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| Fig. 1: The inauguration of the Nord Stream pipeline in November 2011. [2] (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Before the attacks of the 26th of September 2022, the Nord Stream pipeline was a major conduit for natural gas from Russia to Europe, particularly Germany. After the attacks Germany quickly needed to pivot and diversify its energy sourcing strategies, leading to increased imports from the Netherlands and Belgium and the building of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) infrastructure. [1] While the fallout from the attacks is interesting to discuss, it is out of scope for this report. We will focus on the sheer scale of energy transported by the Nord Stream pipelines. To put the energy transport into perspective, we will compare the energy capacity of the Nord Stream pipeline to the energy capacity of all nuclear power plants in Germany.
The Nord Stream pipeline was inaugurated in November 2011 (Fig. 1) and consisted of two parallel lines with a combined capacity of 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year. [2,3] Interestingly, this full capacity was not reached until 2018 and peaked in 2020. [4]
Doing a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, we can estimate the transported energy of the pipeline, which is given by
To get the final number, we only need to know the energy content of natural gas per cubic meter and the pipeline capacity. The energy content of natural gas can vary slightly depending on its composition, but for typical natural gas (mostly methane), we can use 10.75 kWh per cubic meter. [5] To make our calculation a bit nicer, we are using a more conservative estimate of 10 kWh per cubic meter, giving us a lower bound on the energy transported. The pipeline capacity is given as 55 billion cubic meters per year; while the pipeline reached a peak of 56.3 billion cubic meters in 2020, we shall still use the rated capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year for this calculation, to arrive at a lower bound estimate. [3,4]
Putting this all together, we get
This is a very large number. But remember, we are using lower bound estimates for both the energy content per cubic meter of natural gas and the pipeline capacity. The true energy transported is likely even higher.
But how massive is this number really? Let's compare this to the energy generated by all nuclear power plants in Germany.
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| Fig. 2: The VAK Kahl, the first german nuclear powerplant, located in Kahl am Main. It began producing energy in July 17, 1961. [6] (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Germany entered the nuclear age in June 1961, with the construction of its first nuclear power plant, the Kahl Nuclear Power Plant (Fig. 2). [6] For the next six decades, Germany expanded its nuclear power capacity and built a total of 33 nuclear reactors across the ountry. [7] However, following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Germany made a decisive move to phase out nuclear power. [8]
In April 2023, the last three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down, marking the end of an era. [7]
But this raises the question: how much energy could Germany have generated with all its nuclear power plants running? Let's do another quick and dirty back-of-the-envelope calculation to check this.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that Germany never shut down any of its nuclear power plants and that they are all running at full capacity, giving us an upper bound on the possible energy generation. Here, the IAEA reports a net capacity of 26.2 GW for all 33 nuclear power plants ever built in Germany. [7]
Now, to get to the possible energy we can generate in a year, we can use the following formula
This gives us:
or 229.5 terawatt-hours per year. This number is quite a bit smaller than the 550 terawatt-hours per year we calculated for the Nord Stream pipeline. It is also a gross overestimation, since in reality they were never all running at full capacity, and many were decommissioned over the years. Now we can see the true scale of the Nord Stream pipeline. Even when giving the nuclear power plants the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are all running at full capacity, the Nord Stream pipeline, under the lower bound assumption, still transports more than twice the energy generated by all nuclear power plants in Germany.
More realistically, we can look at the actual energy generated by nuclear power plants in Germany over the years and find that it peaked in 2000 at 160.7 TWh. [7] Using these official numbers, we can see that the Nord Stream pipeline transported more than three times the energy generated by all nuclear power plants in Germany in 2000.
Let us ponder these numbers for a moment. Both of them are unfathomably large, nearly inconceivable amounts of energy. Yet within a single day, the energy capacity of all nuclear power plants in Germany was shut down twice over. The Nord Stream's ower-bound throughput of 550 TWh per year dwarfed Germany's nuclear energy production. Even when running all 33 reactors at full tilt, nuclear generation would max out at about 230 TWh annually. Now even when taking into account the conversion of gas to electricity at modern combined-cycle efficiencies (~50%), the pipeline's flow would equal 275 TWh of electricity per year, still far above the nuclear fleet's theoretical maximum. [5] This highlights the extraordinary scale of Nord Stream and the magnitude of the supply shock Germany had to absorb.
© Jan-Lucas Uslu. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] T. Lan, G. Sher and J. Zhou, "The Economic Impacts on Germany of a Potential Russian Gas Shutoff", International Monetary Fund, Working Paper WP/22/144, July 2022.
[2] M. Fulwood et al., "The Curious Incident of the Nord Stream Gas Turbine," Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, July 2022.
[3] S. Friedrich and J. Neumüller, "North European Gas Pipeline," CIVPRO, Working Paper 2007:3, 2007.
[4] "BP Statistical Review of World Energy," British Petroleum, (2018, 2019. 2021)
[5] "Natural Gas Conversion Guide," International Gas Union, 2012.
[6] M. J. Brüchner and A. Weckesser, "The First Two Years of Operating Experience of the Kahl Nuclear Power Station," in Operating Experience with Power Reactors, Vol. 1 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1963), p. 335.
[7] "Nuclear Power Reactors in the World, 2025 Ed.," International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA-RDS-2/45, Aug 2025.
[8] "Dreizehntes Gesetz zur Änderung des Atomgesetzes," Bundesgesetzblatt BGBl. I 2011 I, Nr. 43, s. 1704, 2011.
