[bamzam]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtri ... source=rss

Germany decides to abandon nuclear power by 2022
By Jurgen Baetz
Associated Press
Posted: 05/30/2011 08:21:26 AM PDT
Updated: 05/30/2011 08:21:28 AM PDT

BERLIN -- Germany's governing coalition said Monday it will shut down all the country's nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision, prompted by Japan's nuclear disaster, will make Germany the first major industrialized nation to go nuclear-free in years.

It also completes a remarkable about-face for Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government, which only late last year had pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country's 17 reactors -- with the last scheduled to go offline in 2036.

But Merkel now says industrialized, technologically advanced Japan's helplessness in the face of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the risks of the technology.

"We want the electricity of the future to be safe, reliable and economically viable," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Monday after overnight negotiations among the governing parties. "We have to follow a new path."

While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision -- which still requires parliamentary approval -- dramatically speeds up that process.

Germany's seven oldest reactors, already taken off the grid pending safety inspections following the March catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, will remain offline permanently, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said.

The country's energy supply chain "needs a new architecture," necessitating huge efforts in boosting renewable energies, efficiency gains
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and overhauling the electricity grid, Merkel said.

The determination of Germany, Europe's largest economy, to gradually replace its nuclear power with renewable energy sources makes it stand out among the world's major industrialized nations. Among other Group of Eight nations, only Italy has abandoned nuclear power, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster -- leading it to shut down its three operating reactors.

Until March -- before the seven reactors were taken offline -- just under a quarter of Germany's electricity was produced by nuclear power, about the same share as in the U.S.

Energy from wind, solar and hydroelectric power currently produces about 17 percent of the country's electricity, but the government aims to boost its share to around 50 percent in the coming decades.

Many Germans have vehemently opposed nuclear power since Chernobyl sent radioactivity over the country. Tens of thousands of people repeatedly took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.

A decade ago, a center-left government first penned a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021 because of its inherent risks. But Merkel's government last year amended the plan o extend the plants' lifetime by an average of 12 years -- a decision that became a political liability after Fukushima was hit by Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

"This is a great day of relief for all opponents of nuclear energy in Germany," said Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the opposition Social Democrats. "Today, our political opponents are forced ... to accept our policies."

Merkel's government ordered the country's seven oldest reactors, all built before 1980, shut down four days after problems emerged at Fukushima. The plants accounted for about 40 percent of the country's nuclear power capacity.

Shutting down even more reactors, however, will require billions of euros (dollars) of investment in renewable energies, more natural gas power plants and an overhaul of the country's electricity grid.

Germany, usually a net energy exporter, has at times had to import energy since March, with the seven old reactors shut down and others temporarily taken off the grid for regular maintenance work.

Still, the agency overseeing its electricity grid said Friday that the country will remain self-sufficient.

The government has stressed that Germany must not rely on importing power from its nuclear-reliant neighbors.

Environmental groups welcomed Berlin's decision.

"The country is throwing its weight behind clean renewable energy to power its manufacturing base and other countries like Britain should take note," said Robin Oakley, Greenpeace UK's campaigns director.

Germany's industry umbrella organization said the government must not allow the policy changes to lead to an unstable power supply or rising electricity prices, both of which would affect the country's competitiveness.

"Transforming the energy sector is a hugely demanding project," said Hans-Peter Keitel, the president of the Federation of German Industries.

He urged the government not to set the nuclear exit date of 2022 in stone, but to agree on a date that would be adjustable if problems arise in the coming years.

Sweden's Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren also said that focusing on a fixed end date was unfortunate.

That "means you risk missing the essential part, that is how we should manage the double challenge of reducing the dependence on nuclear power and on climate emissions," he told Swedish news agency TT.

Germany's decision broadly follows the conclusions of a government-mandated commission on the ethics of nuclear power, which delivered recommendations on how to abolish the technology within a decade on Saturday, and presented them Monday.

"Fukushima was a dramatic experience, seeing there that a high-technology nation can't cope with such a catastrophe," said Matthias Kleiner, the commission's co-chairman. "Nuclear power is a technology with too many inherent risks to inflict it on us or our children."

The shares of Germany's four nuclear utility companies were down Monday. The biggest of them, E.ON AG and RWE AG, slipped by about 2 percent, to euro19.62 and euro40.05 respectively.

Neighboring Switzerland, where nuclear power produces 40 percent of electricity, also announced last week that it plans to shut down its reactors gradually once they reach their average lifespan of 50 years -- which would mean taking the last plant off the grid in 2034.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Germany's E.ON announced that plans by its government to shut the country's reactors in response to the Japanese disaster would result in up to 11,000 job losses.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011 ... 11000-jobs

[rerevisionist]

Thanks for that link. Another reminder of the absolutely shitty standard of reporting in the Guardian which is virtually a state mouthpiece, largely funded by heavy advertising from the BBC and other media and public sector quangos. Incidentally, like I think all UK newspapers, its sales have been trending downwards for years.

Do they mean a net job loss? If so, surely that would do their bottom line a lot of good? If not, why should it matter? How come Germany's electricity costs are the highest in Europe, and how much of this is tax? If their industries are energy-dependent, probably the state is involved in pricing - what are the effects there? What about subsidies - the article mentions subsidies to electricity - wouldn't that bring the price down, at least to the end user? Is it even possible to get 35% of their supply from 'renewable' sources? Does nuclear power exist?

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Maybe the reason that Germans pay twice the amount for electricity as the French is because the French aren't making much electricity? The French claim that 80% of their electrical power comes from nuclear energy, and if nuclear energy is fraudulent, or at least a zero sum energy source, then the electrical power for France must come from someplace else. Perhaps Germany?

So the Germans pay double: Once for themselves and once for the French.

[rerevisionist]

Yes. We naive ordinary people think that payment should roughly correspond to what's being bought.

BUT suppose nuclear power is a fraud. The French have to get their power from the German grid. BUT it has to seem cheaper, because it's nuclear. So the cost per unit billed to the French has to be less than to Germans. I don't know about the rest of Europe - as far as I know most countries' electricity comes from coal or oil, with a 10 or 20% burden of fake nuke power. But if Germany is supplying most of an entire adjacent country, that would certainly boost the cost to Germany. No doubt there are huge subsidies to muddy the water though. However I'm assuming (cactusneedles said this) that Germany and France share a grid. I haven't attempted to find if other countries share the same grid, though they may if e.g. wndpower is supposed to be shared. Interesting problem in pricing - the more fake nuclear power, the cheaper the nominal rate, i.e. the more the costs are offloaded. It's possible France is touted as the exemplary nuke power flagship country, come to think of it. Maybe third worlders take trips to France to view the installations. Nobody is supposed to ask, if it's so efficient, why doesn't everyone else adopt it on a large scale?

[NUKELIES]

Now we know why they continued to blow up Fukushima long after the fact... As an excuse for everyone to shut down "nuclear plants."

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Suppose there's another real problem here: Suppose that they are running out of coal and oil, and know it, and in ten years, there won't be enough fossil fuels to make electricity with, and then they won't be able to keep up the charade of nuclear power. What then? When the coal plants shut down, the people say, "Why don't we just get our power from nuclear?" And how will the authorities answer that?

What makes me wonder about nuclear power is that there's never a nuclear plant in some isolated place. The nearest to an isolated plant is Pura Verde in Arizona, out in the desert. But it's connected to a grid.

Like, why doesn't Hawaii have nuclear power?

It is incredible that Hawaii does not utilize nuclear energy as another means of supplying one of our most basic needs: clean, efficient energy.

Due to the lack of innovation and courageous leadership in years gone by, Hawaii ranks first among all states for dependence on fossil fuels, while simultaneously being the state with the most potential for energy diversity.

It just doesn't make sense

http://www.hawaiibusiness.com/Hawaii-Bu ... rgy-Needs/

Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

[rerevisionist]

Siberia, Alaska.. why have thousands of miles of cables and pylons, when a nuclear plant could provide local electricity?

Another thing I was wondering about was the design of nuclear power plants. If the traditional idea of criticality is true, the central essential heat generation surely ought to be fairly compact. In fact quite tiny - maybe the size of a smallish room. The difficulty would be getting the heat away fast, to heat the steam for the turbine. There would be huge high pressure pumps to shift the heat transfer medium before it evaporated, or the equipment melted or exploded. BUT a dumpload needs spread-out heating elements, so the heat generated isn't too concentrated in one place. This is not a very well thought-out comment, but I think IF the dumpload hypothesis is true, the designers would have a large spread-out plant, so heating effects would not be localised, and generally the whole thing would be tolerant of exceptionally large loads. BUT a nuclear power plant needs neutrons causing fission, so it needs to be rather small but with very efficient heat transfer to the turbines.

The actual design - so far as it's possible to tell - surely resembles the dumpload rather than what would be expected from nuclear generation. Note also that if for some reason a dumpload gets seriously overloaded, wouldn't it overheat and show the same symptoms as Chernobyl etc?

Note: of couse, if the physics were genuinely understood, maybe electricity could be manufactured directly in some way, rather than use Faraday's antique method with something spinning in magnet's field!