Germany and Nuclear Power

Presently today, in Germany....there are seven nuclear plants still in operation.

If you go by government statements....the last of the plants will shut down in the last quarter of 2022.  The odds of a plant or two going beyond that planned outage?  Every month or two....there's some hint that the grid might have problems, and that some extension might occur.

Presently, if you add it up....roughly 60-percent of German power is through the normal sources (nuclear, hydro, coal, etc).  Around forty-percent is via renewable sources (wind, solar, etc).

The curious thing that I've always been amazed about in Germany....there's roughly a thousand different companies that provide power within the country....but three-quarters of all power come from four companies (Vattenfall GmbH, RWE AG, E.ON SE/Uniper, and EnBW AG).  What paths these four companies take....really lay out the landscape and cost factor of German electricity.

If you go and talk about capacity.....comparing back twenty years ago (2000).....then nuke power has gone from 23.6 GWe.....down to 11.4 GWe.  Yes, almost half.  The growth areas?  Mostly all wind and solar.....almost doubling.

Official shutdown dates for the remaining seven?  Still not public information.  The oldest of these is Gundremmingen (Jan 1985), and I might suspect it'll be the next to be turned off.

If the schedule renovation of wind generators continues on a negative scale, and lesser wind energy is possible at the end of 2021?  That's really the growing situation you have to wonder about.  I could see some emergency meeting occurring in early 2021....affecting the national election in October 2021....forcing the SPD and CDU Parties to admit that buying more expensive power from outside of Germany is likely, unless you delay things and keep a couple of the nuke plants operational.

The likely possibility of this turning into a top ten political topic?  I'd say it's better than a 50-percent chance. 

The amusing thing is that the Greens would gain traction, and these Greta-gang members would be hyped up....with a stable German electrical grid now openly discussed as being unstable.