Sep 30

Today’s premium article contains the main takeaways from my conversation from Mark Nelson, an expert in environment and nuclear energy, as well as the audio version of our conversation—abbreviated to the most relevant passages. If you’re interested, I’ll share with you the transcript in the future. Let me know, because it turns out that a clean transcript of a long interview is horribly hard to make¹.

I’ll follow up very quickly with another article, as promised two weeks ago, about the UK.

A few days ago, I shared with you the interview with Mark Nelson, and promised to send the transcript, audio, and summary later. Here it is.

Key Insights on Germany’s Nuclear Reactors

From the interview with Mark Nelson:

1. Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons Are Connected

I was always told that nuclear energy and weapons didn’t go together. That the gap between the two was massive:

Their goals are completely different.
The technology to go from one to the other is completely disparate. To go from energy to weapons, you need all the military technology.
You also need to enrich Uranium from only 0.7% to 3-5% for fuel, but over 90% for weapons. You can control the use of centrifuges, so that enriching from one to the other is very hard. This is what Iran attempted, and why it was not able to get the bomb by the time there was an agreement to stop their centrifuge program.
Uranium is very scarce and highly controlled—to the gram. Gathering the 25kg needed for a nuclear bomb is extremely hard.

But Mark shared a couple of insights that changed my mind:

1. The political goals of nuclear weapons and energy are the same: independence.

Countries that want defense independence tend to also want energy independence—because with only one of the two you’re not truly independent. Consider, for example, the theory that Japan went to war with the US in 1941 because the US had blocked it from getting fuel. Hitler might have lost in Russia because it tried to go for the oil in the Caucasus. The US went to war in the Middle East at least partially because of access to oil. Ukraine is famous: It had nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union fell, but gave them up in exchange for assured protection—look where that got them. Maybe the nuclear weapons were useful after all.

2. Many countries that had a nuclear energy program also had a nuclear program at the same time

Of the nine countries with nuclear weapons, all but two are leaders in nuclear energy. The two outliers are Israel and North Korea—in both cases, countries with a very high military threat.

There are about 25 more countries with nuclear energy. Most of them don’t have a weapons program, but many of them did, which I didn’t know: Several countries had a nuclear weapons program while their nuclear energy program was going full steam.

The CIA knew about Spain’s nuclear weapons program during Franco’s dictatorship—a time when Spain was isolated and both energy and military independence were very valuable to them.

Sweden, also a country that was traditionally independent militarily, had a nuclear weapons program during its nuclear energy push.

Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, is an unusual case. It shut down its reactors after Fukushima, but is quietly reopening them all—especially as its neighboring China becomes more and more aggressive. Interestingly, Japan is a de-facto nuclear power, with the ability to get a nuclear weapon ready within six months if required.

Taiwan also belongs to the group: It has nuclear energy and had a nuclear weapons program. So did South Africa. And Argentina. And Switzerland. And Brazil. And Mexico. Belgium doesn’t have a nuclear program but hosts US nuclear weapons. So does the Netherlands. Canada used to.

To be clear, having had a program doesn’t mean these countries continue having nuclear readiness. For example, Japan does, but I’d be surprised if Spain also did.

Nevertheless, I found this insight important for two reasons. First, it gives some credence to the anti-nuclear argument that these are connected. Also, it shows that Mark Nelson, my interviewee, is not a nuclear maximalist.

2. The Debate about Germany’s Nuclear Reactors Has Changed, but People Haven’t Followed

Until now, the debate about Germany’s nuclear reactors was: Should Germany keep its nuclear reactors open, or should it continue depending on Russia, with the conflict of interest that this causes? If it closes them, will it be deceitful to Ukraine, signaling its support while funding its enemy behind its back?

This is no longer a question, because Russia has cut Germany’s gas anyway. And the recent explosions in Nordstream 1 and 2 have made it impossible.

Now, for Germany, it’s not nuclear reactors or Russian gas? It’s nuclear reactors or nothing?

Now that there’s no turning back, Germany has finally declared that it will keep open two of the reactors. But it took the impossibility of the gas to get them there.

Germany’s operable nuclear reactors can serve about 6M people, or 7% of the population. What happens if these people simply don’t get the electricity they need?

They die.

I consulted for a funeral homes company once, and the vast majority of deaths happened during winter. The colder it got, the better their business. I couldn’t find the seasonality of deaths in Germany, but the same pattern is valid in the US, Spain, and the UK, so I assume it’s also true in Germany.

Back of the envelope numbers: Usually 1% of people die every year² in Western countries. That’s about 830k people in Germany. Let’s say that about 65% die between November and March, so 540k. Let’s assume that the low availability of heat this winter kills 10% more people. That’s about 50k people. For context, that’s about a third of all of Germany’s COVID deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

3. Who Benefits from the Nordstream Explosions?

This doesn’t come from the interview with Mark Nelson, but refers to news since.

We don’t know who exploded these gas pipelines. But what we can speculate is who won from it.

Before we do that, however, we need to understand exactly what it is that these explosions achieved.

And the answer is simple: Germany can’t directly deal with Russia for gas anymore.

So the losers are:

Russia can’t dangle its gas in front of Germany’s face for its cooperation.
Germany loses a direct way to get gas from Russia.

That means we can be pretty sure of who hasn’t done it:

Germany’s government.
Germany’s gas industry or its green party.
Russia’s government.

That doesn’t rule out factions inside these places. The German pro-nuclear or anti-gas special interests benefit from this, but probably don’t have the political clout to pull it off. However, a Russian faction that wants to keep the war going could have been the culprit—Putin, feeling a threat to be replaced?

But the players with bigger incentives to do this are actually Eastern European countries, especially Poland, Ukraine, Czechia and Slovakia. They have gas pipelines that serve Russian gas to Germany.

It’s hard to assume that Ukraine could attack these pipelines, risking losing the support of Germany and the rest of Europe. Poland is a bigger candidate, since it has been very much at odds with the Russian-German sandwich—both today and historically. It seems far-fetched that Czechia and Slovakia would do something like this.

Who else benefits from Germany and Russia losing their ties? Well, probably the entire Western alliance. This eliminates any incentive that Germany had to stay close to Russia. France is a strong candidate, because it forces Germany to be closer to it—and accept the nuclear energy that France champions. The US is a strong candidate, as it pushes Germany to support Ukraine against Russia.

All in all, the only state actor that seems to both benefit from this and be capable to stand the fallout if it were to be discovered is the US.

But a key thing to realize here is that non-state actors can also do this.

One of the things that these explosions highlight is that it’s actually quite easy to blow up gas pipelines. Maye this was not a government, but a faction, or a private group?

I look forward to the movie.

4. The Diverse Uses of Nuclear Electricity

One of the main arguments against reopening the nuclear reactors is that most gas is used for heat, whereas nuclear energy generates electricity.

But in many cases, these are interchangeable. People can buy electric heaters that consume electricity instead. So keeping the nuclear reactors open does reduce the potential need for Russian gas.

Another argument is that even if this replacement didn’t happen, Germany could still use the added electricity generation to export to neighboring countries (or import less), which would give these countries more electricity, who might then need less Russian gas to generate their own electricity.

Finally, another crucial point is that forgoing nuclear energy may put many German companies at risk: Their growing energy bills may soon put them out of business. All the energy that Germany can’t produce through nuclear must be imported. In many cases, Germany might import that energy in the form of finished products that consume a lot of energy—cheaper in other countries.

German nuclear electricity is useful in many ways. Shutting it down blocks them all.

5. The Missing Steelman

Since I found and tore down the official position of the German government on its nuclear plants, I have been on the lookout for an updated version, a steelman argument that gathers the strongest arguments in favor of shutting down the reactors. I haven’t found it. When I pressed Nelson on this topic, he mentioned that the steelman argument doesn’t exist.

I have, however, found lots of representatives in German academia and nuclear industries who defend the position that the reactors should remain in operation.

All of this reinforces my current belief that there simply isn’t an updated position on the topic. The government simply hasn't updated its arguments for closing the reactors.

That might be why the government has now asked two reactors to be on standby for the next few months—knowing that it’s not economically viable to just keep them available without a more long-term commitment to produce. The government needs to make a decision: Either the companies invest everything necessary to keep the reactors open—which means a lot of money that can only be recouped by years of operation—or they shut down.

6. Risk vs. Benefit

Nelson succinctly explained why economic viability was not the issue but risk was. Without guarantees from the government that plants can continue operation, keeping the nuclear reactors running is too risky. But with those guarantees, nuclear power is a very profitable endeavor. In fact, according to Nelson, if the government took over the operation, the nuclear reactors could make money for the state.

Keeping the nuclear reactors open is very risky without good guarantees from the government that the operation will remain open. So much so that, with government guarantees, this becomes a very profitable endeavor. According to Nelson, if the government took over the nuclear reactors it could in fact make money for the state.

I haven’t been able to independently verify this, but it sounds more reasonable than the need to recoup new investments by operating for years.

7. The Gist

At the end of the day, this is the problem.

It’s not spare parts, maintenance, fuel, safety, or workers. The problem is that keeping the reactors open means more nuclear for Germany for years, more money for their operators, and a possible turnaround in the public opinion against nuclear. For a Green Party that was formed in Germany around the fight against nuclear, this is an existential threat it can’t accept.

If Germany didn’t have its hand forced, it might have made the wrong choice for the wrong reasons. So make sure to send the petition to discuss this in the Bundestag to any German you know to make sure the debate does happen.

Thank you for your patience this week. I’ve been fighting transcription software. I’m using Descript. It eliminates filler words and the like, but it’s not good enough. Conversations have plenty of words that make sense when listened but are a waste when written. So either I give you an unedited transcript, or spend hours cleaning it (instead of writing another article).

This would mean people live on average to 100 years if we maintained it this way. But the population has been growing, so those dying today are only 1% of those alive. This is a broad approximation for Western countries, to get orders of magnitude.

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[Salon] German Nuclears: Main Takeaways, Latest News, and Full Interview

German Nuclears: Main Takeaways, Latest News, and Full Interview