this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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I understand that it's supposed to be a shitty comic and not a balanced, reasonable take, but if you'd like to hear a German perspective anyways:
I'm not aware of any official representative lobbying other countries to end nuclear, except of course in nations that build their totally safe reactors near our border. I'm also not aware of us being awarded or recognized for our stance. Individual Germans, like me, will of course have been fed different propaganda than you and will argue accordingly.
No one here likes the coal generators. And with how much cheaper solar is these days, they're definitely on the way out. But we don't have a dictatorship anymore, luckily, so even obviously good paths will face pushback, like from entire regions whose jobs are in the coal industry.
We've just been able to get a consensus on abolishing nuclear much more quickly for multiple reasons:
Just a couple of sidenotes
RU attacking Germany is as unlikely as RU shelling London, NY, or Tokyo
I think the news was that someone shelled Zaporizhzhia "Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for shelling the Russian-controlled plant." Now, I'm not Hercule Poirot, but if RU controlled the plant at the time, wouldn't that make UKR the most likely culprit?
Surely Russia turning a tap is less pertinent than USA literally bombing the pipeline?
So where are you buying from the rest of your resources? Surely nuclear is more feasible than coal from a purely geopolitical/economic point of view? I guess good luck with the solar panels.
You seem to be a bit confused about the situation.
It's a bit more likely. Eastern part of Germany was USSR back in the days. Germans share common fears with Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, ... for good reason. They've had this happen before.
A decentralised network with many different production sites for solar, wind, water etc is in many ways less vulnerable than a network with fewer very centralised production facilities.
The goal is moving away from coal and nuclear, clearly, it's just taking too long. EU will start importing massive amounts of hydrogen overseas the next few decades, possibly also funding the green pduction itself in southern countries.
The only real german stupidity was investing in and relying on nordstream 2, because that was after Russia pulled the crimea and donbas.
Russia hasn't attacked any nuclear reactors in Ukraine for obvious reasons. The notions that Russia would attack nuclear reactors in Germany is pure absurdity that no sane person could believe.
That's a straight up lie. Russia never cut off gas supply to Germany, and in fact has repeatedly stated that one of Nord Stream pipelines is operational. German government is choosing to buy Russian LNG through third parties instead of buying pipeline gas directly.
Well, I don't know what to tell you. These things have been broadly reported here in Germany. Whom of us was mislead, doesn't matter for explaining why us Germans have a different stance on things.
Here's two random articles, but I can send a whole list of links, if your search engine isn't turning up anything:
Ah yes, "Ukrainian officials say", very credible source. Weird how IEA never found any evidence of Russia shelling ZNPP though. And yeah, once you stop paying for a product the delivery stops. That's how business works.
Russia stopped delivering gas to 5 european countries in May 2022 because those countries refused to pay in rubels.
Then they announced in June 2022 that they would only deliver half of the agreed-upon volumes to Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czechia and Italy.
In September 2022 Russia stopped gas transfers via Nord Stream 1 completely, "because of technical difficulties".
Those are facts. Russia stopped these gas transfers. No one else.
Russia stopped transfers because Europe refused to pay in a currency Russia could use. Funny how you forgot to mention that the west froze Russian foreign assets there.
Now, Europe is still buying Russian gas, but via resellers while lying to the public.
Those are the actual facts.
I think you mean America cut off your natural gas supply when they blew up the Nordstream
No, Russia had already stopped delivering natural gas at the end of August 2022. The pipelines got blown up on the 26th September 2022.
Yeah... Suppliers tend to do that when you stop paying them.
That's not the case though. Russia stopped supplying gas to 5 countries in May because those countries refused to pay in rubles.
The stop of supplying gas to Germany at the end of August/start of September was not at all related to that.
This in itself is contradictory but even despite that, there's 20.000 people left with jobs in the coal industry. You could give everyone over like the age of 50 their pension as if they worked till the regular pension age and then re-train everybody else with very generous benefits for the interrim time of like 5 years and it would be orders of magnitude cheaper than keeping that system rolling.
Well, if you've got a plan worked out for that, maybe you'd like to present it to our government. That sounds like something they would love to know about.
So immediately snippy.
Yeah, this whole comment section annoys me. So many people who don't get that likely all of us have been fed propaganda. And even if you believe that you're the one person who knows only the truth, then still the absolute worst thing you can do, is to ridicule others who've been told a different story.
The only winning strategy is to share what you've been told and listen to what the others have been told. That's what my initial comment tried to start off. And like, I agree that the guy's comment wasn't even bad, but it was just immediately back to "Here's the absolute facts!". Like, what the hell am I even supposed to do with that comment? There is no reason provided why I should believe it, so honestly, they could have just not written it.
Well we at Hexbear like to assume, rightly or wrongly, that shame is the best to convince some sorts of people to rethink. People have wasted much energy trying to nicely convince these types when it turned out they were entirely unwilling to consider that they are misinformed. Your comments have mirrored how those look with a very reddit-like demeanor. If you're sincere, consider commenting as if you're not on reddit and looking to figure out what's true and people will engage happily. I've learned a lot by doing that.
Remember, the US have spent tens of times more money on propaganda around the world than any other country (remember, US propaganda is different in form than e.g. USSR, but mostly because their way is MORE effective). Europe+the US has spent more in 40 years than the rest of the world ever. Imagine the impact this has on your worldview before reading any news or positions taken in politics around the world.
I personally ridicule people on the Internet because it's funny. I don't think I'm going to change any minds and I don't care. I do stuff in real life when I want to change people's minds. I go online for catharsis.
Plan's right there mate. Early retirement at 0 loss after an age cutoff, 5 year former wages for the rest, have some of the boffins at the Wirtschaftsministerium calculate where the cut-off makes sense economically, done. Fuck just reuse the plans from when you dismantled any given organisation in the 90s - 2000s, I'm sure they're still around, could be used for good for ones. This is not a hard thing to do, logistically.
It's not cheaper for corrupt politicians who receive bribes from the coal industry, however
What does Chernobyl have to do with Germany deciding to appease a few billionaires and burn more coal?
I'm not aware of those billionaires caring whether they get paid to burn coal or paid to build solar farms.
Well they own and are currently profiting from coal mines, they don't own solar farm construction companies.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-4390/nuclear-bros-take-to-social-media-to-spread-the-word/
Foreign dependance is just false. In own country produced coal is clearly less foreign dependant than importing uranium.
All your other points are up for debate and by far not as black and white or right and wrong as you seem to believe.
We are yet to see these fancy schmancy super reactors online in Europe. Just about every new nuclear construction site in Europe in the past 15 years has become nothing short of a financial bottomless pit.
I've heard that Germany today has problems with expertise to operate nuclear sites. Not sure how much of a problem that would be, though.
British new reactors are by now more then a decade overdue and budget is spiralling out of control massively. So massively it's causing the need for diplomacy between France (EDF) and Britain to get involved.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cost-edfs-new-uk-nuclear-project-soars-40-bln-2023-02-20/
Same tendencies are in all European countries that tried nuclear project recently: way over budget and massive delays. Only France is somewhat better exception. Belarus is a dictatorship, if they say reactor go, reactor go. This is exactly what is meant with some fears surrounding nuclear energy. Chernobyl was real. It's not a coincidence it happened in the USSR.
If I say ALL other points you made are not so black and white, I do not have the obligation to specify nor to elaborate. Things are rarely binary good vs evil in this world. Every energy source has advantages and disadvantages. Pro-nuclear voices are often blind for the risks, they are very tiny in possibility and very large in potential consequences at the same time.
Thorium, smr etc is still a pipedream at this point.
It is a valid strategy for a country to invest into proven technology like better insulating homes, optimising network, supporting more wind and solar and combining it with importing foreign hydrogen. This choice does not make Germany or other European countries retarded as is often portrayed. The mistakes are make in the timing, and in the reliance on 1 single foreign supplier (Russian gas), not in the fundamental choice itself to move away from nuclear. The move away from nuclear was very widely supported in German democracy. And it is valid to say this was an environmental choice: no, we don't know what to do with the small fraction of very long lasting waste in the long term, a fact still ignored all the time by the pro-nuclear voice.