Berlin, Germany -- On Saturday, over 200,000 protested nuclear energy in over 20 cities in Germany. In Berlin alone, over 100,000 persons demonstrated.
And on Monday, Angela Merkel announced a decision to phase out all nuclear energy in Germany by the end of 2022. It will, she underscored, by reliable, affordable and economical.
She had appointed a panel of 17, including ministers, academics, politicians, businesspeople, to assess Germany's nuclear energy. This so-called Ethics Commission was charged with assessing Germany's nuclear energy usage on the basis of ethics, weighing whether or not nuclear energy should be used, given its known and unknown detrimental side effects. Ultimately, the Ethics Commission decided it was unethical to burden future generations with nuclear energy's hazardous waste. "A decade," the panel declared this weekend, "is enough" and called for her to end Germany's reliance on nuclear energy.
Last fall, Merkel announced that she would extend the lifespan of plants by 12 years on average.
But she revised that position this past March as a result not only of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Japan and but also of the elections then upcoming in two German states.
Widespread public opposition -- expressed among other things through consistent direct actions throughout Germany -- voiced opposition to nuclear energy. In Baden-Württemberg, one of the two states facing elections in late March, 60,000 people demonstrated against a nuclear power plant located there, forming a human chain from the city of Stuttgart to the reactor located 27 miles outside of town.
A precedent for nuclear policy had been set in 2000, when the Alliance 90/The Greens -- a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party -- announced a decision made in conjunction with the nuclear energy industry to phase out nuclear power plants by 2020.
Germany's four leading nuclear energy firms -- Eon, RWE, EnBw and Swedish-based Vattenfall -- have announced a 180 degree turn, preparing a lawsuit last month against the German government's decision to idle seven of Germany's 17 nuclear power stations by 2022. It was filed by RWE.
These four nuclear energy firms warned that Germany could face widespread winter blackouts, if Merkel phases out nuclear power, a finding that has been challenged by a recent study conducted by German Watch.
Harry Lehmann, General Director of the Environmental Planning and Sustainability Strategies at the Federal Environment Agency in Germany, also argues that powering Germany's energy needs without nuclear energy is entirely feasible -- and by 2017. That is, four years before the 2022 phase out announced today by Merkel.
When interviewed today for his response to Merkel's decision, Jürgen Trittin, chairman of the Alliance 90/The Greens, too, stated that 2017 was a viable date for winding down nuclear energy.
Greenpeace Germany has upped the ante by demanding an even more ambitious phase out in Germany by 2015.
Merkel's decision could have a ripple effect for the nuclear industry worldwide, given that Germany is the largest developed country to phase out nuclear energy. Germany is the world's fifth largest consumer of nuclear energy in terms of megawatts consumed, after the U.S., France, Japan and Russia.
Additionally, Germany's retool could prove useful for a rethink of U.S. nuclear energy policy. According to the German Ministry of Energy, Germany draws 22% of its energy from nuclear power. The U.S, by contrast, derives about 8% of its energy from nuclear energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. If Germany can manage a retool given a reliance over twice as high on nuclear energy, the U.S. should certainly be able to achieve it, given a lower percentage of nuclear.
Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist who covers climate change. Her work has appeared in Alternet, Grist, Environment News Service, In These Times, The Progressive and The Nation, on GRIT tv, WBAI and the National Radio Project.
Katie Engelhart: Political Fallout: Will Germany Go Nuclear-Free?
"The World Can Be Powered By Renewable Energy in 20 - 40 years."
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html
Acid rain is less a problem now, because of changes to agricultural regulation, but climate change has taken its place, and then some. Despite Chernobyl, despite Fukushima, I still think coal is much worse than nuclear energy. And I fear that Germany is making an about-turn on climate change, leading Europe to join the short-sighted Chinese and the denialist Americans in their irresponsibility towards future generations. Only the largely powerless Latin Americans seem to take climate change seriously now.
Even the normally stoic German Federal Network Agency warned that Merkel's decision to ban nuclear power would be "ecologically damaging". Why? Because everyone knows renewables won't take nuclear's place. Coal will.
In the United States, 45% of electrical power is generated with coal. Increasing this percentage should not be a serious option.
I know everyone will say, "renewables should replace nuclear energy". In my eyes renewables should replace coal first, nuclear second. Shutting down nuclear plants will at best mean that renewables will replace them instead of replacing coal plants. At worst it will mean that new coal-fired plants will be built. In both cases we will continue to burn coal at catastrophic rates.
Nukes are a problem. CO2 is a much bigger problem.
Once we have cut our waste, adding renewable will be much cheaper. If a typical home or building cuts its waste by 50 percent, then powering the remainging energy needs of the structure with alternatives would be 50 percent less. 66 percent of the energy produced at a thermal power plant primarily as heat. Another 9 percent is lost transmitting it down the grid. Using the remaining power to light an incandescent light bulb, for example, loses another 95 percent as heat while 5 percent produces light. This energy transaction is an energy efficiency dead end. There are 3.6 billion energy gobbling incandescent lights in America. This does not include halogens, high
Food for thought Scotland last winter had problems with their Wind Turbines, who came to the rescue?
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/12/green-scotland-relies-on-french-nuclear-power-during-deep-freeze/
The French! Of course the Scots are in Denial.
2nd point:
http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/industries/power/nuclear-power-committee/nuclear-power/about-nuclear-power/proliferation-and-international/nations-with-nuclear-power
or
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110511/ap_on_re_as/as_nuclear_future_2
The developing nations will generate more electricity using nuclear reactors than the industrial world before 2030.
The thing that bothers me the most is the industrial nations have not come to an agreement on how to handle spent nuclear fuel rods and nuclear waste. I believe there has to be a U.N. sponsored Nuclear Waste Treaty before this stuff finds it's way into terrorist hands!
The fuel rods can be utilized without moving them off site.
See Nuclear Waste at www.aesopinstitute.org
Does this technology exist or are you still in a R
now coal strikes back using Fukushima disaster.
It is like in California, how the natural gas industry clobbered the well-meaning bio-fuels progressives with cap and trade.
It is competition using the government as the tool.