Why is Germany still opposed to nuclear power despite the energy crisis?

Question

Germany has recently announced that while they’ll keep two of their nuclear power plants operational during the winter, they’re still planning to shut them down in the spring. But why aren’t they doing a complete U-turn and keeping the nuclear power plants permanently active in addition to building new ones? It seems like a viable option to deal with Russian energy supplies going away.

Answer 1

Because the majority of the electorate is opposed to nuclear power.

In particular, Green and Social Democrat voters are against it. Thus, the current coalition (of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberal Democrats) cannot change its position on nuclear power. The current crisis didn't change the main concerns against nuclear power and, since building new plants would be very costly and time-consuming, that isn't considered to be a solution to the short-term issue. There is also political consensus that there are better long-term solutions than nuclear power.

Image from above link translated by Yandex translate.
Red text my interpretation. [RM]

Answer 2

That would be the 4th u-turn in German nuclear energy policy. The other 3 were.

• 2000, when the SPD/Greens coalition government under Gerhard Schröder decided the "Atomausstieg". To phase out nuclear power by 2020.
• 2010, when the CDU/FDP government under Angela Merkel decided to increase the time the existing nuclear powerplants could run ("Atomausstiegausstieg")
• 2011, when the Fukushima Daiichi power plant had a meltdown, and the same government decided that nuclear power should be phased out rather sooner than later. They decided that the last nuclear power plants should go offline in late 2022. ("Atomausstiegausstiegausstieg")

And here we are, in 2022, with the energy crisis caused by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Most nuclear power plants in Germany are already offline or in the process of being taken offline. And so is all the infrastructure required for operating them. Reactivating them would be a huge financial investment, if possible at all. And yet there are plans to do exactly this with at least two nuclear power plants. Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim are supposed to stay online at least until early 2023 (German source).

Why not build new nuclear power plants? The problem is that nuclear power capacity isn't something you can just create out of thin air. Building a new nuclear power plant is a huge project that takes at least a decade of planning and execution. If Germany decided to build new nuclear power plants today, they probably wouldn't go online until the mid 2030s. The geopolitical and energy situation could look completely different then.

However, Germany, or rather the EU in general, already has a strategy in place to replace fossil fuels. The plan is for the EU to become climate-neutral by 2050. The lack of fossil fuels from Russia has only increased the pressure to execute this plan rather sooner than later. This plan does not include increased production of nuclear power. Why? Because nuclear power is one of the most expensive forms of energy. It's just not economically competitive with wind and solar, in combination with hydropower, biofuel and green hydrogen for compensating peak loads or times of Dunkelflaute ("dark lull", when there is neither wind nor sun).

Answer 3

Because the energy crisis is a temporary issue and it doesn't change any of the issues they have with nuclear power. There are many issues with nuclear power around the disposal and storage of the various waste products and spent fuel from the plant. Those issues are still present regardless of there being an energy crisis and will still be present after the crisis is over. There is also the issue that building a new nuclear power plant takes time and won't likely be complete until after the crisis.

In short nothing about nuclear power has changed because of this to make them want to build new plants.

Edit:

In fact the current situation could be causing more people to oppose nuclear power due to the risks being faced in Ukraine. Currently there is a lot of concern around several plants and damage being caused by the conflict that could cause damage to the area and nearby countries. While you will likely brush this off as misguided and the least of Ukraine's problems that is not how other countries see it.

Answer 4

The groups fighting against nuclear power plants in the 1970s were the core political movement from which the German Green party emerged. This is why the Greens cannot turn pro nuclear without ending their existence as a party. Even the currently proposed lifetime extension, very moderate in time and extent, is a perilous endeavor for Robert Habeck, the responsible Green minister, and may well explode the current government if the Green base balks — one of the political principles of the Greens is a more direct democracy, also in their own party, so there may be a party vote about contentious issues like this one.

Anything beyond this very limited life time extension of existing power plants is entirely unthinkable with the current government.

It is important to realize the increased political clout the Green party has gained in recent years. They are likely to be junior partners of middle-left and middle-right governments alike because the left and right fringe parties are unacceptable by the major parties as coalition partners.

Additionally, the two big parties are losing voters. Especially the traditional Social Democratic Party is becoming increasingly obsolete due to ongoing tectonic shifts in labor, and in society in general. The Greens are now an integral, important part of the moderate left in Germany; perhaps they are the moderate left's future, given how important ecological problems have become. They have much more power than they used to have even as recently as ten years ago.

Therefore the Greens will likely be in a position to block a nuclear renaissance in the foreseeable future.

And then there is, of course, the fact that what's left of nuclear power isn't that important any longer in the German energy mix. It may be important enough to let the plants run through the coming winter, a last hooray, and then good riddance.

Because, like you all do, I'm seeing a lot of Youtube videos featuring new, improved nuclear power plant designs which would solve our energy problems. It is all baloney. New plants take decades to build in Europe, only a crazyman would gamble the energy future of his country, his region or his world on unproven new designs, they are crazy expensive, and you are still dependent on imports. And that is before you even contemplate the probabilities of a core meltdown in the most populous regions of Europe and try to find a nice backyard for the waste, risking riots wherever you turn to.

Answer 5

There are several good reasons not to do so:

• It would not help in the current crisis. If you start building new Nuclear Power Plants now, it would take years until they work.
• Power Plants just postpone the problem to the future. Almost no one has an idea what to do with the nuclear waste. It will take millenia until the waste is gone. Taking into account what happened during the past only 200 years, it would be insane to think a chosen place will be untouched by humans, other beings and natural disasters for the next 10000 years.
• Uranium is not infinite.

Answer 6

keeping the nuclear power plants permanently active in addition to building new ones

Nuclear power is not seen as a good solution for providing electric energy in Germany. And indeed it may not be. Just look at France who depends on nuclear power much more and had quite some problems this summer (French Nuclear Power Crisis Frustrates Europe’s Push to Quit Russian Energy). So building new power plants, especially with the planned further increase of renewables doesn't make sense. Letting run nuclear power plants forever equally would collide with increased renewables. Nuclear power will very likely be phased out in Germany at some point.

The major concern currently is getting through the current crisis but that's expected to be a limited in time event. The government increased the running time of some nuclear power plants to next year spring, but then maybe they will increase the running time again. Nobody knows.

I think that the government sees nuclear power plants as an insurance but as for an insurance you only want to pay for it as short a duration as possible.

Indeed there is no shortage of electric energy in Germany right now, electric energy production is covering consumption. Prices are very high but that is a peculiarity of the energy market and how it is regulated where the last (marginal) produced unit of energy has a great influence on the price. Nuclear power plants aren't good at providing peak electric energy packets.

Germany wanted to phase out nuclear power by 2022 and coal power by 2038 only. Both, nuclear power plants and coal power plants should largely be written off and using both should provide similar economic sense. This may reflect that Germans do not care so much about CO2 compared to producing more nuclear waste or risking an nuclear accident in a power plant.

Indeed nuclear power polled badly in Germany over many years in the past. Only with increasing prices, Germans are changing their opinion a bit, but it's not clear if there would be a majority for it now and there isn't a majority within the government.

Answer 7

There are two major aspects not yet listed: price, and duration. Germany cannot meet the legally binding requirement to stop emitting around ca. 2030 with nuclear power, and in any case nuclear power costs much more than renewables. Details below.

Nuclear is too expensive

Not only is nuclear power expensive: it is getting more expensive. Nuclear power is the only major source of electricity whose prices are increasing long-term (not considering market fluctuations for fossil-fuel based electricity). Already today, it is one of the most expensive sources of electricity:

Source: Our World in Data. Further sources in the linked article, which is thoroughly researched with 45 footnotes.

Reasons for this are a multitude, but in general, renewables profit from economy of scale, because solar panels or batteries can be mass produced. Nuclear plants, in particular new ones, are highly complex and suffer from diseconomy of scale. After 70 years, nuclear power still relies on government subsidies, whereas subsidies for renewables are slowly being phased out because they're competitive on their own by now, despite fossil fuel subsidies still being in place. Perhaps nuclear power could become cheaper with deregulation, improved standardisation and a major effort to build many plants of the same type, but the data show no evidence for this happening.

Nuclear is too slow

Germany has signed the Paris Climate Agreement, where compliance with the 1.5 °C target requires an end to all greenhouse gas emissions by around 2030 (Traber et. al, 2021). This is 8 years away. Germany cannot build new nuclear power plants in 8 years. Therefore, new nuclear power plants cannot contribute to reaching net zero carbon in a legally required timescale.

Traber T, Hegner FS, Fell H-J. An Economically Viable 100% Renewable Energy System for All Energy Sectors of Germany in 2030. Energies. 2021; 14(17):5230. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14175230

Answer 8

I'm interested in German arguments based on nuclear engineering facts rather than emotions, if any such facts exist

You won't find any. The discussion about nuclear power plants is 100% emotional in Germany. Nukes have been deemed uncool and unsafe for decades now, and you cannot expect to change this opinion with facts, such as global mortality rate by TWh:

Germany produced about 165TWh of electricity from lignite and coal in 2021, which will cause approximately 4000 deaths. This, incidentally, is also a plausible death count for the Chernobyl disaster.

As mentioned by other answers, it would take at least 10 or 15 years to build new nuclear power plants in Germany. The "nukes are unsafe" opinion would be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Germany has many excellent engineers, scientists and construction workers. But they would simply not be interested in working for the nuclear industry, and would rather design cars. Which, by the way, still kill 7 people every day, in Germany alone.

Answer 9

The problem isn't the total electric power available, but network stability.

What the German grid lacks is supply that can react quickly to changes in demand, because there is no way to dump excess energy. The existing nuclear power plants are old and cannot be run efficiently in load-following mode -- trying to do so would at the same time decrease revenue for the operator and increase thermal stresses from frequent power changes.

Due to the way electrical energy is traded on the market, priority must be given to nuclear power while it is available. Wind and solar generators are required to have feedback mechanisms to disable them when there is oversupply in the network, which is still too slow as a frequency regulation mechanism, but a lot more flexible than nuclear plants.

So, while the nuclear plants are running, more gas is required to compensate for the lack of medium-term regulation on nuclear plants.

The existing plants are kept mostly as backup for the steel and aluminium industries. It is doubtful they will be needed, but the government is playing it safe here.

Answer 10

As pointed out in the other answers, going for nuclear energy requires a long term commitment. On the long term, the main issue to deal with is climate change. For nuclear energy to be relevant to deal with climate change, it has to be used on a large scale. This requires the use of fast breeder reactors, or else we'll run out of U-235 within a century.

Europe and the the US have both stopped developing fast breeder reactors since the 1990s. It would take a long time to build up the infrastructure needed for fast breeder reactors. Only Russia is currently using a large fast breeder reactors for electricity generation. We can e.g. read here:

With energy prices spiking thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and with the growing public cry to move toward sources of energy that don’t emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, nuclear power is getting another look. At the same time, innovators are looking at redesigning fast reactor technology to make it more cost-effective, Gehin said.

Currently, Russia is the only country producing electricity with fast reactor technology. India and China have plans to build out commercial fast reactors in the future. ............

Before nuclear waste can be used to power fast reactors, it has to go through reprocessing. Right now, only Russia has the capacity to do this at scale. France, too, has the capacity to recycle used nuclear waste, Gehin said, but the country generally takes its recycled fuel and puts it back into existing light water reactors.

Answer 11

Oil and gas industry earns lots of money and have been used some to manipulate the thinking of the society. After the long years of demonizing the nuclear energy there is still inertia in thinking. Wind turbines (they are apex predators!) and biofuels (they are the root cause of the world hunger!) also took they hit.