• If you close a nuclear power plant before closing a coal one, you are effectively replacing the nuclear with coal.

    That’s not how words work.

    And coal use has been going up in Germany. So I don’t know where you are getting these ideas from.

    Your data source is outdated. You’re looking at data up to 2022, whilst his data shows 2023-2024, which is more recent.

    2022 also saw problems like the Ukraine war frustrating gas supply, forcing the use of more coal. And there was covid throwing a wrench into things as well.

    Nuclear powerplants in Germany were beyond their lifespan and fixing and modernizing them was not economically feasible. Just too expensive compared to other forms of energy.

    Germany certainly hasn’t been “replacing nuclear with coal”.

    • realitista@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Closing a nuclear plant means you keep a coal plant open. So you are in effect replacing nuclear with coal. If you kept the nuclear plant open you could close the coal plants instead. Idiotic move.

      • The nuclear plants in Germany were too old and too expensive to maintain. At some point a reactor is just end-of-life. They get operational issues causing semi-frequent shutdowns. The reliability issues become a problem that skyrockets the costs further.

        Closing a nuclear plant like that puts enough money back in the budget to afford a faster transition to renewables, which ultimately closes down the coal plants faster too. It’s about the big picture, it’s not as simple as simply saying “we’ll do less coal” or “we’ll do less nuclear”.