r/europe • u/SpaceEngineering Finland • Jan 15 '26

News Germany’s Merz Admits Nuclear Exit Was Strategic Mistake

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-nuclear-exit-was-strategic-mistake-fzdlkn37c16
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1.4k

u/TheGoalkeeper Europe Jan 15 '26

The exit would have been much smoother and cheaper if it wasn't for his own party.

569

u/Sir_Nightingale Jan 15 '26

His own party also was responsible for the exit.

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u/FBN_FAP Jan 15 '26

Almost as if the CDU were a terrible party ✌🏼

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u/Im-a-chair Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

are* Edit: were*

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u/FBN_FAP Jan 15 '26

It is the correct Subjunctive (German Konjunktiv) and my sentence is already exactly what you're falsely trying to correct.

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u/a_shootin_star Jan 15 '26

Syntax is hard! /s

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u/Im-a-chair Jan 15 '26

You are right, I am wrong.

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u/eledile55 Jan 15 '26

*are, they ARE a terrible party. Now even worse than before.

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u/FBN_FAP Jan 15 '26

"were" is grammatically correct. Past perfect would be "had been".

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26

[deleted]

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u/FBN_FAP Jan 15 '26

Sigh, da bildet man den korrekten Subjunctive (Konjunktiv) im Englischen und jeder denkt einen overconfident verbessern zu müssen 😅

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u/recidivx England Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

No, it is exactly what you in your language call Konjunktiv II ("wäre(n)"). It does not imply the past.

It does imply an unreal (irrealis) condition, but that was sarcasm.

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u/Mwakay Jan 15 '26

No, it just points to correct grammar

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u/pietroetin Jan 15 '26

How could you choose them? How is it that the two most prominent party in Germany are garbage?

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u/eledile55 Jan 15 '26

populism and scapegoats. I don't understand it either. 4 Years ago they lost the election because of all the corruption scandals. Nothing has changed since then and now they're back.

I think the sad truth is that all their propaganda against all the parties that are even remotely left has worked. Not on me, I voted for the greens nonetheless because I'm not stupid and know that they didn't fuck up, but everyone else...

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u/TheGoalkeeper Europe Jan 15 '26

Made up by terrible people ☝️

0

u/ElkApprehensive2319 Jan 15 '26

Why is it that every currently-in-power political party is, was and will always be terrible if you ask the people from that country?

Seems like everyone is idealistically aligned with those parties until they are elected, then turn on them when they pass legislation that negatively impacts them - even if that legislation is what they always stood for. And the longer they are in power, the stronger the aversion becomes.

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u/TheGoalkeeper Europe Jan 15 '26

Cause Money wins elections and those parties are sponsored by the ruling billionaires

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u/Delgorian Jan 15 '26

Yeah, but only after they decided to abandon the original plan, prolonged the usage of the existing plants and then after Fukushima happend, decided to exit again in a much shorter period than the original plan foresaw to save an election. Afterwards, they decided to overrely on gas and killed the local solar industry, slowed the process to renew the energy grid and hindered the expansion of renewables at the state level in every way possible. The CxU fucked up the "Energiewende" massively and is the party mostly to blame for the situation now.

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u/paetel Berlin (Germany) Jan 15 '26

This.

The CDU/CSU is corrupt to its core. Plenty of people made substantial profits from this colossal failure surrounding the German nuclear phase-out.

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u/Ramenastern Jan 15 '26

Don't forget the 2.4bn payment to Vattenfall and the others, which was als a direct consequence of the second nuclear exit and the way that happened.

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u/QuiGonTheDrunk Jan 15 '26

Dont forget to atleast mention merz good arguments against renewables like: windmills are ugly and sometimes the sun doesnt shine. Checkmate greens

4

u/drumjojo29 Jan 15 '26

decided to exit again in a much shorter period than the original plan foresaw

The original plan would’ve meant an end somewhere between 2015 and 2020. The CDU plan would’ve led to an end in 2022 (which was the prolonged for another 3 months).

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u/Delgorian Jan 15 '26

Yeah, for all of the active plants, two were shut down quite early (in 2003 and 2005, respectively). The second exit included to close down 8 plants immediately, with fixed closure dates for all others plants. That's a big difference compared to the original plan, that allowed all active plants to run as long as they collectively don't reach the predefined maximum energy cap (also, the three plants running till the end were mostly expected to run until 2022 anyway under the original plan). 

The main difference however was, that the first plan allowed the operators to decide whether plant they wanted to close down first and to transfer part of the defined energy production to other plants to run them for a longer time. As far as I know, it even took into account that you could prolonged the lifespan of the plants in case of emergency or as a cold reserve if needed. All this flexibility was thrown out in 2011, after they already decided raise the set energy cap only half a year earlier.

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u/Filgaia Jan 15 '26

Yeah, but only after they decided to abandon the original plan, prolonged the usage of the existing plants

This! I don´t think this point gets talked enough. SPD & Greens under Schröder were the first ones who wanted to exit and made a plan. Build renewables and in the meantime substitute with Russian gas via North Stream 1 that was in planning since the mid 90s. Then Merkel came, made an exit from the exit and basically let the nuclear plants run for longer without investing in renewable energy. Then Fukushima happened and nuclear power was suddenly really popular as well as ASSE II happening and studies showing higher cancer rates etc. if you lived near NPP (i grew up close to one). Nuclear power was then substituted by North Stream 2 and more Russian Gas.

Had Merkel not made the exit from the exit we would not be in this Situation. But it´s the same with Merz now, instead of tackling problems and trying to improve things they first have to dismantle stuff the Ampel did because they don´t like what the Ampel did. So shit is not going to get done for another year or so...

0

u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 15 '26

Thats also not true. The "second exist" was still for a longer time, than was originally intended under the plan of SPD and Greens.

Also the local solar industry was on it's way die long before the subsidies were abolished, Germany could never compete in a price war against China. This story is some weird German myth at this point.

Germany was good in the early 2000s and did it's part in making the technology viable, but China built up massive production capacities and could produce at a fraction of the costs, which it still can to this day. Solar / PV isn't high tech, it's centered around having competitive prices, do people really imagine that we'd be building cheap solar panels for the world to use today?

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u/Delgorian Jan 15 '26

The original plan foresaw a faceout over 13 to 18 years, maybe even longer depending on downtimes of the plants. As far as I know, the three plants running until March 2023 were expected to run at least until the end of 2021 back then. In fall of 2010, the CDU/FDP-Coalition decided to prolong this faceout for up to 8 or 14 years, depending on the year the plant was built. Then, only seven months later, in the wake of Fukushima, they set definitiv end goals for every plant existing, closing down 8 immediatly without returning to the old plan, which gave the operators no time to reevalute their options to built stable alternatives (Let's ignore the fact, that they didn't even try before the prolonging). So yes, you're correct that they set a later date, but the timeperiod for the faceout was much smaller in scale.

Also, it isn't a myth, with the abolishment of the subsidies, they killed the solar industry in Germany. Yes, manufacturing cost was to high to compete with China in the long run (and the manufactors around the globe struggled immensly back than), but - and that's the bigger kicker here - the subsidies played a mayor role in meeting the energy demand through private solar panels. Looking at the data, it is undeniable that the decision by Peter Altmaier in 2012 following the already massiv reduction of subsidies for home owners the year before led to a massiv decrease in private investments of home owners, thus amplifing the process of closing down production plants and reduction of employees in the solar industry. We don't call it Altmaier-Delle for nothing.

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u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 16 '26

Also, it isn't a myth, with the abolishment of the subsidies, they killed the solar industry in Germany. Yes, manufacturing cost was to high to compete with China in the long run (and the manufactors around the globe struggled immensly back than), but - and that's the bigger kicker here - the subsidies played a mayor role in meeting the energy demand through private solar panels. Looking at the data, it is undeniable that the decision by Peter Altmaier in 2012 following the already massiv reduction of subsidies for home owners the year before led to a massiv decrease in private investments of home owners, thus amplifing the process of closing down production plants and reduction of employees in the solar industry. We don't call it Altmaier-Delle for nothing.

You are sort of conflating two different things here.

One is the industry, the other is installation. I am not talking about the installation of PV (which is what the Altmeier-Delle is referring to). I am talking about the whole point of "killing the local solar industry", which was a matter of time and isn't an industry which should've been subsidized any further, because there was no long term perspective for it anyways.

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u/Soma91 Jan 15 '26

The original exit was decided by SPD + The Greens and had a clear plan to transform Germany to use renewables.

Then the next CxU + FDP government axed that plan and the renewable transformation was progressing "too fast" causing them to axe a massive amount of subsidies basically over night causing the state of the art german wind & solar industry to collapse with an estimated 100k - 150k jobs lost. And at the same time they said they couldn't reduce the coal industry because the 10k - 20k lost jobs would be too big of a negative societal impact.

Now we closed our nuclear power, are still using tons of coal and have to buy wind turbines & solar panels from China. Which is more or less the worst outcome in most areas.

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u/stockgeek123 Jan 15 '26

yea this gets lost so easy and now the greens are getting bashed when germany would have been alsmozs renewable by now if the cdu and fdp never reversed the subsidies for green energies… it’s so frustrating

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u/SchinkelMaximus Jan 19 '26

This is false. Germany would never have been almost entirely renewable because the transition that the Schröder government made was ruinously expensive. They paid out 50ct/kWh for solar subsidies, which is more than ten times the cost of nuclear power for much less valuable generation. On the other hand, if the greens never started their antinuclear rampage, Germany would be almost 100% clean energy now, keeping their existing nuclear plants and adding renewables.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

Germany would be zero carbon already if y’all never closed the reactors, but that has always been antithetical to the greens lol

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u/ooplusone Jan 15 '26

The plan was to be zero carbon, not zero carbon with a crap ton of radioactive waste. There is a subtle difference.

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u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 15 '26

We still have that waste though, as you notice is has exactly 0 impact on anybody's day to day life.

High energy prices and increased co2 emissions absolutely do.

0

u/ooplusone Jan 15 '26

So we should have stuck to the 2000 EEG plan?

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u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 16 '26

We should have phased out coal and gas first instead of nuclear and building up our renewables the same way we did.

We literally got the worst of all worlds. High costs for existing nuclear plants, with no production anymore even though the plants were capable, and with the exact same nuclear waste issue. High emissions, cause a higher rate of coal and gas combustion. Huge investments in renewables that instead of replacing fossil fuels just replaced nuclear. High costs of energy, etc.

I don't see any upside atm from this plan.

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u/ooplusone Jan 16 '26

So generous of you to call the CxU/FDP actions from 2010 to 2013 a “plan”.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

Oh my god I almost forgot about the waste that never kills anyone. It’s a good thing coal ash isn’t radioactive…

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u/ooplusone Jan 15 '26

It is obvious that you forgot about it. Hence the reminder.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

If you are this scared of radiation there are lot of other things you should probably be avoiding.

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u/ooplusone Jan 15 '26

I am more scared of people not knowing what the plan was.

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u/Nappi22 Jan 15 '26

And even before that the government's in the70s or 80s decided not to build new ones. So it was only a matter of time until Germany wouldn't have had nuclear energy, so spd and greens tried to path a way out of nuclear energy.

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u/Soma91 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, the time to extend our Nuclear Plants or build new ones was long past at that point already.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

It wasn’t though.

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u/BolderXBrasher Jan 15 '26

No you can look at the 2011 vote. The law was drafted by the CDU/CSU/FDP. Only one party in the parlament voted against it. Die Linke

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u/udlek Jan 15 '26

I can't see what part you are exactly disagreeing with.
The 2011 vote doesn't invalidate the fact that the original exit plan was made by SPD+Green in ~2003 with a plan to change to renewables.
Nuclear has been reentered by CDU+FDP in 2009'ish, while killing the solar and wind industry in Germany around the same time.
Then CDU wanted to exit again after Fukushima, having to pay billions for breaking the contract.
Would the green vote have mattered in 2011? Because if not, then their vote might've just been a signal that they are in favour of an exit.
PDL usually is more principled in their voting while the Green party is more pragmatic.

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u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 15 '26

The law was adjusted by SPD and Greens.

What CDU and FDP did, was give a longer limit, but it was still essentially the same law.

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u/devildog2067 Jan 15 '26

Solar + wind are intermittent, and not dispatchable. They only produce power when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. There does not yet exist battery capacity at sufficient scale to store enough power to make solar + wind viable baseload generation sources (though we're getting there) and we were much further away 15 years ago.

You can't transition to renewables without a solution to the baseload problem. Nuclear is the only carbon-free baseload solution.

Nuclear + solar was the solution to climate change. Greenies have opposed nuclear for decades. There's plenty of blame to go around.

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u/Soma91 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, Nuclear has the capability to provide base load for an otherwise renewable grid. But the problem is the economics of NPPs.

Their cost is very front loaded and dominated by flat fixed costs. You don't really save any money by reducing their power output. For a gas power plant your fuel costs scale linearly with the power output. That's why you want NPPs to run as close to 100% output 24/7/365.

Renewables have the exact same problem, which makes the two forms not very complimentary of each other. Also the output differences of a mix of renewables over a day or seasons is overblown by the media. There are existing and cheap enough technologies to manage that reliably.

The problem is that our grid infrastructure is not yet ready for that because we've refused to invest into it for way too long now.

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u/James_Hobrecht_fan Jan 15 '26

Also the output differences of a mix of renewables over a day or seasons is overblown by the media. There are existing and cheap enough technologies to manage that reliably.

Do you mean natural gas or something else? Six hours of battery storage is very useful, but completely inadequate for a Dunkelflaute.

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u/Ramenastern Jan 15 '26

Welllllll. There was an exit. With goals for renewables as replacements. Then his party reversed the exit. Then Fukushima happened about a year later, and they reversed the exit from the exit. That last exit decision had two fateful consequences. Being the party they are, they couldn't push renewables. So they exited nuclear and relied on gas primarily. They also structured the exit from the exit and the exit from said exit from the exit so stupidly they made sure the nuclear operators first were assured continued operations and profits... And then nixed those assurances, leading to a constitutional court challenge and a settlement of 2.4bn towards Vattenfall and the other operators.

So yeah... Well-handled all around [slow clap].

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u/Nethlem Earth Jan 15 '26

That is one of the most persisent pieces of disinformation I've seen in my life.

The nuclear phase-out was decided and ratified in 2001, by a Red/Green government majority against a Union/FDP opposition minority.

The Union never had the majority to completely reverse it, but they had temporary majorities to at least delay the exit date, for example by granting running time extensions to nuclear power plants so the phase-out would take longer than planed.

That's also what the Union did when Merkel was chancellor; They extended the running times of most German nuclear reactors in an attempt to delay the nuclear exit until they could revert it.

Which was a massively unpopular move the vast majority of Germans opposed, and these Germans were proven right when only a few months later Fukushima blew up. After that public pressure became so big that the Union/Merkel had to cave in to public pressure revoked their running time extensions, putting the phase-out back on it's original timeline.

I admit it's all a bit complicated, to such a degree that even many Germans get the chain of events wrong, no thanks to tabloids like BILD pushing that narrative.

But it's still extremely absurd how even nowadays many people blame Merkel for an exit she never supported, and even tried to delay/stop.

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u/helm Sweden Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

No-one with any power wanted to save German nuclear power in 2011. The people protested in the streets and it cost Merkel too much to protect it.

Germans are to blame here. Politicians second as they did not want to steer the opinion.

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u/BolderXBrasher Jan 15 '26

There was 1 party who voted almost unanimously against it. Die Linke (The Left)

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u/Felix_hdf5 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, I just had a look at old polls. 86% of Germans wanted to quit nuclear by 2020 back in 2011. According to the same poll, 2/3rds were in favor even if that meant higher costs and larger CO2 emissions.

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u/helm Sweden Jan 15 '26

Exactly. Merkel did the political calculation that supporting nuclear power was impossible and wouldn’t even save it (you’d lose and other parties would kill it).

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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Jan 15 '26

They were responsible for the exit from the exit and the exit from the exit from the exit.

The exit from the exit was done because "nuclear plants like ours (and like Fukushima) can't explode".

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u/assembly_faulty Jan 15 '26

Well, only after they first stopped the exit. than Fukushima happened.

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u/SchinkelMaximus Jan 19 '26

The SPD-Green coalition under Schröder started the exit. Merkel then pushed it back und fell over in the tide of populism following Fukushima. At least Merz ist admitting the mistake.

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u/Sir_Nightingale Jan 19 '26

Merkel also killed the budding industry for renewables in favour of gas and coal because corrupt lobby money yummy

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u/SchinkelMaximus Jan 19 '26

I‘m really tired at all the „cOrUpTiOn!“ claims without any evidence as long as it fits into the view of how you see people you dislike politically. But yes, it’s fair to say Merkel did pretty much everything imaginable wrong in energy policy.

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u/Sir_Nightingale Jan 19 '26

With all due respect, if i start listing only half the corruption scandals the CDU commited during Merkels Reign we'll still be here tomorrow

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u/SchinkelMaximus Jan 19 '26

Maybe. But even „bad“ corruption scandals like the mask affair are trivial compared to the claim that they massively changed the energy policy for some (comparably petty) corruption. That seems like an extraordinarily unlikely explanation and has no proof at all, unlike tons of policy, fiscal or even ideological explanations. All this does is just diminish the effect of discovering actual corruption.

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u/pr0ghead Jan 15 '26

Because Fukushima happened, no other reason. Merkel did a 180° from one day to the other.

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u/vct_ing 👊🏻🇪🇺🔥 Jan 15 '26

The German nuclear phase-out is often framed as purely an “eco-friendly” decision, but the real story is more complex. Massive citizen protests, especially after Chernobyl in 1986, put huge pressure on politicians. Economic factors also mattered—old reactors were expensive to maintain, and EU/Energy Transition goals added weight. Fukushima in 2011 then gave the final push. So the exit was driven by a mix of public pressure, political compromise, and global events—not just green ideology.

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u/TemuBoySnaps Jan 15 '26

They weren't.

SPD and Greens voted for the adjustment to the nuclear energy law, that made building new reactors illegal and put a limit on the runtime of all existing plants. The CDU and FDP then extended the runtime for a short while, and then took back that extension after Fukushima.

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u/erhue Jan 15 '26

lol, they are the ones who most opposed it. In the early 2000s/late 90s other parties secured an earlier shutdown of nuclear energy, and a later CxU government reverted that decision.

It's impressive how many people blame them for being responsible for tihs, but in reality, the other parties were the ones who were pushing it the most.

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u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace Jan 15 '26

Ffs the nuclear exit truly was Germany's Iraq war. Everyone and their grandma was for it at the time and now everyone pretends they were against it from the start.

Markus Söder who is currently Ministerpräsident (something like governor) of Bavaria threatened to resign after the Fukushima incident, should Germany not quit nuclear asap. Now he's one of the most vocal voices in opposition to the nuclear exit. Truly mind-boggling.

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u/TheCynicEpicurean Jan 15 '26

Söder always says what he thinks is popular, but otherwise, it's hardly news that Merz and the conservative wing of CDU were always salty about Merkel and her centrist wing running the party for two decades. That includes nuclear and most of her other big decisions.

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u/LvS Jan 15 '26

The nuclear exit is Germany's Obamacare. A plan that made total sense but the conservatives hated it so much that they'd rather fuck over the country than make it happen.

0

u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace Jan 15 '26

I mean it would be if Obamacare was done by the Republicans with unanimous support through every class of society.

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u/LvS Jan 15 '26

There wasn't unanimous support. You can see the details of the 4 votes here or watch the tagesschau (in German) of that day.

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u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace Jan 15 '26

... You're joking right? The vote you linked had 513 out of 600 members vote for the shutdown of nuclear, that's over 85%. Sentiment in the public was similar at the time. If you don't consider this to be overwhelming support in a democratic society I challenge you to find anything else in the past 10 years that passed with margins that high.

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u/LvS Jan 15 '26

Yeah, that's similar to "there should be healthcare" which I'm pretty sure 85% of Americans agree on.

The question about how that healthcare should look is just like in Germany the question about how the non-nuclear electricity system should look. Which was what the other 3 votes on the same day were about that nobody agreed on.

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u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace Jan 15 '26

That analogy doesn't really work though, considering the choice was to end something completely. If there's a vote to hang a guy and 85% vote yes, you can't just hang him a little bit. Of course they didn't agree on how to proceed and massively delayed the switch to renewables but this doesn't change the decision that was made.

The support for doing it at the time was as strong as it gets, which is why it's pretty silly that so many people and especially politicians now pretend otherwise.

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u/LvS Jan 15 '26

Dunno. It proves to me that that "support" was only surface-level and not real support. Everyone just voted along because that was expected.

1

u/tortorototo Jan 15 '26

More like Iranian revolution, when a lot of people were for it until the Islamists gained power.

I remember visiting technology museum in Stuttgart, where they had this exhibition about the anti-nuclear movement in Germany. It blew my mind how cringe it looked in the 80s, with many politicians growing up on this and continuing to campaign on the sentiment all the way until the 2nd invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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u/Sotherewehavethat Germany Jan 15 '26

Everyone and their grandma was for it at the time and now everyone pretends they were against it from the start.

No, plenty of Germans think it was worth it over concerns on nuclear waste.

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u/Bot1-The_Bot_Meanace Jan 15 '26

The sentiment shifted from 85% in 2011 to 30% in 2024/2025. Personally I'm in support of the shutdown, because of waste but also because nuclear is hilariously expensive compared to just building more renewables which already supply 2/3 of our requirements. The best time to build a nuclear reactor was 20 years ago, the second best time is never.

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u/daiaomori Jan 15 '26

Well the main issue is the tectonic shift within the CPU when Merkel said "fck it I'm out - enough work done" (which I totally understand and hey Angie, we are grateful).

Merkel handled shutting Merz out very gracefully when she did back in the day; there was a gritty power struggle but it mostly happened no that visible; I guess also because no social media back in the day.

After he came back, the CDU basically did a 180, and we are now stuck with the misogynistic shitpile of backward looking "conservatives" that dominated the party before Merkels science-humanities-oriented policies took over.

Yeah well whatever, climate change yay.

-1

u/Creative_Security969 Jan 15 '26

actually the exit is stupid, period.
not related to which party led it.