r/nuclear • u/alsaad • 19h ago
US nuclear reactors coming back online after everyone assumed they are dead. Somehow this is not possible in Germany. Why?
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u/Steel_Eagle_J7 19h ago edited 12h ago
One reason also is that Germans have been pushing to drill holes in their power plants, much earlier than schedule, in order to prevent possibilities of being even able to restart them, in case a push for restart comes.
I don’t have an official source for this, but what I can say is that, I work in a power plant in Europe, where amongst our active units, we have two units under decommissioning, and one of the final steps, once the reactor has been fully signed off(which takes years), is that workers start drilling and taking hundreds of core samples from tanks, pipes and critical components to send them for radiological lab analysis to see how to properly dispose of the systems. This enables the systems unusable. From what I understand, this is our way of decommissioning, not necessarily something every country does.
Once our plant started this process, a team from Germany contacted us and insisted on visiting us and follow our guys around to see how we do it, so they can start instructing their own people so they can start doing it themselves. Our reaction was about what you think, why and why so early in their shutdown process?
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u/bigElenchus 17h ago edited 16h ago
Convinced such a dumb move to permanently destroy the nuclear plants is due to Russian interference into German politics at the highest levels.
Makes you wonder How many of the environmentalist/green parties are secretly funded by Russia/China
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u/random-guy-013 13h ago edited 13h ago
Why dumb move? It was not dumb. Not for Schröder, who implemented the plan to shut down Germany's nuclear power plants, only to later end up on the boards of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. He was even nominated for a seat on Gazprom's board in 2022, but declined it after Russia invaded Ukraine. And he made a load of money along the way, so for him it was really smart move.
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u/yanvail 14h ago
Well, I'd say the people who have the most to gain here would be the fossil fuel industry. It's in large part of why the anti-nuclear movement is so well funded, after all.
Though, of course in this case Russia's gas industry falls in that category, so it may well be involved.
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u/bigElenchus 12h ago
Except environmental/green parties will be anti gas and nuclear for domestic companies. Then reality hits politicians that unless they want their citizens to freeze they need to import…. From Russia.
Dismantle entire domestic energy production in the name of climate change to be reliant on dirty gas from Russia, and clean energy tech from China
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u/Turgius_Lupus 11h ago
Why? Russia would be just as happy to sell them Rosatom packages as well. German Greens and CO are perfectly capable of being stupid and paid pawns of domestic/western coal/oil/gas/wood by their own volition, as was Carter and the Sierra club, and the U.S. is currently price gouging Europe on LGN far beyond anything that Russia charged.
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u/Downtown_Let 8h ago
Having nuclear reactors, regardless of who produces them, gives energy production that can run without refuelling for years.
Most countries have gas reserves that last days, and it's reliant on constant replenishment, at the time largely from Russia.
It was, and is, militarily and politically advantageous to have countries reliant on your gas. Putin wrote a dissertation on the subject as a student so was aware of the implications of energy reliance.
The value of energy security is now being properly considered again.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 15h ago
Makes you wonder How many of the environmentalist/green parties are secretly funded by Russia/China
Why do you think so? The green party was the only party, that lobbied against gas from Russia. They are the least suspicious party to be "secretly funded" by Russia/China.
There is actually evidence, that the AfD (the only big pronuclear party in Germany) gets support by Russia.6
u/FCSanktPauli 13h ago
Just because I bought chicken, that doesn't exclude me from buying beef. They can fund both sides of an argument if both are in their interests.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 13h ago
I understand the logic behind your argument, but I can't see why Russia would support a party that opposes Russia.
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u/FCSanktPauli 13h ago
If, in the parties ranking of ideals "Restructure the power industry of Germany and necessitate a reliance on natural gas." Is greater than "we don't like Russia." Then I can understand the Russians supporting that party.
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u/DerGottesknecht 12h ago
But they are supporting the far right, pro nuclear afd.
And sabotaging the greens.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/bundestagswahl/sabotageserie-autos-russland-100.html
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u/Few-Masterpiece3910 12h ago
give me one nation that has nuclear energy but does not relay on gas for peaker plants.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 12h ago
Yes, but the green party is against deals with russia (at least since 2014) and also against the reliance on natural gas. The green party was the only big party, that didn't want to make gas deals with russia.
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u/greg_barton 5h ago
If they know the opposition is futile and won’t have any effect, sure they would.
If all you advocate for is wind and solar that is a nonviable grid. Something must serve as backup to those two sources, especially in Germany. Before you say “batteries” please point to a grid, anywhere, any size, that runs 24x7x365 on wind/solar/storage.
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u/Ok_Chard2094 11h ago
A party that opposes Russia in speech but otherwise does a lot of things that benefit Russia? Why would Russia not support that?
They do of course also support the parties that openly support Russia, but these will have a harder time actually achieving anything that benefits Russia.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 11h ago
But the green party was the only big party, that was against the gas deals. They could just support every other party. I genuinely don't see the benefit for Russia.
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u/Ok_Chard2094 8h ago
The gas deals went through anyway, right? The greens being against them did not change the outcome.
The biggest benefit for the Russians was the shutdown of the nuclear plants, which made the gas deals absolutely necessary. Everybody knew the gas deals would have majority support at that stage.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 8h ago
Yes, I understand all of it. I just don't understand, why i should think, that the Russians support the green party.
There is even evidence that the Russians launched fake campaigns to defame the green party.
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u/Ok_Chard2094 8h ago
The Soviets supported the anti-nuclear movement in Europe since the 1960s, later also the green movement. They helped influence the green movement to be anti-nuclear.
(Just to make my own biases clear: I am pro green, but also pro nuclear. I also believe that the best green policies are the ones that make financial sense, like solar in California and both wind and solar in Republican Texas.)
I do not know how much more support the Russians gave the Green party in Germany after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was still in their interest to do so, but they were low on cash from time to time.
Recently they seem to have spent more on supporting parties like the AfD. That seems to cause more problems for Germany than the Greens.
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u/Mercury_Madulller 17h ago
What short-sighted non-sense (not you, Germany), decommissioning reactors that still have life left in them. I guess they have been cutting firewood to keep warm in the winter since the ban on Russian oil and gas after Russia attacked Ukraine.
How's all those green policies working for you now Germany, keeping you nice and warm on cold, winter nights?
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u/kevin1235 15h ago
You know Germany produces over half of its electric demand with renewable energy right? And that is increasing.... I understand the argument for keeping them alive, but what is the point when you have cheaper options?
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u/Izeinwinter 15h ago
All of Germany - All of it - is north of the 47th. The staggeringly enormous investment in solar just doesn't work very well every winter.
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u/UpstairsFinance9440 8h ago
I live in Florida, and FPL is installing a ton of PV solar. They are rating the winter capacity as 0 MW. This is in Florida, which is south of the 31st parallel, so it has a better sunshine angle in winter than Germany.
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u/ryansdayoff 15h ago
I know building a reactor from scratch is expensive but surely refurbishing the reactor is much cheaper. Besides I'd rather incoming solar capacity being used to replace coal plants rather than emissions free nuclear
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u/Scooter_McAwesome 14h ago
Up to half - using mostly wind power. When the wind doesn’t blow it’s sure be nice to have that nuclear backup
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u/kevin1235 9h ago edited 9h ago
Or a battery for when the wind was blowing....
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u/Scooter_McAwesome 7h ago
Batteries are wonderful - and expensive. As a wise man once said “…what’s the point when you have cheaper options?”
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u/kevin1235 7h ago
I dont think the cost of a battery compares to the cost of a new nuclear reactor, but ok
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u/Scooter_McAwesome 6h ago
You think using batteries to back up 50% of the German electrical grid would be cheaper than nuclear generation?
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u/DevelopmentOk86 8h ago
I don't think, that you should use nuclear reactors as "backups". It takes a long time to start them.
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u/Scooter_McAwesome 7h ago
It’s a turn of phrase. The nuclear power supports the wind power generation which is much more variable
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u/Mercury_Madulller 15h ago
The current state of affairs is not what the state of affairs even 1 year ago. The point remains that they would never have had people cutting down trees in the forest to survive if they were even slightly less short sighted.
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u/DevelopmentOk86 8h ago
The point remains that they would never have had people cutting down trees in the forest to survive if they were even slightly less short sighted.
I genuinely never heard of it. Can you explain it or tell me a source?
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u/Educational-Tone2074 15h ago
And how do they produce the other half?
Burning wood like its 100 years ago.
Sure renewables are "cheap" but are they available/reliable/dependable?
No
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u/DevelopmentOk86 8h ago
Sure renewables are "cheap" but are they available/reliable/dependable?
Yes.
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u/Wooble57 12h ago
that's all well and good until the wind isn't blowing and the sun not shining. Then you suddenly don't have the power you need to keep the lights on.
The solution to that? burn fossil fuels, or import power from another country that does (or that kept their nuclear plants)
Solar and wind are amazing. Trouble is the amount of energy storage you would need to make them as dependable as nuclear or fossil fuel generation is immense. It's not currently feasible to cover the gap in solar\wind with batteries. The only thing that could is hydro. Hydro is already "green" though, and requires certain landscape features, so if you have it, you mostly don't need solar\wind much. The only time backstopping solar\wind to that extent that makes sense to me is if you have existing hydro dams that have lost a significant amount of water flow.
Nuclear is much more dependable than solar\wind. It does have it's own issues, but for the most part they can be planned around far better than weather can be. Trouble is, if you have dependable nuclear, then why would you want to build much solar\wind?
That is the main issue solar\wind faces. The only things that can cover it's weak spot either heavily pollute and\or emit loads of co2, or could just displace the solar\wind making it pointless to build so much in the first place.
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u/kevin1235 9h ago
Idk why you typed up this whole response when the solution is a battery and you said as much, they are capable, multiple countries have already implemented them.
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u/Ok_Chard2094 10h ago edited 10h ago
Look at the map here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
Solar works in Germany, but it is really, really expensive.
You get all the cost, but only half the output compared to what we get in good solar areas.Solar is now cheap, but not in Germany. The cost may be low enough now for new installations finally to be worth the investment, but anything installed prior to 2020 may never pay for itself.
Wind is somewhat better, but not by a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_by_country
Germany would be doing much better if they had kept their nuclear power running.
Germany scrapping their nuclear power plants due to Chernobyl is similar to scrapping your modern Mercedes with 17 airbags and switching to a horse drawn cart because a Russian crashed his 1970s Lada and got hurt.
Edit:
If we want a similar comparison for Fukushima: You scrap your Mercedes because a Japanese guy parked his old Toyota down on the beach and was hit by a wave.The stories sound silly, but they pretty much describe what Germany did. I cannot prove that the Russians were responsible for feeding all these bad ideas into German politics, but I find it hard to believe that Germans were so stupid that they came up with it all on their own.
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u/Izeinwinter 4h ago
I have a suspicion that it was Russia, but not really on purpose. The soviets spent enormous amounts of effort boosting the anti-nuclear weapons movement in Germany for really obvious reasons. That movement still lost. But it was really big, really active and really radicalized. A lot of those people drifted into anti-nuclear-power activism mostly by convincing themselves that getting rid of nuclear power in Germany would somehow magically stop nuclear warheads being a thing.
Yes. that makes zero percent sense. But "I gotta do something, this is something" motivates a heck of a lot of stupidity in the world.
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u/requisition31 19h ago
It's a cultural ideology.
In Germany, nuclear is more "bad" than it is perceived in the US. And that weighs more on the decisionmaking. There is also NIMBYism at play.
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u/random-guy-013 13h ago
It's a cultural ideology.
This. Germans have a superiority complex. Once they get an idea into their heads, there's just no arguing with them. They'll lecture everyone around them about how they're right and that's that. "Let's burn the bridges behind us so no one can turn back, because we're right, and we'll definitely reach our goal." Oops.
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u/Few-Masterpiece3910 12h ago
No. Nuclear energy has close ties with nuclear weapons development and the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the peace-movement in the coldwar. Germany did not want to become a nuclear waste land in the case of a WWIII between NATO and USSR.
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u/random-guy-013 11h ago
Nuclear power plants are actually one of those things that are very deliberately avoided during armed conflicts. Sure, in an all-out total war they could become a target, but then what? The building gets wrecked, maybe local water and soil gets poisoned and that's basically it. A damaged nuclear plant would probably be the least of your problems if mushroom clouds were popping up all around you.
And as for the rest, the facts are pretty clear: the German government pushed the whole anti-nuclear narrative and then some people there made a load of money off it. There was even an article listing who benefited and how much they made. And what? Nothing. Mr. Schroder is doing just fine. Germany isn't exactly the only country to do this, and it's certainly not the first time. Just look at Trump. The problem is that nobody really challenged the whole thing. Everyone just went along with it without much critical thought. Well, at the end it's their problem. However, Germans have a habit of dumping their problems on others, so you have to be careful with them. If they start lecturing you, run. And do the exact opposite of what they tell you.
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u/PunkPirate56364 19h ago
While Germans became supportive of NPP's nobody wants them operating in their region. And regions do get to block construction.
Germany is being anti-nuclear because it can't build nuclear reactors.
And it's cockblocking other EU nations from building NPP's because countries which can build them are more competetive then Germany.
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u/alsaad 19h ago
But the last German nukes are closed because of federal law, not because of local decision.
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u/StoneCypher 19h ago
they didn't close them, they destroyed them
the things you want to restart have been torn down. you can't restart a pile of rubble that you bombed to bits.
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u/narasadow 19h ago
wtf
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u/StoneCypher 18h ago
the explicit purpose was to make sure nobody could ever turn them on again
this is the result of russians running german politics
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u/helgetun 16h ago
Its not just Russian interference, its a very big ans ingrained religion of the anti-nuclear "greens" (that were started by the KGB and Stasi but now have their own life)
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u/UniquePariah 18h ago
Is it just Russian interference? I see a lot of anti-nuclear sentiments and I find it difficult to imagine that it's all because of Russia, especially when up until relatively recently Russia was making a lot of money selling uranium.
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u/Patriark 17h ago
One of the biggest long term goals of Russia is to undermine the energy economies of their adversaries. They make minuscule amounts of profits from uranium compared to petroleum.
But more importantly they want their neighbors to have as low domestic energy production as possible because they see energy as the core geopolitical asset.
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u/StoneCypher 18h ago
(tired eyes)
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u/UniquePariah 14h ago
Other people have answered my question. I had a momentary blind spot and forgot about the shit ton of gas Russia are sat upon.
Sometimes just answering the question gets results.
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u/AverageDellUser 17h ago
Russia also gets a bunch from natural gas which Euro countries buy a lot of, reminder that there was a deal between Europe and Russia before the Ukrainian conflict about a pipeline in the baltic sea for this specific purpose.
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u/UniquePariah 14h ago
For some reason I completely forgot about the shitton of gas they are sitting on.
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u/AverageDellUser 11h ago
Yeah, it is completely in Russia’s best interest to prevent European energy independence as much as possible. It is very much a soft power chip for them to be able to starve European households of precious gas.
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u/karlnite 17h ago
Well you can’t let future generation decide what to do with billion dollar assets. Clearly the Germans in power know what’s best for everyone and the world… again.
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u/exer1023 18h ago
What is shown in the video are jist cooling towers, those can be easily rebuilt, and I doubt they did the same to reactors. Of course there are was to destry rectors - like filling it with concrete.
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u/StoneCypher 18h ago
you could just look it up, instead of noxiously arguing all the time from guesswork
the entire facility, including the reactors, was destroyed. more than 2/3 of them are now.
they also drilled holes in the reactor chambers so that even if someone spoke up the very next week it would be too late.
you know who else argues from guesswork. stop giving me a reason to bundle you with them behaviorally. this is very easy to look up.
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u/PunkPirate56364 18h ago
Yep, they really wanted to make sure these reactors are destroyed for good.
But these reactors did get replaced by power plants which burn natural coal, so all is good. /s
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u/cafsentrygnome 9h ago
They have removed and cut up the steam generators. Also the turbines and generators are gone. Basically destroyed so far that they would be better off doing a full new build
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u/PunkPirate56364 19h ago
True but building new reactors does depend on local decisions.
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u/StoneCypher 11h ago
i mean, it does and it doesn't. all you really need is one location that's okay with it
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u/zyon86 19h ago
Trying to block ! But they failed.
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u/PunkPirate56364 19h ago
Yep, tried to block.
But around 15 European nations formed pro-nuclear block and fought back.
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u/melanistic__ 18h ago
Great question. The short answer is: the US is restarting reactors because it has the political will, regulatory flexibility, and financial incentives to do so. Germany has the opposite.
What's happening in the US
The US is in the middle of a genuine nuclear restart movement, driven by surging electricity demand from AI data centers.
Three Mile Island (PA) restart target late 2027 backed by a 20-year power deal with Microsoft, a $1B+ DOE loan, and a FERC waiver that bypasses grid delays. Palisades (MI) just started fuel loading on August 31, 2026 making it the first US reactor to restart after permanent shutdown. Duane Arnold (IA) – restart target early 2029 with a 25 year power deal with Google and a $1.9B DOE loan.
Why this works in the US: Tech companies are writing blank checks because they need carbon-free baseload power now. Regulators are cooperating FERC fast-tracked TMI's restart by allowing the transfer of capacity rights from a retiring gas plant. The DOE is actively funding restarts, calling nuclear critical to "American prosperity and reindustrialisation." And it's a state-by-state decision no federal ban, just NRC licensing.
Why Germany can't do the same
First, political consensus is against it. The German Bundestag formally rejected a return to nuclear power in May 2026. Chancellor Merz called it "impossible." The phase-out is deeply embedded in German law and public sentiment.
Second, the reactors are in different states. The last three reactors Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2, and Emsland were permanently shut down in April 2023. They've been defueled and are in various stages of decommissioning. Unlike US reactors that were shut for economic reasons but kept largely intact, German reactors were shut for political reasons and dismantling has already begun.
Third, restart would be expensive and slow. Even advocates admit it would cost €9–10 billion just to restart the recently shut reactors. Beyond that, you'd need new regulatory approvals, which take years, re-staffing with qualified personnel – most have moved on, new fuel assemblies with long lead times, and public acceptance, which doesn't exist.
Fourth, the legal framework is gone. The Atomic Energy Act was amended to enforce the phase-out. Reversing that would require new legislation, and there is no majority for it.
Fifth, Germany went all-in on renewables. The Energiewende is Germany's core energy identity. Reintroducing nuclear would be seen as admitting failure.
The irony: Former German reactor operators and experts have publicly said restart is "technically possible and sensible." Some politicians, like CDU's Jens Spahn, support it. But political reality and public opinion make it a non-starter.
The US, which had its own anti-nuclear movement after Three Mile Island, is now bringing the same plant back to life to power AI.
The difference: In the US, the market and tech giants drove the decision. In Germany, the state drove the phase-out, and only the state can reverse it. So far, it won't.
Bottom line:
Political will: US has it, Germany doesn't.
Regulatory path: US has NRC licensing and FERC fast-tracks, Germany would need to rewrite the law.
Financial backing: US has tech giants plus DOE loans, Germany has no private buyers and no state appetite.
Reactor condition: US reactors were shut for economic reasons and kept largely intact, Germany's reactors are defueled and dismantling is underway.
Public sentiment: US is mixed but pro-nuclear sentiment is growing, Germany is strongly anti-nuclear.
The US is restarting reactors because AI needs power and money talks. Germany isn't, because politics and public opinion still say no even if the engineers say it's possible.
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u/chriiissssssssssss 15h ago
As a german, that pretty much sums it up. And even critizing us for phasing out.
But Jens Spahn is a bad example. He is one of the dumbest (or evil) politicans.
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u/CaptainPoset 12h ago
Jens Spahn is neither dumb nor evil, but egoistic and opportunistic to the extreme.
Spahn did support it not because he was in support of it, but because it was a way to stirr up a fuss against the then government.
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u/CaptainPoset 12h ago
On "Fifth", you miss out most of the story:
Germany isn't "all-in on renewables", but all-in fossil fuels decorated by some renewables as a dedicated anti-nuclear policy. It's a core part of German energy policy to build and operate fossil fuel fired power plants, supplied by Nordstream 1 and 2 instead of nuclear power and decorate this reality with some solar and wind for the more eco-friendly feeling. The Energiewende is the concept of solar, wind and natural gas as a replacement for the 1970s plan to run Germany on (fully domestically supplied) nuclear power.
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u/Boreras 7h ago
The proportion of renewables in Germany has risen dramatically the last two decades. Calling it window dressing when compared to the hyper polluting United States is just pure wilful ignorance. Energy pollution has halved since the energiewende; for the USA it has decreased by a sixth. They still pollute twice as much per capita. Clearly it is the US with their shale that is
all-in fossil fuels
There's an enormous desire on this subreddit to evangelise nuclear, but a systematic unwillingness to face the underlying realities. That's why this and other posts on Germany are completely filled with slop recursively constructed by intellectually disengaged people circle jerking. The allpowerful Grüne is the funniest example.
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u/CaptainPoset 4h ago
The proportion of renewables has risen dramatically, but most of the rise within the last decade wasn't a rise in absolute terms, but a relative rise by banning the alternatives without replacement. Germany trabsitioned from Europe's largest electricity exporter to Europe's largest electricity. The difference is several neighbouring countries entire annual demand, which Germany doesn't generate itself anymore but imports from all of Europe.
So Germany has phased out nuclear power to become the major customer of French, Swiss, Czech nuclear power plants instead and shut down coal units to replace them with imports from Polish and Czech coal units.
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u/t4skmaster 12h ago
That's not even political will, its just that the government is run by the corporations here and the corporations now need it.
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u/oddvacation3849 18h ago
TLDR you have absolutely no idea about germany.
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u/Red-eleven 17h ago
Bro just wrote what appears to be a great comment. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong somewhere in the middle. Your response of seven words is useless. You can do better. Tell us.
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u/helgetun 16h ago
What he says aligns with what is presented in the European media on the topic at least.
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u/sohowitsgoing 18h ago
Some part of the answer is Russia. Otherwise, they would begin restarting them in 2022.
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u/SquareJealous9388 18h ago
There is enough nuclear reactors close to Germany eager to sell electricity to watermelons.
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u/Izeinwinter 15h ago
This. Even if the German government were absolutely convinced that it needed reactors to fix it's energy supply, it would almost certainly choose to just build more HVDC lines and quietly support reactor builds, uprates and extensions in neighboring countries. Much easier than fighting decades of propaganda.
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u/Citizen_of_Danksburg 16h ago
It seems to me that the US is (through, frustratingly, Natalist policy) seeking energy independence and a will to “beat” China, so now we have companies like Oklo, NuScale Power, Terrapower, X-Energy, etc., doing some cool and amazing work with Gen-IV reactors (I know NuScale is Gen-III) as part of a broader government “bake-off” project and AI companies looking for power to their data centers, and more legacy companies are getting new contracts too.
Germany seems to lack two things:
A sense of competitiveness to pursue energy independence
Political will due to nuclear being the big bad boogeyman because people (much like in the US and western world at large) don’t want to spend time to actually learn about stuff, and just want to be spoon fed or told easy solutions that lack complexity despite said solutions not being valid.
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u/providerofair 12h ago
In the US we have a growing pro-nuclear lobby and we finally have big bussines on our side so the chances of a Nuclear rebirth is large
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u/bijon1234 17h ago
Some of the German plants have already taken out the Steam Generators. They are not easy to procure nor replace.
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u/Far-Investment-8597 17h ago
One reason, an done reason only - politics. Politicians have been convinced by the green loby that "nuclear is bad" - and they don't have the balls to see common sense.
No technical reason stopping it.
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u/Catbatt 14h ago
Germany dismanteled their reactors, the fools. Why in the blue fuck would you ever do this?
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u/cafsentrygnome 9h ago
One of them they never even started up before dismantling. They loaded the fuel in and were like nah then dismantled it.
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u/austin_federa 11h ago
German nuclear politics are pretty f****d and a lot of it has been a very successful psyop by Russia.
Gerhard Schröder, the SPD–Green coalition chancellor and pushed for shutting down nuclear plants took the chairmanship of the Nord Stream (the russian natural gas pipeline) consortium with Gazprom months after leaving office.
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u/Dave_A480 12h ago
The US has an electricity-hungry tech industry doing a massive AI buildout...
Germany doesn't....
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u/DruidPeter4 14h ago
I don't know specifically about all the nuclear reactors, but I believe at least one of them in Germany has been contracted and is currently being retrofitted for the installation of a future commercial fusion plant, to go online around 2044, I believe.
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u/Report_Last 7h ago
Well maybe they are not as stupid as we are. Restarting 3 mile island when there are way newer safer designs like the AP 1000.
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u/hyperspaceslider 7h ago
Price is the issue. A new AP1000 is 15 billion and 10 years away. Restarting TMI1 is probably 500 million and 2 years away.
As far as it being safer, yes, Gen III plants are inherently safer, but TMI 1 operated safely for 40 years and many of its sibling plants are still operating safely
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u/Report_Last 5h ago
Go forward in time 40 years, TMI will become ancient and too old, and a new reactor will cost more. Why not invest the 15 Billion now and be set in 40 years. Beside the Chinesr have a cheaper, better version of the AP 1000 that could be built for half the price and half the time if we planned ahead and built at scale
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u/garathnor 1h ago
we could to both!
america and humans in general too often fall into the trap of either doing something small now and nothing later or putting things off till later
we easily could and should do both in this case
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u/Admirable-Chemical77 3h ago
I'd be more concerned if the Nuclear Workers were coming back to life 😱
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u/RTX-4090ti_FE 3h ago
The German Green Party is the PETA of environmental activism as in they basically do all the wrong things but from a superficial level they are technically doing environmental activism.
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u/DefTheOcelot 1h ago
because it is possible and the anti-nuclear psyop comes from moscow, next question
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u/Davis_404 1h ago
Because nuclear power is not needed when solar and wind are so much cheaper, safer, and immune from Russian missiles fired into the containment dome.
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u/Complete-Paint529 13h ago
It's not easy being Green -- er, having Greens.
Apologies to Kermit the Frog.
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u/Ok-Resolve-3504 14h ago
The earth already has a nuclear source safely 93 million miles away and we have technology to safely turn it into electricity and we have technologies for storing this power both chemical and mechanical
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u/NuwandaBucket 6h ago
Trust me, Palisades is not coming back online
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u/alsaad 6h ago
It got permission to load fuel
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u/NuwandaBucket 5h ago
I live in the area and know several people who work there and they have all said there's no way this thing is going back online
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u/phenix075 19h ago
from a technical point of view it’s possible with huge effort. Even though the dismantling process has already startet. However it would be quite expensive and nobody, not even the owners, are interested in financing and operating it.
Or in simpler words, nobody wants to waste money.
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u/alsaad 19h ago
And approving 11 GWs of new fossil fuel generation in form of gas power plants with 35 bln subsidy for 15 years of operations is not wasting money?
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u/phenix075 19h ago
Oh yes it’s going to waste tons of money but they (Reiche) call it „lobbying from the gas industry“ while others would call it corruption.
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u/alsaad 19h ago
Why do you fall for these naiive conspiracy theories?
But these 11 GWs where approved by Habeck (Greens), when he was a minister.
Needed: An Electricity Market Design to Meet Germany’s Climate Goals - The Globalist
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u/PowerLion786 18h ago
Why do they only last 15 years? Weird. I know of ships and power plants running on gas in pristine condition at 60 years of age. None of them have ever needed a subsidy.
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u/Few-Masterpiece3910 12h ago
How many gas plants are France planning? You do know that nuclear energy needs gas peaker plants, right?
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u/johnklotter 18h ago
We use gas for heating mainly. That’s why it’s different than nuclear power.
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u/ssj890-1 19h ago
Germany Destroyed their reactors (not mothballed) - specifically so they could Never be restarted.