Why do you say nuclear is as clean as diesel? That is clearly not true.
CO2 emissions equivalent to wind and solar (actually slightly better). Safety (deaths per kWh) also equivalent to wind and solar. And land use much much better. Waste is tiny for the energy produced and easily contained unlike other industries, which is why no one has died from waste.
So basically you're rejecting the safest power source with the least environmental impact, and the only source along with hydro that has actually empirically (in the real world) accomplished deep decarbonization of an electricity grid (e.g. Ontario, France, Sweden).
Nuclear waste has a lifecycle of 1000s of years. The heat surplus kills river life. If things go southwards, whole regions are no longer livable for us humans.
Nuclear energy is climate change wise, surely a good deal but environment wise and human population wise, the thing is not that easy.
And nuclear waste is only easy contained if you are the US, Russia, Canada or Australia. Because otherwise you do not have a significant sized land area where you can burry that waste without creating massive problems.
exactly, it might not have a big CO2 footprint, but that's not the whole picture, we just don't have any container that doesn't start leaking radioactive shit after some years, so is it really an alternative
The first geological repository goes online next year in Finland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re... . It's not in the sparsely populated north of the country either. There are no problems to speak of when you bury something under 500m of bedrock in thick copper and even thicker bentonite clay. There just aren't.
I think mercantile is the more appropriate adjective.
It was cynical politicians and industrialists who sold the population on a clean energy revolution, all while banking on cheap Russian gas to actually deliver the energy required.
The clean energy revolution was promoted by the Green party in 1998-2005 (including turning off the first nuclear power plants).
It was the string of conservative governments that followed it that neglected (and, at times, actively sabotaged) the build out of renewable power sources.
SPD (center-left leaning party) has been junior partners in every one but one of those conservative governments.
German politics are also very collaborative/compromise driven, so it's a mistake to think the outcome would have been drastically different, had we had a SPD/Green coalition rather than a CDU/SPD coalition the last 16 years.
This is especially the case, given that parts of the SPD were and continue to be on Russian payroll.
Ultimately, renewables are very challenging from a technical perspective for a densely populated country with energy intensive industries and limited offshore wind options.
I would say it is a long term game to become clean energy wise. There was no secret here in Germany about that we used coal, oil and gas for many more years. Renewables are still ramping up.
If you ignore the long term waste. There is no way to place a cost on storing that waste. So people hand wave it away. Hoping a way to deal with it is found.
The alternative is pumping radioactive, polluting waste into the atmosphere, which is exactly what Germany is doing right now with its coal-burning plants.
Is it a clusterfuck: yes. Is it ambitious to leave nuclear and fossils behind us: yes. As a wealthy society should we try: yes.
We Germans are a bit idealistic and maybe illusional but at least we try.