But had they invested in nuclear perhaps coal would be down to 0% today, and the same cost reduction would have applied to nuclear instead, with nuclear being orders of magnitude cheaper?

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bryanlarsen a day ago | parent [-]

If they had invested in nuclear in 2000, they'd have maybe 3 plants built by now.

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slopinthebag a day ago | parent [-]

3 > 0

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bryanlarsen a day ago | parent [-]

Germany has installed the equivalent of about 25 nukes worth of solar & wind.

And 3 is definitely not enough to provide any sort of cost scaling benefits.

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slopinthebag a day ago | parent [-]

They did, but at a cost that vastly exceeded the expected cost of building 25 reactors.

> Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...

Honestly a pretty shocking policy decision from the German government, and I imagine was entirely ideological rather than pragmatic.

	▲	bryanlarsen 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that was central to my point in my first post in this thread.