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Ok, you got me on my lack of precision and missing sources. Estimates like "billions of Euros" and "hundreds of tons" are horribly vague and not a proper base for discussion.
To walk back my reputation I want to add this link: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx which provides a lot of hard facts. According to this report Germany hast to manage 11.500 metric tons of nuclear fuel. There's a state fund of 23.6 billion € for managing the waste. Also the energy companies have put back 38 billion € to build back the German reactors. "Millions of years" was plain wrong, spent nuclear fuel has half-lives as high as 24,000 years, which is not nothing but something to do math with.
Where it is difficult to do the math is the total cost of nuclear power in Germany. There are about 187 Billion € of state subsidies that some sources factor in and some don't. The risk of minor and major accidents and how to account for them is debated heavily. Same goes for renewables, where some sources factor in external costs for manufacturing, land and network, some don't. It's a mess and I no longer wonder why there are so many stark opinions pro and against nuclear power.
It would make sense from an economical standpoint to let the running reactors run long term and rather refurbish older ones instead of building new power plants. To shut down the German reactors early has been a political decision fueled by the political problems around the waste and fear of accidents, not a scientific one. Same goes for the discussion about a nuclear renaissance, which could simply be made on a political basis. But if people want to pay a price (like higher energy prices) to reduce risk, all economical discussion will fall short. The war in Ukraine will shift public opinion towards nuclear, just because the fossils from Russia have become a political burden especially in Germany. But also the public opinion on big infrastructure projects have become very strained after the disastrous Berlin airport project.
It's not about the cost. It's about public opinion and I'm not looking forward to the debate. Ugh.
Most readers will agree the term "ugh fields" describes the avoidance part of basic procrastination. Finding an brand level scientific term for it with an emotional storytelling soundbite with only three letters is the part that needs to be acknowlegded here – kudos ... but flattery, ugh, read next article.
The waste makes nuclear power too risky and thus too expensive if you think long-term.
In Germany we have the situation that the country backs out from nuclear power completely. That desicion has been made by the German government after the Fukushima incident and because Germany is so densely populated that an incident like Fukushima would impact all of Europe. Other countries next door, like France, who also has to keep up a nuclear arsenal, will keep producing nuclear power. I'm pretty sure that the possibility to build nukes is the one big argument for keeping and subsidizing a nuclear power industry at all.
The main political issue and the elephant in the room is the nuclear waste management, which is very expensive if you want to have long term safety. And we are talking about stuff that is dangerous for thousands of years. In the 50s and 60s that stuff was simply thrown into the sea or dumped in abandoned mine shafts (that's why the cost curve had been falling). Germany is already spending billions of Euros now to walk back those original sins - and it's complicated because noone wants to pay. The utilities already got some questionable deals and shook off their responsibility. Goverment and taxpayer money will now have to deal with hundreds of tons of nuclear waste for generations to come. If someone wants to advocate a nuclear power renaissance (instead of renewables and possibly fusion power some day), you must answer the question of waste management - technically and economically.
Buerocracy seems to be tedious at times, but in my opinion it's quite efficient.
Most buerocratic rituals still serve a purpose. There are a lot of decisions to be made by people and they simply want to follow an algorithm. Or a checklist. To do that without friction, people want to normalize their input, that's why everyone insists on the right form. It's standardization.
Let's have a look where buerocracy is happening: when dealing with money. Nobody wants to be responsible, so everybody is trying to secure a paper trail that proves they made the right decision.
Buerocracy is complementing (or weeding out) the human factor, by it's narrow-minded nature. It enables to make decisions based on the effort someone has put into his credentials.
Humans equipped with buerocracy are harder to game with sheer salesmanship and less prone to simple errors.
8/8 (Serenity)