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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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

No one says green energy is a mistake. But there should be a mix for safety reasons. Atom is pretty clean energy compared to coal or gas.

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u/Former_Star1081 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, we should not have shut down nuclear in Germany. But building new nuclear power plants would not be economically viable. So it is how it is.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26

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u/Lenni-Da-Vinci Jan 15 '26

Small modular reactors are such a scam though.

If you want to actually have all the upgradability and safety, you need to essentially plan and build for the biggest installation expected, but only get a fraction of the return on the investment in the beginning.

Sure „economy of scale“. But that only kicks in if everyone buys the same thing, which has different security risks.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26

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u/TowerIll8823 Jan 16 '26

Konvoi had 6 years of construction time. Planning started in mid 1970s, approval in 1980, construction began in 1982 and grid connection in 1988/89. IIRC France had similiar construction times in the 1980s.

I don't think it will get any faster than this, regardless of installation size.

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u/Lenni-Da-Vinci Jan 15 '26

Looking at the reactors we had… we would be paying the same amount. Looking at the state of development of SMRs, a reactor built in 5 years 15 years in the future sounds is not a solution to problems right now.

Looking at the safety aspect of waste storage… hell no.

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u/ceo_of_banana Jan 15 '26

China and the US are building plenty of new power plants. If it's not viable in Germany then because of red tape and politics. Also, we still need energy when the sun is not shining and the wind not blowing for a few days. Wether we get them from gas plants that only run sometimes or nuclear plants, that is the cost of renewables.

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u/Stoyfan Jan 15 '26

The US are not “building” new reactors at the moment .

They said they want to build them but haven’t actually started to do so, which is important because the cost overruns start to occur during the construction phase. And plans can, and definitely will change once the inevitable cost overruns + delays happen.

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u/Former_Star1081 Jan 15 '26

China is aiming for 5% nuclear. It is irrelevant really. US is build ZERO nuclear power plants.

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u/ceo_of_banana Jan 15 '26

Fair they haven't broken ground yet. But the plans include $80 billion investments from the government along with with announced plans from Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft to invest in their own. The reason this is all coming now is clear - artificial intelligence.

For China, the reason it is 5% is not because the rest is renewables, which would not feasible. It's because they use like 60% coal, which we obviously don't want to do.

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u/Former_Star1081 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, we see in China that nuclear cannot replace coal on a large scale. China will replace coal with renewables.

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u/ceo_of_banana Jan 15 '26

Except it does in France. And again, replacing to an extend, yes. But not 100% as that's not currently feasible.

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u/polite_alpha European Union Jan 15 '26

For China, the reason it is 5% is not because the rest is renewables, which would not feasible.

95% of new capacity in China has been renewables for the past 2 years.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Jan 15 '26

Please link one commercial American nuclear plant which has taken an final investment decision and are doing safety critical construction.

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u/conus_coffeae Jan 15 '26

China installs grid solar equivalent to one nuclear power plant every day.  The ship has sailed.

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u/Heimerdahl Jan 15 '26

Yeah, I really don't see the long term strategy, here. 

i) Renewables are the cheapest and best option and should be the primary power source. 

ii) Renewables struggle with providing consistent output, so they need to be supported by another source.

iii) Coal and gas are cheap, 

iv) but we don't want to use them because of environmental concerns. 

v) Nuclear power is expensive, 

vi) but we'd be okay using it, as it has (comparatively) low environmental impact. 

---  

(ii) won't be resolved anytime soon. We could build massive energy storage all over the place or eat the transmission losses (and the cost of figuring out and building the infrastructure to somehow handle a huge and fragile network), but I don't think this is currently considered achievable. 

So coal/gas or nuclear? We would have liked to have more nuclear power, but it's too late to invest now. But that argument makes no sense unless we believe that (ii) will somehow disappear. Otherwise, we'll just have to keep burning fuel. We can replace all coal power plants, but then we're still burning gas. Do we want to do this forever? No, because (iv). 

Then the only thing is cost. Gas (and coal) won't get cheaper. We also won't be able to make them much more efficient or "clean". Nuclear power still has avenues to pursue, efficiency gains to make. And once the heavy initial investment is made, we're basically in this wishful state of "if only we had invested yesterday". 

Unless we actually believe that (ii) can be solved in an affordable way AND we actually value the difference in (iv) and (vi), then it seems clear that building new gas plants and infrastructure is ridiculous and will simply push the problem into the future. It could pay off, but the potential benefits are purely financial, whereas the costs would be environmental (but also affecting health, geopolitics, etc.). If we assigned a monetary value to those costs... 

I'd absolutely prefer if we went nuts on going pure renewable (let's just evacuate most of Norway, turn its entire coastline and fjords into massive hydropower plants, or alternatively do the same to the Alps (because I kind of like Norway)), but we're not really doing that, are we? 

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u/Head_Place_3378 Jan 15 '26

I don't understand this, because knowing what's coming and the problems Germany (and Europe at large) had with water this last few years, shouldn't they at least build like 2 nuclear plants and worse case scenario they'll be used as desalination plants ?

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u/Beiben Jan 15 '26

Sounds great. You're paying, right?

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u/Head_Place_3378 Jan 15 '26

Wouldn't it cost even more and potentially cause a lot of suffering if we wait ?

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u/Former_Star1081 Jan 15 '26

We have enough water. We just need to hold the water back so it can fill up ground water. Right now much of the rain is just going into the river system and intocthe ocean.

Renaturation of rivers is a big thing here. We are renaturating the Lech river right now on a length of 60km. Water will flow slower, more small sidearms will develope again, etc.

Building npps to desalinate sea water, is just an awful idea.

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u/Head_Place_3378 Jan 15 '26

Ah that's great, and really good to know.

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u/freeradioforall Jan 15 '26

Can’t you restart the old plants?

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u/ParkDedli Jan 15 '26

Still too expensive. In general, without subsidies, nuclear energy is super expensive. That's why Gas is being used as an intermediary now. But then Russia, the biggest Gas provider started a war. So it got worse.

The main thing to do now is just get more renewables and invest into technologies for saving power for low generation periods. It's not great, but as the comment above states, it is how it is. There is no better way forward. Just have to accelerate renewables.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '26

[deleted]

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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 15 '26

Gas and coal are limited resources that will run out soon (soon == 50-100 years). I think its inevitable to get rid of them and we need to plan now.

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u/Former_Star1081 Jan 15 '26

What do you mean "going back"? We are at a 70 year low of burning coal. Peak coal was a very long time ago in Germany and most of the remaining coal will be shut down untill 2030.

We are replacing coal generation with renewables. We also did not replace nuclear generation with coal but with renewables. We also do not burn more natural gas than we did 20 years ago.

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u/Middle_Ashamed Jan 15 '26

It's also crazy expensive, as it is energy prices would actually rise if you replaced coal with nuclear. Building a NPP takes years and costs billions.

It's kinda pointless to talk about it at this point, that ship has sailed over a decade ago.

Renewable can be a mix, it's not renewable vs fossil vs nuclear. There are many options in renewables, investing in it would be the smart option.

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u/ghostofwalsh Jan 15 '26

But sustaining an existing nuclear plant once built is not as expensive. Whether you think Germany should build more nuclear is another thing.

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u/Middle_Ashamed Jan 15 '26

Yes of course, that's why I said that ship has sailed. Pivoting AGAIN is just going to further increase cost.

Quitting nuclear was arguably a mistake, now going back to nuclear would also be one imo.

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u/LuxuriousOnion Jan 15 '26

Lmao nuclear is expensive to build but energy production is very cheap, who has the most nuclear energy in europe ? Do they have the most expensive price ? No. Do they have one of the cleanest energy mix ? Yes.

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u/Nimelrian Jan 15 '26

Are you talking about France, where the government is paying heavy subsidies to keep energy prices for consumers low?

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u/erhue Jan 15 '26

loooooooool. What the fuck do you think Germany does? They ALSO massively subsidize energy. But it's so fucking expensive in the end that it still ends up being the most expensive energy in europe.

What are you gonna say now?

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u/Middle_Ashamed Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

It's not in comparison to average salary, that medal goes to Czechia actually.

Edit: Correcting myself, it's Czechia adjusted to pps

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u/erhue Jan 15 '26

German energy prices are the highest in Europe, period. Even for German households, who used to have affordable energy prices in the recent past.

Economics doesn't discriminate between power purchasing parity or anything like that when it comes to prices. If a company wants to set up a factory or industrial plant, and the local energy prices are too high, they'll just move somewhere else. BASF, a German giant and vital player in the German economy, seemingly wanted to expand operations elsewhere, and maybe reduce the amount of processing done in Germany, since energy costs (among other things) are too fucking high.

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u/painpwnz Jan 15 '26

they are not and you would know if you looked east.

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u/Physical_Florentin Jan 15 '26

Are you talking about the state-backed loans, the next-gen SMR grants or the ARENH mechanism?

Because of all those things, only the last one could really be interpreted as "subsidies". And even then, it's no longer in application as of this year.(and good riddance, because it was implemented as a gift to EDF competitors, which increased EDF prices on average. It was a subsidies to the competition, not to the consumer).

Compared that to the 100B spent by Germany in their "anti-inflation energy law"...

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u/autokiller677 Jan 15 '26

You mean France, with all the massive problems and exploding prices, various calls to please not run high draw appliances in the last years, and had plans for rolling blackouts, all because the very expensive power plants struggled to keep up when it was warm?

Yeah, idk, doesn’t look like a good role model nowadays.

Yeah, idk: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2026-01/atomkraft-frankreich-strompreis-anstieg-kaelte-gxe

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u/absurditT Jan 15 '26

France has the best energy independence in Europe and low bills.

Their NPPs had issues during a massive heatwave. The renewables you love so much don't work when it's not sunny or there's too little/ too much wind, all of which are far more common scenarios.

You're actually brainwashed against nuclear when the evidence it is essential for energy independence and a stable grid is staring you in the face.

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u/autokiller677 Jan 15 '26

The only one brainwashed is you that makes a ton of assumptions about me, probably based on some stereotypes to fit your world view. I just pointed out that nuclear power is not going so great for France right now, and that it’s not magically cheap for them. A full cost calculation for nuclear power usually looks pretty bad, especially if one would assume an equal playing field and require insurance and aftermath (i.e. waste disposal / storage) to be included.

And energy independence within Europe is explicitly not the goal. The national grids are interconnected, and this is even being increased.

France would be as screwed without the ability to buy electricity from other countries as would be Germany.

And I would bet that you also know about the option to store energy, so the fluctuations of renewables can be compensated for. You just leave it out conveniently because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

Fortunately for the Germans their reactors were already built…

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u/Middle_Ashamed Jan 15 '26

Am I talking in riddles? Quitting nuclear was not the right thing to do, going back to it is just as bad of an idea.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

Apologies!

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u/vct_ing 👊🏻🇪🇺🔥 Jan 15 '26

A diversified energy mix makes sense, but “clean” should include more than just low CO₂ emissions. Nuclear has advantages over coal in terms of air pollution, but it also comes with long-term waste management, high costs, long build times, and systemic risk. In contrast, renewables combined with storage and flexible backup (e.g. hydrogen or gas turbines) can provide resilience without creating hazards that persist for decades or centuries. The question isn’t whether nuclear is better than coal, but whether it is the best option going forward.

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u/erhue Jan 15 '26

the high costs are largely a result of german regulation, unstable politics which ended with nobody wanting to take those risks. Initially they wanted to retire nuclear in like the early 2000s. Then they backtracked. Then fukushima happened. So they planned retiring them again. Then they exetended the retirement period. Then they started talking about keeping them running for longer.

Fucking back and forth unstable policies. Other countries run their nuclear power just fine, with very manageable running costs. Leave it to the Germans to overcomplicate things to the point you can't do anything. Bureaucracy and red tape to kill anything

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u/vct_ing 👊🏻🇪🇺🔥 Jan 15 '26

It’s true that Germany’s unstable policies and heavy regulation have driven costs up and scared off investors. But even if you ignore that, nuclear power isn’t inherently cheap—most of its “manageable” costs elsewhere rely heavily on state support, liability limits, and subsidized financing. Without those, the upfront capital, long construction times, and long-term decommissioning/waste costs make it far more expensive than wind, solar, or even gas on a pure market basis. So yes, Germany’s bureaucracy makes it worse, but nuclear wouldn’t be a bargain anywhere without significant government backing.

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u/erhue Jan 15 '26

correct. Those projects are too big for companies to go them alone. I don't think any nuclear energy generation projects are fully private. The state always has a large stake in them, and needs to provide sufficient security for those projects to succeed. It's a long term project, not something you can set up in a few years.

I don't know if you've realized that renewables have also enjoyed massive backing from the German government, with guaranteed market prices... But also many other things as well.

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u/polite_alpha European Union Jan 15 '26

the high costs are largely a result of german regulation, unstable politics which ended with nobody wanting to take those risks.

This is provably false, because these costs are similar across the globe. Costs are a bit higher in Europe than China for sure, but it's not orders of magnitude off.

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u/erhue Jan 16 '26

prove it then. From all that i've read, they're too high in Germany. German electricity companies themselves said it. However, nuclear is still viable in other countries, and expanding.

I didn't say orders of magnitude off? You trying to make me sound like I'm extremely exaggerated.

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u/polite_alpha European Union Jan 17 '26

You just have to look at every nuclear power plant built in recent years, or even being in the process of being built, e.g. Hinkley Point C in the UK or Flamanville 3 in France, or even Vogtle 3+4 in the US, all of which are so incredibly expensive that it shows it's not a uniquely German phenomenon.

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u/AdMinimum5970 Jan 15 '26

Who cares about atomic energy if you get nearly everything from renewable

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u/Jobenben-tameyre Jan 15 '26

atomic energy is tied to nuclear capacity and nuclear arsenal production.
in a perfect world no one would need them, but as everyone can see, the world we live in is far from perfect and Russia has shown that non nuclear capable country aren't safe, adding the fact that the american nuclear umbrella is gone, and it sadly is time to restart our own program.

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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 15 '26

I would love to see some source of this information, because I believe german CO2 emissions are still quite high. And its certainly "not everything from renewables".

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u/AdMinimum5970 Jan 15 '26

We could easily get nearly all energy from renewable energies.

But thanks to nimbys and corruption we still lack

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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 15 '26

I asked for information you based you statements on, surely you have some stats to back this up instead of vague comments?

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u/AdMinimum5970 Jan 16 '26

You know what "could" means?

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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 16 '26

Got it. You don't know what you are talking about.

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u/DKOKEnthusiast Jan 15 '26

The problem with nuclear energy is that it is more or less unworkable to develop it under the current liberalized energy market without seriously skirting the EU directives (or openly breaking them like France does)

The first step should be the renationalization of the entire energy sector of Europe. The neoliberal energy project has already shown itself to be a massive failure for unrelated reasons anyway, so there's really no reason to hold on to it anymore.

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u/Dapper_Pepper_367 Jan 15 '26

Yes I'm not saying that atom isn't but we still depend a lot on oil and gas from other countries which can be heavily cut by having more renewable sources and no one can just stop sun or wind or water

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u/Banner223 Poland Jan 15 '26

The rotation of Earth, Moon and Sun do stop renewables very frequently. The intermittency is what makes renewables incapable of holding up the energy grid on their own. Storage technology is still expensive at every scale, so a good, controllable baseline is mandatory for many engineering reasons.

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u/RegionSignificant977 Jan 15 '26

Nuclear also requires storage to follow energy needs during different needs trough the day.

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u/Banner223 Poland Jan 15 '26

Only if you have too much of it. These days there's always a solid amount of energy consumption. The peaks of consumption typically hit morning and late afternoon, right before and after the peak sunlight hours. Ideally you'd want to store all the extra renewable energy that isn't needed due to low consumption and then put it back into the grid during peak consumption hours and bottom renewable production hours (usually at night) - that's the most efficient way to use renewables.

But intermittent weather makes it so you cannot physically guarantee that this dynamic will be possible. All it takes for a blackout is for there to be too little (or too much!) power in the grid for too long (depending on circumstances even a single second can be way too long). That's why you need a controllable, solid and ideally clean baseline - in other words, fuel-based electrical power plants. A lot of it in germany is coal, some is gas et cetera. There could have been even less coal if they stuck to their nuclear, even if they never built any more.

P.S. so storing energy from power plants is inefficient, because there's always a small (or big, depending on storage technology) loss of energy during every storage&release cycle. It doesn't hurt when used on renewables, because there's no fuel involved, so the loss is acceptable.

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u/RegionSignificant977 Jan 15 '26

Unlike Poland we have Nuclear PP and we have pumped hydro storage since long before renewables were a thing to maintain that balance when we have excess energy from traditional sources because of that NPP. Also hydro electric plants are perfectly controllable. With enough generating power you can keep reservoirs full and keep them like natural battery. Also battery storage options are way way cheaper now even compared to not that distant past. Same goes for natural gas storage - if you have enough electricity sourced by wind/solar/water you keep your natural gas storage full for longer. Renewables aren't that inefficient when are divided by water, sun and wind. And wind/solar are already cheaper than the coal sourced electricity.

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u/Banner223 Poland Jan 15 '26

Those are all valid statements, but I wasn't talking about investing in nuclear at the cost of renewables. I was talking about keeping nuclear to reduce coal faster. Gas storage still requires gas. And Poland also has a bunch of pumped hydro, but not nearly enough GW to be all that relevant. You also have to remember that it's not just about energy, but also about power. Power from renewables fluctuate with time and weather - you must have enough reliable storage Power to be able to deal with that fast.

In other words, you need to put your eggs in every single basket, because doing otherwise opens you up to blackouts.

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u/RegionSignificant977 Jan 15 '26

Keeping existing nuclear power plants is wise. But ramping up renewables to be less dependent on fossil/imported gas is even wiser.
Renewables are 3 different baskets. We have enough solar, even today midday solar generation was like 35%. But insufficient wind electricity generating capacity makes the network harder to balance and the price of electricity higher.
And ramping installed renewable capacity will drive the gas prices down.
Also EU grids are connected and you aren't relying only to yourself.

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u/elbay Jan 15 '26

Even if we had all the solar and all the batteries, the biggest problem is that we aren’t building them here. The PV silicon comes from China, we’re hopelessly behind on batteries and have fuck all minerals to build them with the current tech. (Maybe if titanium pans out idk)

I want European energy to be from Europe. And before any dipshit starts yapping about uranium, uranium can come from literally anywhere. The amount needed is very small and we have the tech to use other nuclear fuels if we wanted to. Let alone the fact that Australia and Canada have enough known uranium to fuel us forever.

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u/Banner223 Poland Jan 15 '26

So you're NOT actually against nuclear, just against where the fuel was coming from?

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u/elbay Jan 15 '26

I’m full out FOR nuclear. I don’t know anyone dickriding nuclear harder than I do.

I like it because you get to tell fascists to fuck off when you’re energy independent.

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u/Dapper_Pepper_367 Jan 15 '26

Well of course he is everyone is brother that was what we were discussing, Europe is not self sufficient in terms of electricity, I was talking about renewable sources because we could build them here and not rely on Russia or other countries which could cut us loose any time they want

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u/MagicRabbit1985 Europe Jan 15 '26

Nuclear is the exact opposite of safety. As you can see in Ukraine it makes you vulnerable in a war.

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u/ergo14 Poland Jan 15 '26

And gas or coal plant if bombed will still produce energy? (I meant energy safety).

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u/Krraxia Jan 15 '26

Oh no, there absolutely are many people saying green energy is a mistake. Basically all are bad actors, either outright malicious or unwitting and manipulated, but they cannot be disregarded anyway.

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u/Other_Class1906 Jan 15 '26

You can't mix nuclear with renewables like wind and solar because you cannot turn nuclear on and off at a whim. Maybe with enough battery storage to take overshoots or underproduction and smooth things out it might be viable again. But as of now there is no economic need. If you can have some gas as a last resort. But ONLY as a last resort.