Is Germany's nuclear exit a mistake?
The 15th of April 2023 marks the end of Germany's 60-year-old nuclear history - right in the middle of a global energy crisis. The country had to fire up old coal plants to secure energy supply in the past year, while other countries continued to build more nuclear power plants. Was pulling out of nuclear energy a huge mistake?
Credits:
Reporter: Kiyo Dörrer
Video editor: Frederik Willmann
Supervising Editors: Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann, Michael Trobridge
Special thanks to: Nicolas Wendler, Hans Smital, Christian von Hirschhausen, Rainer Klute and Simon Müller for interviews that could not make it into the video.
#PlanetA #Nuclear #Germany
Read more:
Do we need nuclear power to stop climate Change?
Planet A video: • Do we need nuclear pow...
Flexibility of nuclear power polants, World Nuclear Performance Report 2020:
www.world-nuclear.org/getmedi...
International Energy Agency report on nuclear power:
www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-e...
IPCC pathways including nuclear power: www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploa...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:01 History
02:15 The debate restarts
04:38 The case for nuclear
08:45 Cost and safety
11:45 Conclusion
What do you make of Germany's decision to phase-out nuclear?
For Germany it makes sense but the timing is unfortunate and yes huge mistakes were made to be so dependable on a singular energy source such as gas. Never the less the time it takes to build a singular plant is way too long to be rewarding for germany we are looking at a timeframe that is between 5-15 years with some horror stories of plants taking up to 20-25 years until they are ready to go ( 33 years for the Atucha-2 reactor which is just embaressing and lets be honest the latest big building projects in germany have not been anything to boast about see airports or theaters that are stuck in horrible conditions and the countries inability to provide for the railways of "Deutsche Bahn".) By the time a new modernized plant is ready the ammount of renewables built in that time will already have outpaced nuclear by a leap. Additionally to this the german pupulation is not in favour of nuclear due to a history of false promises, lies and miscunduct when it comes to politics handling nuclear. Adding to the Tschernobyl accident which blasted nuclear dust into europe striking fear into the hearts of parents that had to keep their kids inside during that time and areas that are still affected where you should not eat wild pickings leaves a mark in families. There was a huge movement protesting against the storage of nuclear waste costing the country tons of money in protest management in the early 2000's and the goverment remembers this well making nuclear not only a rational deciciton but an emotional one. So is this a hot mess? Yeah! but not a nuclear mess. :P
It's a huge mistake
To be honest, I think it's a good thing, the nuclear power plants are not in a modern state (the most recent is from 1989), and if they decided to build new ones, it would take 8-10+ years. We are already seeing a record number of solar plants and wind turbines being built, and they are also working hard to build offshore wind farms. I really think that the pressure of the population (where climate change is already a high priority in every party except the afd...xD) is too great to fail here and to leave the coal-fired power plants on for too long. Germany is in the process of transforming itself and they can do it without nuclear power plants!
It's a huge mistake. #SaveGER6
Delay nuclear closures until Germany has enough energy. Never buy any type of fuel from terrorist Russia ever again.
Germany choose to phase out already built low carbon nuclear and keep coal for another 16 years. Absolute worse decision
Exactly
@@gianlucapistoia8993 maybe on a gw basic, certainly not on a gwh basis. But, as the op said, coal is locked in.
@@gianlucapistoia8993 wind and solar are weather-dependant. They are never going to replace coal. They work together with coal.
@@Flipdonyk There are more green options than the two
@@gianlucapistoia8993 nuclear reactor can be operated for 80 years. If it was constructed in 1989 it means it was only 34 years old not even half the life span. They decided to forcefully shutdown perfect reactors to construct 21GW of natural gas power plant. Germany don't care about climate they fought an ideological battle not environmental.
A nation with the largest number of environmentalists moved from nuclear to thermal power mode feels ironic.
How they think... I believe they have failed to grasp the mathematics of power production; and the implications this will have on their economy. It might be wise to start investing in a horse.
@@alainpannetier2543 however they think or thought, there's a tangible result from their actions: they fucked up and now they are suffering the consequences
@@alainpannetier2543 It's not your engineers that's the problem -- it's your politics; and the policymakers making decisions.
Environmentalists often do more harm than good (not always, just often), here in the UK we have very old, very worn out reactors having their life extended for another 20 years because the tree huggers wouldn't let us build any more. So now all of our 2nd generation reactors built in the 70's and 80's - and set to be decommissioned in the 2010's - will now be running well into the 2030's because the green zealots waited too late to back down and let us build replacements. Four of our reactors have cracks in them that require them to be closely monitored at all times and if one of them were to fail catastrophically the blame will lie with the idiots who stand in front of diggers and tie themselves to trees.
@@alainpannetier2543 I know enough to run calculations on energy models built off of numbers supplied by reports from the International Energy Agency. The real concern is that in areas like the US, the cost of electricity is around $0.12/kWh. When you have a high penetration of wind and solar in your grid -- dunkelflaute start to become a really serious issue that will lead to brownouts and blackouts if you have no other energy sources that can meet the demand. Now... a few years ago, the cost of lithium ion battery storage was on the scale of $350/kWh. I'm seeing newer figures these days that puts that cost around $150/kWh. So the real trick is... to figure out the extent of the dunkleflauten and estimate the scale of battery storage needed from that to prevent blackouts and mitigate brownouts -- particularly if you want 100% penetration of wind and solar on your electrical grid.
To reduce carbon emissions they decided to keep burning carbon. Great thinking.
It was anti nuclear, unrelated to co2 emissions
@@tomlxyz Energiewende supposed to achieve low carbon emission, but in recent years CO2/kWh is rising
@@tomlxyz And yet, the effect was the same.
@@tomlxyzanybody supporting anti nuclear powers is plain stupid, no other attributes
You are claiming nonsense. The reality: 37% less hard coal and 25% less lignite coal in 2023! Press release from the Federal Network Agency See "Bundesnetzagentur" 20240103_SMARD.
Replacing nuclear with coal is like replacing your car with 19 horses because you're afriad your car will need maintenace, completely ignoring how much work it takes to own 19 horses.
You dont have to clean up the poop you let behind
@@tigoes You do. You can't leave horsescrap in the road(not here atleast) and you have to clean the staples.
@@basmca1 From the top of my head; And prevent from disease. And make sure food sources are never cut. And train them. And get used riding each of them. And prevent them from going missing.
@@eyeballpapercut4400 and they die
And if they are injured, you know, animal cares are expensive. More than 10x that of humans, at least in my country
Any decision based on "I'm extremely uninformed and also probably scared" is always a mistake.
Applies just as well to the pro nuclear crowd
@@Jonas-Seiler No it doesn't. You making this statement unironically speaks volumes. The technology has been under a relentless and almost entirely baseless phobic assault since the 1960's constructed out of thin air by environmentalist (when it's one of the cleanest energy sources available) and other nutjobs backed by the fossil fuel industry that have convinced common people that the water evaporation towers let off radioactive emissions. It unfortunately became more mainstream following the woefully mismanaged Chernobyl incident deciding to have a risky experiment done and later Fukushima following a record-breaking earthquake, none of which are the fault of the technology itself.
@@Jonas-Seiler Nuclear energy is the only realistic way we are going to get low-carbon baseload with sufficient capacity any time soon. The vast majority of scientific consensus agrees on this. Coal already kills thousands per day by spewing pollution into the atmosphere, renewables are not going to replace fossil fuels so what you are advocating for is keeping natural gas or even coal power plants.
@Jonas Seiler not really...
most people think a nuclear power stations main use is to make power.... THIS IS WRONG!! the main /only real reason for any nuclear power station.....is the prodcution of nuclear materiala used to create nuclear bombs.
It's a perfect example of Idiocracy where people religiously oppose a development that is for their own good and until they realise it's already too late
History books won't be kind to Angela Merkel.
@@Lausanamo Almost all the Nuke opposers are greens
@@brownerjerry174 I know. But Angela Merkel should've known better, she studied physics for science's sake!
@@brownerjerry174 uranium from nuclear weapons is different from uranium from nuclear plants
@@jusebacho And yet they oppose nuclear power...
Germany has always been tone deaf regarding nuclear energy, and their anti-nuclear stance easily spills in neighboring countries such as France which put her nuclear industry in a stand still for over three decades. Every time a nuclear piece comes out on a public media such as Arte for instance, you can definitively tell the German influence. I applaud this piece from DW to dare going against the grain in Germany. However, this might be too little, too late as sunken costs in NRE will prevent any renewal of the nuclear industry in Germany.
90% of times when you ask someone why they are against nuclear power they cannot give you a logical or valid reason
Expenses who won't go away, the government has to live with putting budget on waste instead of shipping it to another country. Nobody want to take care of nuclear waste. Garbage is money and the countries trade with trash but nuclear waste isn't possible since nobody would want to ship this high intensity radiation. When nukes were tested by USA they had to scrap the ships since they were contaminated. This self inflicted debt just keep rising over time and the waste is stored in bunkers underneath. With other waste we just dump it and let it rot and problem is eventually solved.
@@robertagren9360 nuclear power is overall the cheapest though the only reason it actually is priced higher is investors wanting a quick ROI and its not that expensive to dig a hole or modify a mine to store the waste in
%90 of times they will bring up chernobyl
@@wowsuchhandleor fukushima
@@wowsuchhandle Caused by an autocratic government that built poor technology and had very low training standards, and yet the remaining plants at Chernobyl operated until December of 2000.
I find it weird a normally such pragmatic and smart country makes a mistake like this
I didn't either, but seeing how much money they were going to make off of cheap Russian fossil fuels before Putin went crazy (well crazier), it all makes sense.
Most germans are not smart
The politicians are destroying the country
Idiocracy happens more in a developed society
@@okman9684 but the consequences are less severe. Bad decisions lead to many deaths in underdeveloped countries
I can understand no construction in new nuclear power plants, but it makes no sense to decommission the ones you already have operational when your energy transition is not complete, and worse - use coal as an alternative.
@@iam5085 not exactly, utility providers generally get paid the highest price any utility provider would be paid for some reason, so gas power is actually driving up the prices. coal power is very cheap overall, much cheaper than nuclear, even with the lobsided carbon tax.
@@philipkoene5345 Then keep them running. There is no hard reason why 50 or even 60 years is the lifespan limit of a nuclear reactor.
@@iam5085 Nuklear are more expansiv than rewnewable so even coal ist cheaper than nuklear if Germany push rewnewable now faster, it can work
Not just that they will immideatly start breaking them down. No Reserve Power and No reuse of the building site. Eventually they will become Grassland
@@gregorymalchuk272 there is because radiation destroys Steel in one of the worst ways (hydrogen brittlenes). they should have refurbished them and used to Switch off some coal powerplants
Correction: The chart shown at 4:42 says renewable energy in TWh. But we meant MW. Thanks for pointing out the mistake!
Watt is a unit of power not energy, so that chart should have different title as well.
@@SmokWawelski4D watthour is a unit of energy you are confusing it with just "watt" which is a unit of power
@@divat10 they said they corrected from Terrawatt Hour, to Megawatt. TWh to MW, not MWh.
Well that correction seems very wrong. I consume about 1 MW (or 1000 kilowatts) of power every 6 months or so. Are you implying that 26 people had to die in order to provide me with the energy I consume if it's generated out of coal?
@@selimarditi3420 well, yes actually.
I am completely astounded by the statement that even in a technologically advanced country like Japan, nuclear energy couldn't be made safe. Like, who came up with that??? There was an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami! Of course there would've been a disaster! It's not like the power plant suddenly decided to mess up. This was not caused by the technology itself, and the risk of the same happening in Germany is basically 0
Japan sits right on the edge of the tectonic plates, they constantly have serious earthquakes, and if you look back a few centuries they had massive earthquakes. Finally, they put the backup energy "diesel generators" in the basement, right next to the ocean.
Well, Angela had a really good deal with Russia for oil and gas…
And the Power plant was designed to survive that. But it didn't. Emergency systems failed in fukushima. Because of planning oversights (redundancies not respected) and cooling pumps not working. So yes Even in one of the most advanced countries man made errors caused this desaster.
@@MioszMichaowski Yes they had. Germany is now loosing its industry, most energy hungry industries will move to China. The "woke" environmentalist make the environment worse and Europe poorer.
the problem with considering Fukushima to be a proof for lack of safety is not that it wasn't a failure - it was. It's the fact that you have one such accident after some 30 years since Chernobyl means it's a very safe technology
The German political elites obsession with anti nuclear is the greatest failure of reasoning in history
I don't think that this is stupidity. More likely they were paid millions of dollars by Putin, who knows perfectly well that renewables will not fill this gap and Germany will have to buy more gas from Russia.
Those are the hippies.they are old and powerful today and thats why our Military doesnt work and Energy is such an overpolitizized Thing. I fear speed Limit on the Autobahn comes next.
The USSR influenced the youth of the 70s to go against nuclear so Germany had to buy cheap natural gas from their neighbor which they did, and Putin just kept the train going
Wow that’s clueless
@@dave_sic1365 dude this cracked green politicians, say they want to stop climte change but leave nuclear power and switch to coal, its ridiculous!
Phasing out nuclear before coal is utter stupidity. (Not counting the recommissioned coal-plants due to the war in Ukraine.)
True
Phasing out nuclear takes a generation, we're not going to start again now. Complain to the CDU who prevented advancements in renewables and storage for 16 years.
In fact coal power plants are switched down in a much higher pace than some new ones and/or standby ones are coming to the grid. Look at coal power portion in the grid since 1990. Coal is on the ramp down since then and the slowdown effect in this process due to nuclear phase out is minor when looking at the big picture.
@@ThePixel1983 well u can also thsnk the SDP and The Green Party for the slow expansion of renewables, since they protestet basically every high voltage line as well as many other infrastructure projects in that sense (on a local level that is). They could have stopped Exit when they took over the government, so it's definetly not only the fault of the CDU, even though it was stupid to exit in the first place. Not that i'm really allowed to talk big about nuclear power as Austrian...
This is more than utterly stupid... And this comes from someone who lives 5km away from Isar 2
Im from Germany and every single person ive talked to about this doesnt think shutting down the nuclear reactors was a good decision. It always surprises me when huge governments like Germany's manage to make such bad decisions. Like Im not even all that big in to energy and stuff, but I was confused when I first heard the news of our nuclear exit. Meanwhile in the government there are many many people whos only job it is to manage our energy and they still fuck up like this.
Dependant on Green Party support?
Well that's because of the 68ers. The old generation was large, and being anti nuclear was a huge part of their "rebellion" against their parents. They fought a stupid fight all their life, and because they are such a large voter block they get their way
Now that they have shut down the nuclear plants, they should use this land to create solar farms and generate green hydrogen and use it there itseld to balance the renewable load.
@@parthhappy it will take 10-20 years to completly destroy/remove a power plant. You wont see anything on there for a long time
@@parthhappy the amount of power generated from panels on the land used for nuclear power would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of power generated from the nuclear power plants
There was a poll that asked the public if they should close the nuclear power plants and 60% said no and they still did it, true democracy we have here
oh my God 😢
I guess we can thank the internet for revealing Nuclear as an actual good alternative to Germans. Sadly it was a little too late.
@@N12015 No, the government here in germany is just filled with incompetent old people who never hold up their promises. Though this a problem that is world wide, here in germany people even started voting for the right wing party who are dumb but at least care about the nation in their own twisted way unlike all the other parties
Germany will serve as an excellent test case to determine what ramifications are present in a real world scenario where an entire country is dependent on renewables.
Indeed. This statement is absolutely correct. :)
Germany is not the first country to be dependent on renewables though, most of the Scandinavian countries are already that way.
Like switching back to coal?
@@krashd Except one difference, population density, is 10x highlighter in Germany than in Scandinavia, with renewables you need to take lots of nature surface to produce "green" energy.
1/3 of Germany's energy is from coal tho
Most insane decision ever to close these plants.
“fun” fact: shutting down nuclear power was agreed more than 20 years ago, along with a viable plan to move on to renewables in order to reduce nuclear power down to zero and start phasing out coal as well. But a few years later, Germany’s government switched to one led by Angela Merkel and her conservatives for 16 years. They decided to cut down any incentives for more renewables and right short before Fukushima decided to postpone any plans to phase out nuclear, but after Fukushima immediately reversed and started shutting down nuclear power plants with the final deadline by end of 2022. Just the brief “break” of a year of uncertainty already cost billions of “damages” being paid to power companies. But meanwhile, the same government also aided any nimby-sayers to prevent rollout of renewables - it can easily take years to get the permits for anything more than some solar panels on your own home, and especially the conservative-led Bavaria does enforce ridiculous placement standards for wind turbines, prevented installation of solar farms and also slowed down installing the long-necessary long distance electricity power routes to bring electricity from the north to the south. The conservative plan to phase out nuclear power also gave exact dates - instead of the market-driven approach from greens at turn of the century by defining a total amount of power left to be produced from nuclear. So - there’s much more madness, and this is not exactly due to some decisions by some Green Party members, but especially from conservatives who have been in charge for more than a decade and now blame the new government for their own stupid decisions.
I mean practical Powerplants should not close to people in first place
I can understand if the plants were old, but working plants with plenty of life were shut down. Talk about an overreaction and a huge waste of money. Energy suppliers to Germany are still dancing the streets to this day over that decision.
Man we had only 3 nuclear power plants still running and decided a long time ago to shut them down, and so we didn't upgrade it for the last decade so to get them back to our standards Germany would have to invest a lot of money. And for the reasons Germany decided to demolish nuclear power plants there is, the high maintenance cost, the dependence on other countries which sell you uranium, the small but possible problem of a nuclear disaster and that we still don't have a nuclear repository. Im sorry for the long comment and the best of wishes from Germany.
So the dependence to Russian gas was much better 😅😅😅
@@Bucefal76 hell no, we made a crucial mistake back then 😅
Теперь будете покупать (атомную) энергию у Франции. Хотите независимости должны иметь все свое. Ещё не поняли что ли?
The amount of money needed to extend the lifetime of the last 3 nuclear plants would have been extremely cost efficient. Nuclear power in Long Term Operation has a lower LCOE than wind or solar according to the IEA
Yes, like the uranium dust you keep producing as a by product of those giant coal mining machines, yes, very smart.
As someone who's just done an engineering report on renewable energies, this was a great short form explanation of the general situation across Australia.
Kyle Hill's series on nuclear disasters have shown that most of the time, it was human error/incomitance/greed that was the biggest reason behind some disasters, and there have been so much improvement to safety and efficiencies so now we are no longer working with those old, super sensitive power plants anymore! Yes, they cost a lot and take time to build, but damn is it worth it
is it though? Worldwide we got a 25% production deficit in nuclear fuel. Meaning we consume several thousand tons of nuclear fuel more than we can produce by mining and recycling. 40% of NATO´s fuel is bought from Russia (Rosatom). If you count in the externalised cost and subsidies to keep nuclear electricity cheap, nuclear is by far the most expensive energy soucre we have availible. And i mean 10 times more expensive than the same amount of energy generated by redundant renewable sources with a large safety margin for periods of no wind or sun.
Ah yes, but now people don't commit errors anymore and also aren't greedy.
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 but coal. Germany's alternative is to burn more coal. REnewables are not perfect, they need to be suplimented but coal is not the answer, heck even natural gas is better. Nuclear can be that gap filler until renewables flood the market and can provide renewable power for cheap for everyone at anytime, this is achievable unless more coal is burned.
@@Brurgh yeah germanies alternative is now coal. But it wasnt until the CDU/FDP fucked up in 2010. The original energy transition planning of the Greens/SPD intended for coal to first shut down and than a slow gradual phaseout of nuclear in the 2020´s when renewables are at around 80%, with the remaining 20% covered for peaks with gas. That plan was messed up by the CDU and FDP under Merkel.
And human error/incompetance/greed will never go away...
That is what happens when ideologies defeat logic and common sense.
@Yo Mama what's the logic of closing nuclear power plants and replace them with coal?
@@yakub3962 OMG IT'S YAKUB
@@MakeSomeNoiseAgencyPlaylists It is logical to turn to green as much as possible, but giving up cheap and half clean energy therefore the profit necessary for the 'big push' is just a fatal error.
@@Mrac-zz8vh Nuclear is greener than wind and solar, because nuclear fuel in the earth's crust will outlast the sun.
It's a very German thing.
Absolutely loved the documentary! It was such a joyful and enlightening experience! 😄🎉
Hey Ronnian! Thank you! Make sure to subscribe to not miss any of our videos. ✨
"Big Batterys are needed" Hydro Pump storage power plants: am i a joke to you
Things people get wrong about Nuclear Power: Its ridiculously expensive only when you have severe cost overruns(didn't happen in the 80s when these reactors were built) or you phase them out too early, which happened in this case
@@Polygarden fun fact: There are many countries that like to get paid for waste disposal. There's a reason why countries like Russia don't have a waste problem. If theres nobody living in arctic Siberia for hundreds of kilometres.... Just export it! Problem solved. And in a few decades breeder Reactors which use the waste might become economically viable. There are a few breeder Reactors in use which consume high level waste but not financially viable, but that might change. Until then, just dump it into Siberia. If you're serious about climate change, that's what you'd have to do
@@PolygardenThe same argument could be made for literally any energy source….. And it’s also important to note that typically when you look at costs of renewables you’re not factoring costs to manage and sustain deployment based for the relative VRE penetration. When you’re forecasting the cost of wind, are you including the cost of transmission lines to carry that power from the ocean or the middle of nowhere back to a city? Probably not….
@@PolygardenAlso I’d argue the costs of nuclear waste are probably not scientifically accurate, given that there’s significant debate on the accuracy of regulatory timeframes for nuclear waste. Here’s a simple question, what is the 10,000 year timeframe for safe deep geological repository storage based on? I ask, because 98.5% of all nuclear waste by volume is made of Uranium 238, Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239. That 10,000 year timeframe shorter than a single half life of any of the materials I just mentioned…… Oh but what about radioactivity? Ok well 97% of all radioactivity of a waste sample comes from the fission product waste. Problem is the very reason these materials are extremely radioactive is because they decay very to relatively quickly. The longest lasting fission products will experience 10 half lives in less than 500 years…… So if the required length of time to store nuclear waste is not based on the materials that makeup the supermajority of radioactivity nor volume - what is this timeframe actually based on?
What do you mean? Of course they do!
@@brian2440 In 10000 years we would have blasted those waste to space if not reused.
The decision was not based facts but based irrational fears. It was a political decision made to ensure political power, despite rationality. Creating further dependency on gas from Russia just adds to the stupidity IMHO.
And where does Uranium actually come from? It's not a solution either.
@@philipkoene5345 when you replace nuclear with a far worse alternative, causing cancer, air pollution, climate change, it's an irrational fear. Termination of nuclear power was done for political power. Not for a better or more safe alternative.
So they should be dependent on Russian uranium instead of gas? Because that’s where over 40% of uranium comes from.. not to mention reprocessing
@@Polygarden you are wrong - Kazahstan, Namibia, Canada, Australia and Uzbekistan all produce more uranium than Russia. Plus there are also Niger, India, Ukraine, South Africa and so on and so on - the list of uranium producers is long. Russia produces less than 6% of total global production.
@@levismith7444 The largest exporters of Uranium are Australia, Kazakstan and Canada. East Germany used to have a large Uranian mine that produced houndreds of thousands of tonnes of uranium. Why burn tonnes of coal and gas, releasing dangerous gases in the air, if you can have a reactor which produces much cleaner energy. Sure, you're left with nuclear waste, so you either recycle it or store it somewhere ele. What's better, some waste somewhere you never go, or breathing in pollution? Edit: Also russia produces 4% of the worlds uranium, not your inflated rate.
There are still countries in this world where logic is superior to idiocy. At the same time, one of these countries has already learned to reuse depleted fuel.
Germany's problem is that they are very misinformed and scared for no reason what so ever. And instead of doing the smart thing, they just do everything possible to not do that.
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany always relied on the power of FEAR, there was no logic at all.
"Nuclear plants are unreliable" Joke of the year😂
romans lived two thousand years ago and the first pharaohs 5000 years ago. We know little about them. imagine we bury nuclear waste that will last 100,000 years and is deadly. You cant do that the the future generation. We in Germany still have no repository and nobody wants it so...And the construction and dismantling of the nuclear reactors is not Co2 neutral either due to the gigantic amounts of concrete. In addition, because of the phase-out of nuclear power, we will not phase out coal later. Just wanted to make that clear. Btw Finland is the only country with a final repository.
Yeah, I don't even know what he means by unreliable, unsafe?. The time to lower its output to 20%?. Like, the reactor isn't gonna brake down and you have to hit it a few times to get it working, there's no background to the claim.
Seems like you missed Fukushima and Tschernobyl and all the devastating consequences 😉
@@duckdivorce oh my god its so scary maybe we should just go back to monkey as an entire species and hit walls with stones again. Stop putting emphasis on accidents. Tchernobyl was an error, there are always accidents at first like the first boat ever in history sinked as well. Fukushima was a tsunami. Japan lost an entire city to the radiations and yet are they the ones retreating from the nuclear ? No its a fucking european country that has 0 chance to have the same thing happen to them that cower in fear.
@@duckdivorce that's not a case of reliability, that's a case of a very bad design being misused (Chernobyl, an experiment being conducted on a plant with no proper containment structure and a large positive void co-efficient) or in the case of Fukushima, being hit by an exceptionally large natural disaster with a sea wall that was built too small to adequate protect against the Tsunami. If Chernobyl had not been of such a criminally bad plant design being misused, or if the plant at Fukushima had had adequate protections against tsunamis then neither would have occurred. Keep in mind that the Onagawa nuclear power plant in japan was closer to the epicentre of the earthquake and yet was left unscathed and shut down smoothly due to having a sea wall triple the height of the Fukushima one, and for being wisely sited on higher ground. It is in no way inevitable that nuclear plants will melt down, and very rare that they do. Global warming on the other hand could very well be inevitable if we don't take action, and unlike nuclear the effects will not be localised...
Fore some reason, I feel that Germany is an incredibly rigid country in terms of adaptability.
Well they are known for using old equipment like fax still and many of their government agencies still require citizens to provide information with paper instead of digitally. They are efficient though
Germany is a technological advanced country with pragmatic people. Modern coal power stations are much cleaner than they used to be. They are cheap form of short term solution while the renewables are filling out the demands, and can be great fillers later on.
@@madsam0320 no. Coal will never ever be anywhere near acceptable. It's mental to choose coal over nuclear
@@madsam0320 "Technoligically advanced" - stuck in the 2000s when it comes to internet infrastructure and government bureucracy "Much cleaner" - compared to old coal but still another universe apart from nuclear and renewables "Cheap" if you dont consider the cases of asthma and lung cancer which are directly related to areas with fossil fuel plants.
@@secretname4190 lol. no I just don't ignore facts. coal kills more people in a single year than nuclear has in its entire existence. And that ratio is going to get a lot worse once the effect of climate change worsen
I was recently in Germany and was told to not use the washing machine, dryer, or the sauna in order to save energy. They also turned off traffic lights at night in rural areas and you have to “yield to the busiest road.” Very disappointing
Probably has more to do with the frugality of some Germans.
But they won't stop using their carbon-intensive cars, flying to Mayorca, Israel and India, or still consuming so much meat.
if you are building new plants you can also use thermal storage. the reactor puts out molten salt which can be stored at a large scale at high efficiency and then exchange its heat with co2 to run a turbine at higher efficiency than steam turbines. so you can throttle the reactor at whatever speed it can manage and then the moment to moment fluctuation is taken up by the stored molten salt which can be ramped up and down as needed.
Germany are still using Nuclear power. Just not from power plants in Germany. For example importing Power from Sweden, that's about ⅓ to ¼ nuclear generated.
I mean yes Germany also imports electricity, because the european grid is interconnected. Overall Germany exports more than it imports, especially last year with a lot of French nuclear plants being shut down. But importing an exporting electricity between european countries over longer distances is gonna play a huge role withe the increasing amount if renewable energy stabilizing supply an demand.
Then its hypocrisy right.
Germany imports from Norway and Denmark, not Sweden. Norway has a lot of Hydropower and Denmark has an oversupply of Wind. Both countries don't use nuclear power. Stop spreading misinformation.
@@Aaron_We Yes we export more than we import and we pay money for it, so we have one of the most expensive electricity in the EU. That all feels so rigged sometimes xD and now we do stupid and maybe it gets even more expensive that way.
@@te0nani Wrong, Germany imports directly from Sweden and indirectly through Denmark. Sweden is Europe's largest electricity exporter.
Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
the adoption of nuclear power in favor of actually sustainable alternatives has been the real mistake here
@@Jonas-Seiler How?
@@Jonas-Seiler Nuclear energy is more sustainable than wind and solar, because the sun will burn out, but the nuclear fuel in the earth's crust will outlast the sun.
@@Jonas-Seiler There's nothing sustainable about the immense amount of land (thousands of hectares, that's bigger than Chernobyl and Daiichi exclusion zone) and material needed, and end of life waste stream created (even after recycling the bits we can), to produce power from renewables and batteries at the >90% capacity factor a fission plant can with a just a few hectares of space, including the used fuel bunkers. (really just storing it until the new plants come that will be able to use it). Then after 40 years you take down all those hectares of panels and batteries and turbines and do it all again, and again, and again, and again, for many generations. That is an unsustainable way to power a nation in the long run.
@@Jonas-Seiler you do realise you need multiple green power sources for constant electricity generation? As the saying goes ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’
As a German i can say that yes, it is a mistake.
The phaseout was "planed" in 2011, following the Fukushima accident in March, in July 5 month later the Parlament voted to phase out powerplants till 2023. Yes 5 month not to reduce or limit but phase out a whole energy sector.
Is it not amazing that while Germany leaves nuclear energy next door France doubles down and builds more reactors. We have an excellent opportunity to see which industrial nation gets it right.😊🎉
My money is on the french ngl.
I am a german and i bet my money on france :( These people lost their mind i swear.
Then they should stop buying electricity from Germany because of their unreliable old reactors shutting down for maintenance and lack of cooling water in summer. They are building 1 new nuclear power plant since almost 20 years now and decided to build 14 new ones to replace 56 aging ones? France is already phasing out of nuclear energy. But in contrast to Germany, they don't have a plan on how to replace them. I guess buying more electricity from Germany? Seems to be cheaper than heavily subsidized Nuclear energy from home.
france is buiilding less reactors than it is going to decomission in the next 10 years. Its just a replacement not an increase.
Germany will be happy to support the French economy by buying loads of fresh nuclear energy from them
"We have planned to shut them down, therefore we must shut them down. We must respect *the plan* ." Germany in a nutshell.
True. I guess it’s a German trait. With my wife, we had planned to have a kid in 2019 (back in 2013), we accordingly had a kid in 2019. She has since divorced me.
romans lived two thousand years ago and the first pharaohs 5000 years ago. We know little about them. imagine we bury nuclear waste that will last 100,000 years and is deadly. You cant do that the the future generation. We in Germany still have no repository and nobody wants it so...And the construction and dismantling of the nuclear reactors is not Co2 neutral either due to the gigantic amounts of concrete. In addition, because of the phase-out of nuclear power, we will not phase out coal later. Just wanted to make that clear. Btw Finland is the only country with a final repository.
The problem is that they simply weren't able to change the plan without pouring billions into maintenance work and new fuel rods. If you plan to shut down a nuclear power plant, you don't just turn it off on the planned date, but you rather operate it in the most cost-efficient way until the shutdown date arrives. Therefore, they simply weren't able to not shut the power plants down.
@@greidal That's bullshit. People actually involved all said it was totally fine to extend them. The real reasons are pride, sunken cost fallacy, and politics. That was already an argument against the 3 months extension. Turns out it was complete BS.
@@greidal Forget it, you won't convince the stupid brainwashed commentators under videos like this. People are not smart enough to understand how nuclear power plants are working or how a shutdown is done and why you can't simply keep them running. They also don't suffer from Chernobyl like my whole family does to this day and to our last day. They do not know how it feels to suffer because of an event that happend over 1000km away. In the long run, we will profit big times from renewable energy. Yes, we have to pay for the transition (although the cost per kWh from renewable is way lower than from other sources), built energy storages like heated lakes and even use more coal for a few years, but I'm still glad we chose this path instead of the risk of a nuclear power plant like Neckerwestheim failing in a densly populated area thus millions suffering or dying. I've worked as an IT in nuclear power plants and nuclear research facilities and you really don't want to know how often there are small and medium failures... Edit: The high prices for energy in Germany are not directly because of the "Energiewende", but because our politicians are just as corrupted as in other countries and lobbyism by the economy managed to get a loophole for themself, so the people are paying their share. Also the cost per kWh are determined by the most expensive source, which isn't renewable energy.
11:00 you forgot to mention the one in Eastern France, which is the most advanced as it is the only one that is reversible, meaning we can extract this waste if we find a way of recycling it in the future
10:06 this guy says the solution to the unreliability of renewable energy is not nuclear power because its too unreliable, despite the fact they perform exactly that purpose in france as they would in northern germany, because they're "too unreliable and dangerous". instead his solution is simply, more renewables. the absolute state of german politics
In one word? Yes. Edit - After watching the video, my answer is still yes, and I also agree with the view presented. Much like carbon capture, Grid scale energy storage is non-existent, and I personally don't think that it will be viable in the next 15-20 years to have sufficient energy storage capacity to be on 100% renewables. Plus, especially for a country like Germany, it makes no sense to be 100% dependent on wind and solar. Because of climate change, everyone will experience extreme weather, and to reliably have energy available, both the energy production and storage would have to be at least 1.5 to 2 times the required energy by the country. That immediately doubles the cost of solar and wind and batteries. Base load is exactly what it is. Energy that is available regardless of external factors. Nuclear makes perfect sense for base load capacity. And I am not even saying the "new" nuclear technologies. Properly maintained nuclear plants that had years of lifespan left in them should never have been turned off before that time. Instead of that, we ended up burning fossil fuels to bring more fossil fuels so that we can continue to burn the fossil fuels that we bought. It is stupid. But as mentioned, it might be too late for Germany to turn back to nuclear. Hopefully no other country makes the same mistake. Edit 2 (Replies to some points raised in the comments)- I see my comment has gained some traction, and I would like to reply to some of the points mentioned. For the scale of energy storage needed (why we need so much more batteries), there's the principle of the factor of safety in every engineering class. Let's say you have a ICE car and you need a battery for the starter motor. Usually, the starter motor is required maybe once every 30 minutes. Would you size your battery according to that requirement? Would you double it? Quadruple it? Let's say you sized it for 4 cranks, and the engine still didn't start. There are still things you can do, and at best, you inconvenienced 4 people. You don't really have that option with the whole country. Regarding the Japanese comparisons (claims that I said Japanese reactors were not well maintained), Fukushima was well-maintained, and that is why there were zero deaths due to radiation. Also, in case you missed it, it was the strongest recorded earthquake in the region since the 19th century and the waves were 40 meters high. It was a bad design that caused the backup generators to fail due to flooding (40 meters is a lot to be fair), and even slightly newer plants are designed to be passively cooled and meltdown-resistant, like the ones in India. Germany on the other hand, does not have earthquakes or Tsunamis. Now for the French people having issues with old plants, why do you think that is? Germany alone approved 10 billion euros to bail out Gazprom last year. I am pretty sure that if even a tenth of that cost would have gone into researching nuclear tech over the last 30 years, we would have had much better nuclear plants In Europe. And for the person suggesting I operate a nuclear plant while others operate battery-backed solar panels, you are totally skipping the electric grid and power requirements of everyone except residential areas. Actually, not even residential because people living in flats and city centers cannot run their homes on solar, even in Asian countries where there is plenty of sunlight, let alone Germany. Renewables are good now because we have been heavily subsidizing them for over 30 years. Nuclear could have been the same, and we would not have been in such a deep CO2-filled hole if we had focused on nuclear as well. So, in summary, yes, Germany's nuclear exit is a mistake. A mistake they have continuously made for the last 30 or so years. And its not just Germany, it's most of the countries.
Based comment. 👍
The same forces that paid German politicians off to shut their nuclear plants, are also paying off other countries to shut down their nuclear power plants. Don't worry we will all be equal in misery.
"Properly maintained nuclear plants that had years of lifespan left in them" Are you saying that in Japan they did not maintain them properly? Why would you need such a huge energy storage? It makes no sense. Please read about the subject, you'll be surprised.
@@yakovkosharovsky8487 Japan is bringing back its nuclear power. You need huge energy storage when the sun does not shine and the wind dies down. Even though the installed capacity of wind and solar may be huge, the hourly output is highly variable while demand does not vary. That is what he means by base load.
@@holdmybeer123 even when its cloudy, you still get like 50% of the energy. Wind always blows somewhere. Germany is not an energy island. Plus, you know few days in advance, what would the conditions be like and how much can you produce. there is no need for such extreme energy storage facilities.
It's a BIG Mistake to shutdown nuclear
Putin is laughing in Moscow he has lot of useful idiots in German administration
Let's see what the next 10.000 generations which will have to deal with our nuclear waste wil thank about that
@@vomm Lets ask the next 2 generations about the retardation of us burning coal like it doesn't create pollution and as if there's unlimited amounts of it
@@vomm yeah if the planet could hold 10 000 years of massif used of fossil energy :D
@@vomm Don't be irrational.... Compare space needed to store nuclear waste and a space needed to store f.e. plastic wastes. 1:1000000 or more?
The decision which was taken to phase out NP and decommission the NP plants totally is a milestone, and setting the stage to other countries to do so, when we have the best angry solar, why aren't the develop countries see the potential what they can do by tapping the energy from the sunlight. There are so many countries which has sunlight all year, why can't they install solar power plant and tap the energy like what they did for black gold. Sri Lanka has the potential to produce not only solar energy, but wind power as well, but we don't have the capital to build up power plants, if the develop countries proposed a mega project for a power purchasing agreement it will be a great for both countries. Romello (Sri Lanka)
Vast land is needed Tidal power would be good
The german public is already feeling the effects of this mistake with the highest energy costs in the world.
Unrelated. Merit order.
@@mekabare Totally related, more renewables/less nuclear = more gas = high price in merit order.
The Netherlands wanted to buy the one next to the border. The minister of energy said so this afternoon. So we don't have to build one...
Germany will end up importing nuclear energy from it's neighbors.
@@switted823 Like Italy does from France.
@@switted823 we alredy do
Yes, but only occasionally when the French reactors work
@@switted823yup, do you have a problem with that?
Coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants do. It doesn't make sense to reduce nuclear power at all as long as there is a single coal plant on the grid.
True, coal contains small amounts of uranium and thorium, but it's the air pollution from the ash that is the real killer.
@Marty Flowers yeah, the air quality and the environmental costs of minning are bigger issues but it's the ash that contains the radioactive material released mostly. It's not much but coal uses orders of magnitude more fuel by weight in volume that it massively outpaces nuclear energy's waste production.
From abroad, Germany exiting nuclear feels a bit like Brexit : looking at a whole country shooting themselves in the foot
You missed represented a bit the battery storage at 5:24. You showed a lithium ion batterys as battery storage, but at this scale they are new thing and not used that much. The energy storage solutions that you could have showed were for example 2 water dams that one of them is higher. Because they are two water reservoirs you are not that dependant on a river (though of course you still need one to top one of them from time to time). You pump water from the lower one when you generate extra energy from solar for example and when sun doesn't shine (during night or cloudy days) you can use the stored water in the upper dam as... you guessed it... a battery. There multiple structures that are used on such big scale for storing energy for the grid and i am sad that you left them out. Hope my clarification helps!
4:21 It's not really renewables replacing nuclear. It's more like renewables that could have replaced coal and gas were used to replace nuclear instead.
Renewal energy "wind" can not be planned, thus praying, freezing and losing your job is always an option
It's more like nuclear plants closed and coal plants were brought back into service. Draw whatever conclusion seems reasonable.
What baffles me most is that they could have pulled the plug from this decommissioning strategy at any time they wanted, however, they just decided to keep digging their own grave.
Its like BREXIT.
They continued because they determined multiple times that it is economically the best course of action. This is the one thing you can be absolutely certain about. Making sure the german corporations profit is literally the only job of the government.
They couldn't have pulled the plug at any time, they closed half of their reactors on the day of the decision and then laid off all of the engineers who knew how to reprocess fuel. This was clearly explained in the video, once the brakes were on they could not be released, all they could do was increase the stopping distance by a few months.
@@belarepa I'm surprised you didn't blame Russia too .
@@Jonas-Seiler German nuclear energy has lower marginal costs than German coal, which is what they replaced nuclear with.
I rarely hear someone opposing Nuclear power, but when I do, they ignorantly cry that it's 'dangerous'. Nuclear power is by FAR the safest method of producing electricity, even beating hydropower and solar power. It causes less than a thousandth as many deaths as coal plant do (per watt).
Everyone is quick to mention nuclear disasters but the thousands of hydropower accidents and the enormous environmental impact of dams are rarely talked about.
Hey there! We did more videos on nuclear and also tackled the topic of dams in a video. Check them out: Big Dam Problem 👉 kzhead.info/sun/erh_dLqSjF-EqWg/bejne.html Nuclear storage underground 👉 kzhead.info/sun/hKp-lJmKoqGqeX0/bejne.html Thorium nuclear energy 👉 kzhead.info/sun/ftFvm9WxoopvY2g/bejne.html Do we need nuclear to fight climate change 👉 kzhead.info/sun/bLxpYMWkaHipnYU/bejne.html
That graph at 4:30 speaks volumes.. they replaced their nuclear power with renewables, instead of replacing their fossil fuel power with renewables.. so dumb
Germany replaced nuclear power with coal burning equivalent to the total carbon emissions of 37 African nations.
The saddest part is that had they kept nuclear (not expand only replaced), they could have met their 2035 goal in 2025
@@myg1488source?
If you ever think "Gee, how can 80 million people make a mistake?" - this is how.
Majority wanted to keep the plants running - unfortunately the government didnt listen
Germany is an indirect democracy. So not all of Germany decided this, only the Parliament did
If you think we germans vote on every political decision you are retarded. Like always money and fear dictates politics not logic or the people.
The mistake was made by a few hundred people, pushed by millions and hated by millions. But my country is on the best way to destroy itself from inside. Ditching combustion engines, one if not the strongest industry branch in our country and buying technology from China, ditching nuclear power to rely on coal and renewables. Germany becomes increasingly leftist and I am not saying it's bad, but the way our government is approaching all these things makes me question if this is the country I want to support and continue living in. With the prices of everything skyrocketing even more every year, it is going to be very hard to make a living of your salary in the next 5-10 years.
@@DeltaAssaultGaming Why does someone always feel the need to take it back to these topics?
I remember that this news channel years ago was bashing France's nuclear energy, oh the irony.
What about the CIGEO site in France for mineral burying, it's not officially open but mostly ready, i think they've done some tests and are only waiting for the authorisation.
Like blowing out the candle before first checking the light switch
I’m surprised that at 7:52 the point wasn’t made that this flux in excess energy could be used to produce hydrogen instead of turning it off, it’s pretty clear by now that any road towards zero will need hydrogen for heavy industry. Instead of a presenting it as a weakness this excess energy should be seen as an opportunity.
Or to export cheap power to other countries like Norway, instead of trying to suck us dry. If we could, the new and big power cable would probably had been shut down, since the power mainly goes out of Norway instead of going both ways. This means that we now have to pay dearly for our (formerly) plentiful hydropower.
the irony is the cleanest hydrogen production comes from red hydrogen which comes from nuclear reactors.
That is a great idea but you would need to first build some very big hydrogen plants for that, the concept is solid(minus the energy loss in the conversion between electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity) but it's very new so no one has built one of these yet, China, India, Spain, and others are planning to build some to test the concept but the best estimates are that they will be probably online and operational for 2028~2035 that its some 5 to 12 years into the future and maybe a couple more years to refine the designs of the plants, so if the germans want it they better start now
@@PianoWolfg nuclear plants produce hydrogen as a byproduct dude
It is very expensive to build an electrolyzer that only operates on excess solar and wind energy. It would only run a fraction of the time, making it inefficient and costly.
Well Fukushima probably wouldn't have been as severe if they had place the backup power in a spot well away from water and able to withstand earthquakes because the main cause for it failing was because they were placed in a vulnerable area in the reactor to which it can flood and fail if you have a spot where earthquakes and tsunamis are often you need to have everything structured in a way to defend from structure damage and away from getting flooded by water including the backup power, it's that design flaw that Fukushima had occured
Yes, thanks for listening to my TED talk.
Short answer:yes. Long answer:yeees.
5:22 I was planning on commenting about this but you covered it yourself! This is why I think Germany’s plan to ditch nuclear was a bad idea even before the 2022/2023 energy crisis. Because they were ditching it in favor of natural gas which is a fossil fuel! We really can’t afford to start ditching nuclear until we get fossil fuel energy sources to 20% or less of our energy makeup.
@@gianlucapistoia8993 the main reason they are old is people stopped building them so the mass manufacturing of the parts stopped. If well managed there could be a point where a reactor is being built as another is being decommissioned and they complete within a few months of each other.
I hope climate activists can do something about this. Germans are really doubling down on fossil fuels being the future it seems, their veto to stop the EU 2035 fossil fuel car ban etc. Keeping nuclear plants up and running is a huge help on climate and seriously helps. Hopefully someday Germans can get rid of coal and fossil fuels too, but this news is shocking
@@gianlucapistoia8993 they are in a much better position than Germany climate wise, produce much less CO2 and aren’t as hypocritical
@@gianlucapistoia8993 A fission plant can be safely relicensed out to almost 100 years, one made in 1989 is not old. What Germany mainly wanted was to cut costs, and being that Germany hasn't always been a big fan of nuclear technology, all the way back from when it was even a thing in the early 20th century, they didn't have a strong domestic fission program, a lot of the fission technology and policy/governance basis at the time came from France, Japan, UK and the USA. Then enter the very strong fossil fuel lobby in Germany trying to get the Nord Stream pipelines through and a gas based power grid makes more sense than such a power hungry country wanting run on renewable and battery tech that is nascent at best. After all it was the immense fossil fuel lobby that was ultimately responsible for bringing the advancement of fission power in USA to a crawl.
@@gianlucapistoia8993 France is actually in a very good place with their plants
Unfortunately, you have overlooked transmutation, which is being researched in Mol, Belgium. There, nuclear waste is bombarded with a particle beam in a reactor and the energy produced by the subsequent decay of the nuclei can be used. This reaction ends immediately when the particle beam is switched off, so that an uncontrolled core meltdown is not possible. The remaining fuel then only has to be stored for 300 and no longer for 300,000 years. In my view, this is a much better solution than eternal storage, where, in addition, usable fissile material is no longer accessible.
In the Nuclear debate there are two types of people Type 1: People that support Nuclear. Type 2: People that are misinformed. It's simply a fact that nuclear power is incredibly safe and for a modern reactor it's impossible to cause a meltdown due to new technologies. 96% of all nuclear waste can be recycled and the remaining 4% has to be stored until it can be permanently stored kilometers deep underground in such facilities as that one in Finland.
For every generation of nuclear reactor they claimed that they are safe. And for each generation they were proven to be wrong.
Yes, it was a mistake. I'm not saying they should build more but they should have kept these going until coal was gone first.
Its weird how the Fukushima disaster expedited the phase out process.... considering it was a Tsunami that was created by a mega thrust earthquake. Dont think many of those can happen in Germany 🤔
Germans are a naturally self destructive people
Especially that the death toll from the disaster was 0 and all related destruction was the natural disaster and the plant itself literally didn't blow up or kill anyone because they don't actually blow up like in the movies
german coal companys doing a little lobbying with the then current politicians at that time is why it happend -_-
Honestly, given the "expertise" of the German green party, they might believe a Tsunami in germany to be a likely Event.
Well Tokyo Electric was run by arrogant morons, they have been told numerous times to move the emergency generators. Especially since that region is known for tsunamis and earthquakes
No new plants but keep old ones running. The economics will close down nuclear because renewables are so much cheaper. Batteries are being manufactured in mass, something DW ignored.
Love that coal emits more radiation overall as well
"The Black Swans" author talks about how human brain disproportionately reacts to low risk but large loss things. Germans are informed people. However, the public overestimates their information on highly specialized topics. I wish the politicians were at least open minded enough to get advice from experts...
I sure many politicians know, but uhh say this "Green" Party gets a decent chunk of funding from the coal industry so i *wonder* why they're so uninterested in the idea of nuclear
The problem in Germany is the high population density. A nuclear accident envolves much more people than in other countries.
@@martinv.352 It's not really a problem, because it since was found that evacuations weren't necessary and the posed dangers are much lower than anticipated. The old model (LNT) was incorrect.
It's actually embarrassing how stupid this decision is. They'll see the ramifications a couple years from now.
They already have seen ramifications. They'll see more.
With EU makes moving their business abroad easier central Europe would see German industries move there. With no natural resources and lagging population if Germany died down they will stay there until they find a breakthrough I’m afraid.
@@yudistiraliem135 No worries. Many young Germans are migrating to Paraguay.
romans lived two thousand years ago and the first pharaohs 5000 years ago. We know little about them. imagine we bury nuclear waste that will last 100,000 years and is deadly. You cant do that the the future generation. We in Germany still have no repository and nobody wants it so...And the construction and dismantling of the nuclear reactors is not Co2 neutral either due to the gigantic amounts of concrete. In addition, because of the phase-out of nuclear power, we will not phase out coal later. Just wanted to make that clear. Btw Finland is the only country with a final repository.
Like when they laughed at trump for saying they were relying to much on russian oil
As a german i can say that i dont agree with the governments decision to shut down AKWs (Atomkraftwerke) Nuclear Power Plants. But thats not just me who's thinking it, a lot of my friends think that this was a mistake too and only the future will show how we're gonna deal with it when the Coal, Gas and Oil Powered plants have to shut down,...
Batteries are not a suitable storage solution for centralized large scale energy storage. You can just use water for that.
Personally I like milk. The creamy texture that caresses your mouth walls when drunk plain or with a bit of chocolate flavored powder mixed in feels otherworldly. Also Germany's decison to phase out already built nuclear plants for the single reason of "uwu i feewl scawed😦🥺" was a historic L move. And then they dug themselves deeper by using the worst type of coal, that too mined by literally destroying towns where people lived.
milk
I love milk too, especially the taste and texture. My personal favourite are chocolate, strawberry, and malt flavour. But just the milk itself is already delicious. I don't know much about nuclear and coal, but I do believe that blacc roccs produce more co2 than nuks
@@ded4700 I drink a lot of milk. My favorite milk is plain milk. Well, uranium oxide is also black. Though it produces whopping 0 grams of CO2 per tonn of fuel, while burning coal produces 3.6 tons of CO2 per tonn of fuel.
Milk smells like private parts
There's a word for how we innovate in Germany. "Herbeiteuern" ( = to force alternative solutions by making the status quo absurdly expensive, while not necessarily having an economically viable alternative or strategy ready).
So thats why they've been dependent on import from the Nordic countries. Without that it would have been very dark and cold in Germany since the Russian gas stopped.
@@rogerbjorkman4650what you don't understand is that we export more energy than we import, because the whole f*cking European market is interconnected
@@philipkoene5345 But when that comes at the cost of being belittled by its allies, and making it's northern nabours furious, it's a diplomatic disaster. When you sacrifice long-term diplomatic relations over domestic policy, you sooner or later will find yourself standing alone. And in this day and age, standing alone is a dangerous road to walk.
Nice, hadn’t heard this word before and I’m German
The sad thing is that everybody is paying their mistakes 😢 even the neighbouring countries receive more fine particles pollution due to their coal mines…
what you want to do dodge taxes
@@alexjackyperson101 what?
9:45 I hear the "risk" factor a lot of the time, but when you look at how hunderes of thousands of people die because of things like lung cancer due to air pollution, the few nuclear accidents are tiny in comparison. Also comparing modern reactors to the old soviet reactors makes no sense, as it is to compare japan - a country with frequent tsunamis and earthquakes - to germany.
Thank you! Awesome mini documentary on a hot topic.
I personally support renevables and increasing wind and solar. The amount of wind power has been increasing very fast here in Finland, and currently there are also billions of euros worth of hydrogen investments coming because of it, boosting the economy while transitioning industries to lower emissions. But nuclear can be an important and good part of the electricity generation palette. Finland's sixth nuclear reactor's, Olkiluoto 3, final test runs were just done and it's commercial use is starting next monday, 17th of April. Two days after Germany shuts down its last 3 reactors. I think it's especially silly to close nuclear power plants that still have lifetime left. Primary goal should be reducing the amount of fossil fuels, coal, gas and oil. The decisions of closing nuclear power plants will make this transfer out of fossils slower. Germany has currently very dirty electricity production, producing 573 gCO₂/KWh, compared to France's 58 gCO₂/KWh, 7 times lower. It's going to take 20 years for Germany's electricity generation to be as low emissions that France already had in 1980's.
We are too many layers of tech behind were we need to be for a sustainably sourced primary future. But the human mind, while it is capable of thinking of tomorrow, is oftentimes concerned only with the right now. Everyone demanding action be taken is always only screaming now now now now now no matter the cost, since THEY are not actually paying anything, someone else will pay for it because they demand it
Nuclear is the greenest energy too .
Hydrogen is straight up waste of energy , it can be stored effectively , sure , but hydrogen needs a lot of energy to be made in the first place , if you don't want huge co2 emissions , hydrogen is not an energy source , it's storage , very wastefull one , stable , but very expensive
Well you are mistaken if you think that all those "renewables" are cleaner and greener than Nuclear Energy Nuclear Energy is Working day and night Nuclear Energy is working if there is wind or not Nuclear Energy is producing Much higher energy compared to other sources and reason why it is considered bad ? bad PR and uneducated people who think that it is very dangerous .
By all means shut down the older plants which might have had safety concerns, but it would have made much more sense to keep the modern plants and keep them operating until the renewables had been built out sufficiently to provide energy security.
I agree that nuclear would've been a preferable transition technology compared to coal. However, since the shutdown was decided in 2011 and the companies planned accordingly, the plants also can't run much longer. The situation is less than ideal, but at this point, I think it makes a lot more sense to just go full throttle in renewables. The problem with that is that certain parts of germany have a really bad "not in my backyard"-attitude that applies to basically anything, be it nuclear plants, nuclear storage or even the much safer wind and solar plants.
Issue with renewables is that they can't provide a constant base load. Renewables are now, and will be for the foreseeable future, more expensive than their fossil fuel counterparts.
@@Touj-jp2dt Yeah, no. Like, actually not, look it up. The base load is a problem, but there are technologies available to evade that. Are they horrendously under-implemented in germany? Yes. Mainly because the previous government didn't do shit and now everyone is in a bit of a rush. But fundamentally, renewable energy already is cheaper than fossil.
@@Touj-jp2dt why are they more expensive? if they arent running we are using fossil fuel. what we need is better storage, if we can manage that it's renewables all the way. There also are, as seen in the video, forms of constant renewables
If you want a renewable transition just don't phase out nuclear. Keep using it until your renewable capacity is at 100% (Actually you would need more than that because of the intermitency so it would be like 150% or even 200)
For solar you need way more than double the capacity. The difference between summer and winter is 8-9x in solar insolation in Germany. I just don‘t see Germany being self sufficient in the winter for many more decades if ever. If we will be relying on other EU countries then thats ok, but we should have as little reliance on sources outside the EU.
@@alainpannetier2543 Yeah. Create it by phasing out fossil fuels instead of clean nuclear. That's logic 101. Try it.
Even with 1000x you can't rely on wind and solar. It is quite possible to have a 2 week wind lull in Winter. To get Britain or Germany through that lull would need 300 years of total World Battery production. The costs would be beyond belief. To give you an idea the World's biggest battery farm would power a ship for just 1 hour. Yes seriously !
Using just renwables for energy grid is kinda dumb and probably not doable at least realistically, you want some stable and peaker sources of power to get more efficient grid.
Nuclear is more renewable than wind and solar. Because nuclear fuel in the earth's crust will last longer than the sun will burn.
Germany's economic suicide...oh well I'm sure its industry will find other countries that do have functional energy policies.
Even in the worst case coal and nuclear are both equally expensive so the german economy won't even notice this. The only difference will be carbon emissions.
@@kingofthend Yes, German carbon emissions will explode.
@@drharnsaft1005 The data is publicly available. Why don't you look it up?
As the largest European economy, Germany needs vast amounts of cheap energy. If decarbonisation efforts are even taken remotely serious, Germany would also build new nuclear power plants
Putin told them they were moving to fast when your enemy tells you lol
Aren't the electricity prices in Germany also very expensive? You guys should've also talked about that. And my answer is a big TRUE.
42 Euro cents per kWh. Some of the highest on earth.
Nuclear would have not changed the price because It is based on merit order And that is why gas plants make the price And nuclear can’t substitute gas
@@lXlElevatorlXl Then they need better energy markets, which Ursula Van Der Leyen herself has talked about. And yes, nuclear can substitute gas. France operates it's entire nuclear fleet in load-following mode.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Seriously?
@@agnostic5870 yes. It depends on your region, in some regions you can get it cheaper (for some reason where I live it’s still about 25 euro cents), but in others it’s even more expensive. But that sounds like a petty good average
In times of crisis and a war in europe its totally nuts to destroy precious infrastructure that could be useful for some time. As always in germany its not about wisdom, but about ideology.
You said there are laws in place against nuclear, so they would've needed to role them back opening an opportunity for the nuclear lobby to get a foothold in Germany again. We would again not get away from nuclear, it would not be temporary, but coal on the other hand, no one will seriously suggest this as a long term solution. I think it was a good decision to stick with the exit. I hope Germany's progressive stance in this area will cause it to be an innovator and pioneer in the renewable energy sector and become a leader and major technological hub for renewable energy in Europe and the rest of the world.
What was not mentioned in the video is the fact that nuclear energy has never been profitable anywhere in the world. Russia, France, The USA - each country heavily subsidizes this industry one way or another, and it is very expensive for taxpayers.
Wrong
It's a misstake to tear it down before reliable replacements have been added to the powergrid that have been proven to be "reliable".
northern germany produces more energy via wind 24/7 than it could use. The problem is, that bavaria blocked the building of high voltage routes from the north to the south, wich leaves bavaria in a quite unique situation in germany, that it is the largest user of energy and also the largest consumer of gas to electricity in germany. its a bavarian problem, not a german problem.
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 A power grid cannot rely solely on wind energy since it is dependent on nature, and cannot be ramped up to meet consumption demands.
@@LunaticTheCat sure, thats why there are more renewable energy options. And also keep in mind, that "baseload demand" is something that only appeared when nuclear power entered service. up into the 1970´s, night time energy load was drasticly lower than daytime load, due to significant fewer night shifts in primary heavy industries like steel works etc. So if we move back to a more flexible grid usage with lower demand at night and high loads at day.... suddenly many of the problems dissapear. Because baseload is not the reason for nuclear power but nuclear power is the reason for baseload. And also wind can cover about 80% on average, the rest is covered with hydroelectric power, solar power and for peak times gas.
Fear of nuclear power has killed far more people than nuclear power ever will. With it's tiny footprint and low C02 emissions, nuclear power is the greenest power source we currently have, and it doesn't kill more people than "renewables", in fact considerably lower than hydro on a global scale. Look at the Banqiao dam disaster in China. It was orders of magnitude deadlier than Chernobyl. It would be better to use nuclear as the base power in the grid and add "renewables" where it's suitable to do so. I put quotation marks around "renewables", since it's weird to distinguish nuclear from them. The Sun is running on nuclear processes itself, so the so called "renewables" won't outlast those nuclear processes.
How is nuclear power the greenest energy source we have? The greenest energy source are still renewables
@@jan-lukas No, wind, solar and hydro all has an enormous footprint compared to nuclear, which means that nature has to be sacrificed in order to establish those power plants. Wind and nuclear is pretty even in CO2 emissions on their own, but wind can never manage just on its own, and currently fossil fuels step in pretty much everywhere where there isn't ample hydro. And solar and hydro have larger CO2 emissions, not to mention that hydro power more or less creates biological deserts with their large dams. Neither wind not solar has large generators either, which means that the energy system as a whole is entirely reliant on those provided by hydro, nuclear and fossil fuel plants. (The electrical system can't function without those.) There's no question that nuclear is far greener than wind, solar and hydro. I don't know enough about geothermal to say whether that's a contender, but it's hardly ever considered anyway.
@@philipkoene5345 Are you taking into account the cost of the Banqiao dam disaster for hydro then? Either way it's absolutely ridiculous to compare any western nuclear power plant to the budget nuclear reactors of 1970s/1980s Soviet. Nobody in the West would have considered creating anything like that even then, and today's nuclear plants are even safer. Also, fossil fuel plants doesn't need to pay for millions of lives lost annually due to particle emissions. You could literally have a daily Chernobyl disaster without reaching the death toll from fossil fuel plants, yet the ideological blindness in Germany is causing clean nuclear plants to be shut down and filthy coal plants going. It's absolutely disgusting. Reality doesn't seem to matter at all, just conviction.
@@beardmonster8051 Why just one Chernobyl disaster a day? The estimated total death toll of the Chernobyl disaster was about 4,000 (over the consideration of the lifetime of 600,000 people who may have been affected one way or another by it according to WHO numbers - less than 100 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster itself), compared to an estimated 8.7 million annual deaths from fossil fuel pollution, or about 24,000 a day. So we could fit a whole 6 daily Chernobyl disasters into the daily death toll of fossil fuel pollution! Or 240 a day if you only count the direct death toll of the Chernobyl disaster itself. The only drawback is that we would quickly run out reactors at this rate. With only some 420 reactors worldwide nuclear power would not be able to keep up with the death toll of fossil for more than about 70 days if we melt down 6 a day. I suppose it is a clear disadvantage of nuclear power which I have to resign to opponents of this technology, that while it reliably produces power it can not reliably produce as much human suffering as fossil fuels, which appears to be a goal for Germany with their decision. Looking at it from a death toll per MWh, nuclear turns out to be not only weaker than fossil fuels, but every single other energy source we have - even the darling renewables! If you want to be a little bit cheeky like a professor I had during my studies then you could even say that nuclear power has a negative death toll, since modern safety technology and culture is highly influenced by the Chernobyl disaster. So any life saved by our modern safety culture across many different industries and disciplines can at least in some part be attributed to the Chernobyl disaster. Likely many more lives were saved than the ones that passed, although it is equally as difficult to prove as the 4,000 alleged Chernobyl deaths. (The Fukushima event was deadly as well, 1 person died from lung cancer caused by radiation exposure 4 years later, while over 2,200 died in the chaos during the evacuation - not from any form of direct radiation exposure. I think it is worth mentioning since it is often brought up as if it is the greatest disaster in recent history whenever nuclear power is on topic)
On another note, the video's visual identity it taken completely from @Vox Even the reporter's voice kind of similar to Mona Lalwani's voice 😅 but thanks anyway for the work
1:51 Ye, but in Fukushima there were a bunch of different events which made that happen.
Yes, huge mistake, and they've already got all the evidence they need to prove it.
They all talk of accidents of radiation, but all.of those are 40 years old and the reactors today are extremely different than back then and much much more safe
Exactly it's like wanting to ban cars because of all the people who died from accidents in cars made in the 1960s before there were safety belts and crumple zones. Speaking of which more people died last year from car crashes than were affected by anything from the commercial fission power industry world wide since it's inception.
Ah, the Fukushima disaster, where three reactor meltdowns took place, happened 40 years ago. Didn’t know we already have 2051 🤔
all plants are that old. its more efficient to build morr solar and wind power than to build new entire nuclear plants.
Yes and according to statistics, travelling via aeroplane is the safest mode of travel yet they are people dying in it and thus exist the fear of flying Just because it got slightly better than when it was 50 years ago doesn't mean it's way better than the alternatives
"Stop nuclear power!" Stops nuclear power* "Why did you stop nuclear power??" Like... Bro
What people also miss about nuclear is that they are also a crazy heat source not just electricity. Rather than shutting the reactor off for when renewables provide peak power, the reactors could be kept running and the heat diverted to industry and manufacturing that often consume electricity to run equipment like furnaces, etc.
The Dutch are also searching for a solution and also here I see nuclear as the only option. Coal and gas are just hazardous and the countries are in no way at risk like Japan is. So if they do it why not us?
Even Japan isn't at risk, it was a knee jerk reaction due to uninformed public pressure to shutdown their plants and spend a fortune importing fossil fuels for years. It literally took the two worst natural disasters in all its recorded history back to back, along with gross negligence at the management level (the techs, operators, engineers, and supervisors performed their jobs admirably and the best they could), that led to a minor release. The whole situation is blown out of proportion, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were actually bombed and had a much higher amount of contamination than was released from Daiichi, and they are not barren wastes ruled by mutant motorcycle gangs, they are thriving cities.
And Japan's nuclear fleet was, simply put, poorly managed. Just because it's also an industrial nation doesn't mean the standards are the same.
With electric cars becoming more common, and the current geopolitical situation means that even restarting the nuclear programs even with all the cost and planning means it's still better than any amount of renewables can ever do.
another reason why germany likes coal over nuclear wasn't mentioned here, a very big reason is that the coal industry lobbied the politicians to make huge coal deals and expand their coal plants. basically corruption cases that led to more coal power plants