Hacker News Reader

Comment by jexp | Hacker News Reader

The article is factually incorrect on many fronts. There were only 3 reactors running at last. Nuclear was never profitable, the country shouldered most of its costs (esp for radioactive waste storage)

The renewable energy transition was blocked and delayed by the same Merkel govt. Germany was once leading in wind and PV energy and all those industries were destroyed and almost 100k jobs lost. 60bn subsidies per year go to fossil fuel companies including coal mining and burning. Often under the disguise of job retention. All through industrial lobbying and strong unions in the fossil fuel industries.

View on HN

Germany's renewable industry also was never profitable, if you look at the whole country. It was always propped up by huge subsidies, and when those subsidies where scaled back (as planned and announced beforehand), the whole rent-seeking industry folded and business went to China.

It is hard to argue about energy cost in Germany, because all energy sources are a mixture of privately financed and public/state-subsidized, but always in different, complicated and frankly weird ways. Things are easier to see in countries where either practically everything is done by the state (e.g. France) or everything is more free-market (e.g. the US).

It would be more profitable than burning coal, were externalities priced in to fossil fuel energy generation as they are with nuclear energy.

With nuclear, every kWh generated incorporates the cost of decommissioning, storage, truly baroque safety compliance, and all the rest.

With coal, every kWh incorporates the cost of… coal. What’s the plan for the radioactive ash? Dump it. Somewhere. Wherever. What’s the plan for the atmosphere? Screw it. What’s the plan for decommissioning? File for bankruptcy and let the state deal with it.

How much CO2 german fossil fuel energy production is putting the air compared to the others?

Maybe Germany could go energy martial law, that to build and deploy wind/hydro/solar/etc production plants to shut down their fossil fuel energy production plants. In the meantime, if France is ramping up on nuclear energy, Germany will get some from the EU electric grid.

> In the meantime, if France is ramping up on nuclear energy, Germany will get some from the EU electric grid.

It’s mostly the opposite, though. France is heavily importing German electricity.

I said not right now, in the future as it was just announced last year.

Whatever, who knows how it will end up.

Huh, maybe I missed something, my understanding was, that they have no new plants ready to go anytime soon as they just left their old ones, which now have the issues they have. Do you have a link?

You aren't considering the phase-out costs, particularly mortality and environmental costs from the fossil fuels that Germany has now doubled down on.

Green Party activists often demonize nuclear while calling for renewables and their inevitable companion of gas peaking plants. Activists pretend "renewables + gas" is green and clean using insane cognitive dissonance, while claiming that renewables can power 100% of a country's energy needs -- a farcical claim not supported in any country.

Ha, I didn't read your post until after I said the links are always propaganda...see my previous comment. Have an upvote)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com