Well, Germany is one of the biggest industies and economies in Europe. Germany has been emitting the most CO2 of all EU countries in 2000 and in 2023. Nuclear has never played a major role, but solar and Wind has exploded over the last 25 years, while coal has stayed stable. So the growth in demand over the last 25 years has been covered almost completely by renewables.
France is by the way on the forth Position if it comes to CO2 pollution in the EU. But to be fair they ennited about 10 % in 2023 while Germany contributed about 25 %. And on a per capital base Germany is doing pretty bad to, so it defnetly has to transition away from coal.
That won’t be towards nuclear tough. Germany will further expand it’s renewable Sector and some day get rid of its coal. Are they to slow with that? Absolutely. Is nuclear the answer to that? No.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 1 year ago
Investing 25 years into nuclear allows the fossil fuel industry to continue existing for longer, which is why they’re pushing nuclear.
Besides, the path France took is having to shut down their nuclear plants due to a lack of cooling water, caused by extremely hot and dry summers. Nuclear is becoming an increasingly unviable alternative, until we figure out fusion at least.
Meanwhile solar and wind are becoming increasingly more viable by the day.
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
France is shutting down some reactors during the hot summers. The reactors being shut down are the one that reject water directly into the river after passing through the cooling circuit. They shut down to avoid rising the river temperature, the river are already hotter than they should be so they try to mitigate this ecological issue.
Most of the reactors use cooling towers that don’t have this issue since the water is not sent back.
Then they also do that because July and August are the month with the lowest electrical consumption anyway and solar is going strong. So closing few reactors will not have any negative impacts. In winter on the other hand all the reactors needs to be functional.
I don’t understand the last part of your message about fusion, in this case fusion does not change anything. Fusion would use even more water so the problem would be even worst.
On the other hand climate change is impacting renewables every too. Storms are getting stronger and less predictable which can cause some serious damage on solar panel and wind turbines. Having a reliable electric production in the context of climate change is not trivial.