I had the honour of addressing this movement at a rally yesterday where I was particularly moved by the inter-generational nature of the crowd. Whole families turned out in solidarity with local residents who have been protesting against radioactive nuclear waste for the past thirty years. This year the demonstrations have escalated because of the decision taken by Chancellor Merkel, and her government, to cancel the legally set deadline for the phase out of nuclear power in Germany.
In my address at the rally yesterday I called on her to end nuclear madness and to ensure that Germany is remembered for its leadership in a real energy revolution rather than remembered for backsliding into an outdated obsolete atomic age. Germany does not need nuclear energy and is a global leader in renewable energy - currently employing 380,000 people.
The CASTOR nuclear waste transport is an example of the nuclear madness that must end. It is a train convoy carrying eleven 100-tonne containers of radioactive waste that is reprocessed in France and returns to Germany each year for storage. Measurements of these eleven containers done by ANDRA (National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management) show that the radioactivity in each container is higher than what was released at Chernobyl in 1986 -- this makes the CASTOR transport effectively a Chernobyl on wheels.
The final destination for this dangerous convoy is Gorleben, Germany -- where it is to be placed in a storage facility that is completely geologically unsuitable. Of course, there is no suitable storage site for nuclear waste -- the nuclear industry has no permanent solution for the problem of radioactive waste.
This is what the people of Gorleben have mobilized against each year -- and this year they are joined by more people than ever before. Local farmers have opened their homes to house the demonstrators who have come from across the country and beyond. The people's resistance in Gorleben sends a valuable and universal message: We will not bow to the government acting in the interest of the nuclear industry rather than its citizens.
All other governments considering nuclear energy should take heed.
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And if Germany is so great at generating low cost clean power, then why is Germany is buying power from France rather than vice versa?
Don't you just hate it when the facts get in the way of your arguments?
But the protesters don't know the facts. Greenpeace wants to be sure they are kept in the dark.
A car accident, maybe two people get killed; an airplane accident maybe all passenger die; and the bodies and the debris are swept under the rug;
an Atomic meltdown, a whole city is destroyed with a couple of million dead and a few million terminally ill from radiation, and a city dead for centuries.
Plus the transportation, storage and maintenance of storage container for centuries, paid for by yet unborn tax payers.
What kind of Superb safety Record are to talking about?
When you equate a superb safety record of two major meltdowns with automobile accidents you are using voodoo logic. Have you ever seen film of Hiroshima after an Atom bomb explosion, and seen the survivors after ten years and seen their grandchildren twenty tears later? do you want to take that gamble with Atomic Plants? I am certain you do not want to if you are aware of the consequences of a Meltdown, no matter how superb a safety record.
Only one meltdown is one meltdown much too much.
Are you really so ignorant that you think Hiroshima is a possible consequence of an nuclear power plant? Do you know the difference between a candle and a stick of dynamite, or do you think that because they both involve combustion that candles are likely to explode?
Of course if your information about the world is obtained from cartoons, whether it be the Simpsons or Wile E Coyote, you could make this error. But don't feel obliged to share your misconceptions.
The likelihood that such an atomic pant blows up is indeed small. 1:5 Billion, or even smaller. But then, with thousands of nuclear plants world-wide running 24/7, the possibility of an accident increases. It is comparable to oil-drilling in the Gulf, just a million times more dangerous. One oil-platform is safe, but with thousands of them in operation, the likelihood of a leak becomes possible, as we have seen recently.
The problem with atomic energy is that it takes only one single incident to render a whole continent virtually uninhabitable. Very few people know how the Soviets got the reactor in Chernobyl under control. It was only possible because hundreds of Soviet pilots sacrificed their lives to save their country. They volunteered to fly their helicopters over the radioactive mess, to drop concrete into the burning reactor, and seal it. All of them knew they wouldn't survive another week. They all died a gruesome death, being burned alive by the radioactivity they had taken in by flying over the reactor for just 5 minutes. You have to love your country a lot, and I sometimes ask myself, how many would volunteer in this coutnry for such a job.
The Chernobyl #4 reactor disaster was bravely brought under control. But you do no service to people who fought that burning mess by exaggerating the numbers who died of Acute Radiation Sickness - about thirty.
Yes I was around, and working in Europe at the time.
A forest in Germany has been turned into a battleground over nuclear power. 17,000 policemen are trying to keep a trainload of nuclear waste on the move. Protestors are doing everything they can to stop it - including trying to sabotage the track. http://www.newslook.com/videos/264317-german-nuclear-waste-train-draws-protest-sabotage?autoplay=true
Other nations also benefit greatly from nuclear energy. For example, France decided to invest heavily in nuclear energy and today has among the lowest electricity prices and emissions per capita in Europe.
In the US, nuclear energy represents 20% of our electricity but 70% of our CO2-free electricity. If we want to move toward a carbon-free electricity sector, we need to invest more in nuclear energy and renewables, since we cannot do it all with the latter.
As antinuclear groups such as these set up publicity stunts to further their beliefs, they are further marginalizing their position compared to the opinion of most Americans. In poll after poll, most Americans support nuclear energy. This is because people to look at the facts about nuclear energy -- it is a technology that has an excellent safety record and is a clean alternative to fossil fuels.
What happened in Germany back then was very strange. The Federal government wanted to build more atomic plants, but needed a dump ground for the toxic, radioactive waste. They picked an abandoned salt dome in Lower Saxony, close to the city of Gorleben. And people just said: NO!
Suddenly there were left wing college students standing in the streets, together with conservative, catholic farmers, armed with pitch forks, fighting the riot police. It was bad. These were street battles of epic dimensions, with sometimes 20-30.000 people being involved.
The movement gave sudden rise to the Green Party, which was against any atomic energy. They became a formidable force in the Parliament and State Houses. Eventually the Feds backed down, and abandoned the idea of building more plants, and Gorleben as well. 15 years later the Social Democrat/Green coalition under chancellor Schroeder passed a law that all atomic plants in Germany had to be shut down within, I believe, 25 years.
Now Merkel's conservatives gave in to pressure of the big power companies, and derailed this deadline. I think they opened a can of worms. If these protests are going to get just half as bad as in the 80ies, it's gonna get ugly in Germany.
Keeping the nuclear plants running is the alternative to building even more coal plants or burning more Russian gas. Rational Germans coudl be persuaded of this if anyone in the Green movement was brave enough to speak against the hysteria.
I am suspicious we can not get people angry enough to demonstrate against Globalization, the financial powers that wreck the world financial system, threatening the population's survival. Who/What is behind this misguided social insurgency? What exactly is being orchestrated here?
The world population suffers from low and poor standards, starting with our ideologies, our inability to perceive what is necessary for elevating mankind through scientific and cultural excellence.
Fossil fuels will not suffice as an energy source in this century. Scientist must be given the task of utilizing nuclear waste, the use of nuclear fueled fusion and hydrogen technologies, as it is with the increase of the population's available energy density, the population's physical economic power increases.
http://vimeo.com/7938805
When all the coal plants are gone, I'll be willing to hear the argument that nuclear energy is not necessary. But until then, we - with Greenpeace's encouragement - are replacing a 1% chance of local disaster with a 100% certainty of global disaster. That's not rational, and certainly not environmental.
The other rising source of German electricity is gas, imported from Russia.
A majority of Germans is very disappointed about the political turnaround. Originally, the grand coalition had ruled to end the production of nuclear energy in Germany. Recently, the current administration overturned this decision, so the protests are also an expression of people feeling cheated by the government about the general subject of nuclear energy.
There is a very interesting study by the renowned Prognos institute detailing how a realistic clean energy concept could look like (link to the english version): http://www.wwf.de/fileadmin/fm-wwf/pdf_neu/blueprint_germany_wwf.pdf
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/purl.cover.jsp;jsessionid=B69D63BF4665DCD448178C38535E67E9?purl=/204061-lWN32u/webviewable/
Solar power is being refined and improved as we speak. There certainly is a lot of work being done with storing solar energy right now. We are already able to take the solar energy and store it in batteries for use it at night. The time frame, of course, has to be improved, but it is coming. Frankly, to insinuate that nuclear power can be part of a "clean" economyis ignoring the dilemma of what to do with the waste. That is the question and it is a big one. No one can dismiss the dangers that arise with storage. No one wants it in their State, and I can't blame them.
What is the power source with:
superb safety record as compared to all other power sources (in terms of human deaths:terawatt hours produced)
known reliability of power (best capacity factor/uptime in the industry at over 90%)
small physical footprint (1GW=1/3 sq mi)
small environmental footprint (very little fuel needed so little total mining damage to the environment)
almost no CO2 emissions during lifecycle
?
That's right: it's nuclear.
Here's an instructive comparison: France, which went nuclear in a big way, is now producing 80% of its power, has the lowest electricity rates in Europe, and sells 20% of its power produced into the Euro grid. Germany, which tried to phase out nuclear, emits more carbon than France and is now reconsidering its earlier decision.
Who looks like they made the right move?
With nuclear Power you are storing up radio active material that wont go away but increases everyday; an atomic energy plant is a time bomb waiting for a human error or the deterioration of some segment in the atomic dome. .
it is insane to look at the short term production of France's nuclear energy when we live in a long term environment.
Serious talk about solar energy was on the Congressional table in the 1970's, but the oil and coal industries quashed all Bills to subsidize non fossil, reusable energy ; like solar, wind and geothermal sources. We wasted forty years in which time we could have been fossil fuel free, and by now living a clean radio active free environment at half the cost of Atomic energy with its real peripheral costs of storing.
Bottom line. No solution for nuclear waste despite 50 years of empty promises.
That is the idea of the Integral Fast Reactor. "Integral" means under one roof. It has been done on a small experimental scale.
"... take advantage of what nature does by itself already will be able to generate their electricity very safely, and economically"
That is the present-day commercial nuclear enterprise. Nature already fissions uranium by herself, and the industry takes advantage.