Thread by @tomaspueyo

Since the Bucha massacre was made public, Germany has paid ~$1.5B in gas to Russia

Yet 🇩🇪 will still close its nuclear power plants in 2022. Why? I dug up the details. Not pretty.

The only conclusion is that 🇩🇪 would rather kill nuclear than fight Putin & defend Ukraine
1/

What would be the impact of keeping nuclear?

Closing the 3 remaining reactors would increase Russian gas by ~30%
Reopening all the closed reactors would eliminate ALL Russian gas imports

To understand this, we need to understand German gas: where it comes from & how it's used

About 2/3 of Germany's gas is used for heat.

Changing the heat from gas to other sources is very hard. But reducing the demand a bit is doable. Eg, replacing boilers with heat pumps, taxing it more, and asking ppl for an effort.

But the big one that could be affected is electricity generation, which accounts for about 1/3 of all gas consumption.

In 2021, 55% of Germany's gas came from Russia. During the war, it's been able to get that down to 40%.

40% from 🇷🇺~ 35% to electricity

So a small effort in heat reduction + changing all electricity from gas to other sources would completely eliminate gas imports from Russia.

And it's a LOT of money.
Gas is at ~$1/m3
🇩🇪 imports from Russia ~130M m3 of gas a day
That's ~$130M/day

➡️Every week, Germany pays Putin $900M 💸💸💸
Nearly $1.5B since the Bucha massacre was made public

How doable is it to replace the electricity from gas to other sources?

Well, in 2021, 50% of Germany's electricity came from renewables, about 12% from gas, and 10% from nuclear.

Look at that purple (nuclear) vs. gray (gas).

Germany used to generate more electricity from nuclear in the 2000s than the current generation of gas + nuclear.

Put in another way, turning the clock back on nuclear energy would eliminate all gas consumption on electricity, which would eliminate all imports of Russian gas.

So why don't they do it?

In fact, it's not even on the table. The only thing that they put on the table was keeping the current ones open! And even then, they won't do it?

Why?

It took me some digging, but I found the document that the German government used to explain it.

Here is the original, and below a Google translation in English
bmuv.de/fileadmin/Date…

docs.google.com/document/d/1WR…

Side note: the document comes from the Economy and Environment Ministries, both of which are controlled by... the Green Party.

Green is good, but should it be the only factor in the middle of a geopolitical crisis?

Is that what Germany is optimizing for?

OK so what are the reasons they use:
1. It would require changing the law, and maybe even the constitution.
I'm no expert in German politics, but it sounds to me like this is the type of things governments are in a position to promote? Especially in times of crisis?

2. Safety: the reactors would need to pass expedited safety inspections and might not be able to get to state-of-the-art safety.

But the baseline risk of a serious accident is something like 0.001%. What would these inspections do? Reduce it by a further 0.00005%?

Compare that with the reality that Germany is sending hundreds of millions of dollars every day to their blood-thirsty, psychopath neighbor who threatens with nuclear war every time somebody lifts a finger

Yes, of course Germany can take some more time to pass these inspections!

3. Fuel
They fear fuel would run out in Spring 2023 and new fuel would only arrive for Fall 2023.

I fail to understand the problem with that.
I also fail to understand their lack of imagination. Could a gov really not accelerate this?
Where there's a will, there's a way

4. Spare parts
They fear suppliers of spare parts have closed down (no details).
They forget:
• This is the type of pbm you can throw money at
• Ppl who worked in these suppliers are still alive
• The German reactors are nothing unique

5. Personnel
Most workers have retired and new ppl haven't been trained, which would take time.

I kid you not, this is their type of concern: “Argh, I would need to get some people out of retirement and train new people. But it takes so long to train them! Better pay Putin.”

6. Economic considerations
What they say:
"With lack of clarity on spare parts and personnel, how can we commit to a reliable delivery or energy? We can’t be 100% confident."

Lack of clarity? Of course! Then get working on improving it.

"Also what about nuclear waste? We’d need to take care of that."

You’ve been operating 1,000 reactor years. Six reactors for five years is an additional 3%. Is that changing nuclear waste management in any way? No.

"And we’d need to expand the operations to 3-5 years because otherwise it doesn’t make economic sense to the companies running them. The government would need to step in and take over some of the risk."

What's the problem?
Maybe you just don't want to keep the reactors open?

7. Energy Replacement
"Until the new nuclear fuel is in place, we would make up for the shortage with more electricity coming from coal and gas."

The main advantage of nuclear is that it eliminates dependency in 2023.

In 2022, maybe you can just...
Hurry up with your inspections and fuel procurement?
Use more coal than gas?

Maybe the Green Party in Germany simply doesn't want to use more nuclear and coal right now?

The entire doc talks about the costs of reopening the reactors. There is no section about the benefits:
• Save $
• Fight Putin
• Help your neighbors

When you only talk about smthg's costs and not about benefits, you don't really want to do it

All of this shows lack of will.

DE could say: this is a national emergency. Instead of sending $900M/week to Putin, we're going to invest a fraction of that in nuclear.

It won't.

The truth: Germany's current energy strategy doesn't cut the dependency on Russian gas

It could if it kept the current nuclear reactors open & reopened those closed

It doesn't want to

Because for the 🇩🇪 gov, killing nuclear is +important than fighting Putin & helping Ukraine

Full article on this below.
Follow, subscribe for more like this. I write one article like this per week

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-germany-…

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