I recently wrote a reply to someone else with the same argument about the German greens, which I'll recycle here:

"It's bad enough that nuclear proponents ignore the massive cost of nuclear compared to renewables once you factor in building costs, insurance and storage imho. But then to pretend like the conservatives didn't have a choice but to bungle the nuclear exit really is too much.

The CDU never listened to the greens when it came to not killing the solar industry and serving it to China on a golden platter. Or not killing our rail infrastructure by continually delaying maintenance so that we would have to do much more costly repairs later.

But in this instance, they do, and do it in a way that is a gift to the energy companies, and instead of noticing the obvious corruption at play, people still blame the greens."

Sorry if the tone is a bit harsh, but I'm really annoyed at the amount of dishonesty surrounding nuclear energy.

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Timon3 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, it's crazy how successful that particular piece of propaganda is. The conservative CDU is responsible for the decommissioning of nuclear plants, while the Greens extended the lifetime of the remaining plants. It's literally the other way around, but people don't question it - it feels too good to complain about the Greens, right?

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belorn 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What does the German Green Party say in their own political platform today about the use of thermal power plants? Are they in favor of them, to be used to balance the grid when renewable energy fails to meet demand, or are they against the construction and continued use?

I know what the Swedish green party has on their platform, open to be read at any time on their website or in paper materials, or heard by their political representatives. Their position is that thermal power plants are critical to the energy grid in order to enable renewable energy and keeping costs down. They wish to use either bio fuels or green hydrogen to fuel those power plants.

The issue I got with that plan is that current thermal power plants in practice do not use exclusively bio fuels or green hydrogen, and that the environmental science around bio fuels are poor at best and full of green washing and practices that are extremely bad for the environment. The costs of bio fuels and green hydrogen has also demonstrated to be massively expensive, making the cost of nuclear cheap in comparison.

My views of the green will change when/if the green drops their support of thermal power plants, and their overwhelming dependency of using biofuels produced from corn as a way to reduce emissions. Biofuels need to be produced without using artificial fertilizers (natural gas), and without burning down forests to make space for the farming. It also need to be cheaper than nuclear, which disqualify green hydrogen as it is produced, stored and handled currently. Carbon capture and artificial fuels are disqualified on the same point, being overwhelming more expensive than nuclear.

As an anecdote, the Swedish green party leader and a right wing party had a political debate during last election. The Right wing party wanted to demolish an oil fueled thermal power plant that is currently operated in south of Sweden, and replace with new nuclear power plant. Paraphrasing what the green party leader said: "Thermal power plants are a natural part of the Swedish grid, and nuclear energy is way to expensive. We need those plants to keep the grid stable and prices low."

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fnordian_slip 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>What does the German Green Party say in their own political platform today about the use of thermal power plants?

Doesn't matter, at least in Germany. Maybe it's different in other countries, though this would surprise me. Here, nobody reads the party platforms, as they do not correlate with the actions of our political parties.

If you vote according to party platform, then you should probably vote for the conservatives or the reds, as they pretend to be good for the economy and the workers.

I think it's better to judge a party by their actions, instead.

	▲	belorn 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If you judge the political views of a party on how they vote (i.e. their actions), then the result will be a mess. Political parties vote in blocks and alliances, with negotiations and give-and-take. They regularly vote against their own interests if their negotiations means getting their own politics through. One has to look at what they say, not what they do, in order to understand why they voted one way or an other. There have been recently in Sweden a discussion around party voting and block voting. In concept, every politician could vote independently based on their own views and opinions, but as a practical matter they vote according to party politics. Some has now voiced that this should be mandated according to election result, while others want to keep the current system where elected has a choice to ignore party politics and be independent after the election. The reason this has become an issue is that recent elections has been very close with only a few seats difference between the blocks, thus independent (called "wilds") representatives has the ability to overturn votes when the blocks artificial maintains the relative balances between each other. Last, if we look at the actions, then guess how the green party voted when it came to construction of new thermal power plants in south of Sweden.