Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal—and why it won’t go back

The article is badly researched.

This “red-green” coalition banned new reactors, announced a shutdown of existing ones by 2022

The red-green coalition did not announce the 2022 date. They (Greens/SPD) announced a soft phase-out between 2015-2020 in conjunction with building renewables. This planned shift from nuclear to renewables was reverted by Merkel (CDU = conservatives) in 2010. They (CDU) changed their mind one year later in 2011 and announced the 2022 date; but without the emphasis on replacing it with renewables. This back and forth was also quite the expensive mistake by the CDU on multiple levels, because energy corporations were now entitled financial compensation for their old reactors.

IMO a lot of this had to do with Schroeder's and Merkel's connections with Russia and running the country's manufacturing base on cheap gas and oil.

As I suspected. Conservatism is the reason we can't have nice things. Again.

Because there was a massive coal lobby and Merkel was complete garbage. Next.

When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren't that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent's faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc

I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.

I don't want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.

Surprisingly the title is not: Germany ditched coal and did went back to it.

Predictions that the nuclear exit would leave Germany forced to use more coal and facing rising prices and supply problems, meanwhile, have not transpired. In March 2023—the month before the phaseout—the distribution of German electricity generation was 53 percent renewable, 25 percent coal, 17 percent gas, and 5 percent nuclear. In March 2024, it was 60 percent renewable, 24 percent coal, and 16 percent gas.

Overall, the past year has seen record renewable power production nationwide, a 60-year low in coal use, sizeable emissions cuts, and decreasing energy prices.

This is my biggest take away from this article.

Missed opportunity to put solaire on the dinosaur.

ITT the church of nuclear energy strikes again.

Let's skip renewables, pretend there's enough fissionable material and start a straw man discussion about coal my brothers in nuclear. Atom.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Instead, activists championed what they regarded as safer, greener, and more accessible renewable alternatives like solar and wind, embracing their promise of greater self-sufficiency, community participation, and citizen empowerment (“energy democracy”).

This support for renewables was less about CO₂ and more aimed at resetting power relations (through decentralised, bottom-up generation rather than top-down production and distribution), protecting local ecosystems, and promoting peace in the context of the Cold War.

The older activist generation deliberately rejected the mainstream expertise of the time, which then regarded centralised nuclear power as the future and mass deployment of distributed renewables as a pipe dream.

This earlier movement was instrumental in creating Germany’s Green Party—today the world’s most influential—which emerged in 1980 and first entered national government from 1998 to 2005 as junior partner to the Social Democrats.

Indeed, the very book credited with coining the term Energiewende in 1980 was, significantly, titled Energie-Wende: Growth and Prosperity Without Oil and Uranium and published by a think tank founded by anti-nuclear activists.

That lasted until the 2011 Fukushima disaster, after which mass protests of 250,000 and a shock state election loss to the Greens forced that administration, too, to revert to the 2022 phaseout plan.

The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Might I add a point on the cost from MMT perspective. So long as there's enough people and materials to build nuclear plants so that we aren't competing for them with other industries to any significant extent, we can print the money needed to build the plants without any significant effect on inflation. This of course is also true for any other plants or installations.

God dam people are fucking stupid nuclear is safer then coal wind and solar and better for the planet https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU here is my source and if you want his ask him

The author is wrong. It is only a matter of time before Germany goes back to nuclear. Physics won't change regardless of short-term opinion.