Germany could have decarbonized faster by maintaining its nuclear power, but only to a limited extent because the bulk of the coal (especially lignite, a high CO2 emitter) is burned to generate electricity in the former East German regions, which have been devoid of nuclear power since 1995 (Soviet reactors were shut down due to their unsafety). Therefore, all active reactors were located in West Germany, and there is no adequate high-voltage line capable of transporting their output to the East.
At its peak (in 1999), nuclear power produced only 31% of Germany's electricity, itself less than 25% of the energy consumed (even considering primary energy, it only provided 12.7%), and by 2011 (Fukushima...), it was producing less than 18% of the electricity.
Moreover, in the East, coal-fired power plants have long produced high-pressure steam for district heating (industry and heating many premises), which a remote reactor cannot provide.
To claim that Germany shut down its reactors for no reason (after Fukushima...) or that only a minority of environmentalists decided to do so is misleading as, in Germany, all political parties close reactors, and most reactors were not closed by "Greens".
Furthermore, this nuclear potential would result in higher costs and dependency since it would have replaced part of the huge coal industry, which is very difficult to get rid of.
> Germany could have decarbonized faster by maintaining its nuclear power
Precisely.
> but only to a limited extent because the bulk of the coal (especially lignite, a high CO2 emitter) is burned to generate electricity in the former East German regions,
Huh? Not shutting down the existing nuclear plants is a pure positive and does not prevent you from doing other things. Such as building out renewables and/or nuclear plants in the east.
For the money we wasted on intermittent renewables so far, we could have built at least 50 reactors even at the inflated cost of the EPR prototype at Olkiluoto 3. Or 100 inflation-adjusted Konvois. So way more than enough.
Nuclear power is well-suited for district heating and industrial heat applications, unlike solar and wind.
> To claim that Germany shut down its reactors for no reason
Nobody claimed that. Germany shut down its reactors for idiotic reasons:
All West German reactors would have survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami perfectly fine had they been at the site of Fukushima. And we don't have Tsunamis in Germany. How does shutting down those plants make sense again? When answering, consider that Japan is reactivating its nuclear plants.
It's time for Germany to admit its mistake on nuclear energy
> or that only a minority of environmentalists decided to do so is misleading as,
Again, such a good thing that that claim wasn't made in this thread. Or are you misleadingly claiming that it was?
> misleading as, in Germany, all political parties close reactors, and most reactors were not closed by "Greens".
Who "closed" reactors, now that actually is misleading for a change. The law that required nuclear reactors to be closed was passed by the Red/Green coalition in 2002. Germany happens to be a country with the rule of law, so successor governments can't just act on whim, they are bound by the law of the land. Oh, and it was the Greens who made the Atomausstieg the primary condition for their coalition with the SPD.
So while it is correct that all parties are somewhat to blame, to claim that they are equally to blame is ahistorical nonsense and quite misleading.
> Furthermore, this nuclear potential would result in higher costs and dependency
The money Germany "wasted" on renewables brought down prices a lot, triggering massive investments, which was the plan. My prediction is that even France will scale down nuclear power for fiscal reasons alone - they would need to build new reactors now as a long-term replacement - but it does not look too good.
> The money Germany "wasted" on renewables brought down prices a lot,
It massively increased the price of electricity in Germany. And the same holds true of pretty much every other location that tried it.
And it did remarkably little for CO₂ emissions, massively increased our dependence on cheap Russian Gas thus emboldening Putin, cemented our fossil fuel dependence for reliable base load, entrenched our dependence on China.
On the whole, "wasted" is putting it kindly.
Yes, the prices of the generating equipment have come down from truly astronomical to only "not competitive without massive subsidies".
Had we spend the same money on nuclear power plants, we would have long been done with the decarbonization of our electricity sector, and probably well into the electrification and ensuing decarbonization of the other sectors as well.
Except we would have found it difficult to spend that much on nuclear power plants, because even at the price of the messed up EPR prototypes, the same money would have bought us over 50 reactors. At the price of the first three Konvois, around 100, adjusted for inflation and some increases. But when you build 50-100 reactors of the same kind (that's important: don't make every new one different like we used to do), the cost does go down.
France is increasing its fission fleet again, after repealing a law that made such expansion illegal beyond the then existing generating capacity 63.2 GW.
The goal of a reduction of the nuclear share to below 50% was also repealed. I do believe that the share of nuclear in France will decrease somewhat, because intermittent renewables can let the nuclear plants run at higher efficiencies by taking up some of the variability that is currently handled by the nuclear plants.
Come, please do not repeat all this nonsense from the tabloids. First, you need to specify what prices you talk about. If you talk about household prices, then yes those increased. This, btw, was also intentional. The system was designed in this way to encourage energy conservation. It certainly got too far, but this is largely a political issue. In France prices were kept low artificially (which did not help the nuclear industry!). So these prices do tell you exactly nothing about the merits of the technology, and more about politics.
That reliance on Russian gas was increased is complete BS. Only a very small amount of gas which is imported is used for electricity production (10% or so) and it is certainly not true that this (relatively small) amount increased. In 2024, 80 TWh of electricity were produced from gas. In 2010 it was 90 TWh. In that time frame, renewables increased from 105 TWh to 285 TWh. 1.
CO2 emissions went down with roll-out of renewables exactly as expected2) Coal use for electricity production went down from 263 TWh in 2010 to 107 TWh in 2024. In fact, CO2 emission went down faster than planned which is the reason Germany still managed to meet climate targets despite other sectors (heating and transportation) not meeting their targets. That Co2 emissions for electricity production are still higher compared to some others is that there is still a lot of coal in the system (and electricity from that was already exported a lot until recently). But once coal is pushed out completely then this will be gone. The only real conclusion here is that the energy transition was started to late and is not fast enough. The past, nobody can change, but it would certainly be much slower when building nuclear plants now.
France wants to double down on nuclear for political reasons and my prediction is that they will fail because they can not afford it. They have huge fiscal problems and they did not invest enough to renew their nuclear fleet in the past, sold electricity too cheap (so could not build up reserves), and would now have to invest a lot, but their nuclear industry is in a horrible state and their state dept is out of control already.
The "Russian gas" argument is so grotesque also because Germany quickly stopped important gas from Russia after the start of the attack on Ukraine, but neither Europe nor the US has stopped importing nuclear fuel from Russia.
> Had we spend the same money on nuclear power plants
France ("Flamanville-3" reactor) and the US (Vogtle, VS Summer) did so, and it failed.
> Except we would have found it difficult to spend that much on nuclear power plants, because even at the price of the messed up EPR prototypes, the same money would have bought us over 50 reactors.
Once more: source? The most serious allegations published state about official investments previsions until 2050, and not only for renewables (grid maintenance is a)
> don't make every new one different like we used to do
... therefore if a potentially dangerous defect is discovered you will have to shut them down all. No more juice, yay! It nearly happened in France recently, and the shock was alleviated by the fact that the fleet is NOT made of identical reactors, and therefore a fair part could produce.
Not really. The last project (Flamanville-3) started in 2004, work on the field started in 2007, the reactor was to be delivered in 2012 for 3.3 billion € and only started a few months ago (it did not yet reach full power) for at least 23.7 billion €. https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/01/14/epr-de-fl...
Even the official report about it states explicitly that this building project was a failure.
There are claimed intentions to build at least 2 new reactors since 2022, nothing else.
> [renewables massively increased electricity prices, not decreased them as claimed]
> We all have to consider the total cost on the long term.
Yes, we do. When you consider long term, it gets even worse for intermittent renewables. Nuclear, on the other hand is a license to print money when you consider the long term.
> I analyzed it for France.
With all due respects to your "analysis", the French auditors came to a different conclusion.
> Nope [to having little effect on CO₂ emissions]
The graph you linked to proves my point: the reduction is laughable. France's specific CO₂ emissions are less than 1/10th of Germany's per kWh. Have been for decades, at a fraction of the cost.
> France ("Flamanville-3" reactor) and the US (Vogtle, VS Summer) did so, and it failed.
Again, the opposite is true. Those projects did not "fail". They all produce reliable power, which intermittent renewables cannot do, at better prices than intermittent renewables.
Of course, compared to other nuclear projects, they were massive failures, but not when compared to intermittent renewables. The standards are just so different.
And your reasoning is also wrong: those projects "failed" (relative to other nuclear projects) precisely because far too little was being built. They are all First of a Kind (FOAK) builds, and built in countries that built little to no new nuclear in the last 20-40 years.
FOAK builds are slow and expensive (and slow is extra expensive, as most of the cost is financing, i.e. interest payments). NOAK builds tend to go much quicker and be a lot cheaper. As an example, China builds much faster and cheaper. People incorrectly claim this is because they skimp on safety, labor, tech etc.
Not true. Their first AP-1000 took 9 years, almost as long as Vogtles, especially when you take into account the COVID years. They are now building their version in 5 years. Essentially the same reactor, certainly the same country. Half the time.
FOAK vs. NOAK is the ticket.
> .. therefore if a potentially dangerous defect is discovered you will have to shut them down all.
France's primary problem was lack of maintenance due to the de-emphasis of nuclear during the Mitterand years and deferred maintenance during COVID.
And you don't build just one kind. Build 2-3 kinds and 10-20 of each.
Oh, and don't build them too quick. These things last for 100 years, so to achieve steady state you can't build out your entire fleet in 10-20 years, because then you industry has nothing to build for the next 80-90 years and withers.
> Even the official report about it states explicitly that this building project was a failure.
No it didn't. Relative to the standards of nuclear power plants it was horrific. But even under fairly negative assumptions for the price of electricity it will have "modest" profitability. Which, once again, is better than the best intermittent renewables projects.
And FV3 is not "the nuclear industry". It is that particular project.
> There are claimed intentions to build at least 2 new reactors since 2022, nothing else.
That is false. The current plan is to build 6 EPR2 and later on to build 8 more. Sites have been selected for the first 6, and engineering contracts for the first 2 have been awarded to the tune of several billion €.
If that's "nothing", then can I have just a bit of that "nothing" from you? Can send you my bank details.
> When you consider long term, it gets even worse for intermittent renewables. Nuclear, on the other hand is a license to print money
Non-backed-up nonsense.
> With all due respects to your "analysis", the French auditors came to a different conclusion.
Once again: source?
The reality is that the French Cour of Audit officially declared 5 years ago that there could be no more nuclear project without a financial direct public guarantee. Proof: https://www.challenges.fr/top-news/nucleaire-la-cour-des-com...
> The graph you linked to proves my point: the reduction is laughable
Nope, 538 geqCO2/KWh (2013) to 344 (2024) with a huge coal industry which cannot be quickly phased out and while shutting down all nuclear reactors is very good.
> France's specific CO₂ emissions are less than 1/10th of Germany's per kWh.
> and built in countries that built little to no new nuclear in the last 20-40 years.
The projects started 15 to 25 years ago, just a few years after the last reactor built before them. Moreover those nations have active reactors fleets and massive public nuclear R&D budgets, therefore the fable "no-one worked on all this" is ridiculous.
> most of the cost is financing, i.e. interest payments
True, but only because the projects were extremely late.
Very few reactors. Their EPR were officially late and overbudget.
> France's primary problem was lack of maintenance
Source? Not at all. The nuclear authority is very, very picky here.
> due to the de-emphasis of nuclear during the Mitterand years
Nope. Mitterrand heavily helped nuclear, and this is now a well-known fact. M. Boiteux, EDF boss at the time, also did reckon it. French ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rvP1zstk68
> and deferred maintenance during COVID.
Source? Not at all, in practice, as many 'Grand Carénage' subprojects were completed in due time while respecting budgets (this is very rare in this industry and was touted). https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_car%C3%A9nage
> to achieve steady state you can't build out your entire fleet in 10-20 years, because then you industry has nothing to build for the next 80-90 years and withers.
In France the solution was to try to sell reactors to various nations, and
>> Even the official report about it states explicitly that this building project was a failure.
> No it didn't.
Wrong, once more. Proof: "La construction de l’EPR de Flamanville aura accumulé tant de surcoûts et de délais qu’elle ne peut être considérée que comme un échec pour EDF". Source: conclusion of the official report analyzing the EPR at Flamanville, page 31
> "modest" profitability. Which, once again, is better than the best intermittent renewables projects.
Source?
> And FV3 is not "the nuclear industry". It is that particular project.
Granted. Which project succeeded since year 2000?
>> There are claimed intentions to build at least 2 new reactors since 2022, nothing else.
> The current plan is to build 6 EPR2
Yes: it only is a plan. Nothing more. And "6" is "at least 2". Right now we only know where 2 of them can theoretically be built (at the existing plant at Penly).
> Sites have been selected for the first 6
Which ones? Sources?
> engineering contracts for the first 2 have been awarded
Yes, for preparatory work. There is a long route ahead...
France keeps talking about the EPR2 program but the government just collapsed because they are underwater in debt and can't agree on any cuts or increases in taxation.
At this moment to go on a massive spending spree for a dead-end nuclear project is not a very sane policy.
Investing in the futur when you have a hard time creating more value than you consume is exactly what you need to do. Reducing investment is precisely the way to reinforce the downward feedback loop.
If they want to keep taxing the common man, they need them to create more value otherwise to are just taking larger and larger share of vanishing small value.
France does have money; it's just all concentrated in the boomer generation who is fighting hard to keep control. A large share of the debt is generated to keep this gerontocracy confortable at the expense of the youth and future.
Which means you need a return on the investment for it to work. Creating self sustaining industries that don’t need subsidies.
Tossing an absolutely mindbogglingly large subsidy to the 70 year old nuclear industry which never has delivered competitive products is not a good use of money. It is like saying we create value by going around breaking windows and paying people to fix it.
France’s problem is that if they don’t fix the spending issue on their own the bond market will do it for them. Maintaining the debt will be a larger and larger portion of the budget until the only option is solving the issue.
Cutting spending will lower GDP and push up debt as a percent of GDP. But it wasn’t real income when the debt you took on did not lead to productive outcomes. Just polishing a pig.
I’m not sure where to begin. Please stop straight up lying? Nothing in this comment is correct.
In France the battle is over how large the subsidies needs to be to even get started on the EPR2 program. Driven by EDF is too financially weak to take on more projects after the recent boondoggles and that new built nuclear power simply does not deliver electricity at a price the market accepts.
That does not sound very self sustaining.
Regarding Flamanville 3 you are likely citing the report with a discount rate lower than the inflation and a 40 year pay back time, while comparing to the first ever off shore wind farm in France. You know, a prototype as regards to working with French industry and bureaucracy.
For anyone even having a slight economic understanding the writers of that report are shouting from the rooftops that investing in nuclear power is pure lunacy. But shrouded in a language allowing lobbyists and blindingly biased people to cite it.
I also love how the fastest growing energy source in human history, for which subsidies are being phased out as we speak, haven’t shown a positive ROI.
What do I now. All that private money going into renewables are calculated in making a loss.
In France the Cour of Audit concluded that electricity produced by the EPR must be sold at 138€/MWh (2023 value) in order to obtain a tiny ROI (4%).
This is a financial disaster.
Proof page 29: https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/la-filiere-epr-une-d...
I love this. Just pretend that no new nuclear power needs to ever be built and it is economical based on the current economics of soon half a century old paid off plants.
Since the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles and the subsidy scheme hasn’t been finalized just pretend that it doesn’t exist!
They are only talking about CFDs, zero interest loans and credit guarantees! Those doesn’t cost money! Not until they start being paid out! Therefore does new built nuclear power does not need any subsidies. QED.
Or the French were talking about it. Until the government collapsed due to being underwater in debt with a spending problem they are unable to reign in.
We all know the one way to solve a spending problem is an unfathomably large handout to the dead-end nuclear industry!
Please. This is getting laughable. Facts be damned, just ignore reality and with a scalpel cherry pick a few disjointed facts.
> Not shutting down the existing nuclear plants is a pure positive
Ask Japan, and especially Fukushima's residents, about this.
> building out renewables and/or nuclear plants in the east.
Germany chose renewables and cannot quickly phase out its huge coal industry.
> For the money we wasted on intermittent renewables so far
Source (with investments' perimeters and maturities)?
> Nuclear power is well-suited for district heating and industrial heat applications
If, and only if, it is designed for it, and with the appropriate networks. France nuclear does nearly 0 district heating and 0 industrial heat.
> Germany shut down its reactors for idiotic reasons:
Reason: "Fukushima"
> All West German reactors would have survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake
In Japan until 2011, officially "all reactors will survive..."
> we don't have Tsunamis in Germany
Tsunamis are not the sole cause potentially triggering a nuclear accident.
> How does shutting down those plants make sense again?
Refusing nuclear-induced challenges (risk of major accident, waste, dependency towards uranium, difficult decommissioning, risk of weapon proliferation...) while another approach (renewables) is now technically adequate makes sense.
> The law that required nuclear reactors to be closed was passed by the Red/Green coalition in 2002.
Don't omit anything: "The phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010, when during the chancellorship of centre-right Angela Merkel, the coalition conservative-liberal government decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule."
Then the Fukushima accident changed it all. Exactly what I described.
>> Furthermore, this nuclear potential would result in higher costs and dependency
> That is also not true.
Germany burns its own coal, and by doing so maintains a huge sector. By letting reactors run it would have had to phase coal our more quickly, leading to massive unemployment and dependency towards uranium. This is sad but true.
>> Germany shut down its reactors for idiotic reasons:
> Reason: "Fukushima"
QED.
> > Japan is reactivating its nuclear plants.
>Some sing this song since 2015
And it still happens to be true. And only in the weird minds of anti-nuclear activists are renewables and nuclear power incompatible. Almost the entire industrialized world is investing massively in both nuclear and renewables.
And once again: The law that required nuclear reactors to be closed was passed by the Red/Green coalition in 2002. Governments are bound by the law of the land.
Now other governments should have scrapped those laws, but they didn't. So they bear some responsibility for this disaster, but the main responsibility is still with Red/Green (2002) in general and the Greens in particular, because they were the ones pushing it.
It is also really telling that for some reason everyone wants to ascribe this huge "success" to their political enemies...
Fission reactors are not very useful targets in war. In Ukraine, their fleet of nuclear reactors are what's keeping the electricity grid running. And they are building new ones. In war time.
Because presumably France for instance would likely view someone blowing up one of their plants the same way as a nuclear attack. Given their nuclear deterrence policies that would end up badly for both sides
Germany doesn't have a nuclear deterrence and in the event of a nuclear war still might want to avoid having particular bad targets. I'd rather put any new money for nuclear into fusion instead of building large fission reactors.
It is not about blackouts but about the risk induced by a nuclear plant in a warzone.
That's what International Atomic Energy Agency's (UN agency in charge of civilian nuclear) boss said about it: "Director General Grossi reiterated his deep concern about the apparent increased use of drones near nuclear power plants since early this year, saying such weaponry posed a clear risk to nuclear safety and security"
"any military attack on a nuclear site – with or without drones – jeopardizes nuclear safety and must stop immediately"
> They're honor system, which is dumb when you could have browsers not send that data back without opt-in.
Given that there is no objective way to differentiate between functional and tracking cookies, your "technical" solution would also boil down to honoring marking certain cookies as such by the website owner, effectively being the same as what we have today.
(Though I do agree that the UX would be nicer this way)
Well, I mean, we could go the route Safari has, and just blanket-disable 3rd party cookies by default. It's... quite effective (if a tad annoying for folks implementing single-sign-on)
I don't know, I don't think it helps all that much when you are up against Facebook's, and Google's wits on how to circumvent it.
If they can open a port and side-step the security system of Android wholesale, they can probably find a "solution" to the not even that hard of a problem of doing tracking server-side.
There is a problem in convincing everyone on the internet to install a server-side tracking component.
Pretty much everyone was willing to give this away for free on the client side, in return for limited social integration, or (in Google's case) free analytics - server side is a significantly harder sell in many companies, and there is a much richer variety of backend languages/frameworks you have to integrate with.
We are not in disagreement - my point is that is is a fundamentally civil/legal problem, not a technical one. There is no technical distinction between a functional and a tracking cookie.
> and remember the battery with a daily charge will degrade significantly. If it's borderline on release, it'll be inadequate after a year.
That has not been my experience though - having used both an Apple Watch and a Pixel Watch for years on end every single day. Absolutely outside my area of expertise, but I would imagine that you can design batteries to have a much longer lifetime (no of recharge cycles) when their capacity is smaller.
This is a misunderstanding of what essential complexity is.
If it could be subdivided into its own small, manageable piece, then we wouldn't really have a problem as human teams either.
But the thing is, composing functions can lead to significantly higher complexity than the individual pieces themselves have -- and in the same vein, a complex problem may not be nicely subdivisible, there is a fix, essential complexity to it, on a foundational, mathematical level.
You should read the linked article to the end (or maybe you did but missed it)
The problem as explained in what you linked:
> an object-oriented language wants you to orient your code along the rows of types. A functional language instead encourages you to lump each column’s worth of code together into a function.
The point was that the final protocol implementation in Clojure solves this. There is no more lumping. The whole thing is freeform. You can extend an existing record (say it's coming from a library or somewhere outside your control) and add interfaces. Or you can make a new record and implement all the existing interfaces
I tried to translate the article to Rust, but seems that the article's gotcha in Haskell is not necessarily an issue in Rust if we return `dyn OurTrait`, so now I'm even more confused. If anyone could take a look what I'm missing that would be welcome:
------------
Say, you want to write a simple language interpreter.
You have an `Expr` enum (sum type), with say, a `Constant(f64)` and a `BinaryPlus(Expression, Expression)`.
You can easily add a new function expecting an `Expr` indeed, but if you were to add a new variant to the `Expr` enum, you would have to go through the code and change every use site.
You can solve the issue by simply making a `struct Constant` and a `struct BinaryPlus`. Now you can just define a new trait for both of them, and you can use that `dyn trait` in your code -- you can add new functions and also new types without code change at use site!
So what's the issue?
In Haskell, a logic like
```
func example(runtime_val: f64) -> Expr {
if (runtime_val is someRuntimeCheck())
return Constant(..)
else
return BinaryPlus(.., ..)
}
```
can't compile in itself as `Expr` is a type class (=trait). Basically, in this mode Haskell awaits a concrete implementation (we actually get the exact same behavior with `impl Expr` in Rust), but here is my confusion: this can be circumvented in Rust with dyn traits..
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