Germany Shifts to Nuclear Fusion After Fukushima-Era Fission Policy
forbes.com
forbes.com
Now betting on fusion sounds like Germany doesn't want to acknowledge that it was a mistake. "We were right, we're just moving to fusion right away". Except that fusion is nowhere ready. And nuclear fission is not as big a problem as people thought.
I agree that fission is (still) the way to go, with fusion worth researching but still too unsure to rely on. A good article would have noted that view.
It's also obvious in hindsight that politicians on the right have been sabotaging it all along, and despite that it still worked out okay and probably helped save the world.
Imagine the whole government was consistently behind wind, solar, EV, batteries, heat pumps etc. manufacturing and deployment, they'd be more resilient to Russia and better placed to compete with China.
It's notable that the more a German political party supports nuclear, the less they support EVs and heat pumps. Which suggests it's a disingenuous distraction for them.
I'm genuinely confused.
Historical context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende
As to whether it was good idea, a quote from that article:
> The coalition government introduced an intermediate target of a 55–60% share of renewable energy in gross electricity consumption in 2035. The targets were described as "ambitious"
In 2025 they'll be around 56% (and as I said, this is with clear sandbagging by people who are politically opposed to this transition).
And them blazing this trail enabled other nations like Hungary to go from zero to 30% solar in a decade.
I disagree that it's a good idea. They heavily rely on fossil fuels, and when they don't, they heavily rely on France's nuclear energy.
Renewable is great when there is wind and sun, not so much otherwise. It's the kind of situation where "but we're 50% there!" does not matter if the last 50% is impossible. And hoping for nuclear fusion proves that renewables don't solve the problem on their own.
Nuclear fission is not bad, those who are afraid of it are just uninformed.
It's weaker than that, it says that renewables don't currently look like they solve the problem at a national level on their own.
The "currently" is subject to tech improvements, the "look like" is subject to politicians having the same range of beliefs as the rest of us and not being magically blessed with true knowledge, the "national level" part is e.g. "yes the PV and batteries are both cheap enough and available in large enough quantities to do it all, but we don't like the country selling them".
Fusion (and fission) can be a hedged bet; against the third caveat I listed, it doesn't even need to be fully deployed to be useful, as the investment is a costly signal to e.g. China that e.g. Germany will be able to respond quickly if China tries to cut off supply in order to secure Chinese interests.
I don't see that at all: fusion is not remotely a "quick" solution. Investing a lot into a message that says "be careful, if you cut off our supply, we will work on this thing that will take another few decades" doesn't sound super smart.
As I said, politicians have the same range of beliefs as the rest of us, are not magically blessed with true knowledge. They can be believers in fusion just as e.g. Trump has weird beliefs about Chinese domestic installation of renewables.
(Me, I don't know if fusion is or isn't realistic, but I can see ways it can cause proliferation issues just by being easier to configure as a cheap neutron source than as aneutronic, so I hope it's not realistic, but hope isn't a prediction).
Which doesn't matter at all in the case of Germany. One should go for what's reasonable when it's about running a country. I mean... ideally of course. And it was not reasonable to move away from nuclear fission.
I don't understand what you are trying to suggest here.
Do you think German politicians never make errors of judgement? That they can't be afraid of things the general public is afraid of, nor caught up in the excitement of things the public can be inspired by?
The perception in the past in Germany was that nuclear fission was dangerous, and I think it may still be seen as such. All the proponents of fusion emphasise how much safer it is in various ways including that it can't have a meltdown.
I'm of the opinion that the correct time to deploy nuclear power was any time before the early 2010s, as that was roughly when the time taken to make a new reactor combined with the rate of improvements to renewables to swing the balance from nuclear to renewables. But that's just about cost, diversity is also a useful thing in its own right, as (unfortunately) is the ability to quickly develop nuclear weapons.
(A working fusion reactor necessarily helps with making nuclear weapons, just run it in a neutron-emitting mode (IIRC always easier than aneutronic) and use those neutrons to transmute some natural uranium into plutonium, then draw the rest of the owl).
Yes, an entire country gripped by Radiophobia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia
And making huge decisions based on nothing but that phobia. Tragic.
> I'm of the opinion that the correct time to deploy nuclear power was any time before the early 2010s,
The best time to build new nuclear was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Renewables are not sufficient and building out nuclear is much, much quicker and cheaper than the failed German Energiewende, even now.
Gonna need more than a few citations for that, Ken.
It took me a while to understand why it looked like it was the "left" and the green parties that fucked up a golden energy future, but now I understand. With the "more right" parties and style of governance, things will get better, which would not have happened if the former wasn't also true.
Well played.