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Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

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Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#51

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Exiting nuclear power early was wrong. Wasting trillions on handouts from taxpayer money on new built nuclear power today is wrong. Just look at the French:

Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.

The subsidies for the EPR2 are absolutely insane. 11 cents/kWh fixed price and interest free loans. The earliest possible completion date for the first reactor is 2038.

France is wholly unable to build any new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 and the EPR2 program.

As soon a new built nuclear costs and timelines face the real world it just does not square with reality.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#52

Post by tlb »

Torwald wrote: post #17
4gotunameagain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is on Russian meddling, to make Germany dependent or Russian gas. Which happened. Until the US blew up the pipeline, and now Germany is dependent on US gas.

You mean the Green party was undermined by Russians? The Green party had the goal of de-nuclearization from the beginning, at that time the Soviet Union was still in existence. When the Green party came to power and negotiated the nuclear exit, they did not need any external motivation to do so. The only way I can see this being Russian meddling would be the Green party being infiltrated from Russia from the beginnin…

The opposite. The (unsubstantiated and probably false) claim is that the Green party was helped or funded by Russian energy companies, who benefited by Germany shutting down its nuclear plants.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#53

Post by codingbot3000 »

panick21_ wrote: post #46
a3w wrote: post #18

Here we go again. No, even fusion won't rescue the climate. Fission certainly could have helped in the transition.

Fission could and is a sustainable way to have green energy forever. No need to transition at all. Fusion is unlikely to be cheaper anytime soon, even if somebody could build a plant that makes positive energy.

Hey, just wait 25 years, and fusion will be cheaper than anything ;)

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#54

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

grunder_advice wrote: post #12
CjHuber wrote: post #7

Was that not clear from the beginning? Nobody ever claimed it was for strategic purposes, the narrative was "we don't like nuclear anything, we will get rid of it we can bear the costs". So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.

It was a populist move because a big chunk of the electorate is German moms and German grandmas who are absolutely terrified of radiation post Chernobyl.

Given that wild game in the most affected areas still have to be tested soon half a century after the accident I wouldn't dismiss the fear as unfounded.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#55

Post by grunder_advice »

account42 wrote: post #39
grunder_advice wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a populist move because a big chunk of the electorate is German moms and German grandmas who are absolutely terrified of radiation post Chernobyl.

But that fear is also largely manufactured by the government through publicly funded television/radio.

The fear was widespread across the whole European continent at the time. I don't think you can put the blame on any one person. I think it's entirely natural to be afraid of an invisible undetactable danger that will give you cancer. Many other such fears, due to other environmental pollutions are present today, however justified or not they might be.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#56

Post by codingbot3000 »

Mythli wrote: post #25

I'm from Germany and wanted to be a nuclear engineer. My mom to this days has a sticker on her car "Nuclear, no thank you". And she is an educated woman, a professional chemist. It was what bought political victory at the time for the CDU, thats why it was done.

Maybe you are lucky you did not become a nuclear engineer. I've heard from a woman whose late father was one that he and his colleagues all died from cancer. They did not get to enjoy their retirement much.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#57

Post by Zufriedenheit »

The german energy policy has really been an economic failure on an epic scale. They destroyed 30+ fully functional nuclear power plants because of fear of radiation. In the last 20 year spend >500billion € to remodel the energy grid. Now subsidizing electricity with ~30billion € per year. And the result: Carbon intensity of energy production on the same level as US and 3x the electricity price!

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#58

Post by jorvi »

mosura wrote: post #29
4gotunameagain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is on Russian meddling, to make Germany dependent or Russian gas. Which happened. Until the US blew up the pipeline, and now Germany is dependent on US gas.

People have completely memory holed how bizarrely pro everything Russia the EU was from 2000-2015.

Seems you have memory holed how pro Russia the US was too. You guys had joint military exercises. Why single out the EU as being bad?

What you seem to also have memory holed was that up until Crimea, the prevailing idea for Russia was that the more we trade with them, the more wealthy and informed the populace becomes and the more entwined the economy becomes globally and thus losing that access would become too painful to them. The exact same playbook was used for China up till 2016.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#59

Post by CjHuber »

znpy wrote: post #32
CjHuber wrote: post #7

Was that not clear from the beginning? Nobody ever claimed it was for strategic purposes, the narrative was "we don't like nuclear anything, we will get rid of it we can bear the costs". So I don't think you could even call it a strategic mistake, but masochism maybe? Especially while keeping the exit date in the height of the fallout of a real strategic mistake, the dependence on cheap russian gas.

I’d call it stupidity rather than masochism. It wasn’t that hard to see that energy needs were only going to increase rather than diminish. And not because of ai datacenters, but (to make a simple example) for example because of the already ongoing at the time push for the electrification of the automotive industry. It’s also crazy that the initiative was supposed at all by environmentalists. Anyway, props to Mertz f…

Anyway, props to Mertz for admitting the mistake, we’ll see if they will fix it somehow

That‘s the thing. Everyone knew it was costly, nobody ever thought it was good strategically. If he now says it’s a „strategic mistake“ that‘s laughable, did he think it was strategically clever before? If so he was the only one.

The whole issue is that Germany overestimated its own resilience and economic power, which is deteriorating. Of course environmentalists knew that this is not good for the economy but the Green Party is mostly left aligned they were ok with incurring some damage to the economy for their cause, after all that’s their whole point. But they thought well we are such a economic powerhouse anyway, we can do it. So the real strategic mistake was arrogance. And saying that particular action was a „strategic mistake“ instead reflecting on the whole self-image of the country, shows that exactly this arrogance persists

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#60

Post by sfifs »

V__ wrote: post #24

Merz will say anything if it somehow benefits him and doesn't concern himself with facts. > German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, admitted recently that Germany’s departure from nuclear energy was a serious strategic mistake, saying the policy has made the country’s energy transition “the most expensive in the entire world.” Even if that were the case, nuclear had no impact on the cost of the transition. > eliminating nu…

This take misses the real un-stated strategic mistake which is what I'm pretty sure Merz actually means but can't say aloud.

Shutting down nuclear reactors means you lose a source of plutonium that can be diverted to weapons manufacturing. You also lose nuclear engineers and workers with skills and knowledge to fabricate with fissile materials which you need to manufacture those weapons.

Similarly, the reason so many countries have a civilian rocket launching program in spite of having no chance in hell in beating SpaceX economically is to have scientists and engineers who can build missiles if needed.

These are just insurance policies. Both Japan and Korea have them for instance. As recent events have shown, countries without nuclear weapons are essentially defenceless against and dependent on those with them.

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