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IAEA chief says German return to nuclear power is 'logical'

www.dw.com IAEA chief says German return to nuclear power is 'logical' – DW – 11/14/2024

Rafael Grossi said he was "not surprised" there was renewed debate in Germany about bringing nuclear power stations back online. Germany is the only country to have a complete phase out of its nuclear plants.

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.

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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:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-is-eu-electricity-produced-and-sold/
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/european-electricity-review-2024/
- 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.
  
  Bro has been asleep for the past 10 years lmao
  
  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.
  
  Theres also power production from water and also using biogas plants. Those are two technologies being perfectly capable of supplying a base power.
- 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!
  
  The phase-out practically already started in the early 90s, latest when it became abundantly clear that building more reactors was not politically feasible.
  The reason is distrust in anything being handled properly. See Asse (they just discovered irradiated water that they don't have any idea how it came to be because it's actually above the deposit), see plants running without functioning backup generators for decades, the list is endless.

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.
- 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.
  
  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?
  
  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.

Propagandist propagandizes.
More news at 11
- Because being addicted to the teat of Russian fossil fuels has worked out so well...
  
  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.

This article doesn't mention the most important part of all. Nuclear power only made up about 2% of the German energy mix. The power production lost by the loss of nuclear power plants was entirely compensated by renewable power and we also have the smallest coal consumption in about 60 years, so the shutdown had no effect on the German power grid.
The shutdown of our nuclear power plants was also planned since 2011 after the failure of Fukushima. Our government extended the running time by 1 year but it devinetively didnt had the power to just revert the shutdown.
- Note that the 2011 plan was the reversal of the 2009 extension plan, that was a reactionary reversal of the 2002 plan to phase out nuclear power until 2022. So the issue was the reactionary "lets make more nuclear! Oh shit, a nuclear plant blew up, lets track back on our backtrack" move by the CDU/FDP coalition of the time. Incidently the parties that also now are also crying to want back nuclear.
- Nuclear power only made up about 2% of the German energy mix
  Like in 2023 right before the phaseout? What are you talking about?
  It used to be 22% of the energy mix.
  
  To make this clear. Germany decided in 2011 that it finally wants to phase out nuclear(I'm not going into the details about it before 2011). This was 13 years ago. Since then Germany slowly shut down its nuclear power plants. The final shutdown was last year. Before the final shutdown it was about 2% of the total energy mix. Until the final shutdown none gave a fuck about Germany nuclear power plants shutshuting down. After the phase out was done everyone suddenly wants to return to nuclear, even if its not really an economically viable option(I'm not even talking about the waste problems) and even tho that we can't just turn them on. There are only a few power plants left where the tearing down of them hasn't started yet. It would take some time to certificate a lot of stuff(to make sure the plant is safe), get fuel and hire and maybe teach the new staff.
  
  Yeah, 20 years ago. If you build more renewables the share of all other power sources goes down.
  If you look at the total values in your source, you'll see nuclear to decline since 2006. And from 2021-2023 then the full phase out happened. But the only plants that hypothetically could have ran a bit longer were only left to produce 2%.
  To revert now, Germany first would need to invest billions to modernize the plants, which would take years to scale back into it. Also it would likely need to buy their fuel rods from Russia, defeating the whole purpose of sanctioning Russian Oil and Gas.

Never understood what kind of an idiot you have to be to choose coal over nuclear. Absolutely bonkers.
- Germany wanted to replace nuclear with renewables. This "replace with coal" bs is straight up misinformation.
- We didn't. We chose renewables over nuclear.
  
  There is a larger usage of fossil fuels than there otherwise would have been. A certain portion of new renewables replaced nuclear power instead of fossil fuelled plants.
  So yes, Germany did prioritize removing safe, clean energy over removing dirty, dangerous energy.
  
  You tried, but it didn't work out as expected.
  Also, on a side note, with nuclear you could export energy to other countries so that they don't need to rely on coal gas & oil so much.
- Such an attitude afflicts Australia too. We could have close to unlimited free energy, but instead choose to build more Coal since 'Nuclear Bad' and 'Nuclear too much money' (despite the same people decrying the idea of 'too much money' being applied to anything else)
  
  Hmmmm, I don’t think nuclear makes much sense in Australia when we have an abundance of renewable resources available to us. Nuclear energy has never been known to be cheap and rapidly deployable. If we were going to go down the road of nuclear power we will have to start from the ground up given our utter lack of nuclear energy industry. This would take so much time and money. Why do that when we have sun baked deserts, are girt by sea and have every key mineral under the sun.

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.
- 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.
- The results of that article are at least highly questionable or straight up wrong though. The Fraunhofer Institute had a look at it, found wrong data and calculations and ended their response with
  However, it does not seem expedient to make a detailed analysis of the data due to the fundamentally flawed method.
  Source

Never ever ever. Mainly because Germany is sooo bad with new tech, we don't need more juice :)
- We can get more bang for our buck with renewables+storage.
  
  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?
  
  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.

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