Why is Germany decommissioning their nuclear power plants if they require more Energy?
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Because it was mandated in the aftermath of the Fukushima incident that nuclear power is too dangerous, and every nuclear power plant shall be shut down by April, 2023. I didn’t understand or support the reasoning back then, and neither I do today. It’s stupid to shut down the plants in the country yet buy nuclear power from other countries.
Mostly it is a fear of a big accident happening in the middle of Europe and then the country or continent getting showered in radioactivity that affects the health of generations to come. The ultimate decision was made after the incident in Fukushima.
Because it was mandated in the aftermath of the Fukushima incident that nuclear power is too dangerous, and every nuclear power plant shall be shut down by April, 2023. I didn’t understand or support the reasoning back then, and neither I do today. It’s stupid to shut down the plants in the country yet buy nuclear power from other countries.
Mostly it is a fear of a big accident happening in the middle of Europe and then the country or continent getting showered in radioactivity that affects the health of generations to come. The ultimate decision was made after the incident in Fukushima.
Mostly it is a fear of a big accident happening in the middle of Europe and then the country or continent getting showered in radioactivity that affects the health of generations to come. The ultimate decision was made after the incident in Fukushima.
Because it was mandated in the aftermath of the Fukushima incident that nuclear power is too dangerous, and every nuclear power plant shall be shut down by April, 2023. I didn’t understand or support the reasoning back then, and neither I do today. It’s stupid to shut down the plants in the country yet buy nuclear power from other countries.
While it likely was initially due to fear of a nuclear accident, my understanding is it wasn’t really fought because nuclear is surprisingly expensive to operate. It is dirt cheap in the fuel to output ratio but it requires a lot of specialized (meaning expensive) people to operate and maintain the system. It also consumes massive amounts of fresh water.
So while nuclear is a great choice compared to coal in terms of pollution, it isn’t a great choice compared to wind and solar in terms of installation, operation, and maintenance costs. Since solar and wind power are becoming cheaper and easier to install, continuing to fight about nuclear’s safety just wasn’t worth it. Or at least that is how I understood the situation.
Germany has for a long time been more anti-nuclear than other otherwise comparable countries like France or the UK.
Part of that is to do with Chernobyl.
While Germany was not really affected to a large degree it was one of the first places west of Ukraine where people could actually freely talk about that event.
The effect it had on the public was huge. With people being advised not eat food from their own yards, and children discourage from going outside.
Most of that was probably unnecessary, but it affected the psyche of the nation quite a bit. In France and England they were even less affected.
Unlike other countries West-Germany never had a nuclear weapons program during the cold war and thus there was less of a need to keep nuclear reactors going to help build weapons and for the government to make pro-nuclcear power plant propaganda.
After Chernobyl every time some incident happened in a nuclear power plane the press was on to that and always a spokesperson for the government and the company would say that at no point there was any danger to the public.
This was less reassuring than it could have been if they hadn’t been caught in a lie so often.
Finally there was the issue of permanent nuclear waste disposal sites.
Obviously nobody wants one of those in their backyards and the politicians who decided where to put one allowed political concerns to come before science and engineering.
There was a lot of reassurances of how safe the disposal sites were that ended up being shown to lies by reports.
The issue of nuclear waste became a major thing that united basically everyone near the sites or near the railtracks that led to them.
There was a strong anti-nuclear power movement because of that.
By the time fukushima happened, decommissioning nuclear power plants became very popular with a majority of the people.
The rest has little to do with nuclear power at all, but with the politics of energy and keeping coal as a power source because it was a major industry in some regions and shutting that down would have lost too many jobs and threatened politicians careers.
So the coal plants were kept and nuclear power plants were scheduled to be shut down, because there are more jobs in coal than in nuclear power.
Finally the plants that existed were growing old.
To keep nuclear power going companies would either have had to invest money into building new ones or overhauling the old ones. Newer regulations meant to make nuclear power safer mean that building new plants would have been more expensive than the older ones had been.
At the same time power from solar and wind got cheaper and cheaper.
Most people who agree that nuclear power is safe nonetheless would not want one to be built in their backyard and if they would be okay with having one built there they would want to be absolutely sure, that no corners were cut and everything was as safe as possible.
This would be expensive.
Worst of all things like that take years of planning and building. The time to reverse the course of Germany’s nuclear exit was over a decade ago.
If everyone thought otherwise it would not be until perhaps 2050 before the next new nuclear power plant was connected to the grid.
While it likely was initially due to fear of a nuclear accident, my understanding is it wasn’t really fought because nuclear is surprisingly expensive to operate. It is dirt cheap in the fuel to output ratio but it requires a lot of specialized (meaning expensive) people to operate and maintain the system. It also consumes massive amounts of fresh water.
So while nuclear is a great choice compared to coal in terms of pollution, it isn’t a great choice compared to wind and solar in terms of installation, operation, and maintenance costs. Since solar and wind power are becoming cheaper and easier to install, continuing to fight about nuclear’s safety just wasn’t worth it. Or at least that is how I understood the situation.
Germany has for a long time been more anti-nuclear than other otherwise comparable countries like France or the UK.
Part of that is to do with Chernobyl.
While Germany was not really affected to a large degree it was one of the first places west of Ukraine where people could actually freely talk about that event.
The effect it had on the public was huge. With people being advised not eat food from their own yards, and children discourage from going outside.
Most of that was probably unnecessary, but it affected the psyche of the nation quite a bit. In France and England they were even less affected.
Unlike other countries West-Germany never had a nuclear weapons program during the cold war and thus there was less of a need to keep nuclear reactors going to help build weapons and for the government to make pro-nuclcear power plant propaganda.
After Chernobyl every time some incident happened in a nuclear power plane the press was on to that and always a spokesperson for the government and the company would say that at no point there was any danger to the public.
This was less reassuring than it could have been if they hadn’t been caught in a lie so often.
Finally there was the issue of permanent nuclear waste disposal sites.
Obviously nobody wants one of those in their backyards and the politicians who decided where to put one allowed political concerns to come before science and engineering.
There was a lot of reassurances of how safe the disposal sites were that ended up being shown to lies by reports.
The issue of nuclear waste became a major thing that united basically everyone near the sites or near the railtracks that led to them.
There was a strong anti-nuclear power movement because of that.
By the time fukushima happened, decommissioning nuclear power plants became very popular with a majority of the people.
The rest has little to do with nuclear power at all, but with the politics of energy and keeping coal as a power source because it was a major industry in some regions and shutting that down would have lost too many jobs and threatened politicians careers.
So the coal plants were kept and nuclear power plants were scheduled to be shut down, because there are more jobs in coal than in nuclear power.
Finally the plants that existed were growing old.
To keep nuclear power going companies would either have had to invest money into building new ones or overhauling the old ones. Newer regulations meant to make nuclear power safer mean that building new plants would have been more expensive than the older ones had been.
At the same time power from solar and wind got cheaper and cheaper.
Most people who agree that nuclear power is safe nonetheless would not want one to be built in their backyard and if they would be okay with having one built there they would want to be absolutely sure, that no corners were cut and everything was as safe as possible.
This would be expensive.
Worst of all things like that take years of planning and building. The time to reverse the course of Germany’s nuclear exit was over a decade ago.
If everyone thought otherwise it would not be until perhaps 2050 before the next new nuclear power plant was connected to the grid.
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