Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake
clashreport.com
clashreport.com
The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
Nope. Merkel was a scientist but she caved to the green's pressure to keep her coalition. Also she spent a decade of surplus in millions of refugees from Middle East and neglected infrastructure.
"Merkel obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel
"Policy Reversal: In May 2011, just months after extending reactor lives, Merkel's government announced a total phase-out of all nuclear plants by 2022."
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
Shutting down nuclear reactors means you lose a source of plutonium that can be diverted to weapons manufacturing. You also lose nuclear engineers and workers with skills and knowledge to fabricate with fissile materials which you need to manufacture those weapons.
Similarly, the reason so many countries have a civilian rocket launching program in spite of having no chance in hell in beating SpaceX economically is to have scientists and engineers who can build missiles if needed.
These are just insurance policies. Both Japan and Korea have them for instance. As recent events have shown, countries without nuclear weapons are essentially defenceless against and dependent on those with them.
For better or worse there is zero chance that Germany starts a nuclear weapons program. The public sentiment just won't allow that unless we are already at war, in which case it is too late. Besides that, nuclear weapons are stationed in Germany already. France and the UK are next door, so I am also not sure if it would actually benefit Germany at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90/The_Greens#Energy_...
> After the Chernobyl disaster, the Greens became more radicalised and resisted compromise on the nuclear issue.
"Policy Reversal: In May 2011, just months after extending reactor lives, Merkel's government announced a total phase-out of all nuclear plants by 2022."
This is literally what we are discussing in this comment thread. Facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
> Eight German nuclear power reactors (Biblis A and B, Brunsbuettel, Isar 1, Kruemmel, Neckarwestheim 1, Philippsburg 1 and Unterweser) were declared permanently shutdown on 6 August 2011, following the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
Same like any bullcrap Söder comes up on any given day, no matter how absurd.
From a distance, it seems like the whole world agreed it'd be a good idea to only come up with ragebait over and over again :(
So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
The Green party had the goal of de-nuclearization from the beginning, at that time the Soviet Union was still in existence. When the Green party came to power and negotiated the nuclear exit, they did not need any external motivation to do so.
The only way I can see this being Russian meddling would be the Green party being infiltrated from Russia from the beginning.
If you have sources that point to the Green party being undermined by Soviet/Russian espionage or some such, please point me torwards them.
What you seem to also have memory holed was that up until Crimea, the prevailing idea for Russia was that the more we trade with them, the more wealthy and informed the populace becomes and the more entwined the economy becomes globally and thus losing that access would become too painful to them. The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016.
Interesting inference to draw.
> The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016
Nope.
The right was never anti-nuclear, but they were more pro-gas and pro-coal.
I think he has to discard 3 out of 4 boar due to contamination levels, he told us not too long ago.
It wasn’t that hard to see that energy needs were only going to increase rather than diminish. And not because of ai datacenters, but (to make a simple example) for example because of the already ongoing at the time push for the electrification of the automotive industry.
It’s also crazy that the initiative was supposed at all by environmentalists.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow.
That‘s the thing. Everyone knew it was costly, nobody ever thought it was good strategically. If he now says it’s a „strategic mistake“ that‘s laughable, did he think it was strategically clever before? If so he was the only one.
The whole issue is that Germany overestimated its own resilience and economic power, which is deteriorating. Of course environmentalists knew that this is not good for the economy but the Green Party is mostly left aligned they were ok with incurring some damage to the economy for their cause, after all that’s their whole point. But they thought well we are such a economic powerhouse anyway, we can do it. So the real strategic mistake was arrogance. And saying that particular action was a „strategic mistake“ instead reflecting on the whole self-image of the country, shows that exactly this arrogance persists
Do you think companies who couldn’t built a safe airport or train station can suddenly built something more complex like a nuclear power plant without massively going over budget, construction time and safety?
And I guess nobody fears Russian drone flying over WECs instead of nuclear power plants
Fun fact, the ministers of the federal states that are most in favor of nuclear power do not want a final waste storage.
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
Indian, actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_Country (yeah, this guy)
And France (nuclear powered, no particular huge investment in a green transition) beats them easily in both price and carbon.
Never worked? How do you explain all the countries in the world with large low carbon nuclear fleets and reasonable electricity prices? Like France, Japan, Korea, Russia, China, the US, Canada, UK, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine etc? Everywhere large nuclear fleets have been built with a dozen or more reactors the per unit costs have been affordable.
None of that really matters though because when you look at the full system cost of intermittent renewables, they are an order of magnitude more expensive than the marginal cost.
https://discussion.fool.com/t/levelized-full-system-costs-of...
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
France keeps upping estimates for their refurbs and Ontario just announced price hikes to refurb theirs and mess around with SMRs.
I remember in a train 1971 passing some Nuclear Towers and whole train expressed displeasement at the scenery. Kinda scary actually, because they started staring at me for not joining the crowd.
The "Atomtöd" (Atomic Death) Campaign (1950s) Before civil nuclear power even existed, West Germany had a massive "Ban the Bomb" movement. In the late 1950s, the government considered allowing U.S. nuclear warheads on German soil. This sparked the Kampf dem Atomtod (Fight Atomic Death) movement.
The Result: The German public learned to associate the word "nuclear" with total destruction and the Cold War arms race long before they ever saw a power plant.
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
> decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes
If you do the math you will see Germany could have actually saved money if they had build nuclear in the 2000s.
> solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else
Only if you look at levelized dispatch cost, not if you actually look at is as a system for sustainable reliable power for a whole industrial country.
Could you share this math?
There is a reason that Germany and Europe is planning to do very long distance transport of solar energy. Only by having diverse weather pattern across Europe can you possible do it. Of course this is also incredibly expensive.
Even if you assume a very low price from batteries like Form Energy, its still insanely expensive.
Electricity in Germany can look expensive at first sight if you're quoting legacy household tariffs that many existing customers are still on, because they never switch provider / tariff. But that's not representative of what people pay if they sign a new contract today: the market for new contracts is typically several cents/kWh cheaper than those old existing tariffs stuck at their higher prices.
So "Germany has the highest electricity prices" is at best an incomplete claim, it depends heavily on which tariff cohort you refer to (legacy vs new contracts, default supply vs competitive offers), and people on the internet somehow always fall for this, often picking the worst bucket to make a political point.
Sources: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
Unfortunately it's in german but my point stands: for new customers in germany the price per kwh is even lower than what france pays on average.
It'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr...
Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price
https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el...
Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry?
https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge...
Deindustrialization in Germany: Energy Costs Driving Industries Abroad
If you subsidize electricity by capping consumer prices, then you have to either cap producer prices (creating shortages) or have the state pick up the difference. The latter option might make individual factories profitable, but it makes Germany even less profitable: now the country as a whole is paying not only to import electricity, but also for administrative overhead of the subsidy and the deadweight loss produced by non-market allocations of a scarce factor of production, electricity.
All these subsidies do is transfer wealth to the industrial and energy sectors from literally everyone else and impoverish the country as a whole.
A subsidy might be justifiable if it covered a temporary market hiccup. These high prices aren't shocks. They're structural. They're foreseeable consequences of state policies that decrease the supply of electricity and thereby make it more expensive than in competing polities.
Imagine the US trying to address oil shocks in the 70s by subsidizing gasoline. Wouldn't have worked. Subsidies cannot create more of a resource.
Also, given the 2028-2030 pension budget crisis you're facing, I'm not sure you guys can afford to impoverish yourselves with subsidies even in the short term.
If you guys want to remain competitive, you need to find ways to generate power under an affordable cost structure and stop lying to yourselves about how, any day now, the Energiewende will produce a cornucopia of electrons. It's just not happening.
Something has to break here. Maybe you accept declining living standards. Maybe you just burn an enormous ocean-boiling amount of barely-not-peat lignite from your western states. Maybe you become a Russian client state and return to suckling the Siberian gas teat.
Or maybe, just maybe, you see that nuclear power works for others and can work for you too if you get over your atomic phobia.
Germany: 328-354g CO2/kWh
France: 27- 39g CO2/kWhIsn't that convenient? The truth is that Germany could already have completed the "transition away from fossil fuels" that France did if it wasn't so irrationally afraid of nuclear electricity.
"Once the transition is done"
It will NEVER be done due to the intermittency of wind and solar.
This is misrepresenting what Germany did. They shut down their perfectly safe nuclear reactors with 20 to 30 years of remaining life instead of their filthy coal plants, all because of a deeply irrational and anti-intellectual fear of nuclear energy.
By what criteria can Germany's energy transition be considered a success? It has made german electricity some of the most expensive in the world while also emitting 10 times as much CO2/kwh as France. You are getting the worst of both worlds.
Multiple studies estimate the climate and economic cost in the tens of billions of euros.
German culture, especially their "Greens" seems to have mentally fused nuclear power and nuclear weapons into one category unlike most other countries.
As a start to discuss cost, here is Lazards' analysis about the cost of power generation: https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
"On an unsubsidized $/MWh basis, renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation."
Edit: In other news, and as usual for nuclear projects, EDF had to increase their cost estimate of new reactor again: https://sightlineu3o8.com/2025/12/edf-raises-budget-for-new-...
It is absolutely NOT an invalid argument, if you think climate change is a real thing it is by far THE ONLY argument that matters. And it quantitatively proves how terrible Germany's decision to shut down perfectly safe nuclear reactors was.
"renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation."
Not if you want it to be as reliable as nuclear. Again you never explained what Germany is going to use as backup when wind and solar don't produce enough.
Debating you feels like debating Tesla fanboys about Waymo. Waymo actually has hundreds of self-driving cars RIGHT NOW while Tesla keeps saying they are going to have self driving cars any day now yet they all still need a safety driver.
Nuclear energy can power entire countries with almost zero carbon energy RIGHT NOW.
Obviously nuclear power can not make CO2 emissions of any country go away right now, because you would need build more plant first, which also takes decades - just the same as with renewables.
And your ad hominem arguments does not help. Also writing something in caps locks does not make some non-sense valid. These things just make it clear that you have no actual arguments.
Since nuclear is more costly, that all your arguments about the economic issues turn around and go into the other direction.
Germany: 328-354g CO2/kWh
France: 27- 39g CO2/kWh1) You can find a plot here (absolute numbers). See the dramatic drop in emissions in recent years? https://energy-charts.info/charts/co2_emissions/chart.htm?l=...
https://energynews.oedigital.com/nuclear-power/2025/12/11/fi...
Hawaii 41.55 $200/mo
California 30.70 $155/mo
Connecticut 30.63 $192/mo
Rhode Island 28.12 $163/mo
Cheapest residential states for electricity
State Average Electricity Cost (¢) Average Monthly Bill
Idaho 11.71 $110/mo
North Dakota 11.79 $114/mo
Nebraska 12.09 $119/mo
Louisiana 12.29 $150/mo
Utah 12.59 $96/mo
If the end state is very cheap energy, why is it the opposite of cheap now?
Look: the "energy transition" is not working. It's done the opposite of work. You have to concede to reality at some point.
One must conclude the problem lies not in splitting the atom, but educating physicists.
You're a scientist, right? Can you think of any evidence that even in principle might prompt you to change your mind on nuclear?
If over half a country's electricity production is "irrelevant", I'm not sure what would be relevant.
Call it a disaster if you'd like. Lights turn on. Meltdowns aren't happening. The French pay 50% less than Germans per kWh.
You do you, but don't sit there and claim you're looking at the data. You can either interface with the real world or live in a fantasy universe and fail. Up to you.
So there's a selection bias amongst the politicians you see in power.
Sure, we want to elect good people. But relying on their goodness invites moral hazards like this. Everything that makes them an effective politician also makes them an effective criminal, so the question is hardly academic.
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
The fact that these threads are always full of lies with all these twisted narratives show you who's doing the talking in all of them really. This thread was a few minutes old when someone had to mention that "The US blew up the pipeline" and this shit doesn't even collect downvotes or gets flagged, it rises to the top.
I clicked on two accounts posting lies and saw Russian software companies mentioned in their scant posting history, which in itself is not a crime, but also a fitting signal.
As to the Nord Stream, German prosecution services have arrested a Ukrainian national, Serhii Kuznetsov, in their ongoing investigations. The NY Times, the Spiegel, and Washington Post (all very well-known KGB mouth pieces), strongly point to Ukraine as well.
So my question is, are you really in a good position to lecture everyone about "fake news" on those topics ? I guess you were also telling us all that Trump was a KGB agent, before that got debunked in court ?
The greens were funded this was and everybody clapped at the time. Huge mistake.
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
How does that compare to building above ground towers to support cable weight in all conditions?
I'd assume / guesstimate that route planning, community advisement, actual cable length, etc. costs are more or less the same in either case.
Underground power lines are expensive, but not that expensive. As far as I know, you dig a ditch, put the power line into it, and then put the material back in over the top.
Why would you drill?
Trenching is straightforward, I mention horizontal directional drilling as that puts a cap on the total cost of going underground Vs pylons and above ground stringing.
From CBC:
> Current estimates are that it would cost five to 10 times more to distribute electricity to a big city via underground cables, and that not all of nature's problems would be alleviated even if that were done.
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
Involuntary XKCD:
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.
Fusion is unlikely to be cheaper anytime soon, even if somebody could build a plant that makes positive energy.
In addition, the materials you need for a nuclear reactor are pretty simply and can be done with 1960s technology, while the materials for a fusion reactor are literally unknown.
So all the assumptions about fusion are just wrong, the increase in energy density of fusion over fission is pointless, unless maybe we want to travel do another star system.
Except China, who is good at building them.
It’s only in the post climate change world that some are coming around to the reality that France exists and isn’t a smoking radioactive crater.
Younger reactors Germany left running until they also reached around 35 years.
You can check what needs to be fixed with them now (if anything) and do the renovations to keep them working. As long as the basic design is still considered save today, and as long as maintenance and running costs are well below the revenue you make.
The biggest expense in nuclear power is building them. And a really big part of that exploding cost is in all the dark rituals you have to engage in to placate public opinion. (Like excessively long safety reviews and whatnot.)
If you take an existing nuclear reactor, the status quo works in your favour. Even in the unlikely scenario where your renovation essentially replaces the whole thing (so from an engineering point of view, you might as well build it from scratch), renovation might still be the wise choice exactly because of status quo bias in the population.
Edit: ah i reread and see what you meant but my point still stands that 45 years is abnormally short for the type of reactors they had
However if left as is, all of those shut down in 2011 would have been shut down by ~2020 anyways.
Why?
> The mistake was not building new ones to replace them.
Why not keep the old ones, as long as they are still save and profitable, _and_ build new ones?