Nuclear has no relevance in Germany, never really had. The plants barely added any value to the market. When Habeck became Minister, most Nuclear plants were already gone, and the last remaining were phasing out, lacking nuclear fuel and permits. Habeck even gave a permit for the last plants to run some more months, squeezing out even the last parts of fuel as much as they could, just so they could serve as an additional supply in a problematic winter, which turned out to be unnecessary in the end.
Right at this moment Germany's electricity mix has 364gCO2eq/kWh carbon intensity, France is at 21. That is because 37% of Germany's production comes from gas and coal.
Even from an environmental standpoint, France is doing much better than Germany and that is thanks to nuclear.
Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.
Still not Habecks legacy. This was decided under Merkel.
Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions and effect on the water temperature in rivers (every summer more and more plants need to shut down because of this), etc. Even if this would be done right, there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance. In the end I would say it is always a bad idea to rely on only one technology to a large degree. Only a well done mix makes you resiliant.
I agree on this point, me not being anti-Nuclear doesn't mean I am anti-wind or solar. Every country has different circumstances, I live in a landlocked country with mild mountains, temperate climate and modest rivers. In our case nuclear energy seems like the most reliable and scalable option. For countries with huge coastline off-shore wind absolutely makes sense, simialrly with solar.
> Besides, CO2eq are often wrongly measured with nuclear energy, ignoring building emissions.
I think this point is overestimated. Based on a brief search, studies show nuclear carbon intensity around 6-12g, and the building emissions just around 13% of total lifetime emissions [1].
> there are again and again longer periods where Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance.
Valid point but the 2022 French nuclear "disaster" hasn't repeated at that scale so far. In recent years France is a net exporter to Germany. I can imagine that as with many problems in renewables having technical solutions the water temperature problem is also solvable technically.
How strong correlation is there with energy exports from Germany and the status of France nuclear reactors? From a casual look, exports seems to be correlated with weather and access to excess energy, rather than demand from neighboring countries. I would like to see some support that "Germany exports energy to France because their reactors are often in maintenance", rather than Germany export energy to France because windy/sunny weather is producing excess energy.
Looking at Denmark, their export and imports have little correlation to neighboring countries demand or supply. They will try exporting if the wind farms produce excess energy, and they will try importing energy when demand exceed supply. Neighboring countries demand will mostly only have impact on export price.
> Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.
Ironically that was France which needed to shut down a lot of its nuclear reactors in 2022 and 2023 due to repairs. So according to your own logic France "weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most."
Here in Switzerland the reason given for the "energy crisis" was also mostly France as Switzerland usually imports a lot of energy from France.
