> Not shutting down the existing nuclear plants is a pure positive

Ask Japan, and especially Fukushima's residents, about this.

> building out renewables and/or nuclear plants in the east.

Germany chose renewables and cannot quickly phase out its huge coal industry.

> For the money we wasted on intermittent renewables so far

Source (with investments' perimeters and maturities)?

> Nuclear power is well-suited for district heating and industrial heat applications

If, and only if, it is designed for it, and with the appropriate networks. France nuclear does nearly 0 district heating and 0 industrial heat.

> Germany shut down its reactors for idiotic reasons:

Reason: "Fukushima"

> All West German reactors would have survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake

In Japan until 2011, officially "all reactors will survive..."

> we don't have Tsunamis in Germany

Tsunamis are not the sole cause potentially triggering a nuclear accident.

> How does shutting down those plants make sense again?

Refusing nuclear-induced challenges (risk of major accident, waste, dependency towards uranium, difficult decommissioning, risk of weapon proliferation...) while another approach (renewables) is now technically adequate makes sense.

> Japan is reactivating its nuclear plants.

Some sing this song since 2015. In the real world Japan, just like China, massively invests on... renewables! Surprise! And very few reactors were reactivated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

>> or that only a minority of environmentalists decided to do so is misleading as,

> Again, such a good thing that that claim wasn't made in this thread

It is nearly always made, in a form or another, in each and every thread about nuclear energy. In this very post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45230099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45227286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45227025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228712

> Who "closed" reactors

Read on: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561

> The law that required nuclear reactors to be closed was passed by the Red/Green coalition in 2002.

Don't omit anything: "The phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010, when during the chancellorship of centre-right Angela Merkel, the coalition conservative-liberal government decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Chang...

Then the Fukushima accident changed it all. Exactly what I described.

>> Furthermore, this nuclear potential would result in higher costs and dependency

> That is also not true.

Germany burns its own coal, and by doing so maintains a huge sector. By letting reactors run it would have had to phase coal our more quickly, leading to massive unemployment and dependency towards uranium. This is sad but true.

> Ask Japan, and especially Fukushima's residents, about this.

Yes, let's ask Japan!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-16/japan-see...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2024/12/26/world/ger...

>> Germany shut down its reactors for idiotic reasons:

> Reason: "Fukushima"

QED.

> > Japan is reactivating its nuclear plants.

>Some sing this song since 2015

And it still happens to be true. And only in the weird minds of anti-nuclear activists are renewables and nuclear power incompatible. Almost the entire industrialized world is investing massively in both nuclear and renewables.

And once again: The law that required nuclear reactors to be closed was passed by the Red/Green coalition in 2002. Governments are bound by the law of the land.

Now other governments should have scrapped those laws, but they didn't. So they bear some responsibility for this disaster, but the main responsibility is still with Red/Green (2002) in general and the Greens in particular, because they were the ones pushing it.

It is also really telling that for some reason everyone wants to ascribe this huge "success" to their political enemies...