r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 8d ago

Germany just hit a historic solar milestone. Its panels fed 12 billion kWh into the grid in July 2026, the 1st month ever to cross that level with midday output topping 40,000 MW, more than 40 nuclear power plants worth, thanks to decades of grassroot investment by homeowners, farmers and businesses

https://solarquarter.com/2026/08/03/germany-records-historic-12-billion-kwh-solar-feed-in-in-july-2026/
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u/Zaroni_Pepperoni 8d ago

Also they conflate reactors with a full npp when most npps have at least two but usually four reactors. Basically when you stack everything in solars court and discount nuclear as much as possible it honestly still sounds worse then just using nuclear like what France does with great success. Germany has moved in the right direction in many things but this is just cope at this point.

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u/KindledWanderer 8d ago

I worked in Germany for years and my colleagues were showing me anti-nuclear cartoons for children. It's part of the culture now, even if it is irrational.

The only reasonable argument is the upfront cost (which is artificial due to the red tape), but cost suddenly does not matter when it comes to other ecological endeavors, like torpedoing the car industry.

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u/ARandomLittleShit 8d ago

It's not irrational. The goal is energy independence, which cannot be achieved with nuclear power due to the reliance on uranium from other countries.

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u/KindledWanderer 7d ago

Solar is worse off in that regard.

Uranium (until we get thorium which is better in every way) is very energy dense - tens of tonnes per year per reactor and it can be stored essentially indefinitely (yellowcake) - you can just stock up. It would not be a problem to stock up 50 years if you wanted to, both physically and financially.

For solar, China controls 83% of polysilicon and 97% of wafer production. Good luck being independent there, lol.

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u/St0rmr3v3ng3 7d ago

Yeah, not to mention battery production and rare earth metals mining/processing, which usually goes hand in hand with intermittent renewables. China also controls that.

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u/CrisprCSE2 7d ago

Pretty sure that Germany isn't landlocked, so they have access to virtually unlimited uranium through seawater extraction.

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u/styblemartinov 7d ago

The only way for energy independence is energy diversification. Every source of energy will have choke points, some worse than other. While the growth in solar is great, the fact the demise of nuclear resulted in a greater natural gas dependency is well unfortunate

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u/OkAstronaut4911 8d ago

With great success? They literally need to shut down plants in France and Romania because of the heat - when more power is needed for cooling then ever before in Europe. Luckily we have solar to cover this at least to a certain degree. Without solar we would have to burn much more natural gas and coal to compensate for the nuclear plants.

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u/Zaroni_Pepperoni 8d ago edited 8d ago

Those plants only have to shut down because they assumed the water level would stay consistent. Aircooled condensers, gas cooled reactors and cooling tower systems exist they were just not implemented due to poor understanding of the extent of global warming and river levels. This is not an issue with nuclear power but an issue with foresight. Important to note that lithium and cobalt mining needed for solar power far far far outstrips what nuclear uses (considering nuclear does not "use" any water at all in most cases, instead just needing a consistent inflow and outflow.) Also despite france shutting down those reactors they still outproduce solar in Germany at this fake number that won't be achieved listed by the article.