> I see some people campaigning against European green energy or the renewables and it doesn't make sense whatsoever unless you are aligned with Russia or USA.
No, you got this exactly the wrong way.
In fact, it was Russia who initially funded European (German) "green" movement, their main purpose was opposing nuclear (by far the greenest elective source of energy, as evidenced by France's carbon footprint), so that Europe (Germany) would get hooked on Russian gas.
Thats actually not that wrong, because there were contracts between Russia and germany for over then years, where Russia offered very cheap gas for the German industry (Nord-Stream I and II was build for that).
But beside this, Germany was leading in the anti-nuclear movement, and finally shut down there last nuclear power plant two years ago. Currently, in Germany, renewable energy sources [1] are around 75% in the summer and and 55% in the winter month. Renewable are growing fast [2].
Don't forget that they have power shortages and strict rationing in that equation. So at the end of the day they have 75% solar but it is not adequate for the population.
Thats not true. It's 75% renewable. Means, biomass, wind, solar etc.. And in Winter it is 55% renewable. Shortages are compensate mostly with fast booting Gas, Coal and Hydrogen plants.
Also trading[1] in Germany is relatively even (in/out).
They might be mixing up Germany and South Africa i think. IIRC they do have times where they have planned outages in the different areas as the grid can't handle it if all were able to use it at the same time.
We do not have shortages or power rationing. As another poster said, you may be confusing Germany with South Africa, though that's not a common confusion usually.
I'm afraid I have to ask here for a citation for your very confident but to my knowledge wrong statement that Russia (I suppose you mean the USSR) financed the green movement in Germany. Russia is equally a builder and supplier for nuclear energy, so makes significant profit on that angle and has no reason to fight nuclear.
Also the initial green movement was not against nuclear power per se but rather a peace movement against nuclear weapons, the concept just expanded over time to cover also civilian nuclear power, notably after Tchernobyl.
In contrast Russia is indeed known to finance both the far left (which has a lot of 'Ostalgia') and far right (whereby nationalism works against Western unity and strength) movements.
Nuclear power is great if you have it. Not even the French seem capable of building new ones at a timescale or cost that is relevant in todays world dominated by renewables together with storage recently kicking into overdrive.
It's great for the companies that run the plants because they are highly funded by subsidies from the society in which they are built. Nuclear power simply does not work from a capitalist point of view. Former Governments just swallowed this pill, because they had no natural resources that produce enough energy and they tried to stay independent. Now you can do this with renewable energy.
Some of that is because people are so skeptical of it, it never got to economies of scale. You could say the same thing about pretty much any energy source prior to it being scaled up.
Tbf, perhaps that is still an instrinsic problem with nuclear, that it isn't easily ammenable to economies of scale the way solar pannels or fossil fuels are.
nuclear never got economy of scale? There were hundreds of nuclear power plants built across the world in the 1970s/1980s. Developed countries went from "no nuclear" to "~20..30% nuclear" or more in less than 20 years.
If that's not sufficient scale to be economical, then I don't know what would have been.
Historical evidence therefore rather suggests nuclear isn't economical at any scale once active subsidies are out.
Current nuclear power plants under construction in the US or Europe, or recently completed there add more than evidence for high cost and major overruns to the pile.
Of course, one can go all conspiracy and claim that's only because of the deep anti-atom lobby, and because the cheap SMRs have always been torpedoed, or because Thorium molten salt reactors have been secretly killed by the military-industrial complex or whatever.
Occam's razor makes me think though, could it just be that nuclear was, is, and likely, at least for quite a while still, will be just so friggin' expensive that pretty much any "alternative" is more economical?
(back-of-envelope calcs say that if ~1.5GW electric from a new nuclear power plant cost ~20..40G$ to build .. between ~13..28$/W ... solar is <1$/W, there's a lot of spare change for batteries in that. Ok, that's pub talk. Still, if I have influence where my money goes, I'd only grudgingly accept nuclear for base load, subsidised as needed. Economics say, build what's cheap capex to build and then gives zero-opex energy when "running". There's no economic alternative to the "alternatives")
The US decision to abandon thorium cycle research wasn't particularly secret. It wasn't some conspiracy, just a policy decision on where to invest DOE money to get the most "bang" for the buck (literally, since plutonium production was part of the reasoning). It made sense at the time, but the decision was never reviewed after Carter's anti-reprocessing policies went into place.
And if economics were the only hurdle for SMRs, the arctic would be full of them. Flying in diesel or jet fuel to run generators is expensive as hell.
As far as the anti-atom lobby, they're like right there, out in the open, proud of what they do and vocal about it. It's no conspiracy.
Economics is a reason for the lack of nuclear after the 80s, but it's far from the only one.
So blowing up their own nuklear power plant in 1986 was a Soviet-Russian plot to make the German Green party popular? I find that a bit hard to believe ;)
(because the German anti-nuclear-energy movement and the rise of the Green party all got kickstarted by the Chernobyl disaster)
No, you got this exactly the wrong way.
In fact, it was Russia who initially funded European (German) "green" movement, their main purpose was opposing nuclear (by far the greenest elective source of energy, as evidenced by France's carbon footprint), so that Europe (Germany) would get hooked on Russian gas.
The plan worked brilliantly!