Reply 40 of 73, by schmatzler
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RandomStranger wrote on 2022-07-19, 19:08:If anyone can explain regarding energy, what's that insane anti-atomic energy stuff Germany pushes?
We are not really anti-atomic energy, we even run an experimental plasma reactor in Greifswald (Wendelstein 7-X).
But we recently had a government change and the previous leadership just ignored modern energy sources like solar energy or offshore wind parks completely, which has created an extreme dependency on other countries to supply us with gas and power, especially Russia.
We are very dependent on Russia at the moment and the short-term solution to have at least some alternatives is spinning up our old coal power stations. A lot of them have been shut down but are still standing. As far as I know reactor fuel also comes mostly from Russia so it wouldn't be a solution to just spin up more reactors, even if we had them.
Our new government isn't as backwards as the old one, so there will probably be benefits for investing in solar energy and heat pumps in the future, but it will take time to get the whole country supplied with that. Until then times will be hard. I've started to save the money I can spare to pay my energy bills at the end of the year. Some analysts say that prices might quadruple this year or worse, which is absolutely batsh*t crazy - and the result of decades-long neglect by our previous leadership. I also got an oil radiator so I don't have to heat up my room with gas this year and use as less power as I can.