I like that name for Russia.

Germany decided to rely on the cheap and abundant natural gas from checks notes, ah shit.

and shutdown a brand new reactor as well, which would still be running, more than likely.

You are right, but in this specific chart, they don’t include things like building the facilities, mining the materials etc. They just use the CO2 released whilst producing power, which with nuclear is very low. You can click on the chart and zoom in on the data, it’s pretty cool. (This is wrong, see edit)

The whole Germany situation is very complex and I was just jabbing, I live very close to Germany and work in Germany part of the time so I know something about it (but probably not everything). To me phasing out the nuclear wasn’t that much of an issue, but it could have been done way slower to make sure renewables filled the gap. Buying gas from Russia with the war in Ukraine is going on permanently hurt my soul.

Quickly phasing out nuclear is also a big middle finger to the countries in Europe that are looking to expand their nuclear power, but run up against long lead times. They would have gladly bought nuclear energy from Germany, which would mean way shorter lead times and prevent a lot of extra CO2 during construction of new facilities. Whilst building new big nuclear probably isn’t useful in combatting climate change, getting the most out of existing nuclear would have been.

The fuel coming from Russia isn’t as big of a deal to me, as there are plenty of sources around the world to buy from. With the amount of gas we’ve bought from the US recently, we could have easily bought some nuclear fuel as well. Now all these sources have their issues, I don’t like being beholden to the US and places like Niger or Namibia can have human rights issues.

Obviously nuclear isn’t the future and needs to be phased out, but in my mind this meant decades yet and not the rushed phasing out Germany did.

Edit: Just checked the source, they actually do include things like mining of the fuel, construction of the facilities, transport of the fuel etc. into the CO2 calculation. Nuclear just blows everything out of the water in terms of CO2. Only renewables come close, but in terms of CO2 nuclear is the best.

I think you mean mining fissile materials. Nuclear is not in the same category of emissions as fossil fuels that burn carbon directly…

There are no emissions from producing electric power, but tons of emissions building the plants and reactors, mining the fissile materials (which in large come from Russia, btw), transporting the materials, etc.

That’s technically true, but more a consequence of fossil fuel infrastructure peripheral to the power plant itself. Switch your rail network to full electric and use more electricity in your steel manufacturing (already the predominant modern foundry production technique), you’ll solve a big chunk of this problem.

After that you’re talking about CO2 produced by setting concrete to build the plant, and that’s functionally a push relative to any other power plant that also uses concrete (basically all of them, concrete is popular for a reason). You’re also moving well below the carbon emissions targets we need to hit by 2050, so its an efficient move.

it was to stall the phaseout of coal, expand on gas relying on Russia while halting the expansion of renewables and utterly destroying the PV industry

German domestic firms were making huge margins on Russian gas imports right up until the Ukraine War broke out. That’s a big problem with fossil fuels. They’re still incredibly cheap to mine, with a lot of the cost coming via markups in the retail sector. There’s also a huge incentive to simply import PVs from countries with dirt cheap labor costs. So… mostly China with a bit of Canada thrown in there. Germans, like the Americans before them, no longer want to invest in industrial capital because it has a shit ROI. They want to invest in the FIRE and Tech Sectors, because they’ve got crazy high returns.

So more and more industrial capital keeps getting dismantled, with imports filling the gap. And nobody really seems to care about what this does to domestic security or capacity in the event of supply chain disruptions, because that’s Future Peoples problem and we’re making so much money right now.

Really? Because they use the figure given by UNECE, that’s a pretty good source I feel? The report it comes from is also very thorough.

What sources have you seen that state a number 10 times higher? Would be interesting to see where the difference is and what numbers they give for other sources.

Germany didn’t shut down nuclear and replace it with coal, no matter how often you read it online.
They shut down nuclear and reduced coal at the same time, while doubling overall output.