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Comment by JanSt | Hacker News Reader

the current coalition did massive ecological damage by not keeping the six nuclear power plants running. In 2021 they produced more energy than all installed solar combined. It would have been an easy move that would have granted us 10+ more years runway for the transformation of the heating systems. It's an illogical move to take that clean energy out and force massive costs on the people they can't really prepare for. The FDP is losing voters left and right, because they do nothing but stopping even worse politics from the coalition. They are the one thing holding back Germany from going into an unstoppable downward spiral. Germany is already rapidly losing parts of our industry, going into a recession while the burdens on social systems will soon explode. And instead of any solutions for the real problems, the SPD and Greens just want to increase taxes, driving away even more highly qualified people.

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The current coalition did no such thing. They just came into power weeks before 3 of the 6 were switched off. At which point it wouldn't have been reasonable to reverse the decision to get rid of the last 6 reactors. A decision, which was taken by CDU/CSU and FDP. They decided on the switch off date and did nothing in the following 10 years to reconsider. They also did their best to not grow the renewables instead.

But if you look at the article we are commenting here, that doesn't matter as we now have record levels of renewables, quite compensating for the switched off reactors.

That's dishonest. They had three month to reverse the decision on the first three in time of an energy crisis but refused to do it; they took another year not to switch off the next three. The decision HAD to be revised because of the energy crisis and lack of gas. They didn't.

The production has NOT been compensated. We just produce less and import more. It will take years to compensate the six reactors - a lot of time and CO2 emitted.

It is dishonest to claim the decision could have been reverted in the last 3 months. They were in no shape to be kept running. First of all, the fuel rods were spent and would have to be ordered and would have had long delivery times. But the biggest concern would have been maintenance. The maintenance schedule was of course planned with the scheduled shut-down in mind. So a lot of maintenance and refurbishment would have had to be done. So we are talking about a possible several-year downtime at least. Which makes the whole idea very questionable.

If a prolonging the life-time of the reactors would have been desired, the previous government should have done it. Then the necessary steps could have been done without a long downtime. And mind you: they were shut down so early because the previous government hat decided to do so. The initial plan allowed for much longer run times.

There would have been NO road blocks for extending the lifetime. Westinghouse offered fuel rods which would have been delivered in time.

They had all the normal maintenance (every 2 years) and were in pristine condition, much better than most other nuclear reactors on this planet. Only the 10 year interval was pushed out, but it's just an additional check to further increase safety over the long term. No downtime would have been required, especially no multi-year downtime.

The previous government did not know that Russia was to attack Ukraine and gas flow was about to stop with all the effects on energy availability and prices.

No, that is not true. Maintenance was done with the respect to the planned life time. They couldn't just have kept running. That the previous government didn't knew about the Russian war onto Ukraine makes no difference. Gas prices have recovered to pre-war levels, so there is no extra need for the nuclear plants compared to before the war.

This is simple not true.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/politik...

You still pay teice the price for gas as before because we had 30yr low costs (below spot) contracts with Gazprom.

The article is about shutting down the reactors at the 31.12.22. As you know, they were not shut down at that date but ran some months more. That doesn't say anything about the long term maintenance requirements. And in any case they would have to be inspected before any further decisions to be taken as the article only states "they might be able to run further". But that was only an opinion, not a result of a inspection.

You have either not read the article or didn’t understand it. The PSÜ has little to do with the actual condition of the reactors.

I have read and understood the article. It is all speculation about what might or might not be necessary.

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