My deleted response to Pirate Wires' Nuclear Disasters

I wrote a long comment to a recent post of Mike Solana titled "Nuclear Disasters." To my surprise Mike deleted it promptly with the following message:

this wasn't framed as breaking news, fukushima was 12 years ago. i should probably delete your comment because you're not a subscriber and i'm already annoyed, but it's a perfect german take. 7 graphs into your 15 paragraph essay you admit this was the wrong decision, then explain in meticulous detail why renewables are inferior. you say you're tired of your country being critiqued for stupidly accepting dependence on russia, but provide no defense. how can one write so exhaustively and yet convey almost nothing? enjoy your cope. sadly, it won't warm your homes.

So here's my now-deleted response:

Disappointed by this article, Mike. I'm one of those German idiots that I guess is responsible for letting our government pass this move. But, honestly, reading your post and reading the replies to the BREAKING NEWS announcement that Germany is shutting down nuclear, my impression is that the midwit take today is: "Oh look how stupid Germany is, let them get rekt," accompanied with the famous Trump UN speech clip. In discussions on social media, I seemed to have been in the minority regarding a more nuanced take on German nuclear.

Here, and this is sadly not well understood by the English-speaking world, a dialogue that is post-safety has been ongoing for many years, and our arguments are more nuanced than what US social media picks up on. Honestly, at this point, I'm convinced that nuclear safety is a misguided strawman.

On a slight tangent, I find the American critique of Germany's appeasement of Russia through trade weird, as "Wandel durch Handel" is probably as much of an American idea. And sure, it was a failure, but so is the US's strategy of appeasing China through trade, right?

Anyways, few reasons that have nothing to do with spirituality, religion or stupidity, why Germany+Nuclear in 2023 is tricky:

• If Germany were to reboot nuclear, there would be a concern about fuel supply and geopolitics. It's unclear if the EU or Germany has Nuclear fuel depots. Everyone's argument is that Germany was dependent on Russian gas. It'd be a shame if we became addicted to Kazakstan's Uranium, right? Coal is available here(, sadly).
• Nuclear is a base load technology. It increases the grid voltage by +x%. But Germany has heavily invested in renewables which have a fluctuating supply. Nuclear plants can't be shut down instantly (in contrast to coal, gas, biomass, hydro, and oil), and so it is unclear what we'd supposed to do with an oversupply of electricity.
• Germany has gotten out of nuclear since 2002 (which probably was a mistake). But people fail to recognize that we have to deal with the situation at hand today. We have a large renewable energy production (up to 40% of all electricity). After ROI, that's free power(!), so we have also meaningfully divested from nuclear.
• The midwit's take on Nuclear is: "Oh Germany so fucking stupid, they should just re-build the sites." But that fails to acknowledge that we're looking for ways to make renewables work sustainably for our grid. Besides, for anyone suggesting that Nuclear is the short-term fix for climate change: Do you know how long it'd take to re-build nuclear in Germany? How is this a short-term solution?
• And then, with renewables, there is the bearish issue of having to backstop the entire country's renewable production with instantly spinupable alternative power sources (gas, coal, oil, hydro).
• E.g., there is data from 2019 that suggests renewables produced zero percent of the electricity in Germany for some days when the sun didn't shine, and no wind was blowing. But note how nuclear is here is not helpful as it only increases base load steadily. You can't spontaneously spin up a nuclear plant. There are people researching it, but it isn't state-of-the-art possible at the moment.
• I personally also think it is awesome that while the entire world invests in nuclear (as somewhat of a "silver bullet against climate change (what you said)"), there's a country that's going the heretic way. Look, France had to shut down their Nuclear plants in the hot summer of 2022 because the heat wave made the river's water levels unsustainable for cooling. Even discounting the safety concern here, a melting-down nuclear power plant doesn't produce energy either.
• Do I think safety with nuclear is an issue? It's probably OK, but I'm not an expert. Do I think a clean-slate Germany should have doubled down on nuclear? Maybe, but that, to me, is an annoyingly theoretical position. Yes, it is painful dealing with the renewables bet, but this is where we are today.
• However, I think there is also an opportunity here. Having Germany double down on renewable technologies is interesting. If renewables and accompanying technology are being researched and built out here, even if that means offsetting it with a little coal for now, I think long-term that can be a good thing.

I wish more people would understand this.

published by timdaub on 2023-04-18