ABSTRACT: Germany has one of the most ambitious energy transition policies dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ to replace nuclear- and fossil power with renewables such as wind-, solar- and biopower. The climate gas emissions are reduced by 25% in the study period of 2002 through 2022. By triangulating available information sources, the total nominal expenditures are estimated at EUR 387 bn, and the associated subsidies are some EUR 310 bn giving a total nominal expenditures of EUR 696 bn. Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.
We won't settle this debate (and I'm not against nuclear), but it's a discussion around "Do I need fire insurance when my house has a low chance to burn down" and should I use the money for something else.
If it doesn't burn down, you look great. If it burns down, you look like an idiot.
I think people will not understand (some|most) Germans if you haven't lived through Chernobyl and Pershing-II days, dying forrests (from East European coal plants) and also red terrorism (mid 70s, early 80s were a crazy time). The discussion is not a rational one but one out of trauma of that time.
Germany is stationing nuclear capable missiles again, with the approval of the Green Party, which had been at the forefront of the anti Pershing-II protests but is now a war party:
They're conventional missiles, not nuclear. And nuclear capable is a bit misleading here as that capability was dismantled for the Tomahawk cruise missiles. Of course the US could add it back with some effort, but that goes for essentially every missile that is large enough.
The age of Nuclear is over and won't be coming back. The technology trajectories are now just in favor of solar and batteries. Everything else has no chance.
Authoritarian state still keeping a toe in for military and pragmatic reasons. With communistic 5 year plan system you can through sheer force build a few reactors to keep the option open.
For every passing year they’ve been pulling back their nuclear ambitions in favor of renewables.
I always supported nuclear power. It's just the best we have right now. Renewable power is all good and all, but technology is not there yet. Plus, many people in support of green energy never think about all the mining done for this and how it impacts and often destroys environments. It's OK when it's not your environment being hurt. :-)
Anyways, nuclear power is safer than people think. And most, if not all, nuclear power disasters were due to human error.
> most, if not all, nuclear power disasters were due to human error
How is this less of an issue? Are modern reactors not built and operated by humans? We have better sensors and more digital components now, which reduce the risk. But the risk for a wind turbine is, and always was, zero.
"risk of a wind turbine is, and always was, zero" seems like you need to check on how many people die a year while maintaining wind turbines.
Fukushima accident: corruption
Chernobyl: incompetence
Three mile island accident: that's a bit more nuanced than just human error, but nothing we haven't fixed already
SL-1: suicide-murder/human error
Those are the serious accidents. As you may see, all are perfectly fixable. Plus, current nuclear plants are more advanced. Now while you have on your mind these 4 accidents, consider that currently there are 403 in use plants and oldest one is over 60 years. All working with no issue.
For solar and wind the general public generally can’t be affected by any accidents so the deaths are general work place hazards coming from working aloft with heavy equipment.
For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of thousands to get evacuated.
It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries and life changing evacuations.
You mean corruption and incompetence isn't? It's not like someone accidentally pressed wrong button or something. There are clear issues which can be fixed with more regulations when building nuclear plants and who can operate them.
Can't say much for other two, since it's more just human error. One's more of a technical problem that was addressed poorly and other, too unique to happen again. People don't usually murder/suicide in nuclear plants.
In the winter of 2022, France had to restart permanently shut down coal plants[0] and pump gas to Germany[1] for electricity because of a pipe crack that made half of their nuclear plants go into maintenance. Note that this was on top of curtailing energy use (funny enough, because of gas, not nuclear[2]).
You could say "that was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event!" (I'd love to have machine without flaws but nuclear fusion would be faster) but, if it wasn't for the European grid, this could have resulted in prolonged emergency saving measures or possibly a (partial) blackout. Nuclear power is often touted as the stable one, but ironically, solar and wind would not suffer from this kind of problem because they are inherently variable in output. If energy storage for renewables was already a headache, imagine an energy storage system for nuclear.
"[...]And most, if not all, nuclear power disasters were due to human error.[...]"
And the remaining nuclear power disasters were due to unpredictable natural disasters.
So at what time exactly did we eliminate human error and unpredictable natural disasters, so that we don't have to worry about the dangers of nuclear power anymore? It seems, I somehow missed this two super important historic events...
Human error makes it worse. We can fix technical issues, it is much harder to fix human nature and all the potential human causes for safety violations.
No analysis of costs if Germany had adopted a strategy of transitioning to renewables in 2002 is offered, you are just meant to look at figure 2 and say take it on fait it is the result of a coherent green transition strategy rather than Germany dallying and going back to its traditional coal power.
If 350bn is all we need to cut our emissions in Germany (we have a 4000bn annual GDP) by 75%, then I don't get what the big fuss about climate change is. Every industrial country could cough up such small an amount (loan, Fed printing money, etc).
I've always wondered how big of a part Soviet Union / Russia psych ops played in stirring this completely irrational anti-nuclear mentality. The side-effect of getting Germany hooked on Russian gas was extremely convenient to them.
Of course the Chernobyl disaster played some part, but it didn't result in such irrationality in most other surrounding countries. Perhaps the anti-war mentality and guilt from the horrors of WW2 also plays a part?
In any case, what a disaster German energy policies have been for whole Europe.
The argument agains nuclear is not irrational. The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in. Example from recent history here in Germany the nuclear interim storage mine Asse is leaking and the garbage has to be recovered. Cost estimated to be 3.7 billion tax payer money. There is no solution for safe nuclear garbage storage in sight.
I mean, this sounds like the true cost of being insanely bone-headed. And in some sense nuclear lets you be bone-headed in novel ways, which is a risk, but being this irresponsible is not a necessary condition.
> The mine near Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony is the perfect example of how a final storage facility for nuclear waste should not be built.
> Between 1967 and 1978, around 126,000 metal barrels containing low and medium-level radioactive waste were stored in the former salt mine. They contained contaminated laboratory waste, construction rubble and scrap metal, mainly from nuclear power plant use. Officially, it was an "experimental mine" in which the long-term storage of radioactive material was only to be tested. In fact, many of the barrels were simply dumped into the emptied salt chambers.
> The Asse became a problem in 1988. At that time, the operator at the time discovered that water was penetrating the mine. To date, 350 active and now dry areas have been found. The water is collected and brought to the surface - an average of 12.5 cubic meters per day. Without this work, the mine would flood. Recovering the waste, as decided by the Bundestag in 2013, would be impossible.
Perhaps a minor nit (or maybe not), but when you say
> The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in.
That's also the case in general for fossil fuels too. Pollution from burning fossils kills. (And this extends of course - be it lithium mining or recycling PV panels or composites in wind turbines.) There are very few, if any, truly priced-in mass-market commodities I can think of.
(Another not so minor nit is fortunately the EU-ETS exists, but it has its own issues/criticisms which might get too long for this comment.)
EU, one of the most successful peace projects of human history, is based on the idea that tight economic integration leads to peace.
Obviously not working out in full with Russia, and I think Germany could've put themselves in a far better situation energy wise. But, it still stands that the core purpose of EU has been fulfilled. And very easy to judge in hindsight.
The anti-nuclear mentality is driven by mid-70s/early-80s Pershing-II, Chernobyl, Wackersdorf, Waldsterben and red terrorism, which created identity for large groups of Germans alongside trauma.
"most other surrounding countries."
Except Austria no other country had as much fallout after Chernobyl (in the West, and it was silenced in Eastern Europe, see GDR) - especially Southern Germany (Chernobyl happened around Wackersdorf riots in Bavaria).
Is US gun policy idiotic? Yes, but large groups of Americans have tied their identity to it, and can't give it up. Look at anti-nuclear opinion in Germany the same way.
I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture. Given just how much Russia has invested into Elite capture you know they will set everything in their power to make the west suck up their Gas deliveries.
I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture.
That's not how things work.
You need to have some actual evidence for your pet theory of what happened. You don't just get to believe it (or assign it high likelihood of being true) because it sounds like a nifty narrative, and seems to connect some dots for you.
Meanwhile while the commenter above you is saying, being far from "handwavy", is entirely obvious to anyone with knowledge with knowledge of that country at the time. Anti-nuclear sentiment was everywhere, and it wasn't irrational, just misinformed against the backdrop of what we know today.
Soviet influence operations were ridiculously ineffective at the time (the movement goes back to the 70s-80s) and there's scant evidence of them having been able to influence much of anything in the West (even on issues they were greatly interested in and put out tons of propaganda about, the set of which never included nuclear power as a topic).
Both were certainly there – a guilt made psyops far more easier for Russians. But this energy related psyops have been everywhere. I've experienced it almost first hand. After decision to decommission Ignalina Nuclear Power Station in Lithuania there have been joint attempts to build a new one with Estonia, Latvia and Poland. Russian "No need! Dangerous! Russian gas is cheap!" influence during these talks was very prominent. This was also very much there during 2012 Lithuanian nuclear power referendum.
The leading anti-nuclear force in the 1980s and 1990s was the Green Party, which wasn't pro natural gas at all.
Furthermore, it is now one of the most anti-Russian parties, so any conjectured FSB operation could be considered to have failed spectacularly.
The former East Germany supported left wing terrorism and some hard left student revolts, but the anti-nuclear sentiment goes through many parties and simply does not need any external stimulus.
On one hand, Russia can do "green-washing" psyops to create German anti-nuclear sentiment. On the other, Russia creates the implied threat that in some future war a Russian missile will hit a German nuclear powerplant. Well played, Mr. Putin.
It doesn’t matter what the logic and the math says if fear is your primary motivator.
I used to think the Germans were especially sensitive to these types of fear, but then brexit and worldwide trends towards populism as a whole reminded me this is just baseline human behavior.
It didn’t help that someone figured out pretty good branding[0] against nuclear power that makes people feel happy to resist. I would see these silly “Atomkraft? Nein, danke!” stickers everywhere. You almost felt obligated to go along with the sentiment.
The framing in the article is that Germany made a purely technical decarbonization policy choice between renewable energy and nuclear power and chose incorrectly, but this is too reductive.
Germany has a long history of public opposition to nuclear power, going back over 50 years, and this is related to environmental concerns, safety concerns, and the association with nuclear weapons.
Both the USA and the Soviets had nuclear weapons deployed on German soil with the potential to be directed at the German people and this cultural and historical context is important to understand the current policy landscape.
The origin of the popular Green party in Germany is deeply connected to the peace movement and anti-nuclear activism that pre-dates concerns about climate change.
It’s fine to disagree with the policy decisions the German people made, but it’s good to understand the reasons why they made them.
If there isn't another "Energiewende" (two 180° turns would finally amount to Baerbock's 360° turn gaffe), or alternatively friendlier relations with various resource rich countries, Germany's future is bleak.
And let's not forget that Germany then decided to create the economically viable solar power industry from scratch. Only to then remove the subsidies, destroy the domestic industry they just created and hand over the technology advantage they had to China.
This would have been interesting if it would have been published in 2011. But what is the point of publishing this nowadays after all nuclear reactors have been shutdown? They cannot be restarted and are already been dismantled. Also why don’t we see publications like: „What if Germany had invested in solar energy?“ (instead of subsidizing coal and diesel engines)
How so? Germany and everyone else trades with Saudi Arabia. Do you lose freedom because of that? It is a business decision, same as Ukraine's decision to still collect transit fees for Russian pipelines.
These are the only published theories. The Ukrainian sailboat theory has been published in the WSJ just recently. If the downvoters know more, please introduce us to the third theory.
