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Comment by j-pb | Hacker News Reader

I'll never understand how people can have easy access to the latest price metrics [0], which clearly shows that renewables are miles ahead of nuclear, and still largue against them.

20 billion Euros would only give you a SINGLE nuclear power plant at best [1].

If the conservative government we had for the 10 years prior hadn't sabotaged the Energiewende we could have hit 100% renewables by now, instead we had the "Altmaier-Delle" [3][4].

France build Nuclear instead of Coal from the get go, if we could turn back time and do the same in Germany too, great. But unless we invent a time machine, the next best thing is investing into the cheapest CO2-Free technology we have right now, and that's renewables.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

1: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edfs-nuclear-project...

2: https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl/true...

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmceuO02uI

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Germany has actively shut down nuclear plants and as a result burns more fossil fuel, no?

As a percentage of total generation nuclear in Germany was never as high as France, but couldn’t they skip the 20 billion euro cost of a new plant and simply restart an existing one?

Apparently yes: https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/reports/restart-of-german...

But in practice as long as you have Greens in the government you'll never be able to do it.

That report is one year old, so the price calculations are completely off. It neglects that all reactors need to go into revision.

It completely ignores the political dimension which is extremely complicated even if you ignore the Greens. For example the fuel elements are sourced from Russia.

The US is still buying uranium from Russia. Keeping the reactors open for another 3-5-10 years wouldn't have been such a big deal in terms of fuel. Considering also we're still buying gas from them ...

The minister of the economy (greens) was the one who had them running longer than planned due to the Ukraine War [0], they were also the ones commisioning a study from the energy companies to see if they could extend their operations for years [1].

It was the konservative CDU/CSU that set the final decommission date after Fukushima [2].

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xznqbpv0QE

1: https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Nuklear...

2: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/atomstreit-in-der-koaliti...

It's partially true, considering the other two parties were pushing for it too. They had to agree. Plus, we should not mix Habeck with the Greens. Habeck is an individual that sometimes is not supported at all by his own party.

I still remember the discussions - they were literally the only ones not wanting to do it - they set hard conditions, red lines etc. Obviously this went against their political program - thus the resistance.

It was FDP that pushed for additional extensions. [0]

They even proposed to buy new fuel (and further extend) but no, of course not.[1]

PS: CDU/CSU did what unfortunately was hyped on TV - fear of 3 headed monsters etc. Greens, on the other hand, don't understand that we have an energy issue right now and extending nuclear reactors for another 5 years would buy us some time. The ideology won. The sad irony is that because of this ideological choice, they had to burn more coal....!!!!

EDIT: just found this [2]. What's more to add. They are admitting they could have kept the reactors open for another 15 years.

EDIT: according to Habeck, it was the chancellor that pushed for the extension. [3] confirmed also here. [4]

So all the Greens actually did was resistance.

[0]: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ger...

[1]: https://www.dw.com/en/german-greens-lay-out-nuclear-power-po...

[2]: https://greennuclear.online/@collectifission/112588204256628...

[3]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2024-06/robert-habeck-akten-a...

[4]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-chancellor-decid...

> Plus, we should not mix Habeck with the Greens.

> The chancellor’s decision came only two days after Habeck’s Green Party at a party convention officially accepted a runtime extension only for the two plants in southern Germany.

lol

Getting new fuel for them doesn't make any economic sense.

Your entire argument is an emotional appeal.

Show me the numbers that show that nuclear is cheaper than renewables and I'll change my mind, but until then it doesn't make economic sense, and would only be the "ideological descision making" that you accuse the green of.

The current _green_ minister of the economy actually had them running longer than the previous conservative government had planned them to, due to the russian gas crisis. Due to them being phased out there are essentially no spare parts, personell, and fuel, at this point they are being shut down for technical, economical, and organisatory reasons[0] instead of political ones.

Also to put things into perspective, Germany deployed as much solar in the last 3 years[1] as it had in total combined nuclear capacity ever (if you sum up every reactor ever build)[2].

0: https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Nuklear...

1: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/ausbau-erne...

2: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

> Also to put things into perspective, Germany deployed as much solar in the last 3 years[1] as it had in total combined nuclear capacity ever

This is clearly not true. Perhaps you a confusing the nominal capacity of solar plants to real electricity production?

Your source says "The total output of all solar plants rose to 82.2GW" / "Die Gesamtleistung aller Solaranlagen stieg auf 82,2 GW". Whereas in year 2000, Germany produced 170 TWh of electricity with nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

170 TWh is the energy not the power, the area under the curve over the course of a year rather than the height of that curve at any given point.

170 TWh / 1 year is an average of 19.41 GW: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=170%20TWh%2F1%20year

This output is a bit less than the PV capacity installed in Germany over the last 3 years, which is something like 27 GW depending on how accurate the estimates are for 2023.

However, the capacity factor of German PV is about 10%, so the energy produced in 2022 by PV in Germany from 67 GW of capacity was just under 60 TWh delivered. It's probably going to have been around 85 TWh by the end of this year, based on forecasts for installation.

The current Green minister of economy doesn't speak for the whole party. I see what you're trying to do there.

Maybe this will shed some light: https://greennuclear.online/@collectifission/112588204256628...

By own admission of the same guy who said "it can't be done" 2 years ago.

They could have kept nuclear reactors open for way longer. But ... well, go and tell your green voters... It's much better to burn coal.

Theoretically possible != economically feasible. It wasn't habeck that said it can't be done, it was the energy companies a.k.a. nuclear reactor operators [0].

Nobody in the german government, except for the Pro-Russian bootlickers of AFD and BSW would buy new Uranium from Russia.

If you actually watch the interview you'll also notice that Merz of the conservatives also doesn't want to restart the nuclear reactors[1].

0: https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Nuklear...

1: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/illner-ha...

Renewables are not truly CO2-free because sometimes the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. And then renewable fans have to rely on peaker natgas plants, that emit CO2 (though less of it on a kWh basis than oil or especially coal).

Dunkelflaute is extremely rare if you have a sufficiently large grid [0]. That's the beauty of european collaboration, you can have german and spanish renewable jump in for each other, norwegian pumped hydro in the super rare case that neither have wind or sun, and french nuclear, should that happen while the storage is empty and you don't feel like reducing steel production for the day (which is btw also a totally valid way to balance the grid).

0: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute

> Dunkelflaute is extremely rare

Sure, the whole issue is that a reliable grid has to cope with "extremely rare" events too. So having nuclear plants to provide baseload power in such circumstances can be important.

Just run the peaker plants on hydrogen once you have enough overcapacity on sunny/windy days to actually fill some storage.

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