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submitted 3 days ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

Summary

A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.

While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.

About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.

Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.

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[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 13 points 2 days ago

just not true.innofact can f off. if you keep asking the old people, you will get old people answers.

when confronting the asked ppl with the numbers it costs to build a new one they all dont want a new one. not to mention the insurance for a plant. and from ukraine war we all learned nuclear ia stupid.

or go ask any of those fuckwits if we can store the waste where they live. numbers prove that around the plants the number of kids with cancer did indeed exceed all expections.

NOBODY wants a plant or the waste anywhere close to where they live.

"would you like cheap clean nucular(!) energy"

or

"would you like a powerplant and final storage near you"?

fuck innofacts hate campaign.

[-] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

numbers prove that around the plants the number of kids with cancer did indeed exceed all expections.

Do you have a source on this? Not to be contrarian, I've just never heard this to be the case.

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago
[-] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Not sure how much I'll get out of this, being that it's in German, but I appreciate the follow up!

Edit: It gets worse. 60% solid cancers, 120% increase in leukemias among children living within 5 km of nuclear power stations. I'm actually really surprised 😬

[-] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

from ukraine war we all learned nuclear ia stupid.

Isn't that what prompted this - Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, and then everyone needing an energy source that isn't Putin?

"would you like a powerplant and final storage near you"?

Why would they put final storage near humans and not inside a mountain or something?

[-] yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

ask the dutch and the swiss who plan to out them next to the german border. dutch dont have mountains to be fair.

[-] friendlymessage@feddit.org 66 points 3 days ago

FFS, people are stupid.

There was a huge hysteria about nuclear when Fukushima happened. A clear majority was for immediate action. Merkel's coalition government would have ended if she hadn't done a 180 on nuclear and decided to shut down nuclear as soon as possible, which was 2023. I was against shutting it down back then but I thought you can't go against the whole population, so I get why they did it. People didn't change their mind until 2022. Nobody talked about reversing that decision in all these years when there was actually time to reverse the decision.

Now, that the last reactor is shut down, the same people that were up in arms in 2011 are now up in arms that we don't have nuclear. Building new plants will cost billions and take decades and nuclear doesn't work well with renewables because of its inflexibility. It makes no sense at all. It was a long-term decision we can't just back away from. What's done is done.

[-] Floopquist@lemmy.org 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I like that you mention the point, Merkel's coalition made a full 180 turnaround. Which was an error. They could have just made a plan for phasing out the reactors until maybe 2040 or 2050. No, they had to stop them right away and now the existing plants are so gutted that they are not feasible to be rebuilt again.

Anyway, building new power plants takes centuries in Germany. So we should just focus on renewables *and storage solutions now.

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[-] tempest@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 days ago

Nuclear works well with renewables. It provides reliable base load while the renewables and batteries can be used on top of that. Plus the fuel can be sourced from friendly nations like Canada.

Also worth noting that 15 years is a long time. SMRs are starting to be built and France is planning to build a bunch of nuclear capacity in the near future which might mean the possiblity to import cheap energy or leverage the human resources from those builds.

[-] Asetru@feddit.org 10 points 2 days ago

Nuclear works well with fucking nothing because it doesn't work... because it's just too fucking expensive, has to be shut down when it's too hot and is so dangerous you can't even find insurance. Base load can be provided by hydro, gas (which can be sourced sustainably) or batteries, all of which is cheaper, less dangerous and more easily available than nuclear.

[-] turnip@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Well its going to get more expensive relative as well as oil prices fall globally due to recession. But then we will hit another energy shortage and it will become cheaper, which is why France started building nuclear in the 1970s to begin with.

It seems to me nuclear takes you off the ebb and flow of global energy prices, I'd prefer spending on nuclear rather than carbon capture which seems to be the existing plan of many countries to combat climate change.

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[-] Alaknar@lemm.ee 21 points 2 days ago

Killing nuclear energy in Germany was the greatest success of FSB up to the point of planting an asset right in the middle of the Oval Office.

[-] intheformbelow@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago

Germany shot itself in the foot when it turned away from nuclear...

[-] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 31 points 2 days ago

No. Take a good look at France and their nuclear strategy. Both maintaining old reactors and building new ones is extremely costly. Building times are to be measured in decades. Nuclear power is not economically viable nor is it a solution to the climate catastrophe.

Returning to nuclear power in Germany is nothing but a pointless waste of tax money.

[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

Keep looking at things from a money perspective and the solution become obvious : kill everyone and be done with it.

Today, nuclear energy is a reasonably safe, efficient source of energy. Is it the energy of the future ? Probably not. But is it an efficient option for smoothing the grid while planting renewable all around it? It's definitely better than the other alternatives. Does it cost money to develop? Sure. Everything costs money. But there are benefits that won't show up in an accounting book that can't be brushed aside.

[-] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

Power to gas, water pumps, heat storage and battery storage are viable alternatives. There are many days already where we over produce green energy. Why sink hundreds of billions into nuclear plants when we could use the energy we already produce instead?

Nuclear power is all but efficient.

[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You keep seeing these as "alternatives", despite the shortcomings.

I say they are complimentary, and as far as providing power to address these shortcomings, nuclear power is a good solution. How can you look at something that can single-handedly address all power requirements in some area, while providing supports to other, and say "nah", seriously.

[-] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

I can say that because we neither have the time nor the money to sink it into nuclear plants. We have green tech. It's cheap, we're building capacity like crazy.

[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

And you're just gonna ignore all the shortcomings and hope they evaporate, I suppose. Nice plan you got there.

The whole point is that this alone is a risk for the short-medium term that could have been mitigated if not for blind and outdated policies. Look at what a single nuclear power plant could produce continuously, with little variation related to time of day or weather. Saying "we can do without that" today is just foolishness, ignorance, or wilful degradation.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

One way or another you need grid-scale turbines to maintain grid frequency. Solar power can't set frequency and wind power is too variable, so power grids use some sort of turbine to do it.

Nuclear reactors are also necessary to generate things like medical isotopes and tritium for industrial processes, and fusion research. Someone, somewhere on Earth needs to keep their fission reactors going.

[-] FurryMemesAccount 2 points 2 days ago

What do you mean? The cost of an old nuclear reactors' MWh is 40-50€, that's really competitive.

And unlike solar and wind, it produces anytime. As a French person, not only do I think we were right to build them in the first place, I'm annoyed we stopped in the 2000s after the Chernobyl scare campaign, it's safer than Germany's coal, which also produces radioactive waste and isn't properly regulated, unlike nuclear.

[-] uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Look at the desaster that is Flamanville 3, for instance.

The cour de comptes is pretty clear about it, too: https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2025-01/20250114-La-filiere-EPR%20-une-dynamique-nouvelle-des-risques-persistants_0.pdf

I agree that coal is important to phase out, even moreso than nuclear power. Germany was wrong to leave nuclear before coal.
But building new reactors is an utter waste of time and money.

[-] FurryMemesAccount 1 points 1 day ago

I have two answers to give you.

  • Flamanville is a new generation of reactor that we are testing out after regretfully stopping the large-scale production of reactors in France. Therefore the welding sector had been lacking work for 20 years, many retiring. The same issue goes for many other highly-specialized skills in the field. Americans had to be brought in to fill in for these positions, at high cost. So the left hadn't been corrupted by Russia into being against nuclear power in the first place, Flamanville would like gone about as well as developing a fundamentally different design can. I will grant you, however, that this isn't the design I would have liked to see deployed: France used to be developing the Phoénix and SuperPhénix fast neutron reactors until protesters made them stop. These kinds of reactors are cleaner, more fuel-efficient (by several orders of magnitude!), some variants can even consume previous nuclear waste, although I don't think these two French designs could. These would have been wonderful to have access to. Russia and China have already developed these designs, in large parts with our researchers when they lost their jobs, and we'll eventually just buy them from them again. Nice plan.

  • What would you replace these with? Batteries? Once again? Coal? Renewables? How would you deal when, all over Europe, every winter, there are weeks on end with next to no wind nor sun? Should we create new mountain ranges and rivers to store more energy hydraulically? Shift demand? Nuclear is the worst system except for all the others.

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[-] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago

Been saying this for years.

The problem is the power grid essentially being divided by north and south, it's a mess. They needed to fix that before taking nuclear off-grid.

[-] Katzimir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 3 days ago

I have been working in decomissioning npps in germany for over a decade now which is why I feel so strongly about the knee-jerk conservative BS. no, there are not -a million ways- to make waste from nuclear power plants safe. even material released from regulations (concrete from decomissioned buildings for example or soil from the ground) has some residual radioactive particles and just like alcohol in pregnancies: there is no safe amount of exposure to radiation, just a lower risk of provoking potentially fatal genetic mutation that european regulators deem acceptable. but that in and of itself is not really problematic. It is just that we cannot assume ideal conditions for running these plants. while relatively safe during a well monitored and maintained period in the power producing state of a npp that changes radically if things go south. Just look at what happened to the zhaporizhia powerplant in ukraine they actively attacked a nuclear site! And all the meticulous precautions go out the window if a bunch of rogues decide to be stupid - just because. and tbf whatever mess the release of large amounts of radioactive particles does to our environment, economy and society i would rather not find out. as others have laid out here, there are safer and better suiting alternatives that are not coal.

[-] relic_@lemm.ee 26 points 3 days ago

This is just straight up fear mongering. Say what you will about the economics, but the idea that there's no safe amount of radiation is ridiculous (we don't know, but presumably it's okay in some amounts since you're getting radiation doses every day even not living near anything nuclear).

The idea that NPPs are some unsafe technology just waiting to explode is dramatic and untrue.

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[-] Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 3 days ago

There's nothing more to come. Nuclear power is slow and uneconomical.

Joe Kaeser, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy: "There isn't a single nuclear power plant in the world that makes economic sense," he said on the ARD program Maischberger on November 27, 2024.

https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/farbebekennen-weidel-faktencheck-100.html?at_medium=mastodon

A fact check by the Fraunhofer Institute on nuclear energy states: "For example, around €2.5 billion would have to be raised to cover the nuclear waste generated. Overall, considerable short-term investments would be required." (for the construction of a new power plant)

https://www.ikts.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ikts/abteilungen/umwelt_und_verfahrenstechnik/technologieoekonomik_nachhaltigkeitsanalyse/oekonomische_analyse_nachhaltigkeit/241030_Fraunhofer-Faktencheck_Kernenergie.pdf

[-] Quatlicopatlix@feddit.org 17 points 3 days ago

Also the time it would take to build new power plants and get them to run would be something lile 20-25 years. We dont have that much time to get a grip on climate change so it doesnt matter annyways. Either we get 100% renewables untill then or we are fucked annyways.

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[-] fx242@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

Southern countries (Spain and Portugal) have a lot of wind and hydro (and soon solar) power to spare. But somehow some "actors" are cutting them off from the rest of the European power grid. Looking at you France, your greedy bastards!

[-] JATtho@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I'll just comment about one thing that keeps popping up in the discussions: grid-level storage. There is no such thing yet really that would last a full day cycle, and the 100MW or so units we are building are mostly for frequency stabilization and for buying enough time to turn on a base-load plant when the renewables drop out. I'm not arguing against storage - it is absolutely needed.

The problem is the scale, which people don't seem to get. Largest amount of energy we can currently repeatedly store and release is with pumped hydro, and the locations where this is possible are few and far between. Once the batteries reach this level-of-capacity, then we have a possibility to use them as grid-level storage that lasts a few days instead of hours.

[-] torrentialgrain@lemm.ee 148 points 3 days ago

Due to an absolutely comical amount of disinformation on the topic. People are absolutely clueless about the potential costs in time and money.

[-] RejZoR@lemmy.ml 46 points 3 days ago

That was mostly when they were rushing to shut down nuclear plants. Getting them operational again will be insane cost opposed to them keep on running like before.

[-] torrentialgrain@lemm.ee 37 points 3 days ago

Even before nuclear power was the most expensive type in the energy mix iirc.

[-] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 19 points 3 days ago

We're not saving the world by always choosing the cheapest option, that's how we got here

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[-] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 64 points 3 days ago

There's no good reason to be against nuclear power. It's green, it's safe, it's incredibly efficient, the fuel is virtually infinite, and the waste can be processed in a million different ways to make it not dangerous.

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There’s nothing green, cheap, or safe about nuclear power. We’ve had three meltdowns already and two of them have ruined their surrounding environments:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Mining for fuel ruins the water table:

A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas (contaminating the water table) https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/

Waste disposal, storage, and reprocessing are prohibitively expensive:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-nuclear-fuel-recycling/

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[-] Jumi@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

We have an almost indefinite source of energy below our feet and almost nobody talks about. Screw nuclear, go geothermal

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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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