German Government Rejects Bavaria's Offer to Reopen Its Closed Nuclear Plant (reuters.com) 219
Germany consists of 16 states, the largest of which is Bavaria (covering about of fifth of Germany by area). Hours after Germany closed its last three nuclear power plants, Bavaria's premier offered to keep one of the three reactors running as a state-controlled power plant (rather than as a federally-controlled plant), according to a report in DW.
It reports that the premier told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Bavaria was "demanding that the federal government give states the responsibility for the continued operation of nuclear power. Until the [energy] crisis ends and while the transition to renewables has not succeeded, we must use every form of energy until the end of the decade. Bavaria is ready to face up to this responsibility." He also told the newspaper that Germany is "a pioneer in nuclear fusion research and are examining the construction of our own research reactor, in cooperation with other countries. It can't be that a country of engineers like Germany gives up any claim to shaping the future and international competitiveness."
Now Reuters reports that Germany's federal government just issued their answer. No. Germany's Environment Ministry on Sunday rejected a demand from the state of Bavaria to allow it to continue operating nuclear power plants, saying jurisdiction for such facilities lies with the federal government... Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said the authorisation for [the Bavaria-based nuclear plant] had expired and restarting its reactor would require a new license. "It is important to accept the state of the art in science and technology and to respect the decision of the German Bundestag," Lemke said in a statement sent to Reuters.
It reports that the premier told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Bavaria was "demanding that the federal government give states the responsibility for the continued operation of nuclear power. Until the [energy] crisis ends and while the transition to renewables has not succeeded, we must use every form of energy until the end of the decade. Bavaria is ready to face up to this responsibility." He also told the newspaper that Germany is "a pioneer in nuclear fusion research and are examining the construction of our own research reactor, in cooperation with other countries. It can't be that a country of engineers like Germany gives up any claim to shaping the future and international competitiveness."
Now Reuters reports that Germany's federal government just issued their answer. No. Germany's Environment Ministry on Sunday rejected a demand from the state of Bavaria to allow it to continue operating nuclear power plants, saying jurisdiction for such facilities lies with the federal government... Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said the authorisation for [the Bavaria-based nuclear plant] had expired and restarting its reactor would require a new license. "It is important to accept the state of the art in science and technology and to respect the decision of the German Bundestag," Lemke said in a statement sent to Reuters.
"It is important to accept the state of the art" (Score:4, Interesting)
Germany is using expensive fossil fuels to offset the closings of the atomic energy plants.
That's the state of the art. It may not be forever but that's the current state.
The Barvarian dude seems based but he's a pariah in their religion.
Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:5, Insightful)
Soeder knows this is not going to happen and cannot happen. The smart response would have been, "if you insist, then do it" and he would have had to backpedal. Instead he now gets some political posturing based on a lie out of it.
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This right there. It's the usual "I know this can't fly, but it's popular, so I'll say it, knowing I don't have to implement it".
Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear and fossil fuel has been in decline on the Germany electricity grid for years.
https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
Renewables have replaced them, and continue to expand. There was a bit of a slow-down because of the pandemic, but they are back into high growth again now.
You can see very clearly that fossil fuels have not replaced nuclear. You can also see that despite building new coal plants, use of coal has been in continual decline. The new plants replace older ones that have been closed, with more efficient, lower emission ones that are better able to adjust their output to match demand.
Germany stopped allowing new coal plants to be built in 2022 (ones already started can be completed). Currently there is money available for closing coal plants, but that ends in 2028, and all coal plants must be closed by 2038.
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Wait a minute... are you seriously calling Lebensraum a good plan that "went wrong"?
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You can have all of the rules you want, but that doesn't mean that the plan is a good idea.
And it doesn't mean it's a bad idea either. When you approach any idea from a singular perspective then you're bound to get a different answer than someone else. You're approaching it from a global warming perspective, that doesn't mean it's invalid to realise most of Germany's nuclear infrastructure was well beyond it's useful life date and a very real accident waiting to happen.
Things don't last for ever.
If you want a good plan, build a timemachine and get people to start building nuclear plants 20 years
Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:5, Insightful)
They could have chosen to keep those nuclear plants and close some of their lignite plants. Or some of their coal plants. Or use them and not plan to build more gas-plants, which they announced this year, and that they plan to feed with LNG transported from the US (which is absurd from a physics point of view, as you lose energy in the process of liquefying the gas, transporting it, and putting it back in gas form...).
I could say we should talk when Germany emits less CO2eq/kWh than France, but we both know this is not going to happen with their current energy mix. They will instead keep emitting more CO2, like they are doing for the past 50 years, and keep buying cheap energy from their neighbors when they have peaks and grid instability due to the intermittency of their power sources.
Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:4, Informative)
They can't just say they are keeping those nuclear plants going and it happens. They would need re-licencing, which means extensive testing to make sure they are safe. Big investment of money and time. They would also need a credible plan to deal with the additional waste, because German nuclear plants are legally required to keep it on site and their storage facility is full.
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You can't replace the reactor vessel. It's high level nuclear waste and so is the cooling loop. They just demolish the whole thing and build a new one next to it. Takes decades to clean up.
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Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear and fossil fuel has been in decline on the Germany electricity grid for years.
Yes, because they deliberately made the idiotic decision to phase out nuclear power. It's not like by magic or something.
You can see very clearly that fossil fuels have not replaced nuclear. You can also see that despite building new coal plants, use of coal has been in continual decline. The new plants replace older ones that have been closed, with more efficient, lower emission ones that are better able to adjust their output to match demand.
This is really dumb. Nuclear used to be around thirty percent of the German grid. It's now zero. Had this generation capacity remained, there would be zero coal plants in Germany now.
Germany stopped allowing new coal plants to be built in 2022 (ones already started can be completed). Currently there is money available for closing coal plants, but that ends in 2028, and all coal plants must be closed by 2038.
They're building new gas plants instead. Like TWENTY FIVE GIGAWATS worth of them: https://www.enerdata.net/publi... [enerdata.net]
This is just a political stunt by the German version of Texas but this doesn't make the initial Federal decision retroactively better.
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Have you actually read the linked text? Nobody is building anything yet and at the current gas prices nobody will in the near future.
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Have you read the article? Sure they're not building them YET but that's the plan for near future.
And it's also their best case for achieving carbon neutrality with the green hydrogen nonsense. If they don't get built, they'll just keep burning coal instead to supplement renewable.
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There is no plan. The government wants to auction off permits, probably hoping to find a sucker, nothing more.
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This is the sentence that is in the article: "The German government intends to put up for auction gas power plants in 2023 as part of a strategy to add between 17 GW and 25 GW of gas-fired power capacity as an alternative to coal by 2030." I read that as Germany is replacing coal with gas by 2030 however further down in the article: "The country aims to be carbon neutral by 2045". The plan seems to be intermediate replacement of coal with gas and long term replacement of both.
So why replace coal with gas ev
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It's really dumb to have greatly reduced the amount of fossil fuel they burn for electricity? Okay.
Had Germany decided to keep all its nuclear capacity, it would now have an additional problem. Old nuclear plants that can't load follow or meet demand. Operators trying to put the brakes on the switch to renewables because they don't mix well with nuclear. Money wasted on nuclear that could have been spent on renewables.
They have been closing old coal plants that have the same issues. People saying they shoul
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No, the dumb part is playing games with what replaced what when it's a single environment we're in. Sure, whatever, wind replaced nuclear. Instead of replacing more coal. The result is mostly the same, GWs of clean, low carbon energy are off the grid. The grid could look like Finland's right now, but instead it's one of the most carbon intensive ones in Europe, after Poland.
The upside I guess is that it's cheaper, perhaps, except maybe more expensive??? Sorry it's not clear if being paid to charge your car
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Yes, because they deliberately made the idiotic decision to phase out nuclear power. It's not like by magic or something.
No, they made the intelligent decision to close old decrepit plants. The idiotic decision was to not build new nuclear power 20-30 years ago which is what they (along with the entire world) should have been doing. It is not intelligent to keep ancient shit running long past its use by date.
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Germany has decided to fully de-industrialize.
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Re:"It is important to accept the state of the art (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Your graph conveniently ends right before the energy crisis.
2) It's not "whether" fossil fuels have been declining, but the rate of their decline, and there's zero question that the early phaseout of Germany's nuclear plants has slowed the rate of the fossil fuel decline. Germany prized phasing out nuclear over phasing out carbon. And in the process, increased its dependency on Russian gas.
Though I don't say this to pick on Germany - lots of EU countries are very vulnerable to energy-NIMBYism. A good example would be the Netherlands with Groningen's gas fields. "Hey, let's consume gas, but not deal with any of the consequences of producing it - even in an energy crisis, and even when the locals support it [northerntimes.nl]! It was totally a good decision to buy from an expansionist authoritarian with genocidal tendencies instead of producing it locally, because it increased the rate of minor earthquakes in one region, rather than using some tiny fraction of the value of the more-than-a-trillion euros of gas present for remediation and buyouts of anyone dissatisfied. Totally!"
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I did look for a graph covering 2022, but couldn't find one. If you have one, feel free to post it.
The energy crisis was about gas. Germany doesn't use that much gas for electricity. It affected the cost, it wasn't the case that there was simply no gas. Obviously it would have been lessened if more nuclear power had been available, but it's impossible to know what the cost of keeping those plants going would have been, or the longer term effect on Germany's transition to net zero.
If it slows the reduction i
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Instead, they are emitting 8 to 10 times more CO2eq than France per kWh. Since 50 years.
If they hadn't done it then they probably wouldn't be where they are today,
That's the point. They could have gone nuclear (which they had knowledge of) AND renewables, and emit 20-30g CO2eq/kWh. They chose not to, and instead decided to burn more fossil fuels than they could have.
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Right, so even when they had those nuclear power plants running, they were not very green.
And since deciding to shut them down, their emissions have dropped considerably.
They could have gone with more nuclear, but it's incredibly expensive so they wouldn't have been able to install so much renewable energy, and it takes decades to build so they would still be emitting loads of CO2 while construction is on-going.
Also they still haven't got anywhere to dump the waste, and that problem would be rapidly getting
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Right, so even when they had those nuclear power plants running, they were not very green.
Clearly the GP showed exactly the opposite. You can't deny all you want, but France vs Germany proves that nuclear is better and the only real solution we have to AGW. You have truly an amazing ability to remain in denial. Your argument is that we were doing X and it did some good. And 2X is clearly working in France. So lets just cancel X altogether. You make Q-anon look rational.
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It seems like you would want to continue to keep nuclear online as long as it was safe to do so until coal is 0. It may not be that coal replaced nuclear, but taking nuclear offline slows the decline in coal.
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Re: "It is important to accept the state of the ar (Score:2)
Not just German culture. One finds this pathology to varying degrees in all human cultures. Eastern face-saving is a form of it in that the senior man in the room must be right by virtue of seniority. In the US it exists too: Job title equals correctness of opinion. You could be spouting raging nonsense but if you've got a faculty appointment in the right kind of place, or the letters CxO in your job title, it gets repeated uncritically and sometimes influences policy.
Conflation (Score:2)
He also told the newspaper that Germany is "a pioneer in nuclear fusion research and are examining the construction of our own research reactor, in cooperation with other countries. It can't be that a country of engineers like Germany gives up any claim to shaping the future and international competitiveness."
What does this fission plant have to do with fusion research? Either this article puts together quotes that don't go together, or this was some really shifty and stupid fallacious conflation, stupid because of the transparency. The one and only thing that fission plants have to do with fusion plants is that it takes a shitload of energy to operate a fusion research reactor.
Bavaria is ready to face up to this responsibility.
That's not how anything works. You can't put the genie back. Bavaria's not domed.
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Bavaria is also refusing any permanent nuclear waste storage on their territory, which makes the lie obvious. If they were to run that reactor under their own accountability, they would need to do their own waste storage as well. But that is not going to happen, as that nuke cannot actually be brought up again for all practical purposes and he knows that.
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Not only would that be impossible to do on a scale that satisfied the demands, but it was supposed to happen out of state. So his idea was to pressure Lower Saxony to do the dirty work for Bavaria, so Bavaria wouldn't have to make changes on their own. Yeah, and people supporting Soeder's position complain about NIMBYs.
I don't know if Soeder knows or doesn't know. There certainly would have to be some qualified peo
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It has nothing to do with it. But the average voter doesn't know that and it sounds like the federal government, to which the Bavarian state government is in opposition, is stifling research in promising technologies.
It's political bullshittery, nothing else.
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Indeed. In true conservative fashion, Soeder does not care how much damage he does as long as something makes him look good.
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Well, to be fair, he really needs anything he can get to look good.
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What does this fission plant have to do with fusion research?
I'm not a nuclear scientist, and I think I'm right in guessing that neither are you. Given that, neither of us can really answer that question.
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Actually, this one just requires some knowledge of both technologies. They are massively different and there is no signifcant overlap on the nuclear side. Being a nuclear scientist is not required to know that. It helps if you are an engineer or an engineering scientist though (I am).
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That doesn't suggest we should take the word of a politician at face value as more authoritative.
Even if it were a nuclear expert, it would still be reasonable to ask that question to get an explanation when the expert was unclear about the connection.
When reading about fusion experiments, you don't see any role for current fission facilities to play in those experiments. It is totally reasonable to push for an explanation, since none are in common literature.
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The general impression I get is that the use of fission in a fusion bomb does not relate to fusion in energy. None of the proposed fusion plant designs I have heard of expect to use a fission reaction. I have not heard of any fusion research relying upon work being done in fission power plants (even if there were relevance, I'd imagine the production fission power plants would not be where the research would take place).
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It's just some nonsensical populism and you're using an argument from ignorance which mostly only shows that you are clueless.
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What does this fission plant have to do with fusion research? Either this article puts together quotes that don't go together, or this was some really shifty and stupid fallacious conflation, stupid because of the transparency. The one and only thing that fission plants have to do with fusion plants is that it takes a shitload of energy to operate a fusion research reactor.
Maybe in Germany both types of plants would be the jurisdiction of the Federal government? Fusion is one of the hot-topic research areas in energy research recently, although research in the sector has been going on for a long time. Not sure if a research reactor would be, maybe that's why he's saying ... well if we can't have this then we'll build one of these somewhat similar cutting edge things.
It may also be his way of emphasizing that he thinks the current government trajectory is anti-science and by
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The university where I work at has it's own research program [kit.edu] with research reactors and we will be keeping them for future research.
But of course for Soeder's constituents and like-minded individuals that transparent falsehood would still count as a killer argument, because they do not bother to look it up.
Stupid Hippies (Score:3)
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They haven't? When were the 60's again? Do you even math?
Politics Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Closing existing, well-functioning nuclear plants, just to fall back onto coal & gas, seems like poor decision making.
What's the likelihood this decision is driven purely by politics instead of logic?
(probably quite likely)
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Re:Politics Progress (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't well functioning. Isar II, the reactor in question, was shut down last year due to leaks, and is at the end of its design lifespan. This is the phase where the reactor needs much more maintenance and testing to ensure it is safe and keep it running.
Isar II also has a nuclear waste problem. The spent fuel storage is already over design capacity, with over 100 tonnes of waste stored there.
A new licence can't simply be issued, it requires extensive testing and likely some significant remedial work.
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Unlike my living room it's not radioactive though.
Also I think you either overestimate the size of my living room, or underestimate the size of spent fuel casks.
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If these had been "well functioning" sure. They were not.
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That would be poor decision making. But they didn't close well functioning plants. They closed plants that were for the most part many years past their design life and already several extensions from their original permitted operating period. What Germany should have done is start building new nuclear plants 30 years ago, but it's not a bad decision to close old decrepit pieces of shit, it's an inevitable decision.
Note how there are special restrictions applied to classic cars on the road which don't meet c
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there is no such thing as "design life" for equipment like nuclear power plants. they are subject to regular (10 years in most countries) "visits" that include checking every single part of the place for issues, and fixing those issues by replacing parts if necessary.
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There is a design life for any pressurised vessel. Moreso for one that gets bombarded by neutrons daily.
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Yes there is. The visits are nothing more than inspection, and a significant portion of a nuclear reactor is neither properly inspectable nor repairable. Reactors absolutely have a design life, and while it is perfectly reasonable for a well functioning well maintained plant to be extended once with some improvement projects (something which I have first hand experience in), it isn't reasonable to run them as long as they have been.
I've been to the plant which was just shut down. I've walked through the rea
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The likelyhood is one hundred percent.
Anti-nuclear is the defining and uniting element of the Greens (the movement, with a captial G) DNA in Germany. It's a force of its own by now, completely detached from any practical considerations. They couldn't stop it if they wanted to, and I do believe some elements within the 'realist' wing of the party actually wish they could suggest that without commiting political suicide. (yeah, that party, which is in government at the moment, actually has a 'realist' wing.
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The likelyhood is one hundred percent.
Anti-nuclear is the defining and uniting element of the Greens (the movement, with a captial G).
Points for recognizing this: "...but(t)..."
It's driven by fear (Score:2)
Are you going to pay to relocate a city's worth of people, give them new homes, jobs, schools and replace everything they had to leave behind? Fukushima was evacuated for 10 years. You can't just leave a city for 1
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rsilvergun is actually correct here.
The key difference between a neuclear disaster and pollution from other types of plants are two
1) unplanned nature
2) local intensity
The coal plant spits out pollution that yes causes cancers and lung disease etc, but society absorbs those costs over a long period of time.
A neuclear accident could potentially kill a lot of people all at once or even if it does not kill anyone at all impose massive costs all at once, and create a future wave of accident related health care
They cannot do it anyways (Score:5, Informative)
This nuke is shut down permanently. Bringing it up again is next to impossible. But the whole thing is a blatant lie anyways: The Bavarians refuse to participate in the search for a permanent nuclear waste storage facility, with the lie that they claim to not have anything suitable. With this proposal they would have to store the waste on their territory and that is not going to fly. The whole thing is a politics by people without honor or integrity.
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Some added detail. In Germany nuclear plants must have waste storage on-site by law. That reactor currently has over 105 tonnes of waste on site, and more to come with decommissioning. To get the licence renewed it would need to have a plan to store the extra waste.
The law in Germany requires the government to find a permanent storage site for nuclear waste by 2030. It specifically says that all of Germany must be considered, no exceptions. A few options have been identified but no decision has been made ye
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Why, bringing nuclear back online is part of standard operations after refuelling.
Nuclear stations can be restarted and most of the technologies refreshed either after a shutdown or midlife. It's not impossible and certainly it's orders of magnitude easier than either building a new nuclear plant or Solar or Wind generation capacity. It's also easier and cheaper than building new grid to connect far flung sources of power.
It's also a lot easier than storing the energy generated by Wind and solar.
The only r
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If you plan to do it. This plant was scheduled for decommissioning now for quite a while. It cannot be brought up again except with extreme effort.
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The whole thing is a politics by people without honor or integrity.
You are describing the shutting down of still functioning nuclear plants by Germany. All replaced by more coal/lignite/gas (they could have chosen to keep those nuclear plants and close some of their lignite plants) than necessary being burned.
The green party is responsible for so many deaths related to air pollution and CO2 emissions. You can even see it in the party statuses: they are "anti-nuke" (a rethoric term used to mix up the military and civil aspects of nuclear, whereas normal people call it nucle
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You seem to be uninformed as to the state of these plants. They were not "well functioning" by any means. In fact, they would have to be shut down for years for repairs anyways. Repairs that the owners did not want to pay for. Even the extended runtime (a few months) was against the wishes of the owners.
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And your sources are?
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Public statements made by the owners. German media referenced them.
Ideaology over science (Score:5, Informative)
Solar and wind might be able able to fill the gap left by fossil fuels but its a big might. The return on energy investment is marginal if you incorporate energy storage and the storage technologies are turning into difficult nuts to crack. Nuclear on the other hand is a drop in replacement with an enormous energy return on investment.
This is reflected in the price of electricity in France and Germany and the CO2 emissions from the French and German economies.
Even if you believe that Solar, Wind and storage tech X can solve the problems in the longer term, any sane person would keep as many nuclear facilities running as possible until these technologies become mainstream.
Instead Germany is turning to fossil fuels.
The people of the pacific whose islands are going underwater thank you.
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Even if you believe that Solar, Wind and storage tech X can solve the problems in the longer term, any sane person would keep as many nuclear facilities running as possible until these technologies become mainstream.
And there's the problem. We don't have sane people making these decisions. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. We are cutting off our nose to spite our face. What is happening world-wide in regards to energy generation and it's policy is madness. The cart is being put before the horse. It will be disastrous and the policy makers will have blood on their hands.
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Actually exactly the other way round. You just omit some details, for example that electricity is heavily subsidized in France, but not in Germany. Electricity is actually a lot more expensive in France, you just pay the majority of that via taxes. And hence your statement is simply a lie.
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Why don't you show some actual proof for once, instead of accusing everyone else of being a liar, which seems to be your favorite hobby.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com]
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Pay walled. Seems to be about France re-nationalizing EDF, which, great. Should've never been privatized in the first place.
How exactly does this translate to to higher consumer prices?
How does that accout for other governments subsidizing the energy sector
How does that account for the externalities related to burning shitloads of coal and gas instead?
It's kinda the s opposite of what you said (Score:2)
EDF has not been allowed to increase prices (gas went up 6-fold in Europe). The generation costs the same so, they're not being subsidised so much as not creating massive profits.
In Germany, UK and every other wealthy country in Europe, electricity _is_ being subsidised. Many businesses would collapse if their energy bills went up 6-fold.
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This is reflected in the price of electricity in France and Germany
No it's not. The price of electricity in France and Germany is the same. The price of electricity of a wind turbine and a nuclear plant is also the same. EU's common power policy has pegged the base cost of electricity to a common price for a common means of production (the cost of power generated by burning gas). The differences in electricity cost in France and Germany are entirely due to government taxation and subsidies. Sure my colleague across the border pays 15c more on his bill per kWh than I do, bu
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Looks to me like electricity prices in Germany are almost double those in France. If the difference is hidden in taxes they are doing an excellent job, since their tax rates look similar.
https://www.euronews.com/next/... [euronews.com]
I'm in Canada, and pay $0.09 CDN per kw/h. Whatever Germany is doing, I'm sure as fuck glad I don't live there. This article is a prime example why.
Context for Americans (Score:5, Informative)
Bavaria is a bit like Texas. They like to be different and the rest of Germany considers them to be their own unique flavour of crazy. This also extends politically. The ruling party in Bavaria is the CSU (conservative Christians Social Union) who are strictly regional and only operate in Bavaria. They have a long history of thinking they are special and should be different and that what the country decides doesn't apply to them.
For all the shit much of the western world heaps on America's political infighting, Germany is very similar with a whole lot of independent states doing their own thing in many cases. During COVID that was especially comical where people ended up resorting to an app called "Darf Ich Das?" (Am I allowed to do this?) where you would select the specific city / region you were going to so you can find out the current COVID rules for the current region which may very much differ from a place only a short drive away.
Unfortunately for Bavaria, that part of energy policy is not up to the states, but rather the federal government.
In Germany, giving control over nuclear power to a (Score:2)
The German constitution demands that the control over nuclear power has to be centralized in the German national government, not passed to any of its states, and there are valid reasons for that. Any state head demanding control over the plants on their soil ignores those reasons, but also the constitution. They could, of course, try to change the constitution. Which would, of course, require a two-thirds majority, also for good reasons.
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Siding with Bavaria on a constitutional change would be like siding with Texas on one, they won't get 2/3rds support. They probably won't even get 2/16th support ;-)
Nuclear being replaced by coal and imports (Score:2)
Report by Haas School of Business in 2020, source can be found in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany
A 2020 study by the Haas School of Business found that the lost nuclear electricity production has been replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately twelve billion US dollars per year, mostly from the eleven hundred additional deaths associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.
I guess Germany finally managed to put a price on human life. They are also killing people in neighboring countries with their choices. This seems to be an habit now.
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I guess Germany finally managed to put a price on human life.
Every hazardous facility and every country which operates hazardous facilities have placed prices on human life. The only difference is you keep the safety and commercial risks on two different tables in slightly incompatible formats so that people pretend you can't compare them.
Pollution from make up sources will kill thousands (Score:2)
Just a political stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
The head of the Bavarian government, who demanded this, was in 2011 the Bavarian minister for ecology and health. In May 2011 after the Fukushima incident he publicly swore to resign if the bill for closing down all German nuclear plants didn't pass. His party was part of the coalition ruling Germany when the end of nuclear power in Germany was codified into law.
Putin powered (Score:2)
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Nope. He is a shameless liar, because he knows that will not and cannot happen. Hence his words are extremely cheap.
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Nope. Get some actual information. The one being stupid is you. I do not think you mean to be evil, even if what you do is.
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Nuclear energy has saved millions of lives [scientificamerican.com]
Turns out I'm good. If you support nuclear energy you support saving lives.
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From what I've read, these *specific* facilities are in bad shape. The discussion is not about fission energy in general, it is *specifically* talking about one facility.
So yeah, nuclear can be awesome and everything, that doesn't mean *this* fission plant is awesome.
Sounds like posturing (the plant can't reasonably open and everyone knows it), inconsistent (they refuse to allow any more fissile waste to be stored, so they don't even have a theoretical answer for that), and ill-advised (the facility in que
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I fully agree that one should reduce coal use and I also think the nuclear plants should run until their end of life. But if this is "evil", what about this: The US, which has 4x the population of Germany, produced 2555 TWh from fossil fuels (828 TWh from coal) in 2022, while Germany produced 265 TWh from fossil fuels (181 TWh from coal). You do the math.
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Sorry. What you have here is a populist who found a way to pretend he gives a fuck, knowing he won't have to pull through with his promises. It's the same shit as the left parties always lamenting that universal income must be implemented NOW... unless they're in power.
Same shit, different party.
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I always find it amusing when any political party that has been clamoring hard for something suddenly finds themselves *technically* in a position to make it happen, and then suddenly they have to figure out how not to do it, ideally while somehow blaming the politicians no longer in power. Like a dog catching the car...
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it is the Greens have consistently argued in favour of ending purchases of Russian gas
To be fair the Greens are not acting logically. They are like the Greens in many countries, making a lot of noise about being against every policy and then claiming the high ground when they happened to occasionally be right.
It's important to have a Green party. It's important for them to have a couple of seats as well. But in every country where such a party operates, they do so completely delusionally and would be absolutely screwed if they ever find themselves in power and have to generate an "serious" p
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Basically, every simplified political ideology boils down to being delusional one way or another, at least outwardly to a voting public that does not wish to deal in nuance.
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you should also point out Greenpeace has long been hooked to Gazprom's money, that was piloting their anti-nuclear stance.
"It is important to accept the state of the art in science and technology and to respect the decision of the German Bundestag,"
surely means "running coal plants to replace nuclear has to be the stupidest idea ever"