[lysium]

It takes decades to build new nuclear plants. This won’t solve anything until they are built.

Renewables /are/ good for reducing CO2, as every kW produced by renewable is not produced by CO2-emitting alternative. Plus, they make you independent from foreign energy sources.

[eru]

Yes, it takes decades to build new nuclear plants. And the Greens in Germany (amongst other political parties) have been blocking new nuclear power plants for exactly those decades.

More pertinently: those nuclear power plants they shut off were already running. Keeping a plant running takes exactly 0 years.

(You can't really blame German politics here: they just deliver what German voters want. Democracy working as intended.)

> Renewables /are/ good for reducing CO2, as every kW produced by renewable is not produced by CO2-emitting alternative.

Yes, that's exactly what I wrote?

> Plus, they make you independent from foreign energy sources.

That's a separate discussion. Wind energy in Germany and burning German coal is independent of foreign energy sources. Burning Russian oil or importing electricity from photovoltaic in the Sahara are both foreign energy sources as far as Germany is concerned.

As long as you make sure that your foreign imports come from a wide variety of friendly countries, that's not too bad. Eg Germany importing nuclear power from France or wind power from British off-shore farms doesn't seem very concerning to me.

(I'm just using Germany as an example here.)

[input_sh]

It's Germany, they've already built them. About a decade ago they had 17 reactors in operation powering about a quarter of the country. Three years ago they had 6 in operation responsible for about 13% of produced electricity.

The decision to decomission them is a political one, made directly after Fukushima, and fully completed last year. Nothing to do with building them, public was against them and the government listened.

My point being when Germany says they're gonna stop using coal and go all in on renewables, there's historical evidence that they'll follow through. It's just gonna take some years to complete.

[timthorn]

Germany didn't need to build new plants, it already had some.

The "it takes decades" argument was used as the reason for not significantly renewing nuclear in the UK - over a decade ago.

[mk89]

You need energy now. Nuclear was phased out. That's it. That was the decision. And in 2021 was "barely" producing 13% of electric energy with the last 6 reactors.

So either you follow one approach (= mix between imports and solar/wind) or the other (=import until 2032, then import and produce with nuclear energy), with the first approach being oriented to the long run (=independent from other countries, less co2 emissions, etc.).

[TheChaplain]

It does not take decades to build.

The largest owner of wind power installations in Sweden is China. The 5 largest producers of electricity from wind power, 3 of them are foreign (Finland, Germany and Norway).

[bigfudge]

But the knowledge and systems for producing wind tech are well distributed. A blockade of Finland would be only a small bump in the road. Not like setting the Middle East on fire is for gas.