Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back

jeffw@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 227 points –
Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back
arstechnica.com
155

You are viewing a single comment

this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry. In other countries with no nuclear infrastructure, renewables are definitely the better, cheaper, more scalable choice - but countries which invested big many decades ago are in a different position, and Germany's deliberate destruction of their nuclear capabilities has left them dependant on fossil fuels from an adversarial state - easily a worse situation than small amounts of carefully managed nuclear waste while renewables were scaled up.

this ignores the key issue that in Germany, there was already an extensive and perfectly functional nuclear industry.

Shhh... anti-nuclear don't want to hear this. They'd rather project, even though people are talking about how stupid closing down the current nuclear infrastructure and not advocating to build new ones!

I don't support building new nuclear power plants, but it's ridiculous to close down already existing ones given the threat of climate change. NPP should act more like stop gap until renewable energy can take over more effectively.

I answered a very similar comment a little further down:

https://feddit.de/comment/9599367

I'm not claiming it was smart to leave nuclear before coal. It wasn't. But it is what happened and it was decided two decades ago. Nuclear is done in Germany and there is no point discussing it further. New reactors were not going to happen either way.