The 15th of April 2023 marks the end of Germany’s 60-year-old nuclear history – right in the middle of a global energy crisis. The country had to fire up old coal plants to secure energy supply in the past year, while other countries continued to build more nuclear power plants. Was pulling out of nuclear energy a huge mistake?
Credits:
Reporter: Kiyo Dörrer
Video editor: Frederik Willmann
Supervising Editors: Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann, Michael Trobridge
Special thanks to: Nicolas Wendler, Hans Smital, Christian von Hirschhausen, Rainer Klute and Simon Müller for interviews that could not make it into the video.
#PlanetA #Nuclear #Germany
Read more:
Do we need nuclear power to stop climate Change?
Planet A video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X00al1FsjM
Flexibility of nuclear power polants, World Nuclear Performance Report 2020:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/3418bf4a-5891-4ba1-b6c2-d83d8907264d/performance-report-2020-v1.pdf.aspx
International Energy Agency report on nuclear power:
https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-electricity
IPCC pathways including nuclear power: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter2_Low_Res.pdf
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:01 History
02:15 The debate restarts
04:38 The case for nuclear
08:45 Cost and safety
11:45 Conclusion
29 Comments
What do you make of Germany's decision to phase-out nuclear?
Seems like nowadays so called news channel are more busy protecting Politician's and their decision's than the People !
#greenwashing
You said there are laws in place against nuclear, so they would've needed to role them back opening an opportunity for the nuclear lobby to get a foothold in Germany again.
We would again not get away from nuclear, it would not be temporary, but coal on the other hand, no one will seriously suggest this as a long term solution.
I think it was a good decision to stick with the exit.
I hope Germany's progressive stance in this area will cause it to be an innovator and pioneer in the renewable energy sector and become a leader and major technological hub for renewable energy in Europe and the rest of the world.
What about all the nuclear power Germany imported from France last winter?
It was emotional decision backed by stupidity. Terrible mistake and a climate crime.
If you have a nuclear plant capable of adjusting its power output, why would you curtail nuclear output before curtailing renewable output? Most of the cost of nuclear is capital cost and operation costs, not fuel. There isn't much benefit in running nuclear at less than the maximum if there is a demand to get it. So if you have nuclear, why would you add renewables without adding storage?
Yes it is a mistake and they are doing it for the wrong reasons. It is not for nature because the still mine cole on the service.
No, it is not a mistake
Of course Germany phased out too early – especially given dependancy on Russian gas and this was made clear, by the Ukranian war, which could not have been entirely foreseen, but should have been prepared for. This is all worsened by the fact that transition to more coal is not a transition strategy, but several steps back. So yeah, no real proactive transition strategy or risk management for such a huge economy, peoples and industry is mindblowing…
How did you come up with such a low death rate per terrawatt hr for hydropower? Is this country specific? Theres a single incidident in china that led to an estimated 26,000+ dead from a single dam failure. That likely exceeds all non nuclear weapons deaths total including weapons research and fuel enrichment for weapons. You may get to that death per terrawatt/hr rate for nuclear if you include the linear no-threshold model of radiation exposure, but a simple study of airline pilot's cancer rates would suggest that model is extremely flawed and is unethical to use in statistics.
Who here wants a nuclear power plant built where they live? Same question for the waste. Solar and wind have become so cheap and have always been so safe, we can easily power everything using it. As energy storage we can also use sand or water for heat, build giant battery packs and use vehicle to grid technology as electricity storage.
The greens have never understood the simple fact that electricity must be generated in the same instant as it is required. They always talk about the amount of energy we can get from solar and wind but refuse to realise that we cannot control when those generate power. Until we come up with good methods to store electricity on an absolutely massive scale, they are by definition only complements. Decisions should be based on facts, not emotions.
mistake
The "save the planet" the green party is ready to do anything, including killing the planet.
When you take away, you need to replace it with something else. So why oh why do these radical ideologists think it is better to shut down nuclear plants when the green sources aren't developed yet and then have to compensate by firing up coal plants?
Yes, it is.
This is what happens when you let left wing politicians make the decisions. But now they will become dependent on the nuclear power plants in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first and last are building more of them soon. But until then they will be using the brown coal and Chinese solar panels.
No, it is not.
What it is a mistake is the foreign politics decisions, even allowing "allies" to blow up one of the core German infrastructures for your country stability and interests. Sad to see.
Germans used to be fairly intelligent….clearly no longer a fact!!
Belgium made the same insane decision
We shouldn’t bury radioactive waste, we should recycle it. We should build a circular nuclear energy ecosystem.
simple yes!
1. It is a democratic decision, and anti-nuclear grew together with fear about war between West-Europe and Russia; as gemany always felt to be the war ground between US/NATO and Russia; serious scenario: nucear power plants bombed or even collateral damage.
2. 1980 Minister president (lower saxony) expected german nuclear power plants as intermediate solution until 2000 the long term energy solution with sun, wind and hydrogen economy has been implemented. (a cite from a 1984 energy economy critical book)
3. If that 2 decade runtime expectation was true, even when germany saw declining coal industry, perhaps german nuclear power plants might be build only for the 2 or 3 decades, as german engineering documents calculate. Now we have 4 decades, still no long term safe nuclear waste solution. Nobody risks rocketing nuclear waste into the sun, deep ocean sea is also not favorized, perhaps we end up reusing nuclear waste tons heat emmision in every town to switch to CO2 free heating.
I live in Western Germany (yes brown coal industry declining) since 1990, grew up in the northest german city Flensburg near Danmark and saw in the 1970s (holiday) danmarks (declinig and switching) ship yards hiring personal for wind energy projects.
The energy solution is a new problem we have to resolve
Self destruction of Germany. There is no industry, no military, no army only reality is millions of immigrants, and they keep coming.
I hate Germany for this!
Germanys decision to shut down their nuclear power has caused the price of electric power to increase in all northern Europe.
Germany and Denmark causes a electic power deficit on a daily basis of 10-15 GW of power (sometimes up to 20-25 GW).
Sweden used to have a very well balanced mix of hydro-, nuclear- and renewable power.
Since Germany shut their last 6 GW of nuclear power the Swedish electricity export to Germany and Denmark has increased by 10 TWh per year.
Today Sweden exports around 20% of the electricity we produce (a few years ago that number was 12%).
The same goes with Norway who also has increased their exports a lot the last few years.
This means that the power generation in Sweden and Norway no longer can cope with their own electricity demand and prices has sky rocketed.
We used to pay 30 EUR/MWh but today we pay German and Danish prices up to more than 100 EUR/MWh in summer and more than 200 EUR/MWh.
Yes it is and Germany should be cut off from telling others what to do. Mind your own business Germans, because you are mostly wrong but your success is based on deceiving others. You guys hate equal competition so you don't care which method os the best to bring you success. Terrible country.
No it's not, since parliament disallowed storing nuclear water decades ago. Where the new waste should go ?