. That is not ... a lot. And in 2022 Germany exported 5.5TWh and had to restart coal plants when the French nuclear plants were in trouble. So what? That what a grid is for.
If you look at who is pushing H2, you will see that it’s mostly fossil fuel companies who want to prop up gas because as you rightfully pointed out "And gas plants are what is closed to H2 and can be switched over easiest."
> So what? That what a grid is for.
It’s going to be hard to reach net zero while burning coal and if the actual solution is importing nuclear energy from somewhere else while pretending it doesn’t happen, it would be simpler to just straight up go for nuclear.
> Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants.
Germany is constantly reducing gas consumption.[1] From 2000-2024 it reduced electricity generation from coal by 61%.[2]
> How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this.
Only details are open. (Compared to the open question of long term storage of nuclear wast these are very minor problems.) The general strategy is clear: use constantly available renewables (offshore wind, geothermal), connect distant regions for mutual compensation, energy storage.
Personally I think it neglegible if a very small percentage of fossil technology were held in reserve for emergency power generators.
> At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a shortage.
We are in a transition period. It is impossible to suddenly move to complete renewables. Responsible for the rather slow progress are not those people who pushed for the switch to renewables a long time ago, but those who wanted to drag it out as long as possible. These advocates of fossil fuels were the same individuals and companies that wished to extend the use of nuclear energy.
> Meanwhile, all europeans bear the costs of Germany shortsightedness - as usual - since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Since September 2022 Germany imported no gas from Russia.[3] Meanwhile, the nuclear industries of France remains the sole buyer of enriched uranium from Russia in the EU. Admittedly, it has considerably reduced its imports from Russia itself,[4] but is still heavily dependent imports from Russia's sphere of influence (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).[5] The same applies to the USA.[6]
> With nuclear, it's pretty clear how to run a grid. Heck, France has been doing so for decades. The question is how to build it cheaply at scale but at least we have some good ideas and experience about how to do that.
I do not deny that it is possible to operate a reasonably stable electrical network with dirty energy, apart from the regular shortages in dry summers and during heavy frosts. But Germany is ambitious and is going to show the world that it is possible to do it with clean energy. The nuclear lobbyists fear most that this will be successful. This is the only way to explain why they are attacking Germany so fiercely, even though they could actually sit back and wait to see if it succeeds. They fear for their business.
[1] https://energiewende.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/EWD/Red...
[2] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/coal
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor...
[4] https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2025-01-eu-and-us-re...
[5] https://en.fergana.news/news/137148/
[6] https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2025-06-18/rus...
You should look at CO2 / kWh in Germany vs. France
Also, what lessons learned in Iceland, Norway or Albania should we apply in central Europe? We don't have their geothermal and hydro potential (all your examples are not solar+wind but hydro primarily).
Norway has lots of hydropower and a a small population.
Not super familiar with Albania but they seem to be in the same situation as Norway.
France already implemented hydropower wherever it was possible years ago, so that's not an option.
Also France seems to have pretty much the same CO2 / kWh than Norway.