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.
55% is a small majority. But nothing to turn a train around. Things are set in motion.
55% is a small majority
Laughs in Brexit
Southern countries (Spain and Portugal) have a lot of wind and hydro (and soon solar) power to spare. But somehow some “actors” are cutting them off from the rest of the European power grid. Looking at you France, your greedy bastards!
Germany shot itself in the foot when it turned away from nuclear…
No. Take a good look at France and their nuclear strategy. Both maintaining old reactors and building new ones is extremely costly. Building times are to be measured in decades. Nuclear power is not economically viable nor is it a solution to the climate catastrophe.
Returning to nuclear power in Germany is nothing but a pointless waste of tax money.
Keep looking at things from a money perspective and the solution become obvious : kill everyone and be done with it.
Today, nuclear energy is a reasonably safe, efficient source of energy. Is it the energy of the future ? Probably not. But is it an efficient option for smoothing the grid while planting renewable all around it? It’s definitely better than the other alternatives. Does it cost money to develop? Sure. Everything costs money. But there are benefits that won’t show up in an accounting book that can’t be brushed aside.
Power to gas, water pumps, heat storage and battery storage are viable alternatives. There are many days already where we over produce green energy. Why sink hundreds of billions into nuclear plants when we could use the energy we already produce instead?
Nuclear power is all but efficient.
You keep seeing these as “alternatives”, despite the shortcomings.
I say they are complimentary, and as far as providing power to address these shortcomings, nuclear power is a good solution. How can you look at something that can single-handedly address all power requirements in some area, while providing supports to other, and say “nah”, seriously.
There’s no good reason to be against nuclear power. It’s green, it’s safe, it’s incredibly efficient, the fuel is virtually infinite, and the waste can be processed in a million different ways to make it not dangerous.
I’m not the kind to hate on nuclear power itself, but let’s not assume it’s perfect either. There are good reasons against nuclear power, its just not the usual reasons raised by people.
The cost and time effort needed for building one plant is one drawback.
The fact that you can’t say “let’s turn off the nuclear reactor now that we have enough renewables and later today we start it again when the sunlight is over”. It’s a terrible energy source to supply for extra demand needed without perfect planning.
Nowadays, nuclear is not so worth it in general, not because of fearmongering about the dangers (an old plant badly upkept is a danger, independent of what energy source you use, but specially for nuclear plants). Ideally a combination of different renewables would be best, with some energy storage to be used as backup, plus proper sharing of the resources between different places. There’s always sun somewhere, there’s always wind somewhere, …
It’s more expensive than the alternatives, and comes with additional downsides. There is no good reason to be pro nuclear, unless you need a lot of power for a long time in a tight space. So a ship or a space station for example.
NGL, I dig the idea of Sodium plants:
Not sure how practical they are outside the general idea, but it looks promising.
Considering the current political climate I don’t think the world would look at Germany building breeder reactors (thats what these are, even if they desperately try to avoid that term) and just say “Great idea!” ;).
Jokes aside, breeders need at least one more generation of research/demo plants to be really commercially viable. Afaik all breeders so far had less than 50% uptime and none could avoid sodium fires. They would solve quite a few fuel problems tho conisering you can “burn” recycled U238 in them.
Personally I would prefer Thorium cycle plants, but those are even further off.
For Germany right now I don’t see much sense in building new current tech reactors. For the same tax money we would need to subsidize these plants, we could build so much more renewable (and storage) capacity which would result in a faster reduction of ghg emissions.
FFS, people are stupid.
There was a huge hysteria about nuclear when Fukushima happened. A clear majority was for immediate action. Merkel’s coalition government would have ended if she hadn’t done a 180 on nuclear and decided to shut down nuclear as soon as possible, which was 2023. I was against shutting it down back then but I thought you can’t go against the whole population, so I get why they did it. People didn’t change their mind until 2022. Nobody talked about reversing that decision in all these years when there was actually time to reverse the decision.
Now, that the last reactor is shut down, the same people that were up in arms in 2011 are now up in arms that we don’t have nuclear. Building new plants will cost billions and take decades and nuclear doesn’t work well with renewables because of its inflexibility. It makes no sense at all. It was a long-term decision we can’t just back away from. What’s done is done.
nuclear doesn’t work well with renewables because of its inflexibility
Uuuuh, why wouldn’t it? Nuclear can provide a steady base load for the grid while the renewables are providing the rest, filling up storages for spike times if there is an excess. Don’t really see how this is a big issue.
There’s nothing more to come. Nuclear power is slow and uneconomical.
Joe Kaeser, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy: “There isn’t a single nuclear power plant in the world that makes economic sense,” he said on the ARD program Maischberger on November 27, 2024.
https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/farbebekennen-weidel-faktencheck-100.html?at_medium=mastodon
A fact check by the Fraunhofer Institute on nuclear energy states: “For example, around €2.5 billion would have to be raised to cover the nuclear waste generated. Overall, considerable short-term investments would be required.” (for the construction of a new power plant)
Also the time it would take to build new power plants and get them to run would be something lile 20-25 years. We dont have that much time to get a grip on climate change so it doesnt matter annyways. Either we get 100% renewables untill then or we are fucked annyways.
It’s really sad to see that evidently more than half of the german population have an opinion on something which they have little to no understanding of. It’s frustrating what misinformation can achieve.
Nuclear power might work for some nations, but there is just no way it makes sense in germany. All previous plants are in dire need of renovation and will be hugely expensive to bring back up and running, and a new one is just as overly optimistic, as major construction projects routinely go far over budget here, and nuclear energy is already not price competitive with renewables. Nobody wants waste storage, let alone a power plant near them, and it would take years until a plant is even producing energy. By that time, it might already be redundant, because renewables and energy storage will be cheaper and more ubiquitous. there is just no way nuclear power makes sense for germany.
