Germany has decided to go forward with its plans to shut down their last
remaining nuclear reactors.
The controversial decision comes with some serious climate related
consequences that are worth discussing.
Now, fierce debates over whether countries should completely phase out
nuclear power have raged on for decades.
What ends up complicating the matter even more is how to do away with nuclear,
which is a clean energy source, while adequately addressing our energy needs.
Can countries make that transition without depending on destructive
fossil fuels to fill the gap?
Unfortunately, so far, the answer is no.
Before we explore Germany and the issues surrounding nuclear bans, it's important
to understand why there's been an effort to ban nuclear power in the first place.
The antinuclear movement understandably took off during the Cold War in the 1970s,
when sincere fears of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction took hold.
Protesters had legitimate fears that stockpiles of
atomic weapons would eventually destroy us all.
Let's take a look.
>> The first protests were small and
local, but the movement spread quickly in the 70s,
leading to month long sit ins and riots in the following years.
And then came the Tschernobyl catastrophe.
Its radioactive fallout also reached Germany,
which further cemented the antinuclear sentiment in the public.
That led to a unique landmark decision.
In 2002, Germany decided to phase out nuclear energy.
At that point, 19 reactors were generating over a quarter of Germany's electricity,
but they were shut down one by one, and
the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima sped things up.
>> [FOREIGN].
>> The week of the catastrophe, all older plants were shut down.
A few months later, the government decided to get out of nuclear power once and for
all by the end of 2022.
>> While Germany more or less kept its promise and recently completed its
nuclear phase out by shutting down the last three remaining reactors.
Unfortunately, what doesn't get discussed enough is what nuclear energy ends up
getting replaced with.
In Germany's case, it ended up being one of the dirtiest fossil fuels available.
>> People are being urged to cut their energy use.
>> Which put Germany in a very tight spot.
The threat of a gas shortage loomed.
Three of the remaining six nuclear power plants had just been turned off.
The country had to resort to firing up old coal plants to make up for
it, which pushed up overall emissions.
>> Pushing up overall emissions not good.
Very bad.
Left without nuclear energy and limited natural gas due to, of course,
Russia's war with Ukraine, Germany had no choice but to turn to coal.
And to be clear, methane emitting fossil fuels like natural gas aren't
exactly an ideal replacement for nuclear either.
For the environmentalists out there, don't be too hard on Germany.
They're actually not alone in turning to climate warming energy sources in
lieu of nuclear power.
As in California, New York, Italy, Taiwan, and
virtually everywhere else that abandons nuclear energy,
fossil fuels have largely made up the difference, which is a disaster.
Aside from destroying the planet and
contributing to the climate emergency, the fossil fuels that now
replace nuclear also have an immediate impact on people's health.
Coal and gas laces the air with fine particles that lodge in the lungs and
trigger all kinds of diseases.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers concluded that deactivating
reactors leads to thousands of premature deaths from the air pollution,
particularly in poor and marginalized populations.
And despite investing heavily in hydroelectricity, biomass,
wind and solar, these sources of energy simply don't generate
enough power to fill the gap left behind by nuclear's phase out.
>> Germany just isn't there yet.
A third of its electricity still comes from dirty coal.
And that's where nuclear energy could be useful to replace coal until
renewable energies ramp up enough, batteries are developed enough, and
transmission grids are built widely enough to even
out the regional differences in wind and solar generation.
>> As Alexander Kaufman writes in HuffPost, for all the billions of euros
Germany spent on renewables, the now six reactors shut down since
the end of 2021 produced more zero carbon electricity than all
the country's solar panels combined and did so without requiring gas and
coal-fired plants to switch on when the sky went dark.
And look, the picture is even more bleak when you take a step back and
look at Europe as a whole.
Even with some of the technological improvements, like batteries, for
instance, that store solar energy that can be used when the sky is dark,
the current capabilities are still nowhere close to meeting Europe's energy needs.
Weaker than anticipated winds the previous summer had actually forced utilities
in wind powered nations to burn through more gas than expected.
And the methane gas that had served as backup for renewables,
meanwhile, relied on a fresh supply constantly flowing
through the continent's network of pipelines.
And we all know how we feel about pipelines.
Now, the point here is not to trash the incredible strides that
Germany has made in the realm of renewables.
As an American, I find it enviable that Germany treats transitioning
to renewables with the seriousness that the United States lacks.
In fact, by 2022, around 50% of Germany's energy actually came from renewables,
which is pretty damn impressive.
And the country's goal is to increase their reliance on renewables
to a whopping 80% by 2030.
But there are huge questions about how Germany will fulfill the other
20% of its energy needs, and that's assuming the country
reaches its 80% renewable energy goal by the year 2030.
>> And what do we do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow?
The amount of electricity needed to compensate for
that is called the residual load, and it fluctuates a lot during the day.
To fill the gap, we would either need huge batteries to store the energy in peak
times, which we are still far from having on a large enough scale or
we need power plants that we can shut on and off very flexibly.
Right now, a lot of this flexible adjusting in Germany is done
by gas plants, which can be turned on and off completely within just 30 minutes.
But they, of course, also emit considerable emissions.
To cut those, we need to have a low carbon energy source.
Hydro and biomass are currently not flexible enough for that in Germany.
So could nuclear power fill that gap?
>> And again, this is the 20% gap that Germany would be dealing with,
assuming they get to 80% renewables by the year 2030.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Let's actually take a look at what's happening in other countries right now,
before finally considering the costs and benefits of each model.
Now, France actually resisted calls to end its dependency on nuclear power.
The country happens to rely pretty heavily on it.
Just a few weeks ago, on April 7, the carbon intensity of
Germany's power grid was roughly ten times that of France's.
Just let that sink in for a second.
Then there are other countries that actually banned nuclear energy long
before Germany did.
Denmark is a prime example, having outlawed nuclear power in 1985.
Today, about half of the country's energy comes from wind and solar, which,
by the way, just pause for
1 second makes me really realize how far behind the United States is on renewables.
But I continue.
It sounds impressive until you realize that Denmark does rely on fossil fuels and
burning wood to fill the gap left behind by phasing out nuclear power.
Without nuclear, Denmark needs fossil fuels and wood to provide energy for
heating their homes, keeping the lights on at businesses, and
also for fueling transportation.
Pretty rough if you're concerned about the climate emergency, which, of course,
I'm definitely concerned about that, a lot of people are concerned about that.
On top of that, Denmark simply is not generating nearly as much power as
they would if they kept a few nuclear reactors without decommissioning them.
Now, the British energy think tank Ember claims that last year wind and
solar generated a little under 21 terawatt hours of electricity.
Germany's three remaining nuclear reactors alone,
before they were shut down, managed to double that in the same year.
Now, right before Germany actually went through with decommissioning
its nuclear reactors, Danish protesters like 25 year old Johann Solid
traveled from Denmark to Berlin to speak out against the potential shutdowns.
He told the press this, quote, these three nuclear reactors in Germany produce
more electricity than all Danish windmills and solar panels combined.
In one day they wipe out the whole energy transition of Denmark.
But what are the experts saying?
I mean, it's one thing to hear from a 25 year old protester from Denmark who
doesn't like what his country did, but
I wanna hear from actual experts, environmentalists,
including those who are a little more skeptical toward nuclear energy.
Now, we trust the terrifying reports from the IPCC, for instance,
which indicate the rapid pace at which our climate is warming.
Do they agree with the nuclear phase out?
Let's watch.
>> On the point of emissions, there is agreement.
The International Energy Agency sees nuclear power as necessary to lower our
emissions as fast as possible.
And the IPCC also factors in the growth in nuclear power in most of its
1.5 degree scenarios.
>> Even environmentalist Greta Thunberg, who is famously against nuclear power,
says when it came to Germany mothballing nuclear reactors to transition
back to coal, not in favor of it, she expressed quite a bit of dismay.
In fact, Thunberg even got arrested while protesting
the expansion of coal in Germany.
While some countries like Germany have banned nuclear energy,
other countries have decided to go in the opposite direction, and
that includes Japan, which was the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that was
brought on by a tsunami back in 2011.
The tsunami flooded backup generators at the Laxley regulated power plant,
which triggered the worst nuclear accident since Tschernobyl.
But notably, no one died from the radiation.
Things began to shift toward the end of 2021 as warming, meaning climate warming,
worsened, the COVID-19 pandemic deprioritized emissions cuts and
the tradeoffs associated with depending entirely on renewables became clearer.
Ahead of the United Nations climate summit that November,
Japan pledged to restart its reactors.
So other countries have also decided to not only protect the nuclear power
they have in their countries, but to develop more nuclear power.
Ghana and Indonesia announced plans to build their first nuclear plants.
China also promised to build 150 reactors in the next 15 years,
more than the entire world constructed in the last 35 years.
Poland recently announced plans to go on a reactor building spree
according to HuffPost.
Poland announced a deal late last year to build its first full scale nuclear
power plant using American reactor technology and hired South Korea's
nuclear exporter to construct its second station shortly afterward.
And believe it or not, this actually shocked me.
But even Ukraine has placed orders for
new reactors that have been designed in the United States,
betting that atomic energy is actually safer than gas or oil.
And that's after Russia occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
But nuclear, I want to be clear about this, does come with downsides,
which includes issues with nuclear waste disposal and also,
of course, potential accidents at reactor sites.
>> The discourse in Germany has centered on the question of safety.
Talking about accidents and looking at the numbers alone, though,
nuclear is much safer than coal and other fossil fuels.
Check out this graph.
Not only are fossil fuels way worse for climate change, but air pollution and
mining accidents have claimed far more lives than nuclear accidents.
Nuclear waste storage is another contentious issue.
>> There is agro-solution, which has been agreed widely by the Scientific Committee,
which is burial in deep geological repositories.
And the first one is, in fact, going to be coming into operation in Finland.
>> The site in Finland is the only one in the world in construction.
Sweden just licensed a site of its own.
But the other 30 plus countries with nuclear power have yet to build or
license sites and the search for suitable areas is long, fraught, and controversial.
The fear of contamination has continually sparked protests.
>> Look, there could come a day where we have the technological advancements
necessary to abandon nuclear entirely without having to turn to coal or
wood or natural gas or some other fossil fuel.
But the point is we're not there yet.
So as with other political issues,
countries seem to be putting the cart before the horse, which drives me crazy.
And in this case, it's causing destruction to the environment, to the planet.
And the healthcare costs associated with
turning to more fossil fuels in lieu of nuclear
is another concern that I personally have.
Look, this isn't to say I love nuclear energy and I want to keep it for eternity.
I understand the risks associated with it.
I understand the impact it has because of the use of fresh water for
these nuclear reactors.
There could be some technological advancements that mitigate those
issues as well.
But my whole point in bringing up this issue is that it just doesn't
make sense to phase out one of the most dependable clean energy
sources before we've developed the necessary renewable energy
to basically close the gap left behind by the phase out of nuclear.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
And weirdly enough,
somehow people have convinced themselves that switching over to burning wood or
switching over to coal is somehow better than continuing to rely on nuclear energy
until we develop more renewable energy that we can rely on and to close the gap.
But it's an interesting topic, one that for some reason fires people up.
At the end of the day, it's nuanced.
You have to do a cost benefit analysis and you have to weigh the risks of
nuclear with the risks of using climate warming fossil fuels.
And based on the data that we have right now, I think that Germany probably should
have kept those three nuclear reactors up and running until they reached
better developments when it came to renewable energy.