Why Germany won’t keep its nuclear plants open

According to [1], it‘s 14% (for consumers). This includes a large number of CHP (combined heat and power plants), which produce district heat and cannot be replaced with nuclear power.

Then there‘s 36% of industry usage , of which 1/5 [1] is used for power generation in industry power plants. I‘d assume that quite a few of these on-site power plants do other things too, like CHP, and cannot be replaced with nuclear power. Ignoring this, it’d be

14% + 36%*21% = 21,56% of total Gas used for power, in reality, much less would be replaceable with nuclear.

The EU economic think tank Bruegel claimed [2]:

A technically and politically difficult decision to delay the closure of German nuclear power plants in operation until the end of 2021 could free up another 120 TWh of gas

Germany used 945,3 Twh in 2020[3], of which 94,8% was imported[4] That’s 816,14 Twh.

In 2020 55,2% of the imported gas came from Russia [5], so 494,7 Twh. So, according to Bruegel, a respected European think tank, Germany could replace 24,3% of the Russian gas it imported in 2020, if it managed to re-open its power plants closed in 2021. (the ones put out of use years earlier are being demolished[6]

[1] https://www.springerprofessional.de/erdgas/produktion---prod... [2] https://www.bruegel.org/2022/01/can-europe-survive-painlessl... [3]https://www.weltenergierat.de/publikationen/energie-fuer-deu... [4] https://www.bveg.de/die-branche/erdgas-und-erdoel-in-deutsch...

[5] https://www.t-online.de/finanzen/unternehmen-verbraucher/id_...

[6] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_D...

edit: corrected an error

b) Because it's not politically tenable.

c) Because nuclear energy has long since been a minor part of electricity generation, and it wouldn't make much of a difference now.

d) Because it has nothing to do with imports of Russian gas and oil, which is overwhelmingly used for heating, fuel, and industrial purposes. Gas (not just from Russia) only makes up less than 10% of electricity generation. Oil is virtually not used at all for that.

e) Because it's by far the most expensive way of generating electricity, and would not be economically viable without massive subsidies. France's EDF is tens of billions in debt and would be bankrupt without the government backstopping them.

f) Because long-term storage of nuclear waste is still not properly solved.

g) Because mining nuclear materials is an ecological disaster. Also, guess who's a big exporter of uranium in Europe? Russia.

h) Because our long-term plan to switch to renewable sources of energy has been in full swing for over 20 years, and is coming along nicely with fossil fuels more and more getting phased out.

Bonus point: It's incredibly funny how the people who complain about us shutting down our nuclear power plants pretty much always come from countries that have a substantially lower share of renewable energy than we do (ours is at around 45% now) and often import more gas from Russia at least on a per-capita basis then we do, too.

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