Summary
A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.
While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.
About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.
Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.
Building, running, maintaining and decommissioning fission plants is so unfathomably expensive on the taxpayer its not even believable. They are also super prone to war issues because they are so centralized. With a few attacks you can take out most of the energy supply of a country relying heavily on nuclear power. Good luck trying to take out all the island capable solar installations and every wind turbine.
If someone attacks Germany’s nuclear power plants the world as we know it won’t exist because nuclear weapons will launch ravaging most of the world.
Also you don’t need to attack every single solar panel, just the power distribution centers
As you can see in Ukraine, there is still absolutely potential for non nuclear weapon based war in Europe.
It’s not expensive because they are actually particularly hard to make though. They’re expensive because we made them expensive. There’s so many requirements and restrictions on them that aren’t on other power sources. Some of that’s good, but a lot is designed by dirty energy to keep them in business. They drive up the cost of nuclear and then get to say they’re cheaper.
Yeah i wonder why that could be lmao. Nothing ever went wrong with fission power plants right?
As I said, some is necessary. However, a lot is just to make it not viable to protect dirty energy. Nuclear fission is one of the safest sources of energy, including the disasters and clean energy. It’s incredibly safe, and has only gotten safer. The chance of a meltdown are damn near zero now, and even if one happens there’s little chance for significant issues.
Meanwhile coal is spewing out radioactive waste constantly and has very little restrictions.
Another big factor is that every plant is effectively a completely custom design. Because of how few nuclear plants are constructed, every new one tends to incorporate technological advancements to enhance safety or efficiency. The design also has to be adapted to the local climate and land layout. This makes every single plant effectively one of a kind.
It also tends to be built by different contractors, involving different vendors and electric utilities every time. Other countries have done better here (e.g. China and France) mostly due to comprehensive government planning: plopping down lots of reactors of the same design, done by the same engineers. Although these countries are not fully escaping cost increases either.
You are completely correct that regulation is also a big factor. Quality assurance and documentation requirements are enormously onerous. This article does a pretty decent job explaining the difficulties.
Yeah but this is for areas that don’t get enough sun or wind to meet their energy needs. The make small scale nuclear reactors as well. And cities themselves, being supplied by nuclear plants, are juicy military targets too. If a bomb lands anywhere near a city including the plant, it’s bad
Which is almost nowhere. There can be intermittent issues, but those can be overcome with a larger network and grid-level storage.
Which are less efficient, so even more expensive.
Not sure what your argument here is, because no matter what kind of energy production you’re using, bombing a city is always bad. But it’s much easier to cause great harm with nuclear than renewable generators.
But renewables aren’t being replaced with this, fossil fuels are. The grid level storage is significant and requires significant mining and upkeep for that, and it’s very inefficient. We need blended energy sources for safety, with a mix of water, wind, wave, solar, geothermal, and nuclear
No, renewables have to be replaced by nuclear. Nuclear is incredibly expensive (the most expensive form of energy we have). If you don’t run it at capacity 100% of the time, it’s even more expensive.
All that money can either produce a small amount of energy if we go with nuclear, or a larger amount of energy if we go with renewables.
Grid-level storage is getting more and more efficient - a couple of years ago, the combined cost of renewables + storage got smaller than the cost of nuclear. Nuclear is still getting more expensive, whereas renewables + storage is getting cheaper and cheaper.
That’s because nuclear is arbitrarily forced to be expensive due to regulations and legal stuff. If that wasn’t included in the price itself, it would be significantly cheaper. However, nuclear took such a big hit politically that it increased costs as less plants were built. It’s not so much that renewables are per se cheaper, but rather than nuclear gets artifically inflated. Further, I’m not opposed to renewables, I just think nuclear is needed in addition to renewables since it is better for carbon emissions and we have a carbon issue. It also saves on space where renewables can cause greater environmental impact in terms of taking up space or wildlife fatalities.
Again, weird you don’t mention wave or geothermal at all as renewables that have access to near constant power generation.
There is basically no place in the world where you cant use either wind or solar.
Yes, there are, especially if you don’t want to deforest land. And wind and solar and not constant sources. A mix of sources are needed. That you havent mentioned geothermal or wave energy shows that you’re kinda out of your depth here. I’ve gone to many engineering seminars about this, we must have a mix of energy sources and we must use nuclear if our goal is to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions. Other sources of energy all emit too much carbon.
Wow what kinda propaganda seminars are you sitting in? Did they also tell you that “just one more lane” would fix traffic? Wind turbines recoup their entire production and installation carbon emissions in a few months. PV panels in like a year.
I attended an engineering college for my engineering degree.
And no, we specifically discussed this about lanes and trains and buses etc. Just like we discussed nuclear energy.
How do they sequester the carbon they emit? Do you have a link to an article that can explain what you’re saying? Or are you saying its carbon emissions are less than coal or gas, which is different than not emitting anything at all?
How are you so uneducated?
With minimal storage, gas peaker plants that only run like a day per year and a grid spanning several countries it is a breeze to have wind and solar only. Probably not even all of the above are needed.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/planetary-boundaries-breached-nature-climate-stories/
We can’t emit more carbon. Like really, we cannot. We have to sequester it. Gas plants still emit CO2. Nuclear is fine and works well, and doesn’t emit CO2.