They could have done all this without dismantling nuclear power and emitting more carbon than they otherwise would have.

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lnz_me 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.

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3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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suddenlybananas 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.

Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).

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toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158035 - August 2026 (0 comments)

What's happening in Hungary's power grid? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154001 - August 2026 (0 comments)

Hungary to shut down sole nuclear plant as Danube falls to record low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145531 - August 2026 [dupe]

EU considers emergncy meeting as nuclear shutdown leaves HU facing energy crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131244 - August 2026 (1 comment)

How Hungary became the best at solar [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49125682 - July 2026 (1 comment)

Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120120 - July 2026 (231 comments)

France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)

Europe's extreme heat is shutting down power plants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697170 - June 2026 (2 comments)

Commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands.

Europe's summer heat has broken the Bell curve - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158483 - August 2026

Bloomberg: Europe’s Key Rivers Are Drying Up as Extreme Heat Impact Widens - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-02/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/tVpQJ - August 2nd, 2026

> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.

Bloomberg: Europe’s Endless Heat Waves Imperil Once Reliable Power Sources - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-01/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/EvSSS - August 1st, 2026

> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.

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suddenlybananas 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands

Well it's good that Germans chose coal over nuclear!

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throw0101d 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)

There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:

> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.

> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.

> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.

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mrguyorama 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There's no physics reason of course, but not using the natural river source for cooling like this further hurts the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.

Similarly, all industrial processes of heat rejection, including data centers, could use closed cycle cooling, but they don't, because it's more expensive to install and operate.

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realusername 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.

That affects ~0.5% of the yearly production in France, it's not a "primary weakness", it's the opposite, it's so low of a problem that the state simply doesn't care enough to fix it.

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ZeroGravitas 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They are saying economics is the primary weakness i.e. nuclear costs more than renewables even if you don't have fancy cooling methods that would increase the cost further.

	▲	realusername 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well no it isn't, this problem is so small that it's not even worth installing any additional cooling method. It's also the lowest consumption period of the year, making the problem even more irrelevant as some plants are already offline for maintainance anyways. And since the poster didn't knew that, I'm not sure the cost analysis holds up.

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toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They could've, but people and politics are hard and they didn't. It is what it is, can't change the past. We win or we learn.

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suddenlybananas 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That kind of fatalism could apply to literally any idiotic policy. The German government knew what they were doing when they made that choice.

	▲	looperhacks 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"You can't change the past" really isn't fatalism
	▲	RandomLensman 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You think voters had no role there? I don't see nuclear power enjoying some constitutional protection as such, so choosing against it seems ok.

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runarberg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.

I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.

	▲	opo 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If the building costs for the nuclear plants are paid for, nuclear costs are comparable to the costs for utility solar today (and much less than solar 10 years ago). Closing down nuclear plants while you keep burning coal is not a good decision, no matter how you look at it: deaths due to pollution (in Germany and downwind countries), deaths due to mining, economic costs, etc. We will also see in the future what affect all the extra CO2 that is being emitted. Even now, I just read that Germany ranks 8th globally for the amount of coal they burn. The people who made the decisions to close nuclear plants while they still burn coal are responsible for all that.