Germany’s nuclear energy whiplash
Back and forth, back and forth:
Nuclear exit 1 began in 2000. The government back then consisted of the center-left Social Democrats and the Greens. The latter were in power for the first time, having grown out of the hippie counterculture of the 1970s, and in particular the German mass movement against nuclear energy. So Germany decided to phase out its nuclear power plants.
Exit 2 happened in 2010. The government, by then consisting of the center-right Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats, decided to exit from the first exit and keep the remaining nuclear plants running. Exit 3 followed within a year, after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. It spooked the government into exiting from its own exit of the preceding exit. That is, Germany again began phasing out nuclear power.
The country’s last three fission reactors are due to go offline at the end of this year. Bad timing, obviously.
Now Germany is experiencing a power crunch worse than that of most other European nations, which didn’t go the anti-nuclear route. Why did Germany? This isn’t really an answer, but it’s certainly a description:
Many Germans have spent their entire lives protesting against the splitting of atoms. The Green Party’s base, in particular, teems with zealots who consider all nuclear energy evil, and any attempt to nuance the discussion as tantamount to treason.
Well, now Germany is performing another pivot, at least for the moment – at least maybe:
Germany will postpone the closure of its last three remaining nuclear power plants, planned for 31 December, as it prepares for gas shortages this winter.
Anonymous government officials confirmed the move in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday (16 August), saying conditions have been met for the government to allow a temporary lifetime extension of three remaining nuclear reactors as the country is facing a likely shortage of gas due to cuts in supply from Russia over the Ukraine war.
Responding to the article, a spokesman for the ministry of economy said the report in the WSJ “lacks any factual basis”.
Not exactly what you’d call clear. What is clear, however, is that it is the Greens who are opposed to the extension.
As if all of that isn’t bad enough, Rhine water levels are low, and that hampers shipping – including the shipping of much-needed coal from Amsterdam.
This is somewhat ironic, as well: “High river water temperatures in France have impeded the operation of some nuclear power plants.”
What the hell is a “temporary lifetime extension”? Such lunacy!
More idiots confused by simple math. I expect better of the Germans. Maybe we shouldn’t have crushed them so badly in WWII. They can no longer think for themselves.
Germany is not the only entity that is waking from “woke”. Governor Newsom of California (aka Gruesome Newsom) has started a push to halt closure of California’s last nuclear power plant.
It is well documented that California’s power grid, which now relies heavily on sustainable energy (pixie dust), is unreliable; perhaps dangerously so given that broad areas of the state experience summer temps in the 100s, and other areas winter temps around zero.
My power supplier offers monetary incentives to customers who will give it control of their thermostats during summertime evening hours. (The hottest part of the day, and the time when the Tesla owners are arriving home and plugging in.) My response is “No way Jose” to use an old saying that is probably very offensive–although the name Jose is possibly the most common one in my area.
I would not be surprised one bit if Russia has or is -surreptitiously of course – funding the green movement in Germany. After all, Russia stands to gain in all of this by continuing to have a revenue producing large customer. Russia is still earning about $100 million per day selling gas to W.Europe.
And don’t forget that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a good pal of Vlad Putin, is on the supervisory board of Gazprom, the Russian owned natural gas company.
No need to mention Angela Merkel; you can take Merkel out of E. Germany, but you can’t take E. Germany out of Merkel. Her PHD in quantum chemistry was to no avail in helping her make rational decisions.
What’s amazing is that the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, contributed to Germany’s decision to shutter its own nuclear facilities.
Germany is not subject to earthquakes (of any significant magnitude) or the tsunamis they cause.
When ideologues run the show, all that matters to them is achieving their goal; no matter what hardships, no matter the suffering that the average person must endure.
Leftist ideologues hate average people; they consider them untermensch, kulaks, enemies of the state; a filthy stain that requires them to be controlled or liquidated.
The leftist MO of characterizing people as members of a group, not as individuals, facilitates the decisions and policies that ideologues implement.
It’s much easier liquidating “non-people” than it is “real” people.
I’ve never been to Germany, though that’s my ancestry. The limited number of Germans I’ve known here in the US almost universally have a passionate interest in the outdoors and the more magnificent areas and aspects of it. It’s sad because I presume that Green party politics everywhere is driven mostly by watermelons. That is, a drive towards Marxism of one stripe or another.
Long ago I had read that German nuke plants were the cream of the industry. For example, even if they had some massive internal radiation leak, they had robotic mechanisms preinstalled to carry out post leak actions so that humans would not be exposed.
The Fukushima disaster was a plant using a GE plant design from the 1960’s if I recall correctly. Not so hot? The shocker for me was the stupid backup diesel power facility that got flooded and became inoperable. How hard would it have been to waterproof the building and put a couple of tall air intake and exhaust stacks on the building? Japan has had a number of serious Tsunami’s in the past. It was a knowable thing.
‘What the hell is a “temporary lifetime extension”?’
A temporary extension to the length of the life (time), if read like a politician. Think of it as a stay of execution, rather than a pardon.
Perhaps the German Greens expect to heat their homes with the warm glow of their own sanctimony this winter? I guess we’ll see how that goes for them.
Tommy Jay: the other reactors had the backup equipment on the roof, no problem.
I vote that every environmental organization be required to immediately go all solar and wind with battery backup, and absolutely no connection to the power grid regardless of the cost. Plus, walk everywhere on land and cross the oceans in wooden sailboats. Eat your own dog food before it gets shoved down our throats.
Not sure but I believe that some Rivers in France are also low because of little rain fall this year. France gets a good chunk of its power from Hydro. Their rivers are heavily damned. France also gets a good chunk of power from Nuke, but some of their plants are having issues.
Wonder if the UK will reopen its Coal Mines?
Schadenfreude is my favorite German word and I intend to experience it fully and loudly as this disaster unfolds. Because it is a disaster and it will unfold.
Do I say this because I am a sadist? I hope not; my purpose is to help these people mend their ways. “Example is the school of mankind, and it will learn at no other.” – Edmund Burke.
Every Green thinks that by wishing and hoping they can go against Scotty’s statement to Kirk: “I canna change the laws of physics, Cap’n!”
TommyJay,
The first time I traveled to Germany with my wife to meet her family was in the late ’80s and I was taken aback at how anti-nuclear they were. Not that I cared what their politics were, but I was surprised it was still an issue. The “no nukes” movement in the U.S. had lost most of its relevance in the preceding years, but it was front and center in their minds and several regularly attended protests on the topic. In the ensuing years I have gotten to know them all fairly well and I don’t sense Marxism was ever a part of their reasoning. Their main justifications are “green.” “Save the planet!”
But I’ve always sensed part of it has to do with a repudiation of anything American. They elevate the evil of atomic power and atom splitting because it stems from science and technology perfected by the U.S. in the second world war and it lessens, in their minds, the evil their own nation did during that period. I’ve also never met a German who isn’t an expert in the genocide Americans committed against native Americans and won’t gleefully lecture me on the crimes of my nation at the slightest provocation.
Mental disability aside, perhaps no deeper stupidity exists than that exhibited by the ideological fanatic because truth is the first sacrifice upon the ideologue’s altar.
Rufus T Firefly:
German “survivor’s guilt” after all that German culture and politics “gave” the world over the last 100 years.
In addition to Germany’s power crunch, it has eviscerated its military: Under Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign, the Germany [sic] Bundeswehr was stripped bare of its military capabilities. As the Russian military marched into Ukraine in late February, the Bundeswehr chief, Alfons Mais, admitted that the country’s armed forces had been completely hollowed out. “The Bundeswehr, the army that I am privileged to lead, is more or less bare,” Mais said in the face of Russian aggression. “The options that we can offer the politicians to support the alliance are extremely limited.”
The Bundeswehr isn’t just ineffective as a fighting force. As its generals lament, the military is getting infested with jihadis and terrorists as its ranks get more ‘diverse.’ According to the German military intelligence agency (MAD), Islamic terrorists of German nationality were using the Bundeswehr military service to get trained in handling heavy weapons and combat tactics.
This is the concluding section of a post at Legal Insurrection on the impact of “diversity” recruitment on the UK’s Royal Air Force: https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/report-uks-royal-air-force-pauses-recruitment-of-white-male-to-fill-gender-racial-diversity-quota/
The author’s point is that “If British military planners want to see where [their] woke defense policies lead, they just have to look across the English Channel at Germany.”
Rufus,
I probably wasn’t very clear. The Germans I’ve met were all genuinely passionate about the environment. But increasingly I see most politics as being the political 1% propagandizing and driving their base. A watermelon uses environmental issues as a sales pitch, but it isn’t their real agenda. So the masses sign onto the sales pitch and unknowingly get carried along with the whole agenda.
I haven’t encountered any anti-Americanism, but then this group of Germans were all self-selected in the sense that they really wanted to be in America. I have heard of that in a somewhat different context.
““The Hun is always either at your throat or your feet.””
Ok then
https://m.dw.com/en/study-confirms-that-stasi-infiltrated-greens/a-36024911
There is a tradition that pheasants in South Dakota all run when hunted because the flyers were all shot over the years and the survivors passed on their genes. The same seems to be true of Germany. The German Army was almost invincible from 1870 to 1945. In that period, millions of men were killed. The survivors behave much like South Dakota pheasants.
The greens deserved what ever retribution they get.
For an army that was almost “invincible” they managed to loose in 1918 and 1945. Almost invincibility killed 100s of millions during that period. Germans, believing their own propaganda post 1870, destroyed Europe some might say.
The greens as the dw link points out they are parasitic not only in germany but around the world
Germany was the hardest hit of the European NATO countries by the Soviet influence of their “peace movement” in the 1980s, who focused on creating massive anti-nuclear sentiment in the hope of forcing the German government to kick out US nuclear weapons from the country.
The Netherlands were also very hard hit because of US nuclear stockpiles on its soil, causing the country to close its nuclear power stations eventually with no replacement (apart from a single research reactor because that one is vital to creating materials for cancer radiation therapy).
That “peace movement” morphed and merged into the “environmentalist” movement, and always had overlap with it, and brought the anti-nuclear lobby into the “green energy” fold in the 1990s when their funding from Moscow mostly dried up (since, the “environmentalist” movement has been receiving major funding out of Moscow and Beijing).
So the anti-nuclear movement in Europe was born out of a KGB campaign to weaken NATO by removing its ability to quickly deploy nuclear weapons in case of war on the continent, and not so much by fears of nuclear energy (that was a possibly intended side effect, strengthened by the literal fallout of the Chernobyl accident, which caused a lot of fear in Europe as a whole of contamination of the food chain).
There is a rather interesting history on anti-nuclear activism that I’ve come across in this writeup, that essentially links the anti-nuclear activism movement with the original efforts of environmental activism, which, surprisingly, is also closely linked with eugenics.
Weird, huh? Anyway, it’s a pretty good read, as pointed to by @Doomberg.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/05/who-killed-nuclear-energy-and-how-to-revive-it/#notes
…”Paul Ehrlich said, “In fact, giving society cheap abundant energy at this point would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Long essay, but worth it.
Back to the Germany we know and love:
‘German Official Trashes Cost Of Living Protesters As “Enemies Of The State” ‘—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-official-trashes-cost-living-protesters-enemies-state
Opening graf:
‘A top German official has trashed people who may be planning to protest against energy blackouts as “enemies of the state” and “extremists” who want to overthrow the government….’
Funny, the fellow seems to be doing a remarkable imitation of “Biden”…
(Nice to see that America is still an inspiration in some areas of the globe…)
physicsguy, you will appreciate this …
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9c9a3dd8ff162703dc2b87a8f88b44d4b9ff71adcad41169c030450f4403008.jpg
Radical environmentalism is First World self-righteous hubris leading to Third World conditions for us ordinary folks, driven by “leadership” that will pay no price for being wrong and/or are hiding greed behind a manifesto like Die Hard’s Hans Gruber.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d40babefd5f1949684dad7c2878bbe307d634ac7493a12b7bf38b3898c655351.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/82b3bc1c9d6c0c64828b35ffeb90e2345ccaf523ada6183f1553e9f8d06f023a.png
I wrote about the current state of Nuclear, and its prospects, a few months ago…Nuclear Power: Has the Time Finally Come?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67612.html
Public opinion is obviously critical to getting broad acceptance of nuclear: the gap is 60% to 43% among Republicans/Democrats and 59% vs 41% among men/women.
Can a German, age maybe thirty-eight, not identify with the historical Ger.any, will he or nill he? And what does he do with that? Strikes me it can’t be nothing. And perhaps there’s a divergence from what might be considered rational or practical.