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There's a meme in the German anti-nuclear movement, claiming how nuclear is expensive because they've now closed their nuclear fleet and it turns out that the costs are higher than expected to dismantle the reactors and get rid of the spent fuel. Why is it more expensive? Mostly because of regulations they themselves have argued for years to be implemented. Nothing is good enough. This worked great to get the nuclear industry killed. Now it serves as an argument to claim the aftermath is too expensive. It's an amazing display of shooting yourself in the foot for decades. Meanwhile, energy prices have been rising for decades. Not because of the self-inflicted nuclear numbers, but mostly because of the Energiewende that has already cost the German tax payer many times more than the French Messmer plan. Industry has been postponing and cancelling investments for 15 years and is now closing down and just leaving the country. First a trickle, then as a flood. And what do they have to show for it? They still have a 10x higher carbon footprint compared to nuclear France. In fact, relying on French nuclear power has been a foundational pillar beneath their 'Energiewende'. At home they've just managed to replace nuclear with renewables. Bravo. Let Germany serve as a warning for the world of how NOT to go to a zero carbon future. And no, the nuclear industry pays for its own waste stream. This is the international standard, which works fine if you're not stupid enough to close it down.

The German nuclear phaseout may have caused up to thousands of excess deaths annually according to several studies. It’s no secret that the phaseout was a disaster. But when you start digging into the real-world consequences, that’s when reality really hits. Over the past decade, several researchers have tried to quantify the consequences. One topic that keeps coming up is how many people have died as a result of coal replacing nuclear. Most studies agree that the number is in the hundreds or thousands per year, but they reach that conclusion in different ways. Some, like Jarvis et al. (2022) and Núñez-Mujica et al. (2025), model the increase in coal emissions, run those through atmospheric dispersion models, and apply dose-response functions to estimate the health impact. Their numbers land around 725 to 800 excess deaths per year. Neidell et al. (2021) take a different route. They look at reduced electricity consumption following the phaseout and estimate over 1,100 additional deaths per year linked to cold exposure and energy poverty. Kharecha & Sato (2019) project out to 2035 and estimate a long-run average of around 2,286 annual deaths, based on increased air pollution alone. Then there’s Kaariaho (2025), whose number (170 deaths per year) is much lower. That’s not because the health impact was smaller, but because the scope was. Kaariaho only looks at respiratory diseases, and only at observed mortality using a synthetic control method. In other words, it’s a very conservative lower bound. I’ve put these results together in a single graphic. Each dot represents a study. Together, they show a clear pattern: coal replaced nuclear, and people died because of it. This isn’t about nuclear versus renewables. If you remove clean energy while fossil fuels are still on the grid, guess what fills the gap? In Germany, it was coal. And it killed people.

Can't believe they're doing this. Given the changing conditions, i.e., greatly increased support (and need) for nuclear, and the return to sanity by the German people and some German political parties, they should be mothballing, not dismantling, their plants! Article link in reply.

A freedom of information investigation has found that Green party Minister Robert Habeck and Greens appointed bureaucrats colluded to mislead the public about the possibility of extending the operational lifetime of German nuclear power plants. The damning investigation found the bureaucrats changed or covered up memos from experts within the economic and environment ministries which showed that German nuclear plants could safely operate for several more years helping to reduce gas use and drive down emissions and energy prices. Story linked before.

Now we have concrete evidence that Green Party members altered the conclusions of experts in order to stop a reconsideration of nuclear in Germany. The decision to continue the shut down of nuclear plants in the country even after the invasion of Ukraine has been baffling to people globally. Why block restarts and falsify arguments? It makes sense when you understand the Green Party in Europe was directly born out of social movements from the 70’s to stop nuclear. Being opposed to nuclear energy isn’t just something the party has adopted along the way. It’s in their foundational DNA. Believe it or not, to them nuclear is far worse than fossil fuels. Many of their members made it their life’s mission to infiltrate the higher levels of government and accomplish the misguided goal of completely phasing out of nuclear energy. Even if that meant burning more coal. Here is a photo of Jürgen Trittin in 2023 celebrating the last reactors being shut down in Germany. Trittin served as the Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Just a reminder that after leaving office Schröder worked for Russian state-owned gas companies.