In a commentary for Cicero magazine, Ulrich Gräber, who has worked in the nuclear power industry (Areva, EnBW) since 1974 as a mechanical engineer and business economist, notes that “with the shutdown of its last three nuclear power plants, Germany is foregoing 32 terawatt hours of CO2-free electricity generation per year. The number of German coal-fired power plants scheduled to be shut down by 2035 is equivalent to the number of coal-fired power plants built annually in China.” And all that is done to make Germany’s 2% contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.
Gräber mentions a study by industrial engineer Jan Emblemsvåg from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim which concludes that if Germany had stuck with nuclear energy, it would have saved €600 billion on the misguided energy transition and could still produce more CO₂-free electricity than with all its renewable energies. Or the gradual decommissioning of a highly developed transport network that has been built up over decades and the construction of new power lines, costing billions, to transport fluctuating wind power from the north to the south of Germany.
