Nuclear: weird things you don't know

EDIT: fleshed out from a shitty TL;DR I had to rush, special thanks to u/Spooky_Pizza for sharp and focusing questions

1) When you see "energy consumption" statistics, they often measure primary energy consumption using the substitution method. In effect, what is measured is the amount of 'input energy', including energy wasted during combustion, as opposed to energy delivered to the electrical grid. This has been criticized for effectively underreporting renewable energy sources.

Many articles that cite industry groups as sources fail to capture how increased shares of renewable energy reduces primary energy consumption as a first-order effect. Thus they overstate efficiency gains or economic losses, as well as massively underreporting the actual share of electricity derived from renewables (in Germany's case, 54.4% as opposed to the BDEW's claim of 20%)

2) electricitymaps.com uses very fiddled figures for nuclear CO2/kWh emisions, with the UNECE 2022 number of 5g having a very confused methodology. The International Atomic Energy Agency's own estimates laid at 12g CO2 per kWh, though providing a single number rather than a large range implies far more precision than analyses of nuclear power usually provide - more on that later.

3) France's national electrical utilities corporation, the EDF, has been in massive debt for a long time. Between delayed maintenance, electricity price controls, downtime during the 2022 heatwaves, and endless loans, the EDF is asking for no-interest loans from an already indebted French government.

4) Nuclear power plants are incredibly non-commoditized. In other words, ascribing a universal 'cost' or economic attributes to nuclear power is not really feasible, because nuclear plants are project-specific, highly-local operations whose construction and maintenance ends up being 'cheap' or 'expensive' for reasons that do not generalize well. The economics of nuclear energy from 1984 is a free read on the internet archive that is highly relevant to this day. Successfully commoditizing nuclear reactors is the main promise of small modular reactors as well as some other designs, and if successful, it would be a really big deal.

5) "Baseload power" is not a technical term. It is a tool of economic analysis rooted in certain assumptions about the market penetration of renewables and grid conditions. Nowadays, European technical discussions tend to centre on "dispatchable power" versus curtailment, grid integration, and pumped hydro. (Or, if you're one of those people, some new and amazing battery technology)

6) Germany had a lot of fuck-ups with nuclear waste storage, especially in the decade after Chernobyl. I haven't been able to find great English sources on the 1990s lawsuit against Transnuclear for corruption and improper disposal, but the leaks in storage site Asse II have seen international publicity. A lot of international publicity. The CDU did want to change laws such as the Atomgesetz before 2000, but the consensus talks reached no conclusion.

7) Angela Merkel absolutely did change her mind after Fukushima, her statement saying in no uncertain terms things such as (translation mine):

"That precise scenario is not what it's about - it's not about whether Germany will ever have so grave an earthquake or so a calamitous a Tsunami like in Japan. Everyone knows that it won't happen exactly like that. No, in Fukushima it's about something else. It's about the reliability of risk assessments and the reliability of probability analyses. [...] - and so today I add explicitly: as much as I advocated last autumn for the prolonging of the lifetime of German nuclear plants, so unambiguously I conclude in front of this House: Fukishima has changed my stance on nuclear energy."

After leaving office, she still defended her choices in the very article Atrioc read, despite saying it delayed climate goals.

8) My original bullet point here was "I'm pro-nuclear in France and anti-nuclear in Germany. This makes sense somehow.", and man were people not happy with that. So I'll spell it out:

Germany hasn't started any nuclear power plant since 1989. Even if every German became pro-nuclear right now, I have zero faith in their ability to build a modern nuclear facility on-time, on-budget, without maintenance scandals, and with proper disposal chains.

We can criticize their post-Chernobyl response, but there's only so much you can argue with your tearful physics professor who remembers seeing the radioactive clouds and worrying about his family living near a Soviet nuclear plant in East Germany.

9) Importing/Exporting grid power is good actually. Germany exports quite a lot of power as well, and they've invested tons into the joint EU grid, which is what allows renewables to be so efficient and effective. They've been running a winter deficit these past few years, but that leads us nicely into point number 10:

10) Germany's gas issues have to be understood as heat-focused first, electricity-focused second. If we consider the total use of energy, not just electricity, we do in fact see a real decline in energy use. (Doing the same for France makes for an interesting comparison - they have a large advantage in heating electrification, but Germany has been making great strides in reducing fossil fuel use)

When Germany burns gas for electricity, they also produce Fernwärme, which I'd love to have an English source explaining that isn't reddit. The term specifically refers to direct heating "from afar", where waste heat from industry or power generation is harvested, delivering hot water to residential buildings. Local electric heating is nice, but a forced transition can be plagued by issues. Fernwärme systems have already been a huge success are potentially compatible with other industry or geothermal uses.