this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 months ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Even Japan is restarting their reactors

Solar and wind are great, but major industrialized nations will need some nuclear capacity.

It's going to happen sooner or later.

The question is just about how long we delay it, with extra emissions and economic depression in the mean time.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This exactly. You need a reliable source of fuel for the baseline, which is where nuclear energy can supplant fossil fuels instead of or in addition to relying on batteries.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, nuclear is awful as a baseline since you can't turn it off and back on quickly

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

You're absolutely correct, and few people realise this. They think "baseline = stable power", but that's not what you need. You need a quick and cheap way to scale up production when renewables don't produce enough. On a sunny, windy day, renewables already produce more than 100% of needs in some countries. At that point, the 'baseline' needs to shut down so that this cheap energy can be used instead. The baseline really is a stable base demand, but the supply has to be very flexible instead (due to the relative instability of solar and wind, the cheapest sources available).

Nuclear reactors can shut down quite quickly these days, but starting them back up is slow. But worse, nuclear is quite expensive, and maintaining a plant in standby mode not producing anything is just not economically feasible. Ergo, nuclear is terrible for a baseline power source (bar any future technological breakthroughs).

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

There’s nothing green, cheap, or safe about nuclear power. We’ve had three meltdowns already and two of them have ruined their surrounding environments:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Mining for fuel ruins the water table:

A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas (contaminating the water table) https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/

Waste disposal, storage, and reprocessing are prohibitively expensive:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Now list all the fossil fuels related incidents.

Nuclear + renewables is the way to go to stop the climate crisis in the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

People really don't understand that climate change is worse for life on this planet than a million Fukushima accidents.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Fukushima isn't the big argument against nuclear.

IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The "expensive" argument is bollocks.

It's not too expensive for China, South Korea, Japan, the USA, France, the UAE, Iran, India, Russia.

The countries without nuclear will deindustrialize and the countries with nuclear will outcompete them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The countries without nuclear will deindustrialize and the countries with nuclear will outcompete them.

Where is the evidence for that claim?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Germany is the obvious evidence for that claim. Their once great industry is doing really bad due to high energy prices. Which is why even they are second guessing the Energiewende.

Despite insane levels of investment in renewables, they are still stuck on gas en lignite and have very high energy prices.

Merkel's bet that Russian gas could always be depended on didn't work out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The sabotage of solar and wind energy by Altmaier during the CDU government has had a bigger impact than the removal of the few percent of power we got from nuclear. Not to mention that nuclear fuel has the exact same problems as fossil fuels in that major sources of nuclear fuel are in Russia.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Merkel is a conservative. Their party stopped the original long term nuclear phase out, the original long term renewables build phase. Germany had a lot of photovoltaic industry back then. But the conservatives stopped the funding instead of phasing it out slowly.

It's all intentional mismanagement here for the profit of some energy CEOs and politicians

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wait until you see the price of climate change and not moving away from fossil fuels then

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Wait what I am 100% pro renewables...

If nuclear somehow were the only option, I would support it. But it's the worst option.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Completely moving away from fossil fuels with just renewables is a pipe dream. Nuclear is not a panacea and it has its problems but it's part of the solution to get rid of fossil fuels entirely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just because you say so doesn't make it true

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Well, good news, because I'm not the one saying it. That's coming from our Transmission Operator. Everything is detailed in their 992 page report:

https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospectives/bilan-previsionnel-2050-futurs-energetiques#Lesresultatsdeletude

What it says is that 100% renewables in France by 2050 is not possible, as the technology is not quite there yet, and also because our energy consumption ever keeps growing.

What they propose is a mix of nuclear and renewables to reach carbon neutrality, then phasing out nuclear over decades.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes, that's why we should invest money into an expensive form of energy instead of a cheap one, that will help us displace fossil fuels!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

And ironically enough, Fukushima and Chernobyl have not been that bad for plant and animal life. The area around Chernobyl is thriving because most humans are gone.

Sources: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown, which may sound close to an actual meltdown, it's not even close in terms of danger.

Fukushima failed because the plants were old and not properly upkept. Had they followed the guidelines for keeping the plant maintained, it would not have happened.

That's not really the fault of nuclear power.

Chernobyl was also partially caused by lack of adherence to safety measures, but also faulty plant design.

I'd say, being generous, only one of those three events says anything about the safety of nuclear power, and even then, we have come a very long way.

So one event... Ever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Chernobyl shouldn't have happened due to safety measures, yet it did. Fukushima shouldn't have happened, yet it did. The common denominator is human error, but guess who'll be running any other nuclear power plants? Not beavers.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How is a nuclear meltdown not the fault of nuclear power? Of course you can prevent it by being super careful and stuff, but it is inherent to nuclear power that it is super dangerous. What is the worst that can happen with a wind turbine? It falls, that's it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

if we were to either replace all power on earth with nuclear, or replace all power on earth with wind, more people would die from- idk, falling out of wind turbines- then from deaths due to nuclear.

Fukushima had a fucking earthquake and a tsunami thrown at it, AND the company which made it cut corners. It was still, much, much less bad than it could have been and the reactor still partially withstood a lot of damage.

In the United States at least (and i assume the rest of the world) nuclear energy is so overegulated that many reactors can have meltdowns without spelling disaster for the nearby area. Nuclear caskets (used to transport and store wastes) can withstand fucking missle strikes.

Im not going to pretend that there arent genuine issues with nuclear, such as cost and construction time(*partially caused by the over regulation), but genuine nuclear disaster has only ever resulted from the worst of human decisions combined with the worst of circumstances. Do i trust humans not to make shitty mistakes? No, with all this overegulation though i kind of do. Even counting Fukushima and Chernobyl, more people die from wind (and especially fossil fuels) then nuclear per terawatt of electricity production.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Because the shit they were using in the Fukushima plants was so old that it might as well be completely different technology. Same with Chernobyl.

People are referencing shit that does not even apply to modern nuclear power.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

NGL, I dig the idea of Sodium plants:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/pros-and-cons-of-sodium-cooled-nuclear-reactors-for-data-center-energy

Not sure how practical they are outside the general idea, but it looks promising.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "Green" until we have a better way of disposing the waste that doesn't involve creating new warning signs that can still be read and understood 10,000 years from now. :)

If it's still a danger in 5,000 years, that's not "green". :)

Great story on the signage though!

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I’ve always preferred the IPCC terminology of “low-carbon”. Emphasizes that all power sources have carbon and other emissions at some point in their lifecycle. They also levelize the emissions based on energy produced over the expected lifespan of the power generation station/solar panel/dam/wind turbine/etc, and nuclear power is down there with solar, wind, geo, and hydro. Waste must be dealt with, and the best disposal method is reprocessing so you don’t have to store it.

Nuclear semiotics is fascinating. I was very excited when I came across the Federal Disposal Field in Fallout 76 and found that Bethesda used the “field of spikes” design.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's incredibly expensive when all costs over the entire construction period, operating period, dismantling period and storage period for nuclear waste are taken into account.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As for coal, it's even more expensive when it kills off the planet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

No doubt but we have other viable options.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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, ...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

This, it's also pretty much the ONLY technology we have that can be near carbon neutral over time (mainly releasing carbon in the cement to make the plant, then to a lesser extent, mining to dig up and refine material, and transport of workers and goods).

The cost associated with nuclear is due to regulation and legal issues and not relating to the cost to build the actual plant itself so much. There are small scale reactors and many options. Yes it should be used wisely but we can't keep burning fossil fuels.

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