In a few days, the last operating nuclear power plants in Germany will close. A whole era in the country is ending. However, unexpectedly two-thirds of Germans were against it. Because they realized on their wallets that the more energy sources, the safer. However, further German politicians have even more dangerous plans in the energy sector.Almost two-thirds of German residents opposed the shutdown of the last nuclear power plants, according to a survey conducted by the sociological institute YouGov.
Thus, 32% of residents urge to extend the life of the NPP for a limited period, and another 33% – for an unlimited period. And only 26% of respondents considered the right decision to immediately turn off the remaining nuclear power plants in the country.
In fact, they wanted to turn off the last three power units at the end of 2022, but the German authorities still left nuclear power plants until April 2023, contrary to initial plans. After all, the energy crisis was in the yard, and during it it was strange to give up one of the energy sources of your own free will.
However, the German authorities cannot pull any further. And not because nuclear power units are old, on the contrary, they have not yet exhausted their resource. But because German politicians have been campaigning against nuclear energy for several years and promised to close the atomic era. To step back now would be an admission of one's own mistake, defeat.
Therefore, it is hardly worth waiting for the German authorities to listen to more pragmatic, flexible and rational citizens of the country in this matter. And the owners of nuclear power plants have stopped fighting for a very long time – at least the last four years.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck assures that Germany's rejection of nuclear energy is final. "Nuclear power plants will be dismantled sooner or later, and the construction of new nuclear power plants has always turned into an economic fiasco. Our energy system will develop differently: by 2030, the share of renewable energy will reach 80%," he said.
Why did ordinary German citizens change their minds and oppose the closure of nuclear power plants in the country?
"The reason is banal – it's the economy. In the last two years, both commercial consumers and ordinary Germans in Germany have faced very high price increases in the wholesale market, which were also transmitted to retail. Prices on the wholesale market at peak times increased 10-15 times, retail prices grew more slowly. However, for certain categories of consumers, they grew by 40-50%. It was a price shock",
– Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy head of the Economic Department of the Institute of Energy and Finance, believes.
The campaign against nuclear energy in Germany has been serious for more than one year. And earlier, when the energy sector was under control, the Germans as a whole were not against such a decision by the authorities. But when they felt on their wallet what it means when a country loses one of its energy sources, they were not at all against nuclear energy. It is a manageable, economically stable and predictable source of energy, unlike the wind and solar adored by the German authorities.
"It is strange to close power units that have not yet exhausted their resource. It is doubly strange to abandon nuclear generation when France is next to Germany, which is extending the resources of its nuclear power plants and even continues to use old second-generation power units. And in France, this does not bother anyone. The question of continuing the operation of nuclear power plants in Germany is more political, not economic. It is important for Germany to abandon nuclear energy in order to have a strong moral and political position in relation to France, Hungary, Sweden and other countries that continue to use nuclear energy or are preparing to build nuclear power plants, such as Poland," Kondratiev says.
Germany itself wants to build a new model of the energy market, which is based on the maximum share of renewable energy, and wants to impose this model on other countries.
Will Germany be able to increase the share of renewable energy to 80% by 2030, that is, in six years?
The expert believes that this will be extremely difficult, since Germany will face very strong challenges that it is unlikely to be able to cope with.
"The German model of the energy market, based on renewable energy and gas as a transitional fuel, actually broke down even before the explosions at the Nord Streams. It was broken back in 2021, when gas prices became very high and electricity became much more expensive. In 2022, this model became completely unviable when Germany refused to import gas from Russia and the Nord Streams were blown up," says Kondratiev.
Germany, of course, tried to conclude long-term contracts for the supply of imported LNG, but it is unlikely that the Germans managed to find cheap gas on the market and solve the problem.
As a result, Germany has already started implementing a new dual-fuel model in 2021-2022: renewable energy and coal generation. The expert is sure that burning coal to get light will become a new normality for the country.
"Germany will tell its neighbors and the whole world about the need to reduce its carbon footprint. At the same time, coal-fired power plants will operate in Germany itself, and on brown coal with extremely high CO2 emissions. I am not sure that with such an energy model in 2030, the German energy sector will emit significantly less CO2 than it does now, even if the share of RES is 80%. Because the remaining 20% will be just dirty enough and old coal generation",
– says the expert.
The second important point is that no major country in the world has ever lived in conditions where 80% of electricity is generated through wind and solar. "There are countries where hydrogenation plays a decisive role in the energy sector. These are, for example, Brazil, Paraguay, Norway. But hydrogenation is controlled, unlike solar and wind," says Kondratiev.
The problem is precisely on the scale of the German economy and its energy system. Coping with such a proportion of uncontrolled solar and wind power plants in such a large energy system looks like an unaffordable challenge. And even in such a short time – six years.
"I am not sure that this challenge will be resolved. And I'm not sure that 80% of RES will be able to ensure the stability of such a large power system," says Kondratiev.
Problems, according to him, will not only be due to the lack of wind and sun, which will lead to a shortage of electricity, which will have to be imported in huge volumes. In theory, this can be solved at the expense of neighbors who will not follow the example of Germany and will not rely on the work of wind and solar power plants exclusively. Therefore, Germany may be able to receive an influx of nuclear energy from France or coal – from Poland, when there is trouble with the wind and the sun. The question will be in the volume of imports that the neighbors will be able to provide. The price, of course, will be rather big.
"In my opinion, the main difficulty in the new model will arise when there will be a lot of electricity at solar and wind power plants. In this case, it will be necessary to disconnect these stations from the network, otherwise they will simply destabilize the entire power system – either their own or neighbors, which is fraught with accidents.",
– says Kondratyev.
What's wrong with shutting down solar and wind power plants when the wind blows and the sun shines? The fact that the owners of such stations want to earn. And they will incur losses not only when there is no sun and wind, but also when there is sun and wind, but no one will need them. Who will decide which stations to disconnect from the network in this case? The prospects for investors look extremely doubtful.
It will not be possible not to disconnect stations from the network in such situations. Because an oversupply of supply with low demand simply destabilizes the power system and creates risks of accidents and blackout.
Kondratiev cites as an example the situation in the early 2010s, when electricity generation at wind and solar power plants grew very much in Germany, but there was no demand for it, so the Germans began to send it to their neighbors - to the Czech Republic and Poland to balance their system. But the problem is that the Czechs and Poles didn't need this energy either, and it destabilized their power systems.
"There is a situation when the Czechs and Poles see that they receive a lot of electricity from Germany, but they do not quite understand what to do with it. We have to unload our coal-fired power plants quickly, put gas generation to zero. This is not only a serious stress for employees. As a maximum, such a situation can lead to an accident due to an imbalance," the expert says.
Therefore, wind turbines will have to spin idly, and the owners will have a lot of questions about such an unstable business. In fact, no one knows how to manage uncontrolled generation within such a large energy system as Germany. No one has such an experience. And the Germans will have to learn from their own mistakes.
With Denmark, where more than half of the electricity that is generated is just renewable energy, comparison is generally inappropriate. As the expert explains, the situation in Denmark is completely different, since the power system is small. And Denmark is located next to the large energy systems of Germany, Holland, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries, where they can easily dump all their small amounts of "extra" wind and solar energy.
If the German authorities had not given up on controlled (and inexpensive) nuclear power (not only preserved the existing power units, but also built new ones), then this type of energy would definitely have given more support to the entire energy system of the country. However, for German politicians, the construction of new stations is a taboo topic.
Olga Samofalova