Summary

Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, called Germany’s decision to fully phase out nuclear power “illogical,” noting it is the only country to have done so.

Despite the completed phase-out in 2023, there is renewed debate in Germany about reviving nuclear energy due to its low greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaking at COP29, Grossi described reconsidering nuclear as a “rational” choice, especially given global interest in nuclear for emissions reduction.

Germany’s phase-out, driven by environmental concerns and past nuclear disasters, has been criticized for increasing reliance on Russian gas and missing carbon reduction opportunities.

  • atro_city
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    65 hours ago

    According to a 2024 article in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy, Germany could have saved hundreds of billions of euros and reduced its carbon emissions by as much as 70% by embracing nuclear energy rather than rejecting it.

    Good job German Greens! Well done! 👏👏👏

    They are like the right wingers: ideology over facts. I bet if the conservatives win in the next election, fuck some other parts of the country but manage to introduce nuclear again, the next green government will go about undoing nuclear, regardless of its benefits.

    • @[email protected]
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      143 minutes ago

      Ok you’ll have to explain how exactly that’s the German greens fault. They were not in power when the decision fell to stop relying on nuclear power. Even if they really wanted to there are no plants that are operational right now. We’d need to renovate old ones for a lot of money or build new ones for even more money.

      Additionally the specialized workforce needed to operate these plants isn’t available. We stopped training new people for obvious reasons and it’s not like we currently have a lot of skilled people in unemployment that could be recruited on short notice.

      And again, nothing of that has been implemented by the greens. This is the result of conservatives being in power.

  • @[email protected]
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    158 hours ago

    Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out it was a good thing, when the Greens phased out the last 3, it became a bad thing.

    That’s literally all this discussion is about. Anyone who’s actually taken a look at the data knows that phasing it out was the right move and that there’s no point in bringing it back. There’s a reason the share of nuclear keeps going down in the EU. Germany is also not the only country that doesn’t use nuclear anymore.

    Here are the sources for anyone interested:

    • @[email protected]
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      97 hours ago

      It was a stupid idea no matter who conceived of or implemented it. Nuclear is the only viable clean baseload power generation option we have. Solar and wind can’t do it, coal and oil are filthy, battery storage is nowhere near where it needs to be yet.

      • DerGottesknecht
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        16 hours ago

        Baseload is an antiquated concept that doesn’t work with lots of renewables. Battery storage may be not completely feasible yet, but look at California to see that it has the potential to be ready faster than we can build new npps.

        • @[email protected]
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          65 hours ago

          Baseload is an antiquated concept that doesn’t work with lots of renewables. Battery storage may be not completely feasible yet, but look at California to see that it has the potential to be ready faster than we can build new npps.

          “Baseload” is still needed. Renewables are great but they are simply not there yet. There is a world between “potential” and “available”.

          • DerGottesknecht
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            15 hours ago

            Yeah, right now. But not in 10 years when the first npps could be ready. And you would also need storage for npps when there is a lot of wind or sun, cause you can’t shut down the npps all the time or thermal stresses will cause damages to the pipes. And renewables are here now, it’s the storage that needs to catch up.

    • atro_city
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      15 hours ago

      Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out

      LMAO. Completely false:

      In 2000, the First Schröder cabinet, consisting of the SPD and Alliance ‘90/The Greens, officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear energy. The power plants in Stade and in Obrigheim were turned off on 14 November 2003, and 11 May 2005, respectively. The plants’ dismantling was scheduled to begin in 2007.

      Fukushima forced the hand of the CDU afterwards.

      It was a dumb idea in 2000, a dumber idea in 2011, and amongst the dumbest ideas during the war. Unfortunately, the anti-nuclear people shot us all in the foot with their “what about our children in 1000 years” crap. So concentrated on the far far future were they, that they ignored what impact it would have on the near and medium term. Sure, the children in 1000 years might not run into nuclear waste, but they’ll be living in a climate change wasteland. Good job!

  • ValiantDust
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    8 hours ago

    I deeply wish that people would understand that this horse is deader than dead. There is no Frankensteinian experiment and no virus that will bring it back to even a zombie-like half-life. So would you, please, please, just stop beating the poor thing.

    It doesn’t matter anymore how it died, it’s really time to get a new horse.

    Edit: Instead of just down voting, could you explain to me:

    • How should we get nuclear plants running in any time frame relevant to our current problems?
    • Who is going to pay the billions of Euros to build new nuclear power plants? The energy companies are not interested.
    • Where we should keep the waste, since we have not yet found a place for the decades’ worth of nuclear waste we already have.
    • How this is making us independent of Russia, our former main source of Uranium

    I just fail to see any way how this could right now solve our problem.

    • tb_
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      58 hours ago
      • Where we should keep the waste, since we have not yet found a place for the decades’ worth of nuclear waste we already have.

      Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!

      How should we get nuclear plants running in any time frame relevant to our current problems?

      If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we’d have them by now.

      • ValiantDust
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        57 hours ago

        Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!

        I never said that. But there are ways we have to do neither. Why not concentrate on those, especially since they are magnitudes cheaper.

        If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we’d have them by now.

        That might be true, but how is that helping us right now? That’s why I said it doesn’t matter how the horse died. It’s dead now. There are many faster solutions, why take the one that takes longest?

        • @[email protected]
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          17 hours ago

          I never said that. But there are ways we have to do neither. Why not concentrate on those, especially since they are magnitudes cheaper.

          FSS I hate discussions with people… You can do more than one thing. You could have concentrated on both nuclear AND renewables and stopped burning COAL - but no, instead Germany had a fucking uptick in coal power while dropping the much cleaner nuclear.

          This was so foreseeable it hurts. Renewables simply aren’t up to the task of baseload generation yet in the way that nuclear is.

        • tb_
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          07 hours ago

          It’s dead now

          But what if it turns out we do need it in 10 years?

          All renewable everything is cool, but that’s also going to require a lot of storage for the days where it isn’t so windy or sunny. I think having nuclear to cover (some of) the base load on the grid will be very helpful.

          • @[email protected]
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            87 hours ago

            And I think, you have absolutely no idea how incredibly expensive nuclear power is.

            Solar power is literally free during the day in Germany right now. Investing a few hundred million in storage is much much much cheaper and easier to scale than building a nuclear power plant that will only start producing energy in 20 years or so.

            • tb_
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              16 hours ago

              And I think, you have absolutely no idea how incredibly expensive nuclear power is.

              Less expensive than whatever the fuck we’ve been doing with our climate these last 100 years. But those aren’t direct costs, so who the hell cares.

          • ValiantDust
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            7 hours ago

            But what if it turns out we do need it in 10 years?

            That’s the point, we likely wouldn’t have any new nuclear power plants in ten years, even if we started planning them now. The one they are building in the UK was started somewhere around 2017 I think and maybe, fingers crossed, it might be finished by 2029. Right now the estimated cost is around £46 billion, up from originally about £23 billion.

            That’s one plant. We need many more for any relevant effect. Not even starting on the fact that nuclear energy is very inadequate for balancing out short term differences in the grid since you can’t just quickly power them up or down as needed.

      • @[email protected]
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        26 hours ago

        why do nuclear diehards always pretend it’s nuclear or fossil fuels only, like renewables are nonexistant? it smells bad faith as fuck. nobody arguing against nuclear fission power plants are arguing for fossil fuels. absolutely nobody.

        • @[email protected]
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          46 hours ago

          FSS I hate discussions with people… You can do more than one thing. You could have concentrated on both nuclear AND renewables and stopped burning COAL - but no, instead Germany had a fucking uptick in coal power while dropping the much cleaner nuclear.

          Relevant comment from this thread.

  • @[email protected]
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    16 hours ago

    Never ever ever. Mainly because Germany is sooo bad with new tech, we don’t need more juice :)

      • @[email protected]
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        114 minutes ago

        No, we won’t. A certain dude in the government made sure to cut 99% of the funds pertaining to the study of storing energy (i.e., batteries). It is the same dude who accused the Green Party for only making ideological policies. This is the state of stupidity in this country.

      • @NOT_RICK
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        35 hours ago

        I’m under the impression that large scale energy storage is a bit of an unsolved problem at this point, is that not the case?

    • TimeSquirrel
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      09 hours ago

      Because being addicted to the teat of Russian fossil fuels has worked out so well…

      • @[email protected]
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        98 hours ago

        Russia also has one of the largest reserves of uranium in Eurasia as well, only behind Kazakhstan.

        Also Germany would only trade one teat for another. Energy indepences is only possible by using renewables.

        Lastly every energy corporation has said they won’t touch nuclear with a twelve feet pole because it is too expensive and there is no insurance agency willing to back them up.

        The nuclear horse IS dead.

        • TimeSquirrel
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          38 hours ago

          Unless you’re ready to fill the country with a thousand battery farms, you need some sort of steady base supply that solar and wind cannot provide. Hydroelectric is not really a big option in Germany, so that leaves you with coal, gas, and nuclear energy.

          • @[email protected]
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            67 hours ago

            Unless you’re ready to fill the country with a thousand battery farms,

            Oh I am totally ready to do that. A third of these batteries will be actually farms, a third will be sitting stationary in everybodies cellars and sheds and the other half will be rolling on the streets in form of electric vehicles.

            Top off your own batteries and EV with surpluses during excess production and drain them during dry situations. Most people seem to forget that EVs can work both ways.

            • TimeSquirrel
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              -37 hours ago

              There is literally not enough minable lithium on this planet for that to be a viable option worldwide. Somewhere, somebody is going to have to use an alternate source.

              • @[email protected]
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                76 hours ago

                sodium. gravity. carbon capacitors. lead acid. molten salt. air pressure. flywheel.

                there’s alllll kinds of battery storage solutions, and for grid storage just about anything other than lithium can be used because lithium is really only useful for power density applications where weight and size of the battery matters like cars and planes.

                nuclear fission is dead. fusion is the only nuclear worth talking about and that’s still years, probably decades away from being actually useful.

                so then: solar, wind, wave, hydro, geothermal, and all kinds of batteries is what we have now and can do cheaply and do everywhere and do it now.

              • @[email protected]
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                57 hours ago

                Not all batteries in the world have to be made of lithium. Depending on the use case other materials cab be even superior.

          • @[email protected]
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            47 hours ago

            Maybe you should read up on the topic and not just repeat baseless falsehoods.

            That would be so nice…