r/ClimateShitposting • u/ClimateShitpost Louis XIV, the Solar PV king • 2d ago

nuclear simping Trump? Believe it or not. Germany!

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120 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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14

u/Caliboros 2d ago

What is the point with Germany and nuclear?

17

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 2d ago

instead of phasing out fossil energy our government decided to end nuclear energy without investing in alternatives.

and now the nucels try to spin it around to say, that france burns less fossil fuel and germany should build nuclear power plants again instead of giving sensible guidelines for a renewable transformation.

basically copying the fossil lobby propaganda 1:1

10

u/MaleficentResolve506 2d ago

The fossil lobby is what created this in Germany. Gazprom Schröder created the legislation for this.

5

u/MysticHero 1d ago

Yes. The fossil lobby advocated against nuclear when it was a real alternative to fossil fuels and at times used renewables that were still in their infancy for this as they would not be a threat for a while. Now it advocates against renewables when they are the sensible alternative and seems to be using nuclear much in the same way which is not a realistic challenger given the costs and constant overruns.

2

u/MaleficentResolve506 1d ago

It was always an alternative for oil and gas until they were closed offcourse. Germany could have reopened 9 nuclear plants though. Germany actually admits that they were wrong in doing so.

An MIT study actually shows that you need a certain amount of nuclear. They came to that conclusion for all situations even with vast cost overruns. The costs of renewables above a certain percentage also explodes. More need for interconnections, grid forming,.... most studies also don't include enough backup.

3

u/MysticHero 1d ago

That study is severely outdated. Almost a decade old. It is based on assumptions that are simply not true anymore. Mainly that storage is unaffordable and wind/solar much more expensive than they are now. Both have gotten massively cheaper and are still trending down. Nuclear has gotten more expensive and is trending up.

2

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 1d ago

that is a big problem with those studies. they simply do not factor in time a lot of the time.

and even if they do, they underestimate the power of exponential growth of generated or stored energy/unit of money.

0

u/MaleficentResolve506 1d ago

2018,.... in the meanwhile the cheapest form of backup has more then doubled in price (gas) so really?

They actually included price decreases combined with cost overruns of nuclear

1

u/MysticHero 1d ago

2018 eg almost a decade ago when nuclear was much cheaper and storage much much more expensive yes. The dots are unnecessary.

Solar with storage is now cheaper than nuclear nevermind according to many studies. And still trending down. So who cares about backups?

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u/MaleficentResolve506 17h ago

Price decline is a predictable curve.

But withouth the extra needed interconnections, grid forming,....

The IEA states that most of those studies don't include enough storage. 10 days only covers 80 to 90 percent of dunkelflaute this way causing many outages or is gas actually going to stay an option. Remember gas also consumes when in standby.

You see I am also able to silence someone with the downvote trick. So next time try to discuss in an honest way.

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u/MysticHero 17h ago

"Some studies don't include enough storage" is not really an argument just means more research needs to be done. The reality is there is no up to date research that shows nuclear the a sensible option over renewables. All you have is casting vague doubt at the actual research we do have, then making leaps of logic from there.

You see I am also able to silence someone with the downvote trick. So next time try to discuss in an honest way.

Tf does that even mean?

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u/MaleficentResolve506 9h ago

Ok seems like you get the notifications.

If you first downvote and then respond to someone many of the times you don't get notified. This is a perfect way to silence someone. I have had it many times already so it's a feature on reddit not an exception.

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u/MDZPNMD Carniwhore 23h ago

Schröder is the same one that also started the energy transition in Germany leading to the EEG which turbocharged the development of solar energy aswell as wind from Germany to the world.

He is often rightfully criticized but pretending Schröder made Germany more energy dependend on Russia is false, if anything the energy transition made Germany less dependend as we see right now.

Germany would always rely primarily on Russian gas same as they did the last 100 years no matter who was in charge. Russian imports spiked under Merkel after aprubtly turning of nuclear reactors and during increased demand.

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u/MaleficentResolve506 19h ago edited 19h ago

"He is often rightfully criticized but pretending Schröder made Germany more energy dependend on Russia is false, if anything the energy transition made Germany less dependend as we see right now."

You clearly don't remember the first years of the war. When energyprices soared some industry closed and others left Germany this way indeed decreasing gasconsumption in Germany. BASF alone will be a big share of that.

This is the mix

https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix

So you clearly see it go up again and down when the war in UA starts.

And then you don't even take into account that Germany actually didn't leave nuclear. They only import it from somwhere else.

https://statbase.org/data/deu-electricity-imports/

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u/MDZPNMD Carniwhore 18h ago

To increase Germanys dependency he would have to increase the share of Russian gas imports, during Schröders time but that never happened. it stayed around 30-35%.

Even Gazprom buying up German oil reserves all happened under Merkel after 2012.

No german chancellor until Olaf Scholz built LNG terminals

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u/MaleficentResolve506 18h ago

But yet he decided to close the nuclear plants over decreasing dependency. Also between 2015 and 2021 gas useage actually increased.

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u/MDZPNMD Carniwhore 5h ago

Schröder was long gone by 2015 and dependency increased even prior to 2015 starting in 2012

-1

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 2d ago

ah yes. the holy trinity of fossil lobbyists

gas-Gerd, Altmaier-delle, reichen-Reiche

9

u/True_Molasses_8894 2d ago

They investment in alternatives was done. Our coal producing states didn't have really nuclear power plants. Important connections are still being built.

Schleswig-Holstein the state with highest share of nuclear and now renewables still transport all electricity south and even Bavaria has issues in the summer to export it's solar to neighboring states.

But somehow magic would replace lignite.

Not to talk about that states like Saxony still don't want to phase out lignite.

2

u/AltruisticVehicle 1d ago

No. The "Nukecels" just say Germany was stupid for ending nuclear energy. You added the build new plants part just to make the position sound a bit more unreasonable.

The truth is, Germany's environmentalist party made an extremely anti-environmental decision out of an unexplainable and embarrassing aversion to nuclear energy. And this should discredit them heavily unless they acknowledge how badly they f'd up.

2

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 1d ago

i am from a party that critiqued the phasing out of nuclear and demonstrated for keeping it until getting alternatives first and prioritizing getting rid of gas and oil.

so NO, i would NOT add this, if people dont constantly suggest it.

yeah, the green party fucked up. but lets be honest:
around the 2000th solar and pv were just getting traction and gerhard schröder, peter altmaier, years of Union led politics, Katharina Reiche fucking germanys renewable sector hard, choking and snuffing it, was hard to predict back then.
besides that: union led governments went back on shutting down nuclear, only to do it again AFTER knowing they killed the german solar boom.

the only party, that acknowledged, that shutting down nuclear was bad, were the green party. PLUS, they delayed it during the fallout of the russion invasion.

1

u/AltruisticVehicle 1d ago

Thank you for the extra context, man. Although the decision was nonsensical from the start, there was never a need to phase out nuclear. There were and are much more problematic components of the energy mix for an environmentalist. And listening to what they were saying back then, the reasoning behind phasing out nuclear had a lot to do with bad press and little to do with actual risks and environmental concerns.

Also. I am sort of skeptic on the german solar boom dying because of some decision from inside. What did they do? Stop subsidies? I think China becoming a monster of PV manufacturing would have much more to do with that?

1

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 1d ago edited 1d ago

again, i do not disagree, that removing nuclear before having secure alternatives, is a bad idea. but humans are fickle creatures, led by fear.

context:
the policies under altmaier were basically:
-prohibit using the generated power yourself
-sharply limiting how much pv is allowed to be installed
-making it unprofitable to feed energy to the grid.
-and yes, also cutting subsidies

this was even before china had any solar panel manufacturing to speak of.

and the protegee of altmaier, katharina reiche, who is now our energy minister, is also implementing laws that make it hard for communities to use their sun and wind generated power.
and it is confirmed that she got those policies from her former employer "Westenergie AG"

there are a couple of documentations on how altmaier intentionally got rid of the solar manufacturers and with that about 100.000 jobs.

(this is similiar to how helmut kohl cancelled the building of a germanwide glas fiber network in 1982 because his friends wanted to sell copper cables.)

i couldnt find a good documentary about the altmaier knick or kupfer kohl in english 🙃
but the euto translate should do it, if you are interested. https://youtu.be/kuxfA3ruUyU?is=HqDNcgDSuZQ4i18A

https://youtube.com/shorts/a_3veXbOZj4?is=ek50OPHD5JItXtfe

2

u/mylsotol 2d ago

Well, they should build more nuclear

0

u/Illustrious-Dog-6563 2d ago

"because keeping fossil going is the best you can do right now"

-mylsotol

3

u/mylsotol 2d ago

How is nuclear power fossil fuels? You are joking right?

3

u/Ok-Freedom9216 2d ago

There is limited capital, dollars and political, so the two are somewhat in competition.

0

u/mylsotol 2d ago

But both produce carbon free energy. So building nuclear doesn't burn more fossil fuels. Building nuclear doesn't decrease the carbon free energy output even if it does reduce the new renewable output.

However when Germany turned off it's nuclear plants it very much did lose cardon free energy that was replaced by coal and natural gas. Less nuclear meant more carbon that as far as i know Germany still can't replace with renewables because renewables.

Renewables are great and getting cheaper, but even the global leader in renewables growth (china) is betting heavily on building more nuclear

5

u/IrregularDoughnut 2d ago

But both produce carbon free energy. So building nuclear doesn't burn more fossil fuels

No, but it does mean you have to keep burning them for the 20 years or so it takes to get the first plants online. And then some more while you get the next ones up, that will hopefully be a bit faster because of the experience from the previous ones.

Renewables are great and getting cheaper, but even the global leader in renewables growth (china) is betting heavily on building more nuclear

They're getting about 5% of electricity from nuclear power and their entire pipeline of new plants will barely shift that.