BBC – 30 May, 2011
Germany pledges to end all nuclear power by 2022
Germany’s ruling coalition says it has agreed a date of 2022 for the shutdown of all of its nuclear power plants.
Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement after a meeting of the ruling coalition that lasted into the early hours of Monday.
Story here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208
Petrossa says:
May 30, 2011 at 3:51 am
And France pledges to build some more and renovate the older ones. Glad i live in France (8 cents a kw/h including tax) rather then Germany were i presume they’ll follow Denmarks glowing example and prices will rise to more then 20 cents.
Prices are already over 20 cents in Germany!
My understanding is that it costs around $300 million to shut down each nuclear plant. Just wait for the results of the next election in Germany and all of a sudden nuclear power will be back on the table. What a joke.
@ur momisugly Joe Public, May 30, 2011 at 3:08 am
That’s not “the real story” as y0u put it. It’s a completely different story, and completely irrelevant. Unless you think that every time a disaster happens in one country then another country should react by closing down an entire industry?
Not gonna happen. The long lead time is the tip-off. They will gain the electoral advantage now from their promises, and 11 years from now either they will be forgotten or these “leaders” will be retired. Anytime a politician makes a promise of action in a time frame that extends beyond the next election, they have no intention of doing it.
The year 2022 is several political lifetimes away. This is the usual political joke. France and Sweden will provide them with nuclear electricity.
No worries. Cold fusion will easily take up the slack in as little as 5 years. Then no nation on earth will need a fission-based nuclear program except to make bombs. That will separate the sheep from the goats.
The Germans are in for at least two painful lessons taught by the folly of allowing ideology to override common sense, physics and basic maths:
(a) The backbone of German industry, predominantly located in the southwest (Federal States of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria) is even now making plans to emigrate to countries where energy prices are less choking: e.g., to France and the Czech Republic for starters — 7ct (€) per kWh as opposed to 24ct in Germany, where absurd subsidies for intermittent wind and solar “alternatives” (my sainted aunt’s left foot!) are bloating everybody’s cost of living.
(b) The jobs consequently displaced and lost will cost Germany, already indebted to the hilt by social give-aways to almost everybody, including illiterate and unskilled immigrants from wherever the half-moon shines, heavily beyond repair. Add the cost of bailing the PIIGS states out just to resuscitate the comatose European Union and the embezzled Euro currency — and you’ve got the perfect plot of how an industry giant climbs up to the attic, selects a fairly stout rope and ends it all.
Ends it all against sounder knowledge, expertise and advice, that is; Germany is being deindustrialised very much the lines of Henry Morgenthau, 1945, which were never implemented. (Just owing to the Cold War that rapidly developed in the wake of WW II, thus saving Germany from revisiting the Middle Ages.)
This time, ironically, it’s just to satisfy the “voices of the streets”, wayward opinion polls and half-witted clergymen and philosphers who were unwittingly raised to the state of “energy experts”, advising Comrade Merkelowa on nuclear power — howling, naturally, with the wolves, saying that (of all places) Fukushima showed how evil it all was, and how easily this evil could scourge Germany into oblivion … Ignoring that neither Germany nor France (operating a combined 80 nuclear power plants for 50 years) ever had a single nuclear incident worse than a failing light switch, or a transformer way outside the containment. — German media, though, keep headlining trifles like these as major predicaments …
To strike a placable note, please let me note that inconvenient truths have a way of cutting both ways. For the time being, however, Germany (not to forget the rest of Eurocatic rule) is determined to commit suicide for fear of death, as if all these blokes had subscribed to a correspondence course at Lemmings, Inc.
November came, with raging south-west winds.
Let the Germans run as far down that road as they can- the further the better.
Let them eat the full fruit of their folly.
The Germans are fully capable of learning hard lessons and bettering themselves for it.
I am totally against Nuclear power using Uranium, like today’s reactors. And the waste that is produced and has to be disposed of. I am far from being an expert on Nuclear power, but I’ve learned a few things in the last while about Thorium, and I may need to be corrected on a few facts!
L.F.T.R has been around but not developed because of the fact the American military could not make nukes from the waste! And the physicist who discovered it tried to convince the industry to change and he got fired!
No possibility of meltdown, less than 1% the waste of normal reactors, 1 tonne of Thoriun =200 tonnes of Uranium. Can be turned on and off when required! They can be a lot cheaper to build because you don’t need all that concrete or cooling towers!
Some research needs to be done but the nuclear industry is not willing to change or develop it!
Norway alone has thousands of years reserves of Thorium.
India is building Thorium plants, but not using L.F.T.R so defeats the advantage!
Energy crisis, what energy crisis? Just an excuse use by the powers that be to keep us controlled!
We have thousands of years supply of energy, and that’s a fact!
We can use L.F.T.R to make hydrogen for our cars, and to heat our homes!
No need for 8 hours to charge batteries when you can refill in 5 mins with hydrogen!
Nissan gen II will take 16 hours if twice the range on 220 volts AC!
Wind power??? don’t make me laugh, Ireland is one of the windiest places in the world and we will never meet our demands through wind alone, and we are a tiny island with 4.5 million! Just think what a few L.F.T.R reactors would do for us? almost total energy independence! The last 2 winters were the coldest, driest, on record and very little wind was generated, Imagine pumping Billions into such unpredictable technology! They want Electric cars eah? where do they think all that extra energy will come from if people stop using ICE cars?
Our largest power station is 1GW coal, and cost 1 Billion Euros in the 80’s, now the fools have to spend 40 million at a time we are broke to meet stupid god damn E.U emissions regulations!
When you sit back and educate yourself on what goes on in the world it’s no wonder we still fight each other, we don’t allow ourselves to progress, we are kept back in the dark ages, by corruption and greed! Chernobyl need not have been if L.F.T.R had to be developed, and the accident in japan and 3mile Island and of course the not talked about Windscale in the U.K, now called Sellafield. Who because of their near meltdown dumped a load of Plutonium in the Irish sea making it the most radioactive in the world! And all because they wanted to make nuclear weapons, they didn’t want to be left behind! +all the other things like missing plutonium, leaking plutonium, that place is a total disaster!
I don’t think we will see L.F.T.R any time soon!
Sorry, ladies and gents — the 3rd paragraph should end:
“… selects a fairly stout rope and ends it all.”
This is what happens when myth rules. Germany once again is succumbing to romantic mythology, first, master race purity with its disastrous consequences, now luddite mythology. With growing populations, third world poverty, no proven effective new technologies ready to replace existing energy sources there will be massive unemployment and food shortages. And the science isn’t even settled. Has the world gone mad?
Build more nukes – get more fuel – Brilliant
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/30/bloomberg1376-LLZK0I1A74E901-0PV3MV8LDJ1DOTDCLS9HQ5EHL3.DTL&ao=2
Fukushima Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ as Radiation Soars
Belarus suggests for Chernobyl dead zone that grain be grown and used for ethanol production. Apparently radioactive elements do not transfer into ethanol .
And Fukushima is relevant to Germany, how?
A little bit of risk analysis wouldn’t hurt:
1. Are there major (earthquake) fault lines underlying Germany and its environs? What is the likelihood of a magnitude 8-9 earthquake?
2. How likely are German nuclear plants to be hit by a tsunami exceeding a few meters? Also, the map indicates none of the nuclear plants are right on the coast (but I know nothing of the slope).
RockyRoad says:
May 30, 2011 at 6:31 am
No worries. Cold fusion will easily take up the slack in as little as 5 years. Then no nation on earth will need a fission-based nuclear program except to make bombs. That will separate the sheep from the goats.
___________________________________________________________
Mon ami, are you expressing dreams and opinion, or are facts extant to support those statements, s’il vous plait?
Joe Public says:
May 30, 2011 at 3:08 am
You guys DO know that 3 of the reactors are in meldown right?
And the temperatures in the pressure vessel and containment vessel remain relatively stable and there has been no substantial release of radioactive materials in more then a month. What difference does it make if something melted…as long as it’s contained.
The decline & fall of the German economy has begun, as has their economic bondage to Russia and its natural gas.
So Germany has learned an important tradition from it’s old WWII ally (Japan) after-all – seppuku (also called hara-kiri).
Seriously, this decision has been made far enough, into the future, so that the next few sober governments can reverse it, if necessary. Besides, there are new promising technologies emerging which may change our entire grid paradigm. In any event, Germany will probably become a demonstration, of what not to do and WHEN not to do it. GK
walt man says:
May 30, 2011 at 6:51 am
Fukushima Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’
Mitigation planning already underway –
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110509p2a00m0na009000c.html
The Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ was a choice not to mitigate.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases
I truly hope Germany has a lot of natural gas or coal fired electric generating plants planned. Otherwise, the current generation of Germans will find out how miserable their grandparents were during the last three years of World War 2.
Chris Wright says:
May 30, 2011 at 3:03 am
“Hydro-electric is far more dangerous.”
I am not against nuclear power, however can you please explain how Hydro-electric is in any way, shape or form dangerous?
Peter Dunford says:
May 30, 2011 at 4:28 am
“Actually, the Germans are building coal fired power stations. Nuclear, when including decommissioning and spent fuel storage, is more expensive than coal.
http://motorcitytimes.com/mct/2010/04/26-new-coal-power-plants-in-germany/
I think Germany will bemore competitive than ever.”
There is a difference between operating costs and capital costs. Prematurely shutting down functiong and built nuclear plants, where only the operating costs remain and they are far cheeper for power generation then any other including coal, is not sound economics.
I also do not think the greens will allow the coal production.
This may help them, if it works: http://pindanpost.com/2011/05/30/energy-a-new-alternative/
They won’t build nuclear plants but France will and Germany will buy the power from them.
I suppose this means the end of Germany’s steel industry. Probably their automotive industry, too. Maybe even their industrial sector altogether.
Sad, too. They could have built *modern* plants that don’t have the Fukushima problem and been energy independent. But I suppose the continent not only wants a weak Germany, they have convinced the Germans that it is desirable for them, as well.
Oh, well.