The story of their shutdown is really quite crazy.
The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
There should be a law that lawmakers can only be scientific people when it comes to science, i.e scientist's and engineers not humanities or arts majors. These people take decisions which are absolutely absurd. The entire western world has stockpiles of plutonium which is not going to be used for anything other than mutual self destruction. Because of these anti nuclear activists types the western hemisphere has trillions of dollars energy locked in the plutonium bombs, that could have been used in Fast breeder reactors and would have benefitted humanity.
Merz will say anything if it somehow benefits him and doesn't concern himself with facts.
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
This take misses the real un-stated strategic mistake which is what I'm pretty sure Merz actually means but can't say aloud.
Shutting down nuclear reactors means you lose a source of plutonium that can be diverted to weapons manufacturing. You also lose nuclear engineers and workers with skills and knowledge to fabricate with fissile materials which you need to manufacture those weapons.
Similarly, the reason so many countries have a civilian rocket launching program in spite of having no chance in hell in beating SpaceX economically is to have scientists and engineers who can build missiles if needed.
These are just insurance policies. Both Japan and Korea have them for instance. As recent events have shown, countries without nuclear weapons are essentially defenceless against and dependent on those with them.
When you go to the German Wikipedia page about the Fukushima incident you can learn about the misleading reporting in Germany, even in the public broadcasting like ARD or renowned newspapers like Süddeutsche Zeitung (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuklearkatastrophe_von_Fukushi...). Many articles were published that claimed 18.000 casualties from the nuclear disaster while in reality it was the Tsunami.
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
Was that not clear from the beginning? Nobody ever claimed it was for strategic purposes, the narrative was "we don't like nuclear anything, we will get rid of it we can bear the costs".
So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe?
Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
It was a populist move because a big chunk of the electorate is German moms and German grandmas who are absolutely terrified of radiation post Chernobyl.
It wasn’t that hard to see that energy needs were only going to increase rather than diminish. And not because of ai datacenters, but (to make a simple example) for example because of the already ongoing at the time push for the electrification of the automotive industry.
It’s also crazy that the initiative was supposed at all by environmentalists.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow.
Nonsense. The Greens and all the anti-nuclear were absolutely convinced and never stopped screaming that nuclear was absurdly expensive and the energy price would go down. They over and over again claimed nuclear was bad financially.
My money is on Russian meddling, to make Germany dependent or Russian gas. Which happened. Until the US blew up the pipeline, and now Germany is dependent on US gas.
I'm from Germany and wanted to be a nuclear engineer. My mom to this days has a sticker on her car "Nuclear, no thank you". And she is an educated woman, a professional chemist.
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
Maybe you are lucky you did not become a nuclear engineer. I've heard from a woman whose late father was one that he and his colleagues all died from cancer. They did not get to enjoy their retirement much.
The german energy policy has really been an economic failure on an epic scale.
They destroyed 30+ fully functional nuclear power plants because of fear of radiation. In the last 20 year spend >500billion € to remodel the energy grid. Now subsidizing electricity with ~30billion € per year.
And the result: Carbon intensity of energy production on the same level as US and 3x the electricity price!
This is lot of nonsense. The cost is mostly due to the funding of renewables at a time when they were still very expensive. This was highly successful in bringing down cost. Despite fakenews in this direction, fossil fuel consumption did not increase in Germany and is on the decline with a corresponding reductions in CO2 emissions. According to the following link Germany 338g / kWh Co emissions, US 384g /kWh.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
Exiting nuclear power early was wrong. Wasting trillions on handouts from taxpayer money on new built nuclear power today is wrong. Just look at the French:
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
So, basically his own party, CDU was part of the coalition when nuclear exit was decided. The chancellor from his own party, Merkel decided to accelerate exit after Fukushima, while increasing dependency on Russian gas and blocking construction of renewables in CDU/CSU governed states. And now it is the previous government that failed the energy transition. Funnily enough, both this and previous governments declared current state of affairs very inefficient and bureaucratic and promised to fix it, so the question is, if German political mainstream in general is capable of making substantial improvement or we should tear the system apart and elect AfD+BSW combo as shock therapy.
I agree on the problem of the mainstream having trouble to fix the system that feeds their corruption. I just fear that electing proven traitors such as AfD (partially financed by Russia and China, supported by Russian bots, now bootlicking the US admin) and BSW (directly controlled from Moscow) will only make a tough situation worse.
Wasnt Germany weirdly anti-nukular already 60 years ago. Where did it came from?
I remember in a train 1971 passing some Nuclear Towers and whole train expressed displeasement at the scenery. Kinda scary actually, because they started staring at me for not joining the crowd.
The "Atomtöd" (Atomic Death) Campaign (1950s)
Before civil nuclear power even existed, West Germany had a massive "Ban the Bomb" movement. In the late 1950s, the government considered allowing U.S. nuclear warheads on German soil. This sparked the Kampf dem Atomtod (Fight Atomic Death) movement.
The Result: The German public learned to associate the word "nuclear" with total destruction and the Cold War arms race long before they ever saw a power plant.
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
I guess you're right. It's a pity that Elon Musk was incapable of aligning with the German Green movement. So many good things (e.g. large batteries on the German grid to buffer wind and sun) could have come out of that.
The Green party actually helped create the right circumstances to build the German Tesla factory quite fast. He was not exactly grateful later on, supporting their political opponents :-D But I guess their extreme wokeism did not help either.
Batteries are not actually becoming dirt cheap. And if you do the math of how much you need, even if batteries get cheaper by 50% (and that is unlikely just based on materials cost) its nowhere near enough.
> decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes
If you do the math you will see Germany could have actually saved money if they had build nuclear in the 2000s.
> solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else
Only if you look at levelized dispatch cost, not if you actually look at is as a system for sustainable reliable power for a whole industrial country.
Trash Headline. He was not part of the Nuclear Exit, therefore he can not "admit" a mistake. He thinks it was and desperately wants it to be a mistake, no doubt.
It really is not. This is misinformation spread mostly by the right winged party in germany and conservatives to some extent to.
Electricity in Germany can look expensive at first sight if you're quoting legacy household tariffs that many existing customers are still on, because they never switch provider / tariff. But that's not representative of what people pay if they sign a new contract today: the market for new contracts is typically several cents/kWh cheaper than those old existing tariffs stuck at their higher prices.
So "Germany has the highest electricity prices" is at best an incomplete claim, it depends heavily on which tariff cohort you refer to (legacy vs new contracts, default supply vs competitive offers), and people on the internet somehow always fall for this, often picking the worst bucket to make a political point.
As a physicist I disagree. While one should have left the existing plants running longer (but those things are decided a long time in advance), the exit was fundamentally th correct decision from an economic point of view. The extreme drop in prices in renewables world-wide only comparable to Moore's law also clearly confirms the success of Germany's Energiewende. But you need to look at data, not fakenews to understand this.
The spectacular success of nuclear power where it's been tried combined with equally spectacular failures to rebase first world power grids on renewables should have prompted you to question your assumptions by now.
One must conclude the problem lies not in splitting the atom, but educating physicists.
You're a scientist, right? Can you think of any evidence that even in principle might prompt you to change your mind on nuclear?
I think what is important to keep in mind: Merz is on the conservative, pro-economy side of the conservative party, whereas Merkel is not. She has a background in science. She never liked Merz.
Merkel dumped nuclear after Fukushima simply to improve her electoral calculus. As in everything she did, there were no long-term concerns. Yet to her defence it has to be stated that nuclear energy in Germany was just not economically feasible anymore at that time (when gas was still cheap, wind and sun cheaper, and burning coal was not yet frowned upon). Also, Germany had shut down their own uranium mining long ago.
Politicians who appease these irrational psychogenic illnesses that sweep a population instead of saying "you're all idiots" are awful people. An abrogation of their leadership.
So to summarize, they were wrong to move away from nuclear.
They were wrong to ban fuel vehicle at the EU scale.
They were wrong to welcome 1 million Syrian refugees.
They were wrong to cut off gaz from Russia.
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
Why? Germany is not allowed to have nuclear weapons (2 + 4 contract). And this is the only reason nowadays to build nuclear power plants. The UK openly admits that this is the only reason why they build a very expensive nuclear power plant. Otherwise nuclear power is simply much too expensive.
It also was a strategic mistake to bury under the carpet the investigation for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, which was obviously orchestrated by our biggest ally. The US of A.
This is typical CDU conservative talk from Merz. He is on a war path with anything Angela Merkel did because she saw him as politically inexperienced and shunned him. So he had to work for Blackrock.
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
Even though we use well under 25% of the fuel in even the most efficient reactors, the energy density of fissile fuel is many orders of magnitude higher than conventional fuels.
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
You are right that it was a dumb decision, but in this case blame the voters, not the politicians. It's democracy at work, it's what the people wanted. (At least judging by opinion polls and protests and the like.)
Well, the only real downside to this is that energy is a bit more expensive and emissions won’t go down significantly for an extra 15 years or so. Depending on your preferred social cost of carbon that could not matter to you.
Nuclear is high capex and low opex. From a LCOE perspective, it's ~always bad to shut down nuclear plants early (due to capex being a sunk cost), but it's also usually bad to make new ones (due to high capex) relative to contemporary alternatives.
Why shut them down? Older generation reactors? A lot of other countries are extending the lives of older reactors successfully and with far less cost and delay than a brand new plant.
The only thing worth discussing here is how a domain with like 10 snapshots on archive.org - half of them nginx errors - has this submission trending on Reddit and HN.
hippo22|1 month ago
The shutdown was initiated by chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After killing Germany’s nuclear sector, he signed off on Nord Stream 1 as he was on his way out of office. Just after leaving office, Gazprom nominated him for the post of the head of the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. Russia later nominated him to be on their largest oil producers board.
This guy basically sold out Germany’s energy independence for Russia.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der
internet2000|1 month ago
pankajdoharey|1 month ago
V__|1 month ago
> German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.”
Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition.
> eliminating nuclear power — once a significant part of the electricity mix — has complicated energy planning and driven up costs.
Not investing in the gird for decades and stalling renewables for cheap Russian gas arguably was more of an impact.
> Merz argued that Germany’s rush to pivot away from nuclear energy, combined with extensive investment in renewable sources under the Energiewende policy, has made the transition unusually expensive.
Reliance on Russian gas has made everything expensive, but since his party is responsible for that, it's easier to scapegoat the departure of nuclear energy.
The only mistake was to depart from nuclear before reducing gas, since that would have reduced emissions quicker.
sfifs|1 month ago
Shutting down nuclear reactors means you lose a source of plutonium that can be diverted to weapons manufacturing. You also lose nuclear engineers and workers with skills and knowledge to fabricate with fissile materials which you need to manufacture those weapons.
Similarly, the reason so many countries have a civilian rocket launching program in spite of having no chance in hell in beating SpaceX economically is to have scientists and engineers who can build missiles if needed.
These are just insurance policies. Both Japan and Korea have them for instance. As recent events have shown, countries without nuclear weapons are essentially defenceless against and dependent on those with them.
pepa65|1 month ago
codingbot3000|1 month ago
ofrzeta|1 month ago
alecco|1 month ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_90/The_Greens#Energy_...
> After the Chernobyl disaster, the Greens became more radicalised and resisted compromise on the nuclear issue.
nbadg|1 month ago
The CSU/CDU Union party (from which Merz comes) has been, at least in recent historical time, consistently pro-nuclear (at least in terms of their actions). They have consistently voted to lengthen contracts with nuclear providers and consistently advocated for pro-nuclear policies, even when the power companies themselves had long since committed to ceasing all nuclear power production in Germany.
Additionally, the exit out of nuclear power was decided following public outcry after Fukushima -- ie, still squarely within the Merkel government. Merz has been consistently anti-Merkel.
So put into context, the article is saying "the current chancellor of Germany, Merz, thinks leaving nuclear behind was a strategic mistake!" while ignoring "whose party has consistently been pro-nuclear, whose predecessor, who (by the way) Merz doesn't like and frequently and loudly disagrees with, only presided over the decade-long phase-out in response to public outcry following a major nuclear disaster".
IMO this is about as newsworthy as what he ate for breakfast.
moepstar|1 month ago
Same like any bullcrap Söder comes up on any given day, no matter how absurd.
From a distance, it seems like the whole world agreed it'd be a good idea to only come up with ragebait over and over again :(
CjHuber|1 month ago
So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.
grunder_advice|1 month ago
znpy|1 month ago
It wasn’t that hard to see that energy needs were only going to increase rather than diminish. And not because of ai datacenters, but (to make a simple example) for example because of the already ongoing at the time push for the electrification of the automotive industry.
It’s also crazy that the initiative was supposed at all by environmentalists.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow.
panick21_|1 month ago
4gotunameagain|1 month ago
croes|1 month ago
Fun fact, the ministers of the federal states that are most in favor of nuclear power do not want a final waste storage.
Mythli|1 month ago
It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.
flowerthoughts|1 month ago
codingbot3000|1 month ago
Zufriedenheit|1 month ago
uecker|1 month ago
ViewTrick1002|1 month ago
Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.
France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.
As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.
ZeroGravitas|1 month ago
France keeps upping estimates for their refurbs and Ontario just announced price hikes to refurb theirs and mess around with SMRs.
ivan_gammel|1 month ago
codingbot3000|1 month ago
timonoko|1 month ago
I remember in a train 1971 passing some Nuclear Towers and whole train expressed displeasement at the scenery. Kinda scary actually, because they started staring at me for not joining the crowd.
timonoko|1 month ago
The "Atomtöd" (Atomic Death) Campaign (1950s) Before civil nuclear power even existed, West Germany had a massive "Ban the Bomb" movement. In the late 1950s, the government considered allowing U.S. nuclear warheads on German soil. This sparked the Kampf dem Atomtod (Fight Atomic Death) movement.
The Result: The German public learned to associate the word "nuclear" with total destruction and the Cold War arms race long before they ever saw a power plant.
funkify|1 month ago
batteries are becoming dirt cheap, decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes. solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else. the markets will adjust, simple as that.
any push to prolong the transition simply benefits fossil stakeholders.
codingbot3000|1 month ago
panick21_|1 month ago
> decentral production wins amidst clusterfucking climate catastrophes
If you do the math you will see Germany could have actually saved money if they had build nuclear in the 2000s.
> solar and wind already are cheaper than anything else
Only if you look at levelized dispatch cost, not if you actually look at is as a system for sustainable reliable power for a whole industrial country.
Sweepi|1 month ago
UltraSane|1 month ago
AceJohnny2|1 month ago
ca1f|1 month ago
Electricity in Germany can look expensive at first sight if you're quoting legacy household tariffs that many existing customers are still on, because they never switch provider / tariff. But that's not representative of what people pay if they sign a new contract today: the market for new contracts is typically several cents/kWh cheaper than those old existing tariffs stuck at their higher prices.
So "Germany has the highest electricity prices" is at best an incomplete claim, it depends heavily on which tariff cohort you refer to (legacy vs new contracts, default supply vs competitive offers), and people on the internet somehow always fall for this, often picking the worst bucket to make a political point.
Sources: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
Unfortunately it's in german but my point stands: for new customers in germany the price per kwh is even lower than what france pays on average.
uecker|1 month ago
aubanel|1 month ago
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
quotemstr|1 month ago
One must conclude the problem lies not in splitting the atom, but educating physicists.
You're a scientist, right? Can you think of any evidence that even in principle might prompt you to change your mind on nuclear?
MrGilbert|1 month ago
codingbot3000|1 month ago
adamors|1 month ago
authorfallacy|1 month ago
seba_dos1|1 month ago
energy123|1 month ago
lucasRW|1 month ago
At what point does that political class that has destroyed Europe, gets voted out for good, if not prosecuted ?
Sabinus|1 month ago
amai|1 month ago
tetrisgm|1 month ago
The greens were funded this was and everybody clapped at the time. Huge mistake.
4gotunameagain|1 month ago
grunder_advice|1 month ago
foepys|1 month ago
The CSU (the Bavarian equivalent and permanent coalition partner of the CDU) is also demanding to reactivate nuclear power plants but at the same time is not willing to store any spent nuclear fuel. The CSU is also notoriously anti renewables and does not want new power lines in their "beautiful scenery" to get the renewable power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
eru|1 month ago
codingbot3000|1 month ago
panick21_|1 month ago
4gotunameagain|1 month ago
[deleted]
chasil|1 month ago
A decision to forego that benefit of energy density will be painful, especially if implemented quickly.
Involuntary XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1162/
Eji1700|1 month ago
Economically, diplomatically, strategically, and environmentally probably the dumbest decision they could have made and something they will continue to feel repercussions from for at least another decade.
It’s not as loud as Brexit or Trump but likely equally as damaging to so many causes across the board.
The only silver lining from this monumental fuck up is that since sadly we only learn when consequences occur, they’re finally having to face the music and will hopefully plan for a better future.
eru|1 month ago
gregbot|1 month ago
a3w|1 month ago
No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.
panick21_|1 month ago
Fusion is unlikely to be cheaper anytime soon, even if somebody could build a plant that makes positive energy.
outside1234|1 month ago
chmod775|1 month ago
energy123|1 month ago
SilverElfin|1 month ago
Except China, who is good at building them.
mtoner23|1 month ago
eru|1 month ago
Why?
> The mistake was not building new ones to replace them.
Why not keep the old ones, as long as they are still save and profitable, _and_ build new ones?
UltraSane|1 month ago
wewxjfq|1 month ago