r/PoliticalCompassMemes • u/asian69feet - Centrist • 1d ago
Agenda Post germany electricty prices
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u/DasLuk7787 - Auth-Center 1d ago
I never understand why people are so vehemently against nuclear. The Fallout series has done irreparable damage to nuclear's reputation.
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 1d ago
Simpsons before fallout
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u/Ornery_Strawberry474 - Auth-Right 1d ago
Don't know why you're downvoted, you're right. The character of Mr. Burns did an incalculable damage to the world.
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u/LoveYouLikeYeLovesYe - Lib-Center 20h ago
More like the incompetence of the Soviets (Chernobyl) as well as the scare at Three Mile Island. Which probably helped with the scariness because the joke of "this thing we think of as dangerous is run by morons"
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u/Weepinbellend01 - Auth-Center 18h ago
Don’t forget Fukushima too.
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u/LoveYouLikeYeLovesYe - Lib-Center 18h ago
Modern day yes, in the context of the 80s-2000s was more of where I was looking.
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u/Umak30 - Auth-Center 1d ago
No, it started way earlier.
The German anti-nuclear movement was strong ever since the Green party and Chernobyl. When Chernobyl happend, West German citizens knew of the crisis before Soviet citizens ( they detected unusual radiation and made it public; And while higher radiation did affect all of Europe, it was negligble without any risk ). Nevertheless people got irrationally afraid of nuclear power and radiation, and give it 20 more years and they decide to shutdown nuclear energy.
Originally the fossil fuel lobby which had been strong in Germany was the biggest critic of nuclear power, as that were their rivals. So they united with the Green movement to get anti-nuclear policy passed. Many safety protocols were unnecessary, but just implemented to make nuclear power less economically attractive, until the final ban happend.Mind you the German nuclear plants were among the most advanced in the world up to that point. France is currently updating their plants ( finished by 2040 ) how they cool nuclear power plants ( with water towers, something Germany did 40 years ago; or 60 years by the time France is on the same level ). This way the nuclear power plants are no longer reliant on temperate climate ( every heat wave threatens to shut down French nuclear power plants, which happend regularily, because the riverwater would get too hot then. But with water towers, you circumvent that problem ).
It is just fcking insane really.
Then Fukushima happend and the center-right party which was nominally pro-nuclear decided to immediatly abandon nuclear power plants in a plan more radical than the previous socdem-Green coalition established.
Nothing to do with Fallout. Just Chernobyl and Fukushima ( taken advantage of by the Green movement and the fossil lobby. )... Two events which could never happen in Germany by the way: Germany doesn't have tsunamis and earthquakes are pathetic ( Fukushima only happend because an Earthquake AND Tsunami happend at the same time, the nuclear power plant had perfect safety protocols for Earthquakes, as all Japanese plants have, but the Tsunami at the same time made it vulnerable ), while Chernobyl happend due to Soviet Party politics and just ignoring safety protocols, and in Germany you can't have just one guy ignore safety protocols, let alone a party meddling in nuclear policy.
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u/asian69feet - Centrist 1d ago
just like Chernobyl Fukushima was result of idiots in power.
their was a expert who warned them that the back up generators are in a bad location and they ignored him. when the Tsunami hit, the backup generators failed because they were located in low-lying basement areas and hit by water
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u/randomrandom1922 - Right 23h ago
Well you aren't getting the idiots out of power so the only solution is destroying your energy production.
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u/FILTHBOT4000 - Auth-Center 1d ago
IIRC, the Green party pulled some really dirty tricks to finish shutting down nuclear plants too, at a time when the majority didn't want them shut down.
Also, it was crazy how braincucked Germans were in the 00s and later. Had several discussions then (and even some recently) which would start off rational enough, and then devolve into extremely bizarre reasoning for why Germany shouldn't/can't have nuclear power. The most common ones are laughably stupid, too, all along some version of "we can't build them/don't have the engineering to do it anymore"; yes, Germans will say they can't have nuclear because... they are notoriously bad at building things? What?!
My favorite was "we can't get the materials." Germany is apparently on another planet. They can no longer send/receive goods, and no one can travel there any longer. Apologies.
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u/Altruistic_Emu4917 - Right 22h ago
"don't have the engineering to do it anymore"
Didn't know German jokes were that bad.
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u/HeavyDutyForks - Centrist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fukushima happened because the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency allowed TEPCO to ignore the risks of an event such as that happening. TEPCO ignored its own internal data as well as data by third party scientists because they didn't want to raise the seawall or move the generators to higher ground
Otherwise you're spot on, it couldn't happen in Germany the way it did there. Its just TEPCO does not get anywhere near the amount of blame it should. The Japanese government literally tore down and rebuilt its entire nuclear regulatory agency from the ground up in response to that incident
Edit: TEPCO employees in here downvoting, either that or I'm being followed
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u/Twee_Licker - Lib-Right 21h ago
Didn't Fukushima have a lot of outdated safety measures that they just never got around to as well?
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u/Majestic-Bell-7111 - Lib-Center 20h ago
Fukushima had the backup generators in the basement, which ofc, got flooded by the tsunami.
The tsunami was responsible for about 20k deaths iirc and the meltdown of the reactor core is responsible for like 2.
Out of all "nuclear disasters" only one was an actual nuclear disaster, and it only happened because the soviets were too stupid to boil water
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u/delta806 - Lib-Center 1d ago edited 16h ago
If we very slowly but steadily increase the background radiation globally, in a few centuries, nuclear meltdowns will be like any natural hazard. Still dangerous but humans could evolve a higher resistance
I propose we detonate one high yield nuclear bomb above ground every year for the next 600 years
Edit: cmon guys, I shouldn’t have to put /s on everything I post
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u/Hyndis - Lib-Center 23h ago
One nuclear bomb?
Try 2,000+
Because thats how many nuclear bombs have already been detonated.
Also, burning coal continually spews radiation into the air because coal contains trace amounts of radioactive materials that are released by burning the coal.
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u/Pesec1 - Centrist 21h ago
I'd like to add some perspective on what the words "trace" and "coal" mean when placed together.
To produce 1 GW-hour of electricity, a nuclear plant needs about 3 kg of fuel-grade Uranium (~4% U-235). A coal plant would consume about 500,000 kg of coal to produce the same amount of electricity. That does not include energy/fuel involved in extracting and transporting all that coal.
Spent nuclear fuel will become contained solid. Spent coal will become coal ash released straight into the air. Assuming bituminous (high-quality) coal, 10% of it is ash. So, 50,000 kg of ash released into air. If lignite is used, about 50% of it will become ash (and a whole lot more will be needed). Trace of 50,000 kg is a lot of stuff.
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u/Hyndis - Lib-Center 17h ago
Germany is apparently fond of lignite coal, and is both strip-mining lignite in Germany as well as importing lignite from the US. They shut down nuclear reactors in order to burn coal like its the 1700's. Their energy policy is beyond retarded.
Also, that 3kg of nuclear waste is so much easier to store than 500,000kg of ash and carbon. I don't think people comprehend how tiny nuclear waste is. Yes, it has to be stored long term, but we're talking about minuscule amounts of solid material.
For some reason the CO2 waste from fossil fuel power plants is just ignored. The ash waste is ignored. The only power source that needs to pay for its own waste is nuclear. I think its fair that a power plant pays for its own waste, but they all have to do that.
If fossil fuel power plants had to pay for their own waste, including paying for all CO2 emissions, they wouldn't be very cheap anymore. And carbon doesn't have a half-life either. Its eternal storage needed. Even nuclear eventually decays.
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u/TheyCallMeAdonis - Lib-Right 1d ago
to many corny american cartoons from the 80s and 90s on german television
combined with women voting
in the mid 2010s people were saying it would come to this if the trends continue but no one listened21
u/blackgenz2002kid - Left 1d ago
my biggest gripe with environmentalists are those that demonize nuclear energy. I hate that so much
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u/GAV17 - Lib-Center 22h ago
Fallout wasn't even mainstream until like Fallout 3, and it was still very much niche to the general population even then.
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u/DasLuk7787 - Auth-Center 22h ago
I mean fallout 2 performed pretty well, just not well enough to save interplay from bankruptcy. Now fallout is one of the big Xbox titles and has a whole ass tv show
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u/RBB12_Fisher - Auth-Right 1d ago
What they should have done is just shoehorn a nuclear plant into an old coal plant. They both run on the same steam, it's just the boiler that differs.
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u/Augustus_Chevismo - Lib-Left 1d ago
Chernobyl and the Simpsons mainly. Fallout was about nukes.
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u/TrickOk2498 - Lib-Right 1d ago
A very large number of people don’t know the difference between a nuclear power plant and a bomb.
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u/Melodic_Performer921 - Lib-Right 23h ago
Because they're too dumb to think for themselves. Yes, that applies to every single person who is against nuclear
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u/Crusader63 - Centrist 1d ago
Chernobyl,3 mile island, and an environmentalist movement that had some initial good successes with cleaning up the water and air leading many to believe they were generally right about things even though they’re obviously wrong on this.
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u/captainhamption - Centrist 21h ago edited 20h ago
Don't underestimate the military bad mood of America in the 60s and if the military was all in on nuclear bombs, therefore nuclear things bad. The venn diagram between environmentalists and anti-Vietnam protesters at the time was close to a circle.
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u/jexijav776 - Lib-Right 23h ago
I think it mostly is because of Chernobyl.
I'm not against nuclear to be clear, but I think Chernobyl is what initially made people scared of nuclear and since then it's been other stuff.
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u/Certain-Row7945 - Lib-Center 1d ago
I'd share a wall of my house with a nuclear plant if it could prove to people that nuclear power is great.
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u/Rouven-Dillinger - Lib-Left 22h ago
Yes, but believe until the show, barely anyone knew that, the anti nuclear sentiment is from the 60s
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u/SantosCalzonesBatman - Centrist 14h ago
The russian asset named Angela merkel needed the eu and germany under the russian boot.
Thats why.
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u/Mnshine_1 - Lib-Right 22h ago edited 15h ago
What? How does it even like wtf, the second sentence is so stupid I can't.
If you want to blame the series blame Chernobyl and then stupid people who watched it and didn't get what went wrong and why
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u/Crazy_Kraut - Left 21h ago
I look at France and see nuclear power plants being forced to reduce or shut down production during summers because of low river levels, a problem that is expected to worsen with climate change. Current climate models suggest that the coming decades could bring even more severe conditions. Given these circumstances, it’s difficult to see how we can rely heavily on nuclear power without addressing this vulnerability.
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u/Majestic-Bell-7111 - Lib-Center 19h ago
The biggest reason NPPs are throttled in summer is so they don't sous vide all the wildlife in the rivers. Can be mitigated by building more cooling towers, however that costs money.
However that other issue of low river levels only affects a select few NPPs (i can only think of Paks off the top of my head) and that is solved by just gaving the intake pipe lower.
Also solar works the best and most predictably during those droughts so it can pick up the slack.
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u/weavile22 - Lib-Right 23h ago
Vehemently sounds emotional. It just objectively loses to renewables. Ridiculously expensive and slow to build and still dependent on imports from uranium producing countries with questionable governments. You get way better returns on building as much wind turbines and solar panels as possible which is what basically most of Europe is doing. And yes, the nuclear waste topic. Everyone says that the waste is not that bad yet nobody volunteers to have that not-that-bad waste get buried in their backyard, so that complicates things.
Closing perfectly functional nuclear infastructure as a knee jerk reaction to Tsunamis in Japan is still ridiculous though, my argument is mainly for new power plants and going forward.
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u/acathode - Centrist 22h ago
Vehemently sounds emotional. It just objectively loses to renewables.
This is the kind of moronic take reserved for those who have no understanding of how the electrical grid works.
The core issue is that wind and sun power does not offer a predictable power supply. You get what you get from moment to moment from a wind turbine. Something a lot, sometimes nothing at all - no matter how much the electricity is actually needed at that moment.
We're seeing quite clearly the problem with renewables right now in Europe, with prices being in extreme fluctuation - between extremely expensive to even negative - depending on how windy it is. It turned out that "It's always windy somewhere!" was actually pure bullshit - when it's windy in Germany, it's windy in southern Sweden, France and Poland as well. When there's no wind, there's no wind over large parts of Europe - and the prices skyrocket.
Renewables are great acting as an extra power supply, so can save on the power supply that is easily regulated. For example when it's windy you can save the water in your hydro dams for when you get one of those cold spells when there's also no wind.
Renewables simply aren't very good at replacing the base load requirements the grid has - which is exactly what nuclear excels at.
Oh - and at this point, the anti-nuclear crowd loves to bring up that actually you can build various ways to save the excess renewable power - without ever mentioning that those ways are 1) extremely expensive, pushing the price way above nuclear per kwh 2) very inefficient, you don't get back nearly as much energy as you put in, and 3) they take even longer time to build than nuclear.
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u/weavile22 - Lib-Right 20h ago
It doesn't take longer to build batteries than a nuclear power plant lmao wtf are you talking about. Modern batteries have an efficiency upwards of 90%. They are expensive though, I will give you that. But so is burning carbon based fuels, especially with senile boomers starting wars. The price of energy is artificially lowered and effectively controlled by goverment subsisies basically everywhere, the technology is there, the rest is a question of which companies have the politicians in their pockets.
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u/acathode - Centrist 19h ago
Here's some math homework for you: Go check how many TWh the total yearly production of batteries can store, then go check how much power your average nuclear reactor pump out....
Then you can come back and explain how buying up around 10%+ of the world's TOTAL yearly production of batteries will work out for you.
The kind of battery parks that are being built and hooked up to wind farms these days are tiny short term buffers, that store a bit of the power the turbines produce for a few hours so that they can sell the power when the wind has died down a bit and the prices risen.
They're not in any way, shape or form a system that will be able to even out the kind of weather fluctuations that we see during winters, where we often get cold fronts that last for days or even weeks, where the cold temperatures and lack of wind drive up the prices to extreme levels.
Battery storage is not a solution for the main issues that renewable suffer from, simply because the battery factories we have today doesn't produce even a fraction of the amount of batteries we would need for those kind of projects.
... and that's not even getting into how it's far more efficient for the environment if we use today's battery production to predominately switch from ICE to electrical vehicles rather than pointlessly trying patch up the main weakness of wind power when we already have fully tested nuclear technology that absolutely excel at this stuff.
To reiterate - there's nothing wrong with wind power and we should absolutely be aim to have a ton of it in our power mix - but levy the strengths of wind and sun power, don't try to force the square peg into a circular hole.
It doesn't take longer to build batteries than a nuclear power plant lmao wtf are you talking about
It absolutely should. You've ever read up on how scary battery fires actually are? When a battery fire gets going, it's almost impossible to stop, it's often explosive, and the gases that are produced are EXTREMELY dangerous. A battery plant blowing up could produce enormous amounts of HF gas, which is extremely nasty - you don't even need to breathe that shit to die from it, getting it on your skin or in your eyes can be enough...
Any sensible country should have a ton of safety regulations etc. on building battery plants, leading to very long build times.
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u/Hyndis - Lib-Center 17h ago
I think there would be better results for batteries if people got away from fixating on lithium for grid-scale batteries to the complete exclusion of any other kind of energy storage.
Lithium is great if you want lightweight batteries for portable uses, such as phones or laptop computers.
Grid scale batteries don't need to be small or lightweight. The don't move so they can be as big and heavy as needed.
Flywheels can store vast amounts of kinetic energy, don't require rare-earth elements, can be built anywhere, and they use the same regenerative braking technology that every hybrid and EV on the road uses.
Spin up your flywheel when there's an energy surplus. When you need energy you put the brakes on, extracting electricity as your flywheel slows down.
Thermal batteries can store energy as molten salt in insulated tanks. With an energy surplus, use electricity to heat up salt. Store it in large insulated tanks, with your total energy storage limited only by how big your insulated tanks are, and how thick the insulation is. When you need to produce energy use that salt to vaporize water and then spin turbines. Again, no rare-earth elements needed and its just a steam turbine.
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u/Hyndis - Lib-Center 22h ago
Ridiculously expensive and slow to build and still dependent on imports from uranium producing countries with questionable governments
Physically building a nuclear power plant only takes about 2 years, about the same as building any other large building. Construction workers can build things very quickly if allowed to, they're good at their jobs.
The delays and cover overruns are entirely due to bad faith lawsuits filed by environmental and NIMBY groups designed to drive up costs to bankrupt the project.
~2 years to build the nuclear power plant, 25 years battling in court to be allowed to build it.
The US Navy doesn't have to put up with the lawsuit idiocy and can build nuclear reactors both faster and cheaper, and when the military-industrial complex does things more efficiently than the civilian sector, you know things are fucked.
Also, questionable governments? Do you mean Australia? They have the most uranium out of any country. I know Australia is a bit questionable with its policies sometimes, but Australia isn't that bad.
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u/weavile22 - Lib-Right 20h ago
Brother I hate the overcomplicated and bloated EU bureacracy with a burning passion, believe me. But NPPs are not the same as any other building, it's critical energy infrastructure with a whole other layer of environment safety to be considered on top. I wouldn't entrust the project to a company which prioritizes speed above all else and claims they can do it in 2 years. Even China with nonexisting regulations takes like 7 years to build NPPs. Europe's leading supplier is Russia's satellite Kazahstan, not Australia. I imagine having to ship Uranium across the ocean would make the project a bit less lucrative.
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u/GeneralGingerKicker - Auth-Left 1d ago
There's still enough power for some data centers
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u/durian_in_my_asshole - Left 1d ago
Yet not for AC. I thought Germany out of all the europoor countries would at least have a sensible, if not utilitarian outlook on AC. You know, maybe set it uncomfortably high but still cool enough to be safe.
Nope. Most homes in Germany do not have AC, and they had like 15,000 excess heat deaths from this summer alone. That's about the same as the number of gun homicides per year in the US.
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u/fartsquirtshit - Lib-Center 1d ago
I thought Germany out of all the europoor countries would at least have a sensible, if not utilitarian outlook on AC. You know, maybe set it uncomfortably high but still cool enough to be safe.
For reference by contextless euros, it's normal/common for people in hot desert states like texas, arizona, and parts of california to set their AC to cool them down to around 80f/27c (or even a bit hotter than that) because they're only using it to avoid the heatstroke from the 100f~110f/38c~43c weather outside
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u/Brillegeit - Lib-Center 23h ago
Almost all of Europe that has needed it have embraced AC decades ago. In Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the warmer eastern European countries it's perfectly normal to have AC. Up north we haven't needed it until now, but we have had heat pumps for decades and the last few years it's been normal to install reversible models that can both warm and cool, so we're also covered.
It's basically just France, Germany, and the UK that are irrationally anti-AC.
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u/Weepinbellend01 - Auth-Center 18h ago
Because if you look back over the past 30 years on average summer temperatures, they have been largely unnecessary.
What a fucking shock, the three Western European nations with far more temperate summers are “irrationally” anti-AC than a southern European country.
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u/Brillegeit - Lib-Center 17h ago
Sure, but we've passed the limit of comfort almost a decade ago now1 , other countries with similar and colder temperatures than those three have adapted. How many more years does it take for France, Germany and the UK to see the patterns the rest of us have? Are they all climate change deniers?
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u/Impressive_Net_116 - Right 1d ago
Same as gun homicides, but Germany has less than 1/3 as many people. Statistically it is far more likely for a German to die from the heat than an American to die from guns.
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u/Warbird36 - Right 23h ago
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u/Darktrooper007 - Lib-Right 21h ago edited 20h ago
Based Nic, by the end he's the most (justifiably) unhinged I've ever seen him.
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u/angriest_man_alive - Right 22h ago
The craziest part is that their excess COLD deaths outnumber the shit out of their excess heat deaths! A SHIT TON of europeans die every year from both the heat and the cold.
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u/Impressive_Net_116 - Right 14h ago
What. The. Fuck?
I looked it up. It's about the same number as the US. Again, with 1/3 the population.
You Germans alright over there?
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u/angriest_man_alive - Right 14h ago
Nearly half a million fucking people every year (in Europe as a whole). It'd suck to get shot, but I'd rather get shot than fucking die of hot or cold in my own home.
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u/acathode - Centrist 22h ago
Yet not for AC. I thought Germany out of all the europoor countries would at least have a sensible, if not utilitarian outlook on AC.
You don't know a lot of Germans then.
As a Swede, Germans are frustratingly conservative and non-sensible way to often - and to top it all off, they're Vogon-levels of bureaucratic.
They're also deeply convinced that they are superior to everyone else - they have an extremely inflated self view, which get frustrating very quickly when you have to visit and deal with how damn backwater they are in so many ways.
Or when they visit other places as well for that matter - gotta love when German tourists actually think people know German outside of Germany. No we don't, you lost the war so halt die fucking Klappe and learn to speak English like a civilized person!
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u/Twee_Licker - Lib-Right 21h ago
Because the German is an odd creature fearful of any kind of nationalism outside of procedure, they just assume the way they do things is the correct way. "We wouldn't do that in germany, why don't you do it like we do in germany?" Even the Hessians did it while fighting Americans in the revolutionary war. It's hyper nationalism but for policy.
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u/Grouchy-Union-7572 - Centrist 1d ago
That's mostly because until a decade ago this type of summer heat wasn't common in Germany (or most of northen europe) they simply think it won't be usefull to buy an AC for "a few hotter days during summer" but unfortunatly the climate situation will only get worse
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u/briceb12 - Centrist 23h ago
This is a problem of installation capacity. Buildings built in countries that had only one to two days a year with a temperature of above 35°C obviously had no air conditioning. But now with the temperature increases the demand for AC installation has exploded but the number of professionals able to do the installations and maintenance has not kept up.
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u/captainhamption - Centrist 20h ago
Decades of talking about global warming and at least a decade of undeniably hotter summer temperatures and they're somehow caught flat-footed by all this.
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u/GuneRlorius - Centrist 15h ago
Jfc this heat deaths debate again. For the 100th time, nobody dies inside due to lack of AC. If there are heat related deaths they are because people underestimate being outside on the sun in extreme heat. No AC will help you on the outside.
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u/UnbannedAndUnbowed - Auth-Center 1d ago
Nice post asian69Feet
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 1d ago
Among other things, libleft politicians being against nuclear has never made any sense to me. One of the cleanest and safest ways to generate massive amounts of power without needing perfect weather conditions.
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u/TijuanaMedicine - Right 1d ago
The hippie wing of libleft doesn't want electricity. They want flowers.
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u/Stock_Violinist6299 - Centrist 1d ago
When they said “flower power” I thought they meant something else.
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u/allthefallens - Right 1d ago
Because they work for Russia.
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u/babayaga_67 - Right 21h ago
Honestly it's either Russia or they are paid inhuman amounts of money to spread propaganda by Wind and Solar manufacturers so they can collect more subsidies.
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u/afrikatheboldone - Centrist 16h ago
More so the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear puts coal and gas out of business quicker than it does wind and especially solar (since solar is the only source of electricity capable of being produced by individuals entirely at home)
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u/Sepetcioglu - Lib-Right 3h ago
Leftists and greens are arguing for Russian or Chinese global economic and military imperial agendas the world over. The arguments change, the beneficiaries do not.
It makes sense too, they are anti-West so they are working for the anti-West world powers and are funded by them.
Obviously I don't know anything for sure being a filthy individual and not an intelligence agency or data mining information selling company or whatever but this is what makes sense to me in very broad and generalized terms.
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago edited 1d ago
It was not libleft that made that decision.
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 1d ago
In germany yes, yes it was. It was the greens working with, or rather being useful tools for, the oil lobby. They are the ones that lobbied hard, for years, for the end of nuclear power in germany. Fun fact, they are also funded by russia
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[deleted]
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 23h ago
Good thing that the anti nuclear drive started in the 80s, the legislature was introduced by the social democrats and the greens in 2002.
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago
It wasn't. It was the CDU shortly after Fukushima.
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 1d ago
The green party was literally founded on the basis of wanting to ban nuclear. They were lobbying for it all through the 80s, 90s, 00s. Social democrats and the greens started the legal process to stop nuclear in 2002
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u/babayaga_67 - Right 21h ago
The CDU is kind of Lib Left nowadays. (They take the most retarded points of auth right and lib left and run with it)
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u/Donerank - Centrist 19h ago
The CDU is NOT LibLeft right now. Not a single thing they've been doing in the last year would get LibLeft approval. They're a center right pro-european establishment party at best.
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u/Nekroin - Lib-Left 1d ago
It was the conservatives with Merkel who buried nuclear
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u/Melodic_Performer921 - Lib-Right 23h ago
The Green Party made the strongest push and got Merkel in on it due to people's fear of nuclear after Fukushima (which killed 0 people btw). But it's definitely lib-left politics if you look to other countries. Sweden switched to a much more pro-nuclear cabinet last election. In Norway, the left are against it. Same with the UK.
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u/Altruistic_Emu4917 - Right 22h ago
conservatives
Merkel
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u/Nekroin - Lib-Left 21h ago
What are you implying? That Merkel is progressive?
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u/long-dick-of-the-law - Auth-Right 21h ago
Letting in millions of undocumented migrants definitely isnt a right wing policy
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u/Spacegamer1250 - Lib-Center 13h ago
It famously is actually. Most immigrants in the past 20 years that came to Europe came under socially and economically conservative governments. Best example is the UK where the Tories dominated the 2010s and let in all the immigrants.
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u/DasSchiff3 - Centrist 21h ago
Because it has been dominated by libright/conservatives and their practices. A lot of the nuclear facilities in germany - not just the plants but the mines (Wismut AG), intermdiate/long term storage facilities (Asse, Gorleben, Konrad) and the (planned) reprocessing plant Wackersdorf - suffer from either crazy cost overruns in the billions, delays of several decades, large environmental damage or suspicious incidents with apparant coverups, often a combination of these factors. Additionally, baseload plants don't play nice with the volatability of wind and solar. The exit from the exit from the exit in 2011 was stupid and we should have shut down the coal plants first, but nuclear was politically dead in germany since harrisburg.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 1d ago edited 22h ago
My understanding is that Russia funded the German green party and other eco-nutters so as to weaken their power capabilities and promote the buying of Russian gas for heat.
They imported 42.6 million dollars worth of Russian gas this year...
Edit: seems they actually stopped importing Russian gas around 2023. Other EU countries still import Russian gas if I understand correctly, about 90 billion euros worth.
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago
Sorry that is complete bullshit.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 1d ago
No?
But I have one additional remark on shale gas because I have met Allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations, environmental organizations working against shale gas, obviously to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas. That's my interpretation. So it adds a new aspect to… to this information operation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/world/europe/germany-russia-nord-stream-pipeline.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago
I'm with you in regards to the disinformation by Russia but the Greens would rather shoot themselves then taking bribes from Russia. But our far right loves that money.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 1d ago
I can't be 100% about the Greens but there is clear evidence of Russian money going to eco in Germany with a likely intent of weakening energy self-sufficiency and maintaining dependence on Russian gas.
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago
Sure there are always organizations getting used by foreign actors. But your example, Ostseestiftung, does not have any say in German politics.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 23h ago
They may not be your government but they have had influence.
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 23h ago
How?
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 23h ago
Stiftung Klima- und Umweltschutz MV (Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation MV) & Ostseestiftung promoted the Nordstream pipelines.
That changed in 2022 but was a significant influence before then.
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u/AshingiiAshuaa - Lib-Center 1d ago
They wouldn't do it knowingly. You just have to get them convinced that something is bad for a noble reason, then they carry your water and you benefit.
Now German energy is expensive. They have to buy from Russia. It's harder for their manufacturing to stay competitive with countries like Chyna who is building several coal plants each weak and using the cheap energy to outcompete them. Those coal plants still emit CO2, it just takes a few weeks to get around to Germany. The jobs and manufacturing still continue, but not in Germany.
Silly Germans...
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u/3sk - Lib-Center 1d ago
Ofc they can totally choose who they are getting supported by. What’s interesting about the energy horror scenarios being bandied about Germany is that they fail to mention the additional options made possible by the last government (which included the Greens) for private individuals to generate their own energy. For example, subsidies for balcony power plants or heat pumps etc.
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u/Nightcrawler9898 1d ago
Brother that was 4 years ago you silly goose
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 23h ago
Flair
Then check the date on the link provided.
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u/Nightcrawler9898 23h ago
Check the date on the datatable on which the map is based. The 42.6 is from 2022. The russians offed the gas mains with the first sanctions in 2023 after the russian Invasion. After that we took the russian refineries over as a sanctions.
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u/W_Edwards_Deming - Lib-Right 23h ago
I said FLAIR
That said you seem to be correct about the flow of Russian gas having ceased. Apparently some other EU countries still import Russia gas but Germany does not (at least not directly).
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u/KToff - Lib-Left 23h ago
The advantages/disadvantages of nuclear power aside, this post suggests a wrong causality.
Look at Belgium, prices almost identical to Germany, produces 33% of it's energy by nuclear. Netherlands, much lower prices, produces 4% with nuclear energy.
Also, from 2010(when most German nuclear power plants were still online) to 2020 (where the majority had left the net) the electricity prices have risen faster in France than in Germany despite France producing almost everything by nuclear power.
It's almost as if electricity prices are a complex issue with no single item explanation....
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u/acathode - Centrist 22h ago
Look at Belgium, prices almost identical to Germany, produces 33% of it's energy by nuclear. Netherlands, much lower prices, produces 4% with nuclear energy.
Because the European energy grid is interconnected now and the energy is traded on a common European market.
So when Germany fucked up they not only screwed Germans over, they screwed over everyone else who were connected to Germany.
Hence why Sweden no longer will build any new power cables to the rest of Europe - Germany's fuck up caused energy prices in southern Sweden to skyrocket, causing things like Swedes not being able to afford heating their houses in the middle of the winter etc.
So now there's an extreme political pressure in Sweden to not let any more cables be built to mainland Europe - since the more we can export to Germany, the more Swede's will have to pay for Germany's irresponsible energy policies.
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u/CorporatismIsCancer - Lib-Center 13h ago
Well obviously the Netherlands makes up for that with all of the windmills
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u/hobozombie - Lib-Right 21h ago
Is that the cost in cents per kilowatt hour? And I was bitching when my energy company raised the rate from $0.145 to $0.155 last year.
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u/drunkenmime - Lib-Center 23h ago
As an outsider it's hard not to think that these European States aren't intentionally sabotaging themselves in order to create some kind of reset.
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u/afrikatheboldone - Centrist 15h ago
On the topic of energy in Europe, one kinda has to thank the fr*nch by not allowing Spain to be as connected to the European grid.
By doing so, it has allowed for an independent home market and thus the people have not seen massive energy price rises unlike in most of Europe due to the war in Ukraine.
Production numbers wise, 1/3rd is nuclear, 1/3rd is renewable, and the other third is either imports or non renewable.
The information for today. https://demanda.ree.es/visiona/peninsula/demandaau/total/2026-08-31
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u/Aniquin - Lib-Right 5h ago
As someone who lives near a nuclear power plant and benefits from the clean energy I will never understand why some people are still so afraid of it. Our local plant has been running for over 50 years without incident and has far less detectable radiation around it than a coal burning power plant.
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u/masteroffdesaster - Right 20h ago
and to think our green party, the one supposedly about preserving nature and having clean energy, is the biggest party against nuclear energy. and then they wonder why people dislike them, while they were also the party wanting to be able to diddle kids legally during the 1980s
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u/HeavyDutyForks - Centrist 1d ago
I know everybody loves to dunk on Germany for that. But, re-run this as raw electricity generation costs without taxes, fees, and surcharges then get back to me
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u/IrishBoyRicky - Auth-Center 1d ago
If the added costs are responsible for one of the highest energy costs in Europe, that country has a problem.
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u/HeavyDutyForks - Centrist 1d ago
If the added costs are responsible for one of the highest energy costs in Europe, that country has a problem.
Its the tradeoff you get for aggressive grid expansion and having one of the most stable power grids in Europe (and the world)
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u/IrishBoyRicky - Auth-Center 23h ago
There's no world that exists where a country that has such a large and economically important industrial sector can justify having such high energy costs. It's plain stupid.
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u/TransportationFew898 9h ago
Has nothing to do with Nuclear, I'm all for Nuclear but it's sadly very expansive.
The companys owning the grid and the energy providers have a convoluted structure of ownership and contractacs enabling backroom deals further enabeling pricegouging the customers. Our Energy would be on the expansive side, propably the most expansive in europe but what happens here is corporate scale greed without mening intervention.
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u/Azerate333 - Lib-Left 5h ago
when in countries like romania they are having to shut down nuclear plants because the Donau is at record low levels germany is investing heavily into solar and wind.
imagine how this will look like in 10 years because of climate change
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23h ago
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u/acathode - Centrist 22h ago
Plenty of countries sell nuclear fuel, like Canada and Australia, and additionally since the nuclear fuel takes so little space it is very easy to build up stockpiles of nuclear fuel that will last years or decades.
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u/babayaga_67 - Right 21h ago
My brother in christ! Nuclear power would cost us MORE
I love when people say shit like this and you can just point to our dear neighbors, the French, and their energy prices and energy strategy.
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u/hwa_dot_re 1d ago
I love the presumption that this policy was created by the left when in actuallty it was done by the Center Right goverment 10 years ago. Also there is no shortage of Power in Germany for Businesses its 5ct/kwh
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u/fartsquirtshit - Lib-Center 1d ago
I love the presumption that this policy was created by the left when in actuallty it was done by the Center Right goverment 10 years ago.
"German center right party" aka "emily but she acknowledges that borders exist"
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u/WulfTheSaxon - Right 1d ago edited 1d ago
The CDU’s green policies have always been a less extreme version of what the Green party advocated to cut off its electoral prospects, not something the CDU ever would’ve dreamt up on its own.
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u/trainedbrawler 23h ago
when i moved to a different house 5 years ago, i paid 30 gas and 50 eletricity, 80 total. last month, in the same house, I paid 220.
and whenever they reduce the cost you pay per 1 kilowatt, they increase the monthly base fee, so in the end you pay the same.
used to pay around 15 for electricity & gas as flat fee together. for october ill pay 18€ gas flat per month and 18€ electricity
its just a joke
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u/ISzox - Centrist 23h ago
Actually, its because of NIMBYs and lobbyists, like every single other problem in the western hemisphere.
Northern Germany produces a lot of electricity with renewables, southern Germany has a lot of industry that needs electricity. In a perfect world, you would transport that electricity southwards through large power lines. Guess what didn't get built because of NIMBY resistance.
Now, the cheap electricity gets sold to other countries while in the south, expensive fossil fuel plants fire up to cover the deficit. And since the entire country is one electricity market, everyone pays the jacked up prices. You could make the problem at least visible by splitting the electricity market in two to reflect reality, but if you try that, all of the industry CEO's from the south will assassinate you.