Germany is moving beyond nuclear power, but at what cost?

> Germans chose to prioritize shuttering nuclear, and that’s the wrong choice.

Actually it was not. There was no choice.

The problem is that you neglect the context. There are a bunch of actual problems which made getting rid of nuclear faster than coal the only way.

1) there was no choice. No one asked what should we replace with renewable. The renewable energy movement developed out of the opposition to a full Atomstaat (a nuclear state) and the risk of nuclear accidents in a densely populated country/europe.

2) there was no way it could have been decided to replace coal first. Coal is the only large primary energy source in Germany. By far. Hard coal and lignite. The whole industrialization of Germany was based largely on coal. Thus whole regions were living from that. And some still are. There is much larger opposition to replace coal than nuclear because people earn(ed) their living from it and there was (and still is) a large political lobby for it. This lobby is not from the greens. it took decades to close hard-coal mines and it takes decades to close lignite mines. Basically when the workers retire. Not because renewable energy fans like that, but because the opposition from some political parties and the industry is strong. Remember when environmentalists were recently protesting against lignite mining in Germany? Political impact: not much. In the current federal government are conservatives and social-democrats - both with large coal lobby groups.

3) Technically fossil fuel plants are slightly more flexible than nuclear power plants and mix better with renewable energy.

4) since coal is the only large domestic primary energy source at that time (very little natural gas, very little oil, uranium mining was dirty and on the way out, not much hydro, very little renewable deployed, ...) it was seen helping with energy independence.

5) France went in into nuclear technology early because that was a side effect of the creation of nuclear technology for the military. Germany didn't have military nuclear infrastructure, was late to the nuclear build-up and does have no ambitions for its own production of nuclear weapons - though that was featured when conservative politicians and technology fans decided to build up nuclear technology. Thus nuclear power was also an easier target to break up the grip of the four big electricity companies on their monopolistic market (each exclusively owned distribution and production in a large area of Germany). If you look at France, they haven't build-up similar large amounts of non-hydro renewables.

So the claim that Germany did make the wrong choice is completely neglecting the actual history: there simply was no choice and we are lucky that we were able to start the replacement of at least one of the problematic technologies and that this gave us an idea of the path to further reduce coal. There are still areas where we have even less progress: traffic and heating.

Wind and solar, plus the already existing 6gw of pumped storage and increased curtailment gets you to 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent requires more storage.

Batteries can help to some extent for shifting day to day peaks.

Seasonal storage is more tricky. Germany has about 3 months worth of natgas stored in underground caverns. One approach would be to use this to store syntheticly produced gases from electrolysis.

Note so far everyone here is talking about electricity which only makes up a third of Germany's emissions.

Synthetic gases (non-fossil) will be required for high temperature heat, and chemical feedstocks for industry. For example some steel smelters in Germany are transitioning from coal to hydrogen.

Nuclear is a poor fit to an electrical grid which is mostly renewable for both economic and technical reasons. However it may be a good fit for running synthetic gas plants which can use both the heat and electricity and require 24/7 energy.

1.) of course there was a choice. That’s what all of this was, a concrete plan, none of this was organic. A choice was made to be nuclear-free, and not coal free. This is what set the stage for larger reductions of nuclear than coal as renewables grew. This was absolutely a choice.

2.) this absolutely may be what’s underpinning the preference. I’ve never really made a claim about why the choice was made, only pointed out it was the wrong choice from an environmental perspective. But let’s not pretend this was some nefarious lobbyists, the German people were behind prioritization of closing nuclear as well.

3.) Sure, although we both know this doesn’t justify the decision as it’s not a big enough issue to really matter.

4.) Right but we aren’t talking about plans to build new nuclear plants, we are talking about what that already exists gets decommissioned, coal or nuclear. So this is irrelevant.

5.) Again, not relevant to which of existing power generation capabilities you phase out.

You really seem unwilling to engage on the point being made here.

There was no choice. There was no question at that time what to phase out and there would have been no political majority to exit coal. The most important goal of the environmental movement (and which lead to the red/greens government and to the exit decision) was to exit nuclear and to find an alternative to that.

> You really seem unwilling to engage on the point being made here.

Same. You are trying to rewrite history.

2) + 4) + 5) are not irrelevant: these were jobs, industry, tradition, political influence, etc.

You seem to think that decisions on energy politics exists in a vacuum, independent of reality and historic context.

The political discussion to exit coal in Germany only started to get traction a few years after 2010.

It's like asking why the US didn't fly to the more interesting Mars instead of the Moon. There simply was no choice when that decision was made. Constructing a choice in hindsight is just rewriting history.

> how does nuclear energy help with climate change?

and the answer is: it doesn't. Simply because it does not scale to make anywhere near of the needed impact in the next 50 years. Nuclear production will struggle to keep it's current levels for the next two decades. Renewable does expand rapidly.

Draw the trend curves for energy consumption, deployment of production and you'll see that nuclear is a costly mistake. That's just basic mathematics.

"Atomkraft, Nein Danke" was the rational reaction to investing billions into the wrong energy landscape.