That is the funny part: when the sun is down and the wind is not sufficient (surprisingly often), nuclear-hating Germany buys power from its neighbours - including France.

At least there exists a reason to prefer nuclear power plants from being farther away from you.

What the US does with oil makes even less sense.

What the US does with the transportation of oil makes even lesser sense. If climate crisis is existential it seems like it would be worth having a few oil spills along a pipeline to save some carbon.

> At least there exists a reason to prefer nuclear power plants from being farther away from you.

Not at the distances this short. If anything happens to any of the nuclear plants in France the pollution will reach Germany within 24 hours.

I've actually seen this used as an argument FOR building nuclear power plants in Poland: we already have like 10 such plants within 200 miles from our borders, so we already have all of the risks, but none of the benefits.

I think you are confusing the ideas of "anything happen" with "if the worst case scenario happens". There are plenty of examples that disprove your theory.

And even in the worst case scenario the farther you are away the better.

Or they power up old coal and gas plants :)

> That is the funny part: when the sun is down and the wind is not sufficient (surprisingly often), nuclear-hating Germany buys power from its neighbours - including France.

I'm not sure if I understand that line of thinking. While the nuclear exit of Germany may have been short-sighted, it is what it is now. And when shit hits the fan in France because their power plants are down for maintenance or a lack of suitable coolant water, Germany exports electricity to France. That's what a supra-national electricity grid is for and that's not a topic that ever was open for debate.

Also, regarding the decision Germany made regarding nuclear power, I am not sure if it actually was the wrong one. Looking at the cost overruns and extended timelines of essentially any new nuclear reactor construction, the people complaining about nuclear power not being economically viable may have a point. Whether the much proposed alternative of small scale nuclear reactors can live up to it's promise on any kind of meaningful scale remains to be seen.

What I think is the biggest failure of German energy policy is the fact that Germany went from a leader in renewable technology to desperately lacking behind. While this demise was partially driven by the companies themselves, some extremely short sighted policy failures also are to blame.

France concludes resorption of a huge backlog of nuclear power plant improvements that resulted in exceptional downtimes in 2021-2022. With that done and investment back to the levels it should never have fallen under, the deficit of the 2022 winter will not repeat.

As for the alleged cooling water shortages, they are not shortages but regulatory limits on downstream water temperature - which only concerns some riverine plants. With three litres evaporated per kW/h produced, plants with evaporative cooling are very far from enduring a water supply constraint.

Germany usually buys from France because it's cheaper, not because they could not supply it on their own. Europe has a tightly integrated market, and everyone is covering each other, which also allows to usually buy where it's cheapest.

Stupid Europeans and their cross country grid connections working as intended!! Texas did it better.

The current discussion is France wanting to directly subsidize existing paid-off nuclear plants with EU money because they are not competitive on the European whole-sale market anymore.

The other side argue France can do it using their own funds if they deem it necessary.

https://www.ft.com/content/b1dbd7b4-d8b9-45eb-bd18-4976f7c9a...

If taking into account the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in isolation, variable renewables are more competitive.

If taking into account the System LCOE (sum of generation, integration and storage costs to reach equivalent stable supply), then nuclear wins - and that doesn't even account for the VRE's huge land use.

"Firmed renewables" are cheaper than or equal in cost to new nuclear today [1]. Renewables and storage are on an exponential cost reduction and learning curve, while nuclear famously has gotten more expensive with each generation [2]. Given that nuclear is uncompetitive against against renewables today, adding a 15-20 year lead-time just makes it laughable. Then another 30-40 years to turn a profit.

Nuclear is a technological dead-end economically. Perfect for niche applications like submarines, but not for the grid.

[1]: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

Interesting Lazard study. First time I see such investment guys so optimistic about grid-scale storage beyond the currently supply-limited pumped hydro.

The only way electricity is stored at the moment is using pumped hydro so. Regardless of the source.