Nuclear energy is very expensive and does not necessarily provide energy security. You just have to check on the energy usage in France during the summer, when the nuclear power plants had to be shut down repeatedly now. Pushing nuclear power would neither provide reliable nor cheap energy. The route forward is solar, hydro, wind and batteries.
Yet it used to be very cheap. In some places it still is cheap whilst being much safer than in the past.
Meanwhile the requirements for it and the processes it has to abide by are kafkaesque.
Not in a double down on security way.
Just plain nonsensical.
I have heard so many stories from outside and people workin in it.
Things like considering refabricating the same lightbulb from some now non existant company from the 80's because that one got listed and is certified and the process to go trough to allow a new one is too cumbersome and the light went out in the toilets of some irrelevant sidebuilding.
So you get a lightbulb that costs an insane amount.
Or here in belgium the greens pushed some new tests to detect microfisures deep in a ridiculously thick vat that isn't security critical that would have been there since fabrication and which nobody else in the world checks for and they shut down the place for it when found.
Anything to validate their own theory that nuclear is too expensive whilst planning for new gas plants.
Meanwhile the plant in france that was shut down is because they didn't want to have an ecological impact on a nearby nature reserve. Something that indeed wasn't accounted for decades ago.
At the same time one manages to have such plants running in Saudi Arabia?
Additionally Germany has spend untold amounts more on it's renewables.
It still hasn't linked it's own damn grids, put strain on infrastructure and prices abroad...
and those same investments won't go for nearly as long. A good part of that green wave investment already needs replacing.
All whilst necessitating fossil fuel production because that capacity figure that people hold up means jack shit when it's not what they actually produce in summer and those panels in berlin produce not even a fraction of that capacity in winter.
It was never cheap. Nuclear energy got a lot of subventions which limited the prices as seen by end users, but not cheap in general. You can read a writeup of the parliamentary scientific service about that at https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/877586/4e4dce913c3d88...
A striking example is the German state having to pay for storing the nuclear waste (temporary and final, see https://www.bafa.de/DE/Wirtschaft/Handwerk_Industrie/Rueckba..., though Germany has no final storage). Also when tearing down the old plants it can happen that the state is paying for that, as in https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/atomkraft-n.... Those costs were not part of the calculated energy costs, and in the past there were further subventions for the companies that lowered the price. Those are also listed at my first link.
>Nuclear energy got a lot of subventions which limited the prices as seen by end users
You think that isn't happening even more now?
And yes it was a lot cheaper than it is now. One reason being that a lot more were built around that time in europe and our reactors actually went up in about 5 years.
Nuclear, while not cheap, is clean. Coal and Gas account for 40% of Germany's energy production. All this endless talk about nuclear and whatnot, but other EU country's have been net neutral for CO2 emissions for a while now. A goal that Germany will never reach.
True, nuclear is clean, but only if the final storage question is ignored. (I would have used nuclear reactors for longer, at least so that those that were already built could work until they reach their planned end of life. But until the storage question isn't solved properly, one perhaps should not advocate for new nuclear reactors.)
The problem is nobody wants nuclear waste near their front door, even limited politicians were quick to realize that.
Nuclear is not clean. It causes toxic nuclear waste that will still be radioactive when our civilization ends, radiating the humans of the future. CO2 emissions are also still caused by it, and would grow when mining for nuclear material got harder by continued usage.
> other EU country's have been net neutral for CO2 emissions for a while now.
No EU country has achieved that, to my knowledge. It would be very surprising giving the EU energy mix and the petrol based traffic sector. Sources please.
> Coal and Gas account for 40% of Germany's energy production
Which means 60% is renewable, and that part is actually growing.
The low figure of CO2 usage often cited is based on an estimation you can read at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290.... I don't remember it giving a clear estimate on how much it rises, but that is understandable, as already the current estimate is not a reliable figure.
But it's the wrong comparison. Nuclear energy is not to be replaced with fossil energy, but with renewables. So that "advantage" is completely irrelevant.
The EU court agrees with me. I trust it to have more knowledge than either of us. Nuclear is low-carbon. End of story. You can deal with toxic waste easily. [1]
> adiating the humans of the future.
Gas and coal produce more radiation than nuclear energy.
> CO2 emissions are also still caused by it, and would grow when mining for nuclear material got harder by continued usage.
But they would not grow comparable to burning actual stuff. Not even close. You are being disingenious.
> No EU country has achieved that, to my knowledge. It would be very surprising giving the EU energy mix and the petrol based traffic sector. Sources please.
Sorry, mistake on my part, I meant low carbon electricity (so not burning literal poison, like Germany). Let's take France, the very country you critiqued [2]. Or Norway. Or Switzerland [3]. Now, compare it with Germany [4]. Note that every country that achieves a high score can either rely on geothermal energy or hydro, neither of which is reliably useable in Germany. So for anyone who can't make use of these technologies, nuclear is the only option.
> Which means 60% is renewable, and that part is actually growing.
There is a hard limit here for Germany. We are not a prime candidate for neither wind nor thermal energy, so our renewable mix actually decreased this year, back to 55%. [5] We need a flexible backup option for situations like this. The only option is either continuing to burn dirty fuel, go back to nuclear energy or to make ourselves eternally dependent to buy electricity from other EU states (which is the current plan).
Nuclear energy is decidedly not a flexible backup option for anything. Those plants are slow to regulate, have never been and will never be a backup. The solution is energy storage and producing so much more at the peak that at the low end is enough. Also, there is no problem importing from countries that do have more geothermal or hydro energy.
> But they would not grow comparable to burning actual stuff. Not even close. You are being disingenious
The comparison is invalid in the first place. It's not about nuclear vs fossil, I never did argue for fossil energy. So the comparison you opened up is bs anyway. It's a propaganda talk point of nuclear proponents that tries to mislead from the actual comparison to make, which is renewables vs the other options.
The decision of the EU court was unfortunate, stupid, and that appeal to authority does not function.
Nuclear is cheap if you still have the expertise to make plants cheaply. Countries like Korea, India and China are rapidly expanding nuclear power plants, building them in the range of $2-5 billion dollars, while a smaller-sized plant in the West would set the books back by at least $5 billion. Korea is even winning bids internationally to build powerplants - first they won the bid to build the UAE's first powerplant, and more recently they won the bid to build another large powerplant in Czechia.
