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.
This is true, but I don't think the reason for his proclamation. It would be very unlike him.
For better or worse there is zero chance that Germany starts a nuclear weapons program. The public sentiment just won't allow that unless we are already at war, in which case it is too late. Besides that, nuclear weapons are stationed in Germany already. France and the UK are next door, so I am also not sure if it would actually benefit Germany at this point.
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.
They got 8% of the votes in 1987, up from 6% in 1983, didn't even make it past the five-percent hurdle in 1990 - so what justifies the obsession with the Greens, when the large majority of Germans rejected nuclear energy after Chernobyl? Why must all nuclear energy threads on HN pretend a fringe party ruled Germany with an iron fist?
When issue will start going widespread, mainstream parties will latch onto it too to prevent voters from switching. It was not Green who decided to exit the nuclear, it was CDU government.
In 2011 the Greens won key conservative regions with their Fukushima fearmongering and outright lies (see GP comment). They drove massive anti-nuclear protests. And with all this they forced Merkel to u-turn on nuclear or she would lose power.
"Policy Reversal: In May 2011, just months after extending reactor lives, Merkel's government announced a total phase-out of all nuclear plants by 2022."
This is literally what we are discussing in this comment thread. Facts.
> Eight German nuclear power reactors (Biblis A and B, Brunsbuettel, Isar 1, Kruemmel, Neckarwestheim 1, Philippsburg 1 and Unterweser) were declared permanently shutdown on 6 August 2011, following the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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.
The fear was widespread across the whole European continent at the time. I don't think you can put the blame on any one person. I think it's entirely natural to be afraid of an invisible undetactable danger that will give you cancer. Many other such fears, due to other environmental pollutions are present today, however justified or not they might be.
Fukushima sure, but a lot of women were traumatized by Chernobyl and the news of a cloud of radioactive dust that was going to give them all cancer. I think Fukushima just reingnited those fears.
Given that wild game in the most affected areas still have to be tested soon half a century after the accident I wouldn't dismiss the fear as unfounded.
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.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow
That‘s the thing. Everyone knew it was costly, nobody ever thought it was good strategically. If he now says it’s a „strategic mistake“ that‘s laughable, did he think it was strategically clever before? If so he was the only one.
The whole issue is that Germany overestimated its own resilience and economic power, which is deteriorating. Of course environmentalists knew that this is not good for the economy but the Green Party is mostly left aligned they were ok with incurring some damage to the economy for their cause, after all that’s their whole point.
But they thought well we are such a economic powerhouse anyway, we can do it.
So the real strategic mistake was arrogance. And saying that particular action was a „strategic mistake“ instead reflecting on the whole self-image of the country, shows that exactly this arrogance persists
Do you think companies who couldn’t built a safe airport or train station can suddenly built something more complex like a nuclear power plant without massively going over budget, construction time and safety?
And I guess nobody fears Russian drone flying over WECs instead of nuclear power plants
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.
Seems you have memory holed how pro Russia the US was too. You guys had joint military exercises. Why single out the EU as being bad?
What you seem to also have memory holed was that up until Crimea, the prevailing idea for Russia was that the more we trade with them, the more wealthy and informed the populace becomes and the more entwined the economy becomes globally and thus losing that access would become too painful to them. The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016.
You mean the Green party was undermined by Russians?
The Green party had the goal of de-nuclearization from the beginning, at that time the Soviet Union was still in existence. When the Green party came to power and negotiated the nuclear exit, they did not need any external motivation to do so.
The only way I can see this being Russian meddling would be the Green party being infiltrated from Russia from the beginning.
If you have sources that point to the Green party being undermined by Soviet/Russian espionage or some such, please point me torwards them.
The opposite. The (unsubstantiated and probably false) claim is that the Green party was helped or funded by Russian energy companies, who benefited by Germany shutting down its nuclear plants.
Not sure why you're blaming the Greens here, they're a second-tier party in Germany and weren't even a part of the governing coalition during Fukushima and the decision to completely exit nuclear.
The Green party and the Social Democrats were the governing coalition that enacted the nuclear exit. Sure, it was completed by the other two big parties after Fukushima, but by that time the exit was already underway in practice.
That's nonsense. Large parts of the German Left has been incredibly anti-nuclear for 40+ years. And by the 80s they killed further investment. And by the 90s it was clear that nuclear was temporary and was going to be killed.
The right was never anti-nuclear, but they were more pro-gas and pro-coal.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
I have given them as examples, both having support from voters. There’s unfortunately no real alternative to mainstream parties at the moment from political point of view. Nobody really cares about cost of living and housing crisis, overcoming healthcare special interest group lobbies etc.
So true, unfortunately.
I wonder why that is the case. Maybe the majority of voters (pensionists, state employees, ...) is just not affected by these problems (yet)?
Most people have a vested interest in one party remaining in power, one that addresses their personal concerns over everything else. The ruling coalition just passed a pension reform that supports the older generation but is hostile to the young. Trade unions will support the SPD no matter what, because additional bureaucracy "benefits" workers. CDU is strongly influenced by business lobbies (and FDP too). Greens are feel-good choice for voters alarmed by climate change and as such are highly unstable (their pro-war stance could be probably a good idea, if Ukraine was winning, but now it looks detached from reality). The main problem is that German politics have professionalized, with careers starting straight from university, and became as opportunistic as product management in scale-ups. People understand that their political future isn’t tied to a decade-long housing program, so that is off the table.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The far right in Germany now calls themselves pacifists :-D
Nevertheless, I would feel much safer living in a EU that has serious nuclear deterrence capabilities.
well France is still in the EU and has nukes (including some in nuclear submarines), for what it's worth. Though it's not a given that the French would use their nukes to defend the EU.
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.
We still have a large nuclear enrichment facility (Urenco) and research reactors, so this is not what Merz means.
This is true, but I don't think the reason for his proclamation. It would be very unlike him.
For better or worse there is zero chance that Germany starts a nuclear weapons program. The public sentiment just won't allow that unless we are already at war, in which case it is too late. Besides that, nuclear weapons are stationed in Germany already. France and the UK are next door, so I am also not sure if it would actually benefit Germany at this point.
spot on
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 Greens and allies have been scaremongering on nuclear power since the 80s.
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.
They got 8% of the votes in 1987, up from 6% in 1983, didn't even make it past the five-percent hurdle in 1990 - so what justifies the obsession with the Greens, when the large majority of Germans rejected nuclear energy after Chernobyl? Why must all nuclear energy threads on HN pretend a fringe party ruled Germany with an iron fist?
When issue will start going widespread, mainstream parties will latch onto it too to prevent voters from switching. It was not Green who decided to exit the nuclear, it was CDU government.
In 2011 the Greens won key conservative regions with their Fukushima fearmongering and outright lies (see GP comment). They drove massive anti-nuclear protests. And with all this they forced Merkel to u-turn on nuclear or she would lose power.
"Policy Reversal: In May 2011, just months after extending reactor lives, Merkel's government announced a total phase-out of all nuclear plants by 2022."
This is literally what we are discussing in this comment thread. Facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
> Eight German nuclear power reactors (Biblis A and B, Brunsbuettel, Isar 1, Kruemmel, Neckarwestheim 1, Philippsburg 1 and Unterweser) were declared permanently shutdown on 6 August 2011, following the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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.
But that fear is also largely manufactured by the government through publicly funded television/radio.
The fear was widespread across the whole European continent at the time. I don't think you can put the blame on any one person. I think it's entirely natural to be afraid of an invisible undetactable danger that will give you cancer. Many other such fears, due to other environmental pollutions are present today, however justified or not they might be.
You still shouldn’t eat certain mushrooms in Bavaria thanks to Chernobyl
Also post Fukushima.
Fukushima sure, but a lot of women were traumatized by Chernobyl and the news of a cloud of radioactive dust that was going to give them all cancer. I think Fukushima just reingnited those fears.
Mushrooms and boars are still contaminated in Bavaria
The operator companies are also in favor of the exit because it’s too expensive
Given that wild game in the most affected areas still have to be tested soon half a century after the accident I wouldn't dismiss the fear as unfounded.
I’d call it stupidity rather than masochism.
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.
Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow
That‘s the thing. Everyone knew it was costly, nobody ever thought it was good strategically. If he now says it’s a „strategic mistake“ that‘s laughable, did he think it was strategically clever before? If so he was the only one.
The whole issue is that Germany overestimated its own resilience and economic power, which is deteriorating. Of course environmentalists knew that this is not good for the economy but the Green Party is mostly left aligned they were ok with incurring some damage to the economy for their cause, after all that’s their whole point. But they thought well we are such a economic powerhouse anyway, we can do it. So the real strategic mistake was arrogance. And saying that particular action was a „strategic mistake“ instead reflecting on the whole self-image of the country, shows that exactly this arrogance persists
autonomy, for a nation, is hardly a strategic mistake
So you are saying this has the potential to make Germany more autonomous and less dependent?
Where is the stupidity?
Do you think companies who couldn’t built a safe airport or train station can suddenly built something more complex like a nuclear power plant without massively going over budget, construction time and safety?
And I guess nobody fears Russian drone flying over WECs instead of nuclear power plants
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.
Nope, the reason is, we can’t guarantee the power plants are safe, we don’t have a final storage for nuclear waste and it too expensive.
Fun fact, the ministers of the federal states that are most in favor of nuclear power do not want a final waste storage.
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.
People have completely memory holed how bizarrely pro everything Russia the EU was from 2000-2015.
Seems you have memory holed how pro Russia the US was too. You guys had joint military exercises. Why single out the EU as being bad?
What you seem to also have memory holed was that up until Crimea, the prevailing idea for Russia was that the more we trade with them, the more wealthy and informed the populace becomes and the more entwined the economy becomes globally and thus losing that access would become too painful to them. The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016.
> Seems you have memory holed how pro Russia the US was too.
Interesting inference to draw.
> The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016
Nope.
You mean the Green party was undermined by Russians?
The Green party had the goal of de-nuclearization from the beginning, at that time the Soviet Union was still in existence. When the Green party came to power and negotiated the nuclear exit, they did not need any external motivation to do so.
The only way I can see this being Russian meddling would be the Green party being infiltrated from Russia from the beginning.
If you have sources that point to the Green party being undermined by Soviet/Russian espionage or some such, please point me torwards them.
The opposite. The (unsubstantiated and probably false) claim is that the Green party was helped or funded by Russian energy companies, who benefited by Germany shutting down its nuclear plants.
Not sure why you're blaming the Greens here, they're a second-tier party in Germany and weren't even a part of the governing coalition during Fukushima and the decision to completely exit nuclear.
The Green party and the Social Democrats were the governing coalition that enacted the nuclear exit. Sure, it was completed by the other two big parties after Fukushima, but by that time the exit was already underway in practice.
That's nonsense. Large parts of the German Left has been incredibly anti-nuclear for 40+ years. And by the 80s they killed further investment. And by the 90s it was clear that nuclear was temporary and was going to be killed.
The right was never anti-nuclear, but they were more pro-gas and pro-coal.
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.
This is a sensationalist piece of not-news.
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.
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!
renewables will win the long game.
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.
>even if batteries get cheaper by 50% (and that is unlikely just based on materials cost) its nowhere near enough.
Could you share this math?
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.
I have given them as examples, both having support from voters. There’s unfortunately no real alternative to mainstream parties at the moment from political point of view. Nobody really cares about cost of living and housing crisis, overcoming healthcare special interest group lobbies etc.
So true, unfortunately. I wonder why that is the case. Maybe the majority of voters (pensionists, state employees, ...) is just not affected by these problems (yet)?
Most people have a vested interest in one party remaining in power, one that addresses their personal concerns over everything else. The ruling coalition just passed a pension reform that supports the older generation but is hostile to the young. Trade unions will support the SPD no matter what, because additional bureaucracy "benefits" workers. CDU is strongly influenced by business lobbies (and FDP too). Greens are feel-good choice for voters alarmed by climate change and as such are highly unstable (their pro-war stance could be probably a good idea, if Ukraine was winning, but now it looks detached from reality). The main problem is that German politics have professionalized, with careers starting straight from university, and became as opportunistic as product management in scale-ups. People understand that their political future isn’t tied to a decade-long housing program, so that is off the table.
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.
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.
That move reminds me of Cameron promising the Brexit referendum to placate Eurosceptics because he thought it would never happen.
But Merkel AFAIR never claimed this decision was based on any science but on popular demand and public feeling after Fukushima.
That is correct. Before the nuclear exit due to Fukushima panic her government actually reverted the exit of the former government.
I did physics in middle school. I am always right, I have a background in science
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.
Even the refurbs of existing nuclear have high price tags.
France keeps upping estimates for their refurbs and Ontario just announced price hikes to refurb theirs and mess around with SMRs.
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.
Involuntary XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/1162/
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.
It's the same ridiculous situation as with the Greenland saga. The transatlanticists don't want to let go of the past, but America isn't looking back.
Here we go again.
No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.
Fission could and is a sustainable way to have green energy forever. No need to transition at all.
Fusion is unlikely to be cheaper anytime soon, even if somebody could build a plant that makes positive energy.
Hey, just wait 25 years, and fusion will be cheaper than anything ;)
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.
It was a mistake, because it makes it harder to build up a nuclear weapons stockpile. Which Germany desperately needs.
Nonsense. Civilian nuclear plants are not needed for nuclear weapons. They are in-fact a terrible way to make nuclear weapons.
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Have you ever thought about how to best prevent the US or Russia from pushing a country around?
Ukraine sorely misses their nukes.
With your history surely the far right wouldn't get that amount of power ever again... right...? Oh... wait....
The far right in Germany now calls themselves pacifists :-D Nevertheless, I would feel much safer living in a EU that has serious nuclear deterrence capabilities.
well France is still in the EU and has nukes (including some in nuclear submarines), for what it's worth. Though it's not a given that the French would use their nukes to defend the EU.
France has nuclear bombs.
Exaaactly my point buddy.
I think Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage are closer to commanding a nuclear arsenal than Alice Weidel.
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