10 ms·

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

by cbmuser 2mo ago

toomuchtodo 2mo ago
While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this right, subsidizing their existing merchant nuclear generator fleets until more renewables can replace them] Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 Analysis: Wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time ever - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-overtake-fossil-fuels-in-germany-for-first-time-ever https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-ov... - July 28th, 2026 > Germany has various targets in place that require a rapid expansion of wind and solar power, including cutting economy-wide emissions to net-zero by 2045. The nation is also aiming to increase renewables’ share of electricity consumption to 80% by 2030 to achieve a “largely climate neutral” power system by 2035. It's time to get over the nuclear issue, it's history. It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment. Batteries and solar will continue to rapidly decline in cost, nuclear will not. (total annual solar PV deployment is approaching, but not quite yet, at 1TW/year, and continues to increase year over year) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
- realusername 2mo ago
  > they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. X to doubt, I'll believe it when I see it, for now they are like a galaxy away from that goal. And also that'll be even harder to reach if they want to improve their atrociously low electricity heating rate.
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    You're free to doubt, healthy skepticism is a good thing imho, there is no will to spend what nuclear would cost and renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. We're locked on a hockey stick trajectory of their uptake purely through the economics. Spain is phasing out the last of their nuclear for more renewables, for example. Fossil gas will fill the gap until solar, wind, batteries, and transmission push the last of fossil generation out of the mix, and every year less and less gas will be used until remaining fossil gas generators sit idle. Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-nuclear-shutdown-set-to-test-renewables-success-story https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 18.79% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
- dncornholio 2mo ago
  You realize that "green energy" in EU is dependent on gas and/or coal? When there's no wind or sun, we will gladly burn gas or coal, and call it green energy. Nuclear doesn't have this requirement. It's truly zero carbon. Unless you can show me plans to fill this gap with batteries on a national scale, renewables < nuclear
OKRainbowKid 2mo ago
This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclear energy and Germany's decision to fade it out is now driven more by emotion/ignorance than reason.
- ch4s3 2mo ago
  It depends on how much you value land use and care about the knock on effects of the associated mining. I’d rather figure out how to build out nuclear cheaply like South Korea and China and use more land for wild space. The per hectare land use of nuclear is minuscule.
- jrflo 2mo ago
  There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
  - grey-area 2mo ago
    That’s why they mentioned batteries.
  - throw-the-towel 2mo ago
    But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.
    - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
      Renewables and batteries are great for peaks though. And not very good for base load Nuclear is great for base load, not great for peaks Our current situation is we are building tons of renewables and storage but still burning tons of fossil fuels because they cannot replace the base load very effectively. Nuclear replaces the carbon part of the equation
alephnerd 2mo ago
> As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power Frankly, it doesn't matter what Germany or other European nations do - their carbon footprint has dramatically decreased. The issue is everyone else [0]. China (12 GT), the US (5 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent over half of all global carbon emissions. The EU and UK's combined carbon emissions are half of Asia (excluding China and India) emissions. Countries like India and Vietnam are expected to see GDP growth in the 6-8% range for the next decade, and both are doubling down on coal [1][2] and other carbon heavy fuels, so emissions are only going to grow further. Any marginal decrease in carbon emissions at this point is too little too late given that much of Asia and South America is expected to see carbon emission grow in the 3-8% range. [0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1980..latest&country=USA~CHN~Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~IND~European+Union+%2828%29~RUS~OWID_AFR~North+America+%28excl.+USA%29~OWID_SAM~OWID_OCE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-coal-power-plants-iran-war-complicates-lng-plans-2026-07-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-c...
- calvinmorrison 2mo ago
  Lets just name names. China. India.
  - toasty228 2mo ago
    And every country which moved their factories there
- toasty228 2mo ago
  It should be illegal in 2026 to have such a naive view. co2 per country or capita doesn't mean shit when the world uses China as a factory: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-...
kleiba2 2mo ago
I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,565 | | United States | 1,737 | | India | 1,395 | | Russia | 536 | | Japan | 492 | In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt. All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad. [0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...
- throwayay4929 2mo ago
  Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.
  - chmod775 2mo ago
    > let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting? https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/image_dropdown/public/2026-06/CAMS-air-quality-report-PM2.5_2.png.jpg https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...
    - throwayay4929 2mo ago
      I did: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://aqicn.org/map/europe/
xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
While I agree that the ban is stupid, Hungarys nuclear power plant closed today due to lack of water: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...
- Paradigma11 2mo ago
  Thats not a property of nuclear power plants but of having been built some 60 years ago when nobody took that into account.
teh64 2mo ago
Which major countries other than Germany and Italy have a ban on nuclear power?
- newaccount670 2mo ago
  [dead]
- dolmen 2mo ago
  Iran. But the ban comes from outside.
pornel 2mo ago
We've ran out of time. Even if political will shifted immediately, getting new nuclear plants on the grid is going to take a decade or more. In the meantime batteries + solar or wind can be built quickly and hooked up pretty much anywhere. Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy!
- palata 2mo ago
  > Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy! In a world with abundant fossil fuels on which globalisation relies. The question is: what happens when it stops? Can renewables win in a world without abundant oil? We don't know, we haven't tried.
  - pornel 2mo ago
    "we"? Looking at electricitymaps, everyone except maybe Nebraska and Mongolia is making progress. The supply chain already exists, available worldwide as long as you don't bomb your suppliers.
    - palata 2mo ago
      You don't get my point. "Everyone is making progress, in a world largely dominated by fossil fuels". Renewables are making progress with the help of fossil fuels. We don't know how it will be without it, because we haven't tried. We as "the global economy", obviously.
cedilla 2mo ago
The last time any company was interested to build a nuclear reactor in Germany was in the 1970s. About thirty years before the eventual (first) ban. We can rant all day about how stupid it was of the conservatives to re-enact the ban on nuclear power without restarting the subsidies for renewables, and lament that they thus ensured that coal power would thus have to replace more of the lost load, but that's all in the past and we can't change that. If you think we need more nuclear power to fight CO2 emissions, you're 50 years late. That ship has sailed before most of us here were born.
vrganj 2mo ago
Nuclear Power is useless in a climate change scenario. France and Spain are having to shut down their nuclear plants because they can't cool them during heatwaves: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-over-fears-46c-heatwave-could-cause-disaster/ar-AA26lxwj https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/fra...
- ghostbrainalpha 2mo ago
  How can articles on major news sites have typos this bad up for over a month? "The crisis in France has claimed dozens of lives, with 40 people drowning while attempting to call off from the heat since June 18" Call off should be "cool off". And forgive me if this is a stupid question, but don't nuclear power plants produce enough energy that they could power their own cooling? Why do they have to rely on the free cooling provided by a river?
illiac786 2mo ago
This is just trolling. So. Boring. Something can be urgent while no one is doing anything about it. Would not be the first time. That point would be the first of many incoherences in you comment. I don’t debate that there is urgency, that so much more should be done, etc. but your comment really isn’t helping.
niemandhier 2mo ago
Germany is not a major country. The 1. Something percent it contributes to the global co2 output just do not matter much. If you purely think about the climate and don’t care for things like fair resource distribution, forget about the Germans. Update: Actually if every country with a per capita higher emissions than Germany would drop to German standards we would reduce co2 emissions by 25%. That sounds like a goal, sind this is even possible without nuclear power, it should be easy for the is and china, who could throw it into the mix.
GuestFAUniverse 2mo ago
Germany's CO2 output is at 1.6% worldwide. Totally irrelevant. https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions The same people who dismiss green policies as damaging to the economic are often the ones calling for nuclear power. I like a daily paradox.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

by cbmuser 2mo ago

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

While I would agree that it is regrettable Germany sunset their nuclear early when they should've extended the runtime for another 5-10 years to avoid excess carbon emissions since shutdown, but clean energy has already surpassed coal in Germany and they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. [My note: The US states of Illinois and California got this right, subsidizing their existing merchant nuclear generator fleets until more renewables can replace them] Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 Analysis: Wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time ever - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-overtake-fossil-fuels-in-germany-for-first-time-ever https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wind-and-solar-power-ov... - July 28th, 2026 > Germany has various targets in place that require a rapid expansion of wind and solar power, including cutting economy-wide emissions to net-zero by 2045. The nation is also aiming to increase renewables’ share of electricity consumption to 80% by 2030 to achieve a “largely climate neutral” power system by 2035. It's time to get over the nuclear issue, it's history. It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment. Batteries and solar will continue to rapidly decline in cost, nuclear will not. (total annual solar PV deployment is approaching, but not quite yet, at 1TW/year, and continues to increase year over year) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

realusername 2mo ago
> they will likely hit net zero in the next decade at current deployment rates of renewables and batteries. X to doubt, I'll believe it when I see it, for now they are like a galaxy away from that goal. And also that'll be even harder to reach if they want to improve their atrociously low electricity heating rate.
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  You're free to doubt, healthy skepticism is a good thing imho, there is no will to spend what nuclear would cost and renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper. We're locked on a hockey stick trajectory of their uptake purely through the economics. Spain is phasing out the last of their nuclear for more renewables, for example. Fossil gas will fill the gap until solar, wind, batteries, and transmission push the last of fossil generation out of the mix, and every year less and less gas will be used until remaining fossil gas generators sit idle. Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-nuclear-shutdown-set-to-test-renewables-success-story https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 18.79% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
dncornholio 2mo ago
You realize that "green energy" in EU is dependent on gas and/or coal? When there's no wind or sun, we will gladly burn gas or coal, and call it green energy. Nuclear doesn't have this requirement. It's truly zero carbon. Unless you can show me plans to fill this gap with batteries on a national scale, renewables < nuclear

OKRainbowKid 2mo ago

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclear energy and Germany's decision to fade it out is now driven more by emotion/ignorance than reason.

ch4s3 2mo ago
It depends on how much you value land use and care about the knock on effects of the associated mining. I’d rather figure out how to build out nuclear cheaply like South Korea and China and use more land for wild space. The per hectare land use of nuclear is minuscule.
jrflo 2mo ago
There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.
- grey-area 2mo ago
  That’s why they mentioned batteries.
- throw-the-towel 2mo ago
  But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    Renewables and batteries are great for peaks though. And not very good for base load Nuclear is great for base load, not great for peaks Our current situation is we are building tons of renewables and storage but still burning tons of fossil fuels because they cannot replace the base load very effectively. Nuclear replaces the carbon part of the equation

alephnerd 2mo ago

> As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power Frankly, it doesn't matter what Germany or other European nations do - their carbon footprint has dramatically decreased. The issue is everyone else [0]. China (12 GT), the US (5 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent over half of all global carbon emissions. The EU and UK's combined carbon emissions are half of Asia (excluding China and India) emissions. Countries like India and Vietnam are expected to see GDP growth in the 6-8% range for the next decade, and both are doubling down on coal [1][2] and other carbon heavy fuels, so emissions are only going to grow further. Any marginal decrease in carbon emissions at this point is too little too late given that much of Asia and South America is expected to see carbon emission grow in the 3-8% range. [0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1980..latest&country=USA~CHN~Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~IND~European+Union+%2828%29~RUS~OWID_AFR~North+America+%28excl.+USA%29~OWID_SAM~OWID_OCE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-coal-power-plants-iran-war-complicates-lng-plans-2026-07-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-looks-more-c...

calvinmorrison 2mo ago
Lets just name names. China. India.
- toasty228 2mo ago
  And every country which moved their factories there
toasty228 2mo ago
It should be illegal in 2026 to have such a naive view. co2 per country or capita doesn't mean shit when the world uses China as a factory: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-...

kleiba2 2mo ago

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,565 | | United States | 1,737 | | India | 1,395 | | Russia | 536 | | Japan | 492 | In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt. All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad. [0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...

throwayay4929 2mo ago
Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.
- chmod775 2mo ago
  > let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting? https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/image_dropdown/public/2026-06/CAMS-air-quality-report-PM2.5_2.png.jpg https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...
  - throwayay4929 2mo ago
    I did: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://aqicn.org/map/europe/

xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago

While I agree that the ban is stupid, Hungarys nuclear power plant closed today due to lack of water: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...

Paradigma11 2mo ago
Thats not a property of nuclear power plants but of having been built some 60 years ago when nobody took that into account.

teh64 2mo ago

Which major countries other than Germany and Italy have a ban on nuclear power?

newaccount670 2mo ago
[dead]
dolmen 2mo ago
Iran. But the ban comes from outside.

pornel 2mo ago

We've ran out of time. Even if political will shifted immediately, getting new nuclear plants on the grid is going to take a decade or more. In the meantime batteries + solar or wind can be built quickly and hooked up pretty much anywhere. Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy!

palata 2mo ago
> Even if we had nuclear fusion, solar+batteries could still win on cost and time to deploy! In a world with abundant fossil fuels on which globalisation relies. The question is: what happens when it stops? Can renewables win in a world without abundant oil? We don't know, we haven't tried.
- pornel 2mo ago
  "we"? Looking at electricitymaps, everyone except maybe Nebraska and Mongolia is making progress. The supply chain already exists, available worldwide as long as you don't bomb your suppliers.
  - palata 2mo ago
    You don't get my point. "Everyone is making progress, in a world largely dominated by fossil fuels". Renewables are making progress with the help of fossil fuels. We don't know how it will be without it, because we haven't tried. We as "the global economy", obviously.

cedilla 2mo ago

The last time any company was interested to build a nuclear reactor in Germany was in the 1970s. About thirty years before the eventual (first) ban. We can rant all day about how stupid it was of the conservatives to re-enact the ban on nuclear power without restarting the subsidies for renewables, and lament that they thus ensured that coal power would thus have to replace more of the lost load, but that's all in the past and we can't change that. If you think we need more nuclear power to fight CO2 emissions, you're 50 years late. That ship has sailed before most of us here were born.

vrganj 2mo ago

Nuclear Power is useless in a climate change scenario. France and Spain are having to shut down their nuclear plants because they can't cool them during heatwaves: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-over-fears-46c-heatwave-could-cause-disaster/ar-AA26lxwj https://www.msn.com/en-gb/weather/extreme-weather-events/fra...

ghostbrainalpha 2mo ago
How can articles on major news sites have typos this bad up for over a month? "The crisis in France has claimed dozens of lives, with 40 people drowning while attempting to call off from the heat since June 18" Call off should be "cool off". And forgive me if this is a stupid question, but don't nuclear power plants produce enough energy that they could power their own cooling? Why do they have to rely on the free cooling provided by a river?

illiac786 2mo ago

This is just trolling. So. Boring. Something can be urgent while no one is doing anything about it. Would not be the first time. That point would be the first of many incoherences in you comment. I don’t debate that there is urgency, that so much more should be done, etc. but your comment really isn’t helping.

niemandhier 2mo ago

Germany is not a major country. The 1. Something percent it contributes to the global co2 output just do not matter much. If you purely think about the climate and don’t care for things like fair resource distribution, forget about the Germans. Update: Actually if every country with a per capita higher emissions than Germany would drop to German standards we would reduce co2 emissions by 25%. That sounds like a goal, sind this is even possible without nuclear power, it should be easy for the is and china, who could throw it into the mix.

GuestFAUniverse 2mo ago

Germany's CO2 output is at 1.6% worldwide. Totally irrelevant. https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/emissions The same people who dismiss green policies as damaging to the economic are often the ones calling for nuclear power. I like a daily paradox.