[joss82]

If it’s cooled in an “open cycle”, it means that the water vapor is released in the atmosphere, via these huge aero refrigerators towers. It will eventually fall back down as rain or snow. Water is not a scarce resource in Germany. Shutting down those plans was an ecological and economical disaster bordering on high treason.

[pintxo]

Actually, water is scarce in some parts of Germany [1], it might not look like it, but there are still drought conditions in the soil of some parts of Germany [2].

[1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/wasser/extremereigniss... [2] https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937

[Zoadian]

nonsense. the economy didn't even notice the shutdown. and those plants were more costly to operate than renewables are, so we're enjoying cheaper electricity now. it also wasn't an ecological disaster, in fact it didn't change anything in that regard.

[bschne]

1. Renewables have currently offset less than half of year 2000 nuclear generation -- https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix

2. Industrial energy prices seem to have risen pretty consistently since 2000: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

I'm pro renewable build-out, and a lot of new nuclear projects seem to my layman's eyes uneconomical, at least at today's cost (maybe we'd get better at doing it cheaper again if we invested, I don't know), but your claims seem false.

[kanwisher]

no cause cheap Russian gas and oil replaced it, now with the war on the economy is cratering with expensive energy

[robertlagrant]

Is this true? This chart[0] says otherwise.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/electricity-price

[dtech]

Did you miss the natural gas crisis? All of Europe has been scrambling to replace Russian gas with LNG. If I remember correctly Germany even decided to postpone some nuclear reactor closing because of it. European industry and especially Germany industry is facing major stress due to high gas and energy prices.

[lupusreal]

Is that why Germany is pissing and shitting itself over issue of energy from Russia, America and NS2? This is not symptomatic of a healthy and secure energy economy.

[betimsl]

how much is the cost of a kW in Germany?

[vaylian]

Why would shutting down the reactors be an ecological disaster?

[Krssst]

Shutting down a nuclear reactor means postponing a coal plant shutdown. Coal being the worst way of generating electricity regarding CO2 emissions.

[joss82]

Solar and wind cannot replace base load power. Especially not in Germany. They have to rely on peaker plants even more, and those are burning gas, emitting CO2. And they built more coal power plant units, like Datteln 4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datteln_Power_Station

[Sayrus]

Germany relies mostly on oil, coal and gas for energy production [1]. Shutting down reactors that produces energy at a very low carbon cost (especially since a huge part of that was building the reactors) means you keep using fossil fuels. At the time of writing, Germany produces power at 432gCO2eq/kWh [2] (compared to 169 for UK, 13 to 37 in Sweden, 42 in France, 309 to 600 in Italy and 759 in Poland).

In practice, Nuclear was replaced with renewable but fossil fuel usage didn't go down.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by...

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly

[JohnBooty]

Not to mention, it plays right into Russia's hands by keeping Germany dependent on foreign gas.

[tzmudzin]

You could not replace them entirely with renewables, so fossil fuels were used