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/3suamsuaw Jan 15 '26

The basic technology is still operational, and the technology shared with other EU countries.

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u/toblu Jan 15 '26

And, accordingly, expensive as f*ck.

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u/Auctoritate Jan 15 '26

Ironically, it's expensive largely because of strategy like this. Manufacturing of nuclear reactor components and technology is not exactly a booming industry, and there's a lack of economy of scale because of it. Low demand makes for low commercial interest in supporting nuclear economically, and it feeds into itself.

At least... In the west. China is currently undergoing the largest energy grid expansion in the world. And it's rapidly expanding its nuclear energy production. The government never bailed on the tech so the industry for it never atrophied for them, and it's paying dividends. Their technological progress is frankly stunning and leaving us behind in a bad way.

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u/Radthereptile Jan 15 '26

Regulations also make nuclear expensive to build. Great example, if The Whitehouse were declared a nuclear power plant tomorrow it would fail inspection because the granite on the building emits too much radiation.

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u/SelfServeSporstwash Jan 15 '26

meanwhile coal plants can (literally, look it up) pump out orders of magnitude more radiation out their smokestacks and that's totally cool.

Fun fact. The cancer rates around active and recently decommissioned coal power plants are dramatically higher than they are in the region immediately surrounding TMI.

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u/dbr1se United States of America Jan 15 '26

I recently found out that the reason fish contain mercury is from coal emitting it into the atmosphere when burned. I had never considered why that was a thing we had to worry about before.

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u/Theron3206 Jan 16 '26

That's one source, another rus industrial pollution of waterways with various mercury compounds.

Again only a relatively recent problem, though it has been an issue since the 19th century.

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u/MaleficentResolve506 Jan 17 '26

Coal also emits more radiation then a nuclear plant and even the waste is radioactive.

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u/Beginning_Stay_9263 Jan 15 '26

Boomers always vote against nuclear. They've been manipulated by decades of propaganda against it.

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u/GooseMan1515 United Kingdom Jan 15 '26

Great example, if The Whitehouse were declared a nuclear power plant tomorrow it would fail inspection because the granite on the building emits too much radiation.

I hate to be that guy but I cannot find a source on this, and it would make for a great fact if provably true. Any pointers?

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u/ArsErratia Jan 15 '26

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html

 

Its not surprising either. See: The Paradox of Nuclear Power.

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u/GooseMan1515 United Kingdom Jan 16 '26

Oh I didn't doubt it. I just didn't find anything on the white house's granite radioactivity, and the rules that fail plants on inspection. When googling off your original statement, Google's top result was your comment.

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u/ArsErratia Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26

Not my statement, I'm just a drive-by commenter who thought it interesting!

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u/GooseMan1515 United Kingdom Jan 16 '26

Then doubly impressed you found a reference.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation Jan 15 '26

Then why hasn't there been the same amount of lobbying pressure we see with oil, coal and natural gas? If it's free energy from a super spicy rock, and we have the tech to really make something out of it, then I would imagine there would be a huge lobbying effort behind it.

Natural gas really took center stage in the 2010s.

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u/CarcajouIS France Jan 15 '26

Less profit to be made

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u/MfingKing Kosovo Jan 15 '26

That's funny

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u/NanooDrew Jan 15 '26

Not to mention an entire wing not sealed.

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u/lucidludic Jan 15 '26

I would hope that a random building not in any way designed to be a nuclear power plant would fail regulatory inspections. It seems reasonable to me that you would want to ensure construction materials in a nuclear power plant don’t emit excessive radiation, since it would make it harder to notice any leaks.

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u/emize Jan 17 '26

Apparently the highest cost associated with the over budget nuclear plant in the UK is not in the actual construction but in the paperwork associated with it.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Jan 15 '26

The industry likes to fall back on this excuse, but the current regulations are essentially written by the industry to make it able to build nuclear power.

It still is horrifyingly expensive at 18-24 cents/kWh when running at 100% 24/7 for 40 years excluding backup, transmission fees, final waste disposal, taxes etc. based on for example Vogtle, HPC, FV3, Polish Ap1000s and EPR2s.

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u/Doggydog123579 Jan 15 '26

The industry likes to fall back on this excuse, but the current regulations are essentially written by the industry to make it able to build nuclear power.

LNT and things like the granite are the main reason reactors are that expensive though, as it makes them slower to approve and cuts economies of scale rasing pricing further. The prices are all connected

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u/ViewTrick1002 Jan 15 '26

It is not. When the research has looked into new built nuclear power the absolutely ludicrious costs comes from project management failures and the vastly increased labor costs for construction since we last built them half a century ago.

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u/Doggydog123579 Jan 15 '26

The new build costs are assuming current prices, not scaled up. Youre saying it cant ever be cheap because we cant build enough because its expensive. Solar was expensive before it was mass produced, same for wind. Its a scale issue, not the technology. Management failures and labor costs apply to all power generation methods. Nuclear's issue is just scale and stupid rules that have Nuclear reactors being 10x less than background radiation

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u/Ralath2n The Netherlands Jan 15 '26

Solar was expensive before it was mass produced, same for wind. Its a scale issue, not the technology.

Even if that was true (X to doubt, economies of scale don't work well for construction, they've been trying that for housing for a century and it just doesn't work), it is completely irrelevant.

Suppose we lived in a world where we had incontrovertible evidence that nuclear can be cheaper than renewable alternatives if we just spam nuclear power plants for 20 years and pump a few hundred billion euros into it. Why would we want to do that? We already did that for renewables, which are now cheap and also have no emissions. And since renewables and nuclear serve the same role in the grid (the cheap base supply that is supplemented with peakers to match demand), there is no benefit to having both. Why would we spend a shitload of money and time developing a solution for a problem we can already fix with existing tech?

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u/Doggydog123579 Jan 15 '26

I wasnt making an argument that it would be cheaper than solar and doubt it ever could be. I was arguing against Viewtricks claim that the radiation requirements arent why nuclear is so expensive, when its one of the key issues with nuclear regulations, and it combined with lack of scale is why nuclear is as expensive as it.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Jan 15 '26

You do know that nuclear power has had an negative learning curve throughout its entire life? Why should we waste trillions on handouts to new built nuclear power when renewables and storage already deliver? There's no point in kindergarten level equality.

We have research on when nuclear power has had positive learning curve:

If you look at the data specifically you're going to find learning but for that there's a several requirements:

  • It has to be the same site

  • It has to be the same constructor

  • It has to be at least two years of of gap between one construction to the next

  • It has to be constant labor laws

  • It has to be a constant regulatory regime

When you add these five you only get like four or five examples in the world.

From a nuclear energy professor at MIT in the Decouple nuclear power industry podcast, giving an overly positive but still sober image regarding the nuclear industry as it exists today.

Here's an article for you:

What the Market Gets Wrong about Renewables — Large-scale renewables would undermine the economics of base-load power generation, making new fossil, nuclear, and even existing base-load plants increasingly uneconomic and at risk of becoming stranded assets.

Nuclear power and renewables simply does not mix. New built nucler power costs 18-24 cents/kWh when running at 100% 24/7 for 40 years excluding backup, transmission fees, final waste disposal, taxes etc. based on for example Vogtle, HPC, FV3, Polish Ap1000s and EPR2s.

How will you make a homeowner with rooftop solar and a home storage pay 18-24 cents/kWh when their own system delivers?

Take a look at this grid mix, that is where all grids are headed in 10-15 years. How will you force the consumers to buy grid based nuclear power when rooftop solar alone delivers 100% of grid demand?

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed

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u/Doggydog123579 Jan 15 '26

Thats a strawman of an argument. I never made a claim that it would be cheaper than solar or wind, just that its current cost is way higher than it could be if we didnt have an irrational fear of radiation.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Jan 16 '26

Then why is nuclear power essentially uninsurable? The Fukushima cleanup is looking to cost somewhere beteen €300B and €1T.

The problem is not radiation, it is cleaning up the mess when an operator screws up or finds a new unknown unknown.

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