1,426 karma · joined January 20, 2022
"Who cares if the emergency reserves are fossil gas when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, construction, aviation, industry, maritime shipping and so on?" - many.
German EEG/y spending is about to increase because it's paid more frequently despite most expensive contracts being over. And for offshore this already didn't pan out well. Solar has the advantage of lower capex but will be hit too.
Nuclear requires far less overcapacity and transmission. You can cycle maintenance schedules and if country's demand is smaller, you build smaller units like Candu to make this rotation.
The only countries that really tried are France and Sweden and the result was stellar.
Germany plans gas expansion to firm renewables.
* Antinuclear movement resulted in DK/DE having worse emissions vs France/Sweden even today.
* Finland will give final authorization for Onkalo this summer https://qazinform.com/news/finland-set-to-launch-worlds-firs... Sweden already started construction at Fosmark. But ultimately conceptually it's not much different from Herfa Neurode
* Most of Sellafield problems are from nuclear weapon test experiments with esoteric waste, not classic commercial reactor waste.
Your list is kinda weak
"Every kw of nuclear production we create is resources we could have instead put into adding more than 1 kw of solar backed with batteries at this point. Moreover the other renewables would come online and displace fossil fuel usage faster. Thus spending money on nuclear results in a more polluted higher CO2 world, not the other way around." - what a nice nonsense argument. With the same success I can say without nuclear - if you build ren and keep fossils for firming, you'll pollute in fact more over time, because you'll still use them. That's also why DE wants to expand gas capacity. And this plan was laid out not by CDU but Fraunhofer ISE itself
Not that many died from rad exposure or cancers from power plants. I mean, depends with what you compare. Entire Chernobyl deaths are expected to be 4k or less depending on data. That's how many ppl die in Germany in 2y from car accidents. That's probably how many died from early phaseout of nuclear https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z
You are right that radioactive material still needs special handling. Just like many other toxic materials like https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6nly288j4o
"Of course it is. Malicious actors can kill millions with the amount of nuclear waste generated daily." - ah yes. And a meteor can kill the entire earth. What's the possibility?
Entire US interim storage of commercial waste costs merely 0.5bn/y until a final repository is built like in Finland. That's dirt cheap.
Nuclear is statistically safe as you said, even accounting with major incidents. Nuclear requires least mining, materials, land per kwh - can be proven too and has one of the lowest env impact per UNECE.
It's your choice to be antinuclear but the data is clear - have the world followed the french/swedish path - we'll not talk about climate change in it's current form. We also know what an antinuclear path leads to - both in Germany and even Denmark which still can't reach french emissions and started pissing off neighbors montelnews.com/news/0138d712-3afd-4590-883e-4b9221fd776a/norways-ruling-party-rejects-renewal-of-denmark-cables https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-pauses-plans-...
Antinuclear movement in Denmark put a ban on construction and guess what happened later? DK became one of the biggest coal consumers on the planet with newly built coal plants.
France got a bit of antinuclear frenzy too by dismantling 2 Fassenheim units to allow connection of Flamanville. All this instead of retiring the leftover gas/coal capacity.
Spain retired several nuclear units before all coal and gas capacity too.
Even if nuclear comes after 25y it's still welcome - much better than Germany building gas plants to firm renewables
"Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes." - what an inflamatory nonsense. Plants without cooling towers are modulated. Plants with cooling towers have marginal impact of less than +0.2dg if we look at french Garone with 4 units.
"No, that €50 billion is just what EDF is in the reds. The actual cost is much, much higher, of course. French citizens still have to pay for their electricity, after all." - french households have lower prices vs german ones per Eurostat too
Asse was an experimental facility without a plan of what to do if experiment doesnt work out. 75% of the waste there is medical+research sectors. Nobody died from Asse incident nor will. Most of sellafield costs are from weapons testing era
Vatenfall in Sweden said this because Sweden has already cheap electricity prices due to existing hydro+nuclear. More nuclear without proper demand means losses. Still, Sweden will have new nulcear https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/swedish-new-nucl...
The bottom line is France with nuclear has far lower household prices vs Germany without it, far better emissions, decarbonized far earlier, spent on entire fleet half of what Germany spent on EEG, the gap getting wider each year
you are acting like there's some race that needs to prove things. But the race already ended. A combo of ren+nuclear gives far better results. It was proven in Sweden. It was proven in France