Thank you. The nuclear fanboyism is crazy here and on reddit. Looking back, almost all nuclear power planta in Germany had to shut down over the last summers, because the cooling water Was either not enough or too hot. That technology has run it's course and every potential investment is better routed towards renewable, battery capacity or green hydrogen.

In addition, the european pricing for power is defined by the most expensive source - and nuclear as well as coal are power sources that are getting more expensive, raising the cost for users. Supporting both sources for energy is madness.

And yes, tearing down windfarms for coal is fucking stupid, as is hoping that russia will keep selling us gas. Europe needs it's own power infrastructure and has enough potential for it.

I've seen another video article instead that basically says sure nuclear is good on paper if:

• power plans should be 4th gen... which are non-existent at the moment (if not at the prototype stage only) and which construction in case will take decades and which costs are huge and also hard to estimates, even for France who has built a lot of nuclear power plans along the years and has probably the better know-how resources on the matter
• not everyone should go nuclear at the same time, because if everyone does:
  • fuel material market price will increasingly raise due to its demand making nuclear energy production inherently less convenient as time passes and the fuel stock gets depleted, in turns shrinking the offer
  • all known stock of fuel material at the current usage are estimated to run dry in 120 yrs (so immagine if you wanted to convert today a country to full nuclear power it will probably require 50 yrs and last only 70 at best), but the remaining stock will surely last a lot less if suddenly everyone should convert to nuclear energy production

The article and the video are in Italian, so I'm afraid at best you can only translate the written article to your language of choice
https://www.corriere.it/dataroom-milena-gabanelli/ritorno-nucleare-pulito-sicuro-cosa-vuol-dire/f9d58b1c-b200-11ed-8c7f-0f02d700e67e-va.shtml

Not to mention that building new plants can take a decade and costs a fortune - if you invest that money into renewables and power storages you have working power much faster.

Also OPs graphic is a real problem but it only goes until last year where we just got rid of Merkel. Her party was actively working on making it as hard as possible to work wind turbines while investing into gas from russia so with the new government the speed should finally pick up again

Of course shutting down existing nuclear reactors is a bad idea (which also happened because of Merkel) but that decision was made so long ago that the companies running those plants prepared for them to shut down for a decade and have stopped hiring people, the ones working there are on retirement contracts and they didn't invest into future proofing the plants anymore so they were kind of falling apart

Wow I'm surprised to see people are actually downvoting you and arguing about this. It's common knowledge that the cost, impact, and build-time of new nuclear plants makes them a poor choice for energy. Not only is wind/ solar cheaper, it's faster to build.

Also worth noting are the centralization and security risk aspects of nuclear

• Citation Needed

I hate when people say “stop importing it from Reddit” like half of us didn’t migrate from there.

What the fuck did you expect to happen? Reddit didn’t believe that. The users that participated in the site did.

Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.

Although I agree with this comment, this is exactly what the covidiots said. "Just google it". If you want us to believe your controversial opinion, you're going to want to take the time to add the most credible sources you can find to back you up.

not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding

Thorium reactors were made those in the 60s, they weren't pursued because thorium can't make nuclear bombs.

I agree with you on nuclear being more expensive as all facts point that way and future nuclear technology, but i dont understand how we could transition to a 100% renewable energy sector, It would be good if you could give a citation or explanation for that. Diverse and distributed source is how we get an energy secure grid, renewables could help with the distributed source part, but when it comes to diversity the popular renewable technologies wind and solar are very limited, both of these source cant power a base load without batteries (this applies mostly to solar, but wind too has low output at night). Also there is this issue witj managing generation and demand (Nuclear too have issue with this as its not possible to quickly adjust nuclear power generation like other conventional spurce). A full renewable energy grid would depend on batteries, currently we have much limitation with batteries. Mature technologists of acid based batteries require huge areas, and lithium based ones would require rare lithium which its mining alone would cause alot of pollution, and relying on other alt battery technology itself would be a long stretch as its development and commercialisation to usable form would take years to achieve as the same case afforable future nuclear technology.

Other alt renewable energy like geothermal could help with base load (not sure, someone could correct me if this is not the case), but itsnt possible everywhere. The same goes for tidal plant as it depends on geography and specific time of day. With this scenarios if we were to move to a 100% renewable grid then, the price for energy will increase at night time in a way that i think could reach nuclear energy rate.

A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up and possibly contribute to climate change. Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact, i read this on a text during my academics (havent checked the source for this other than that).

is it true that in reality we can only build renewables OR nuclear? i feel like that's not reality.

I'm reality, the world is burning and both techs will mitigate. instead of resisting nuclear, renewable advocates ought to go after fossil fuel subsidies

Nothing you said other than expenses is an argument against nuclear. If anything, the take from you argument is that we should construct even more nuclear, not less.

Ontario Canada constructed 20 reactor units between 1965 and 1994. While the CANDU units are no doubt different from the designs used by France, 14 in 26 years is certainly achievable. This does not mean renewables should be disregarded, but both options should be pursued.

Better start now than wait then.

Scholz is right that nuclear is dead in German. Nuclear is always political and there's no stable political majority pro nuclear. This has nothing to do with the technology. It just won't happen.

Most entreprises, energy or else, are privately run and financed. Capitalism. Nuclear is private on paper, but no one is going to build reactors without governent support. Many industries are regulated, like banking, but they are still driven by profit motives, private interest. At least in Germany, there's no entrepreneurial mindset behind nuclear. Rent seeking business people and lobbyists, sure. But not risk takers. The businesses lobbying pro nuclear are lead by ex-politicians and similar types who secretly want a safe government job.

Nuclear is dead and it's not the biggest problem. The much bigger elephant in the room is that we mostly talk about renewables. Sure, renewals grow, but nowhere near the rate needed. Everyone can see this, the data is available, and we just don't give a shit.

And don't get me started on hydrogen. Doesn't make sense to even consider hydrogen unless you have a huge surplus on (preferably renewable) energy.

It's always too late, might as well not try

Don't worry by 2030 it will all be burned in Poland so it won't count