this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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And water is wet.
Sadly, shutting down all nuclear powerplants to rely on coal and oil power is not a great combination with replacing all ICE cars with electrical ones.
Strangely solar, wind and hydro power are cheaper to build, maintain and cheaper to make electric energy available.
Additionally they don't create highly dangerous waste that needs to be kept safe for a veeeeeery long time and for which no working solution has been found.
What's mostly missing is for the ongoing change towards renawables is storage, but hey, the ascent of electric vehicles comes in handy for that.
Being still in favor of nuclear today is about as tone-deaf as being in favor of still using fossil energy.
Those systems cannot keep up with demand at present never mind the growing need. Nuclear is the best we have weather people want to admit it to themselves or not.
Nuclear is neither able to compete with cost of production per kWh nor with speed of construction of renawables, whether people want to admit to whomever or not.
And the winter nights with basically no light, freezing temps and no wind will stop coming, right? Is your argument that it's preferable to burn coal or oil?
Winter nights are often stormy: wind turbines do their job.
It would seem you and I have very different winters. At -20C, I've never seen more than a gentle breeze.
Smrs are exploding in popularity for this very reason.
Because they don't have to factor in the cost of dealing with the nuclear waste.
This is an error that's been made and still being made everywhere.
Costs are going up regardless of the methods of energy creation. The most important thing is meeting energy demand.
Unfortunately the same can be applied to any equipment that is used in the energy field. How long do solar panels last, how much does it cost to “recycle” them? Same for go wind turbines and anything else. They all have an end of life cost economically and environmentally.
The cost of installing solar has gone down fro quite a while (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices) and depending on your region you can harvest around 1 kWh annually per 1 Watt peak power.
With the price per Watt being a fraction (2024: $0.26) of a Dollar and the life span of solar modules being in the decades, it really is a no-brainer whether you want to install them or not.
While they degrade over the years, they still retain close to 90% of their original power after 20 years and above 80% after 30 years.
They're basically free from maintenance.
The inverters may not last that long, but even for quite big installations at home in the range of double-digit kilowatt peak with annual electric energy procution in the double-digit MWh range, they cost only a few hundred bucks.
The biggest part (by mass) of solar panels is glass, which you are aware can be recylced until the cows come home.
Another big part is aluminum. Recylcing wise the same as glass.
And if you really want to replace them after decades, the amount of material that can't be recycled is quite small and not hazardous. Put it in the landfill.
Wind turbines are in part different as the blades typically can't be recycled afaik. At least they're in the category of non-hazardous waste as well and just like solar panels wind turbines last a very long time plus the towsers and the generators can very well be recylced/reused.
Alas they require more maintenance than solar.
The bigger challenge than finding cheap and not dangerous sources of electric energy at the moment appears to be the storage.
With more and more electric vehicles being on the street and each of them with capable batteries this can be a part of the storage solution alongside of grid-storage.
I choose renewables over fossil and nuclear any time of the day.
Which Germany seems to be, seeing how you import loads and loads of coal and oil power from Poland, not to mention nuclear power from France and Sweden (among others).
I searched for info and there seems to be a clear trend according to https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix which fossil is going down, nuclear having gone to 0, total energy imports going down, renawables going up.
Do you say such a transformation can be done over night?
Looking at the USA in comparison I come to the conclusion that a lot of countries are on the right path.
Your electrical production went from >5 million TJ in 2000 to ~3 million TJ in 2024. You seem to be relying on everyone else producing at times with no wind and no sun. Like cold winter nights when everyone else needs their power too. 70-80 Euro cents per kWh was unheard of just 5 years ago. It's not even uncommon where I live now that you've removed what dependability your grid had.
https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity shows a different picture regarding electrical production.
Where's your source?
Btw. you can stop addressing/blaming me; you have no idea where I reside.
My bad. I mixed up "energy" with "electricity", which is not the same thing. Was looking at the domestic energy production graph (second line graph on mobile at least) at https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix .
Edit: Your source states that Germany is importing 81% more electricity "now" (2024) than in the year 2000. Still "just" 5.8% net import, but seems (to me) as if my point still stands even if the numbers were the wrong ones.
Fuck nuclear... it accounted for 6% of the energy mix (-ish.. taking this number from memory) and we still don't know what to do with the waste. Also it creates further dependence on acquiring uranium from Russia. So no, that did not make as big of an impact as many think.
Why was it 6%? Was it because you decided 30 or so years ago that you should stop with nuclear instead of servicing your plants? Seeing as you import loads of coal, oil and nuclear power from all over Europe, maybe your electrical system isn't as green as you seemingly love to claim? (You're far from the first German I've spoken to about this topic whom held the same position)
Not sure who you're yelling at, your communication style is unnecessarily confrontational. I am rarely aligned with what the German government does, nor was I involved in any of the decision making. But I do believe that nuclear has no long term future, especially if we need to import uranium from abroad, specifically Russia.
Well maintained plants might be safe, but we see how every summer several need to be throttled down because cooling water is running out. Noone has figured out where we put the waste, in classic human fashion we bury it in the ground and hope someone will figure it out before that becomes its own disaster.
I don't claim Germany has green energy, yet it made some significant progress in the past decade. Despite most governments repeatedly making the worst possible decisions. Like crippling the solar industry in the east or handing our tax money over to big oil and gas. Admittedly having to import most of our solar panels from China isn't great either, but I prefer a once of purchase over a subscription.
I'm bothered because your policies have fucked up my electrical bill. Nowadays it's €200 a month in the summer and €1200 in the winter. Used to be €200 in the coldest months when there's -20C, basically no sunshine and no wind to speak of. But sure, fuck nuclear.
Sweden has one (1) reserve power plant. Oil based. Has been turned on twice in the past 30 years. First time was 22 hours or so during a super cold day in ~2014. Second time in summer 2022. Has been running for almost 4 years and still counting, because it makes financial sense to provide Germany with electricity produced through burning 400 liters (regular bathtub capacity) of oil per second. Please, fix your national production somehow.
Oh no, I didn't realise you pay more for energy now. Of course then let's build more nuclear power plants because they're famously cheap to build, operate and maintain. You sound like all my favorite Germans suddenly outraged by war(crimes) because gas prices went up.
Electricity prices regularly go into the negative on windy/sunny days. It's not me ripping you off with your energy bill. So instead of repeating populist rhetoric, I suggest you start yelling at your own government. We need to stop importing overpriced LNG and oil and continue to focus on renewables (for Sweden probably geothermal and hydro). Don't worry, I'll be doing the same here. Europe can figure this out together if we only start yelling at the right people.
Germans are an interesting breed. They see countries with way cheaper electricity production costs than them, and think, "yeah, nuclear must be more expensive".
That's what we're doing. Like it or not, there cannot be a strong EU as long as Germans keep electing people like Merz. Tired of the Deutschland Hass? Get these nukes out of Ramstein
You're yelling at me, I don't represent the German government nor did I ever vote for anyone involved. Quite the contrary. I don't like nuclear for reasons already outlined, you can look up the number yourself to disprove your feelings.
Sweden already net exports 19.4% of what we produce. Hydro is not free of problems, it famously destroys the travelways of eels and other water creatures. Replacing the capacity of one nuclear plant with wind parks fucks up bird life, and allegedly the turbine blades are hard to recycle. More solar would be welcome but doesn't help shit on those winter nights when we need the electricity the most.
One of the underwater cables from Scania to northern Germany broke for a few days, suddenly our electricity was affordable again. Weird how that works.
Got it.