Liška

In fact, there is no American-style majority voting system in Germany - as long as the elected party receives more than 5% of the vote in the federal election, it is represented in our parliament! …Nonetheless, Germany is struggling with exactly the same problem of right-wing / neo-fascist populism as basically every nation in the Western world at the moment…

For more reading on Germany’s political power / party dynamics, please have a look here!

I don’t know whether this should be hastily dismissed as “FUD”: Do you want to live in a world where all of your country’s critical infrastructure is owned by Chinese state-owned corporations as soon as your government can no longer service its loans to Beijing?

… The situation is certainly not entirely comparable, but since the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, we have seen the problems Germany has had with the fact that its gas storage facilities belong to Gazprom…

Germany’s strategy of going all-in on LNG has been a colossal failure, and I do not believe going all-in on any other energy sources is wise. Diversification of energy grids is almost always the best strategy, as it mitigates risks which are as yet unforeseen. Let’s build wind and solar, but let’s also build nuclear. Worst case scenario Germany has lots of clean energy.

There is nothing wrong with diversification, but it is always a question of how much bang for the buck you get in the end - especially against the background of the politically explosive debate about electricity prices. The real costs of nuclear power (including risk insurance, etc.) are immense and one must honestly ask oneself what amount of renewable energy one can get on the grid with the same investment in a realistic time. Given that Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley Point will be / already are all massively over budget, I assume that with the expansion of the trans-European grids (HVDCs) and seasonal storage of green hydrogen, methane, etc. we will probably achieve this goal better and cheaper…

Canada and Australia are #2 and #4 producers of uranium. Uranium mining is extremely distributed, and we have no strategic risk of losing access.

OK, point taken - assuming that their deposits are sufficient for the uranium demand of the whole western world for the next 50-100 years (?), supply may be regarded as secured.

We do not shut down nuclear plants. They are not quick-fire generation. They stay in operation indefinitely, and provide stable power during periods of low sun and wind. They make an excellent complement to renewable grids which are subject to high volatility.

Correct, that is exactly the problem: Without an unconditional feed-in guarantee (i.e. even at times when the nuclear power plants could operate economically on the common European electricity market), no operator would agree to produce nuclear energy. This, in turn, ensures that any power plants that cannot be shut down quickly enough (especially nuclear and coal-fired) have the effect that wind farms, in particular, often have to be taken off the grid. Since this is also connected with compensation payments to the wind power operators, these are external costs of nuclear power which we all (private households and industry) have to pay via our electricity price…

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fundamental opponent of nuclear power, but I would like to point out that at this point in time I think we can achieve our goal of an emission-free energy sector faster and more cost-efficiently if we focus our political, regulatory and economic efforts entirely on the development and scale up of renewable energy and storage technologies - not to mention the fact that the supply chain for uranium (Russia, Niger, China, Kazakhstan, etc) and the security of supply with sufficient cooling water are by no means secure at present and in times of worsening climate change…

Apart from that, nuclear power plants cannot be shut down fast enough and are therefore not realy compatible with an energy mix that is largely based on renewables…

Or in Germany’s case, nuclear energy.

You know that not even the former operators of the German nuclear power plants are in favour of going back to nuclear? Even if we decide NOW to invest in nuclear power again on a grand scale - which makes no sense at all economically - it won’t help the energy transition, because planning and construction takes decades and is irrational in terms of costs. However, I agree with you that it was a strategic mistake on the part of the former Merkel government not to shut down coal-fired power plants first but to shut nuclear - but this does not change the current path dependencies of the German energy sector at all!