In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear.
So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear and coal was swapped, Germany could have reduced its emission generation capacity by an extra 66%. (Focusing mainly on coal, since that is (AIUI) the worst of the carbon emitters.)
(Meta: I understand some folks aren't a fan of nuclear. I disagree, but recognize people have different values and weighing of priorities. But I just find it fucking stupid that coal was left to keep running by people who claim that climate change is a priority. Certainly a discussion can be had about pros/cons of new nuclear, but why the fuck would you prioritize closing current nuclear over coal?)
Well first, coal went down, too, if we are still discussing Germany. In parallel with shrinking nuclear generation. See the cleanenergywire link upthread for the numbers. So the coal vs. nuclear discussion is baseless already (again, if we still talk about Germany).
Secondly, energy != electricity. Coal is mostly used for central heating (a plant heats water, water is then transported to a whole neighborhood). Electricity is sometimes also produced, but usually not the primary reason for the plant to exist in the first place. Nuclear plants are usually used for generating electricity (in Germany). Germanys carbon problem is the heating infrastructure being dependant on fossil fuels (mostly gas), but it has no lack of electricity sources.
Thanks for stating your openmindedness re/ nuclear discussion, BTW, IME statements like this can really lift the whole level of discourse.
> Well first, coal went down, too, if we are still discussing Germany.
Yes, but when it comes to coal more down is more better. And if nuclear was still around I would hazard to guess that's what would have happened.
The graph I'm looking at is labelled "Installed net electricity generation capacity in Germany". Lower down there's a pie graph with shares, and coal makes up ~20% in gross electrical production.
Germany was shamed endlessly for not shutting down coal plants fast enough by the same nuclear fans who didn't make a peep about Poland making a decision to be 80% coal for ages.
It raised some interesting questions about priorities.
The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.
No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.
> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
See perhaps:
> […] 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.
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
> Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
The only people causing conflict is Russia, and Germany had to be dragged kicking and screaming in shutting down Russian supply pipelines, so don't go talking about "security" when the actions from Berlin showed there was zero consideration for it:
Actually no, or unlikely, since it’s a massive escalation. Even in Ukraine Russia does not strike the nuclear plants. They strike all the other power plants though.
The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday expressed "serious concern" after Moscow accused Ukrainian forces of launching a drone attack on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine
> It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
Maybe you should take a closer look how those prices come to be.
Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
Last time they wanted to play the free market game, they had to bring the company back into the forgiving hands of the French taxpayer.
I have rather Germany invest into future tech then waste it on rotting reactors which are obviously unfit for the current state of global warming already.
Nuclear was clogging up the grid with it's expensive energy. It is gone now and the grid is diversifying while it follows the path of complete decarbonisation.
There is absolutely no reason to look back for Germany and only those whose ideology is "looking back" seriously do that currently.
The difference is that Germany's investments in renewables at a time when they were still expensive helped to create an economy of scale, which brought down prices for everyone and helped trigger a huge amount of investments worldwide. France build an unsustainable nuclear industry that was forced to sell electricity below cost and had to be renationalized to survive.
> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
This is just plain false. In the 1990s and early 2000s, EDF was generating a whole lot of profit, which it wanted to reinvest. The governments of the time (both left and right) said: "Nope! We’ll take that, thank you." As a result EDF stopped making new nuclear plants and, most importantly, new nuclear engineers and technicians. When the government suddenly decided to have EDF build a new plant 15 years later, the 1980s generation was all but gone, the industrial know-how had vanished, and thi construction costs very logically skyrocketed. Oh, and in the meantime EDF had been (and still is) forced to sell electricity to its competitors under production cost.
Can coal plants buy insurance against global warming? Can a hydroelectric dam buy insurance against downstream flooding?
Very few things in the power grid has insurance against major accidents. It is even doubtful for example if a forest fires caused by transmission lines will be repaid in full by the insurance of the power company, and to the degree that will pay all costs to property and land owners
I agree with everything you say, but the initial "Atomausstieg" was decided in 2000/put into law in 2002, when the Greens were in office. The exit was delayed in 2010 (and then accelerated again in 2011) by the CDU/CSU/FDP, but the initial decision for the exit was very with involvement of the Green party
And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.
The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.
If look up the original plan from 1980s, you will see that the German Green idea was to replace nuclear power and oil with renewable and coal and natural gas. Climate change was not very important, the most important was to remove nuclear power. (The founding idea of German Greens, as was for many anti-nuclear groups, was that by removing nuclear power they will remove the danger of nuclear weapons.)
Energie-Wende: Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran [Energy transition: growth and prosperity without petroleum and uranium]
Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas.
Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, batteries reduce the need for regular gas backup. By 2030, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour over 80% of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period, up from about 20% in 2025.")
i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.
I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.
Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).
> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.
> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.
There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:
> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.
> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.
There's no physics reason of course, but not using the natural river source for cooling like this further hurts the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
Similarly, all industrial processes of heat rejection, including data centers, could use closed cycle cooling, but they don't, because it's more expensive to install and operate.
> the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
That affects ~0.5% of the yearly production in France, it's not a "primary weakness", it's the opposite, it's so low of a problem that the state simply doesn't care enough to fix it.
They are saying economics is the primary weakness i.e. nuclear costs more than renewables even if you don't have fancy cooling methods that would increase the cost further.
For renewables (solar, wind) to work reliably you have to provide on-demand backup, invest in energy storage systems and increase investments in electric as renewables are often far away from consumers. (German offshore wind in north, major industrial consumers in south). So direct comparison of isolated costs of renewables and nuclear is misleading. You have compare the whole system.
"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."
Germany invested in renewables already at a time when they were very expensive. This created an economy of scale that brought prices down to everybody. Nuclear was never economical anywhere, so no, Germany should not have expanded nuclear. I think it could have kept them running a bit longer, but those decisions were made a long time ago and changing them also has a cost.
Isn't this the guy that double counted everything? Because he counted when something got bought and then counted the subsidy used to buy and added then together?
> Everyone jokes about the 20/20 hindsight of cost management. In Life-Cycle Costing, Jan Emblemsvag proposes to do something about it.
Here's a new approach to life cycle costing that brings activity-based costing, risk, and uncertainty into the forefront. You'll focus on future costs and learn how you can perform any type of cost management activity better than before by introducing uncertainty into models and exploiting them to the max.
Well no it isn't, this problem is so small that it's not even worth installing any additional cooling method. It's also the lowest consumption period of the year, making the problem even more irrelevant as some plants are already offline for maintainance anyways.
And since the poster didn't knew that, I'm not sure the cost analysis holds up.
I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.
I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.
If the building costs for the nuclear plants are paid for, nuclear costs are comparable to the costs for utility solar today (and much less than solar 10 years ago).
Closing down nuclear plants while you keep burning coal is not a good decision, no matter how you look at it: deaths due to pollution (in Germany and downwind countries), deaths due to mining, economic costs, etc. We will also see in the future what affect all the extra CO2 that is being emitted. Even now, I just read that Germany ranks 8th globally for the amount of coal they burn. The people who made the decisions to close nuclear plants while they still burn coal are responsible for all that.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/live/fifteen_min... Anyone is free to compare France and Germany here.