Germany's Nuclear Disaster

It's only getting worse.

Cherenkov radiation creates a blue glow in an operational nuclear reactor — WikiCC

After decades of gargantuan renewable expansion, Germany is one of the greenest countries on the planet. Or at least it would be. You see, Germany has just agreed to spend €16 billion ($17.36 billion) to build four enormous natural gas energy plants. Why this obviously backward step? Well, even though multiple studies over the years have shown nuclear energy produces less carbon emissions and is considerably safer than solar energy, Germany has been trying to phase out its considerable fleet of nuclear power plants since as early as 2003. This wasn’t a logical move, and was instead driven by political point-scoring and the nuclear misinformation that is rife in the West. The phase-out was completed last year, leaving a gaping hole in Germany’s energy supply, which only natural gas could expand fast enough to fill, hence these eye-wateringly expensive and climate-defacing natural gas power plants. But how bad is this situation really?

When the German government announced these natural gas power plants a month ago, they described them as “modern, highly flexible and climate-friendly.” This isn’t as much of an oxymoron as you might think; instead, it is just profoundly misleading. As the German government pointed out, these power plants can, in theory, be converted to run on carbon-neutral hydrogen produced from renewable energy. Sounds great, but it is super impractical. Hydrogen electrolysis is only 75% efficient, and hydrogen combustion is only 22.5% efficient. This gives a dire round-trip efficiency of 16.9%. In other words, converting this already green energy into hydrogen and burning it creates losses of 83.1%! Why would you do this incredibly wasteful and unnecessary process? Just cut out the middleman and use renewable energy rather than messing around with hydrogen.

This is a perfect example of blatant greenwashing to cover up an embarrassing mistake. Last year, Germany’s own climate agency said that it will likely miss its target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 per cent by 2030, largely thanks to the nuclear phase-out. This riled up calls to restart the nuclear reactors across the political spectrum. But Germany’s leader, Olaf Scholz, who pushed for the nuclear phase-out and supported these new gas power plants, denied these calls and declared, “Nuclear energy is over.” It’s no surprise his government is desperately trying to spin these new power plants as sustainable; otherwise, it paints them as misguided climate hypocrites.

So, how bad are these power plants?