IAEA chief says German return to nuclear power is 'logical'
IAEA chief says German return to nuclear power is 'logical'
Rafael Grossi said he was "not surprised" there was renewed debate in Germany about bringing nuclear power stations back online. Germany is the only country to have a complete phase out of its nuclear plants.
Summary
Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, called Germany's decision to fully phase out nuclear power "illogical," noting it is the only country to have done so.
Despite the completed phase-out in 2023, there is renewed debate in Germany about reviving nuclear energy due to its low greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaking at COP29, Grossi described reconsidering nuclear as a "rational" choice, especially given global interest in nuclear for emissions reduction.
Germany’s phase-out, driven by environmental concerns and past nuclear disasters, has been criticized for increasing reliance on Russian gas and missing carbon reduction opportunities.
Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out it was a good thing, when the Greens phased out the last 3, it became a bad thing.
That's literally all this discussion is about. Anyone who's actually taken a look at the data knows that phasing it out was the right move and that there's no point in bringing it back. There's a reason the share of nuclear keeps going down in the EU. Germany is also not the only country that doesn't use nuclear anymore.
Here are the sources for anyone interested:
It was a stupid idea no matter who conceived of or implemented it. Nuclear is the only viable clean baseload power generation option we have. Solar and wind can't do it, coal and oil are filthy, battery storage is nowhere near where it needs to be yet.
Basically, when the right-wing CDU started the phase-out
LMAO. Completely false:
In 2000, the First Schröder cabinet, consisting of the SPD and Alliance '90/The Greens, officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear energy. The power plants in Stade and in Obrigheim were turned off on 14 November 2003, and 11 May 2005, respectively. The plants' dismantling was scheduled to begin in 2007.
Fukushima forced the hand of the CDU afterwards.
It was a dumb idea in 2000, a dumber idea in 2011, and amongst the dumbest ideas during the war. Unfortunately, the anti-nuclear people shot us all in the foot with their "what about our children in 1000 years" crap. So concentrated on the far far future were they, that they ignored what impact it would have on the near and medium term. Sure, the children in 1000 years might not run into nuclear waste, but they'll be living in a climate change wasteland. Good job!
The phase-out practically already started in the early 90s, latest when it became abundantly clear that building more reactors was not politically feasible.
The reason is distrust in anything being handled properly. See Asse (they just discovered irradiated water that they don't have any idea how it came to be because it's actually above the deposit), see plants running without functioning backup generators for decades, the list is endless.
I deeply wish that people would understand that this horse is deader than dead. There is no Frankensteinian experiment and no virus that will bring it back to even a zombie-like half-life. So would you, please, please, just stop beating the poor thing.
It doesn't matter anymore how it died, it's really time to get a new horse.
- Where we should keep the waste, since we have not yet found a place for the decades' worth of nuclear waste we already have.
Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!
How should we get nuclear plants running in any time frame relevant to our current problems?
If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we'd have them by now.
Pumping all of our waste into the atmosphere is a much better solution!
I never said that. But there are ways we have to do neither. Why not concentrate on those, especially since they are magnitudes cheaper.
If we had started building them the first time that question was asked we'd have them by now.
That might be true, but how is that helping us right now? That's why I said it doesn't matter how the horse died. It's dead now. There are many faster solutions, why take the one that takes longest?
Never understood what kind of an idiot you have to be to choose coal over nuclear. Absolutely bonkers.
Germany wanted to replace nuclear with renewables. This "replace with coal" bs is straight up misinformation.
Such an attitude afflicts Australia too. We could have close to unlimited free energy, but instead choose to build more Coal since 'Nuclear Bad' and 'Nuclear too much money' (despite the same people decrying the idea of 'too much money' being applied to anything else)
Hmmmm, I don’t think nuclear makes much sense in Australia when we have an abundance of renewable resources available to us. Nuclear energy has never been known to be cheap and rapidly deployable. If we were going to go down the road of nuclear power we will have to start from the ground up given our utter lack of nuclear energy industry. This would take so much time and money. Why do that when we have sun baked deserts, are girt by sea and have every key mineral under the sun.
According to a 2024 article in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy, Germany could have saved hundreds of billions of euros and reduced its carbon emissions by as much as 70% by embracing nuclear energy rather than rejecting it.
Good job German Greens! Well done! 👏👏👏
They are like the right wingers: ideology over facts. I bet if the conservatives win in the next election, fuck some other parts of the country but manage to introduce nuclear again, the next green government will go about undoing nuclear, regardless of its benefits.
Ok you'll have to explain how exactly that's the German greens fault. They were not in power when the decision fell to stop relying on nuclear power. Even if they really wanted to there are no plants that are operational right now. We'd need to renovate old ones for a lot of money or build new ones for even more money.
Additionally the specialized workforce needed to operate these plants isn't available. We stopped training new people for obvious reasons and it's not like we currently have a lot of skilled people in unemployment that could be recruited on short notice.
And again, nothing of that has been implemented by the greens. This is the result of conservatives being in power.
The results of that article are at least highly questionable or straight up wrong though. The Fraunhofer Institute had a look at it, found wrong data and calculations and ended their response with
However, it does not seem expedient to make a detailed analysis of the data due to the fundamentally flawed method.
Propagandist propagandizes.
More news at 11
Because being addicted to the teat of Russian fossil fuels has worked out so well...
Russia also has one of the largest reserves of uranium in Eurasia as well, only behind Kazakhstan.
Also Germany would only trade one teat for another. Energy indepences is only possible by using renewables.
Lastly every energy corporation has said they won't touch nuclear with a twelve feet pole because it is too expensive and there is no insurance agency willing to back them up.
The nuclear horse IS dead.
Never ever ever. Mainly because Germany is sooo bad with new tech, we don't need more juice :)
We can get more bang for our buck with renewables+storage.
I’m under the impression that large scale energy storage is a bit of an unsolved problem at this point, is that not the case?