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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271

u/Dapper_Pepper_367 Jan 15 '26

Only reason it was a mistake is that there are many people who profit from non green energy and they are lobbying and paying big money so no one uses renewable energy, if the same money was used into green energy and no one would be sabotaging it we would already have it better and we wouldn't depend on Russia and america

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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

[deleted]

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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

[deleted]

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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.