This is not what's happening. Germany is shutting down both coal and nuclear. Due to the incompetent CDU (the conservatives are ruining everything once again) there was a lot of back and forth on nuclear, and their lobbyist friends delayed the exit from coal. But there finally is a plan to shut down all coal, but build more, and all nuclear plants are shut down and in the process of being dismantled, and turning them back on would not accelerate the shutting down of coal. Building nuclear is a slow and expensive process. Could this have been handled better 20 or even 50 years ago? Absolutely. But in the situation we're currently in, nuclear is not the solution.
Nuclear is the solution until all coal plants are shut down. Coal kills millions each year (1000x more than coal) in addition to being a massive contributor to global warming. Nuclear is one of the safest power sources in the world and emits no greenhouse gas.
Shutting down nuclear plants while coal plants still exist is a crime against humanity.
You know what, I actually agree on that. Countries that currently have running nuclear plants should keep them running until they've eliminated coal (and gas, although their use not really overlaps - base load vs peak), but then shut them down.
Then we can totally agree. It's not what Germany did though.
Yes, but it's too late to reverse that course. Germany's nuclear plants are out of operation, and refitting and restarting them would take many years (most of them were at their end of life when they were shut down), and involve costs better spend towards the long term by building up renewables directly, and shutting down coal.
No, because Germany didn't replace nuclear power with coal.
Shutting down a nuclear plant while keeping coal ones open is replacing nuclear with coal. And coal use has been going up in Germany. So I don't know where you are getting these ideas from.
No, it's going down. There was a sharp decline in 2019, in 2020 it was even lower due to the pandemic and then went up again to the level of around 2019. 2022 was a little worse because of lower gas consumption due to the war in Ukraine, gas was partially replaced with coal. The last nuclear power plants were shut down in April 2023, yet 2023 also saw lower coal consumption than even in 2020, which strongly suggests that nuclear isn't replaced by coal.
Honestly even gas should be phased out before nuclear.
Well, if we look at nuclear and gas we can also see that nuclear wasn't replaced by gas in Germany. Gas and nuclear have very different purposes in the grid, on can be spun up almost on demand the other can't. Anyway, at least in Germany there is no nuclear power anymore so arguing that something else should be phased out first is pointless, and saying that nuclear was replaced by coal or gas is spreading fakenews.
Every nuclear plant that is closed is a coal or gas plant that could be closed, so yes, coal is replacing it.
This is not what's happening. Germany is shutting down both coal and nuclear. Due to the incompetent CDU (the conservatives are ruining everything once again) there was a lot of back and forth on nuclear, and their lobbyist friends delayed the exit from coal. But there finally is a plan to shut down all coal, but build more, and all nuclear plants are shut down and in the process of being dismantled, and turning them back on would not accelerate the shutting down of coal. Building nuclear is a slow and expensive process. Could this have been handled better 20 or even 50 years ago? Absolutely. But in the situation we're currently in, nuclear is not the solution.
Nuclear is the solution until all coal plants are shut down. Coal kills millions each year (1000x more than coal) in addition to being a massive contributor to global warming. Nuclear is one of the safest power sources in the world and emits no greenhouse gas.
Shutting down nuclear plants while coal plants still exist is a crime against humanity.
You know what, I actually agree on that. Countries that currently have running nuclear plants should keep them running until they've eliminated coal (and gas, although their use not really overlaps - base load vs peak), but then shut them down.
Then we can totally agree. It's not what Germany did though.
Yes, but it's too late to reverse that course. Germany's nuclear plants are out of operation, and refitting and restarting them would take many years (most of them were at their end of life when they were shut down), and involve costs better spend towards the long term by building up renewables directly, and shutting down coal.
No, because Germany didn't replace nuclear power with coal.
Shutting down a nuclear plant while keeping coal ones open is replacing nuclear with coal. And coal use has been going up in Germany. So I don't know where you are getting these ideas from.
No, it's going down. There was a sharp decline in 2019, in 2020 it was even lower due to the pandemic and then went up again to the level of around 2019. 2022 was a little worse because of lower gas consumption due to the war in Ukraine, gas was partially replaced with coal. The last nuclear power plants were shut down in April 2023, yet 2023 also saw lower coal consumption than even in 2020, which strongly suggests that nuclear isn't replaced by coal.
Honestly even gas should be phased out before nuclear.
Well, if we look at nuclear and gas we can also see that nuclear wasn't replaced by gas in Germany. Gas and nuclear have very different purposes in the grid, on can be spun up almost on demand the other can't. Anyway, at least in Germany there is no nuclear power anymore so arguing that something else should be phased out first is pointless, and saying that nuclear was replaced by coal or gas is spreading fakenews.
Every nuclear plant that is closed is a coal or gas plant that could be closed, so yes, coal is replacing it.