Germany's Energy Catastrophe

Could this be case of an extreme regulation, much like "everything is known to cause cancer in the state of California"?

Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine are much closer to Chernobyl than Bavaria is, and the populations there regularly pick and eat mushrooms without suffering a wave of extra cancers.

The funniest thing is - Germany was repeatedly warned by Eastern European states that this (literally this) will happen if they continue to build Nord Stream 1 and then Nord Stream 2 and try to "fix" Russia by trade. Russian government already poisoned Ukrainian presidential candidate in 2004. Killed opposition and journalists both in Russia and in EU. Invaded 2 countries (Chechnia and Georgia - I don't even count Lithuania cause it was technically USSR) and committed war crimes (especially in Chechnia). And Germany just ignored this cause cheap gas and "they will surely change if we just give them money".

Like how dumb can you be?

Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and probably others warned Germany and the rest of EU about this for decades.

Polish president in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia said "Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and then, perhaps, my country - Poland". It wasn't some genius foresight- this was mainstream opinion in Poland and many other EE states for over a decade already. We warned about Russia using the pipelines for blackmail and about their ambitions to recreate USSR against the will of the people in post-communist states.

By 2010 Russia already shut down gas for various EE states on several occasions to blackmail or punish them. Germany knew this and just ignored it. Probably cause it "couldn't happen to Germany and fuck EE".

In 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time and annexed Crimea. Also supported dictator Assad in murdering his own citizens and used hybrid warfare on EU by helping him push refuges to EU which created a huge political crisis.

Germany knew this and still sucked that gas like there's no tommorow and continued to build Nord Stream 2.

Last year Russian agents blew up a big ammo warehouse in Czech Republic. Germany still continued with Nord Stream, cause you know, who cares about Czech Republic (their ally in NATO and EU).

Oh, BTW - Germany also sold weapons to Russia and helped them train soldiers all through that time. They were supposed to stop after 2014 but they didn't.

All the warnings and pleas to stop doing business with Russia and especially to stop sending them weapons and increasing energy dependency were dismissed by Germany (and other EU states to a lesser degree) as "russophobic" because these countries were "understandeably traumatized" and "didn't understand modern global politics". Basically Germany treated us like dumb kids while commiting slow extended suicide.

It's mind-boggling how a big European state like Germany with big ambitions and supposedly independent media could be so ignorant for 3 decades with nobody in the country taking the warnings seriously.

We don’t have an energy problem. We have a gas problem.

I’m open for (re-)discussing nuclear energy here in Germany, but we could run 100% on nuclear or coal and a full gas stop by Russia would still have catastrophic consequences. We need gas for industrial/chemical processes and heating our homes. In fact, if the Energiewende had progressed a bit further, then more houses would have installed a heat pump by now.

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

Grid-scale storage (apart from hydro, but that's basically maxed out or unsuitable for most geographies) is still an unsolved problem for renewables, even the largest lithium-battery ones are basically a rounding error. You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables. Not even sure if there's enough lithium to make this work theoretically with current tech.

> On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated

Same is true for every other power source as well. Energy storage for renewables is never included, so you need backups, the €100 billion German defence package announced a few months ago is a direct consequence of "cheap" Russian gas, the millions of people suffering/dying from air pollution related issues from using coal.

There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.

It is in no way co2 neutral. Its strongest claim is that it emits less co2 than alternatives. This is based on a bunch of assumptions on how hard it is to get the raw material, that the radiated garbage is transported once (to storage that does not exist) etc. So it is bullshit, but it will always be claimed in these comment threads, right next to the lie of Chernobyl having killed basically no-one.

Nuclear steam boilers are slow to control as their base reaction takes time to cool up or down. Good for base load, not fast coverage of highs.