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
A number of assorted replies ..
@Petrossa
“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.”
Actually electricity costs between 20 and 25 Ct/kWh in Germany right now, before the nuclear shutdown. It’ll rise even higher.
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@Peter Dunford & Tom Mills
“Actually, the Germans are building coal fired power stations.”
Some maybe, but according to current ideology and policy, the bulk of electricity is going to come from wind turbines. Even if some coal plants are going to be built, the wind energy plans will guarantee that the German electricity prices will skyrocket anyway.
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@Peter Miller
“The coal has run out and also that’s not a green option!”
No it hasn’t, Germany has several centuries worth of lignite in its soil. Coal can be quite clean if the exhaust is filtered properly, and all the coal plants in Germany do that.
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@joel Heinrich
“Right now 13 out of 17 reactors are shut down and we have no brown- or blackouts.”
No of course not, but the shutdown converted us from a net exporter to an importer of electricity, at a higher cost than making it ourselves. Economically it’s a loss with no gain to balance it, except ideological satisfaction for those so inclined.
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@R. de Haan
“Don’t forget that the AGW scare was introduced in Germany in 1986”
It was in the West German media in 1980 if not earlier.
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@klem
“Just wait for the results of the next election in Germany and all of a sudden nuclear power will be back on the table.”
There is no mainstream party pro nuclear power, not even one against the sped up phaseout. And I can’t see a majority of the population voting for one. Even if reductions in living standards start to be felt, few will draw the connection, and even them some will probably say “It’s for a good cause”. The German media are universally in line as well.
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@Indur M. Goklany
“And Fukushima is relevant to Germany, how?”
The mainstream line of thinking in Germany is “If it can happen in Japan it can happen here too” without much looking at the circumstances. I keep saying, if there’s a train crash in Japan, do we abolish our railways then? But most people don’t get it.
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@Ken S
“I am not against nuclear power, however can you please explain how Hydro-electric is in any way, shape or form dangerous?”
One word: dam failures
Notrickszone’s take on the decision.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/30/china-to-german-nuclear-engineers-and-scientists-research-and-work-for-us/
Hoser –
You wrote –
‘The Fukushima reactors experienced a partial meltdown from the heat produced by the decay of fission products after the reactors were shut down properly.’
Wrong, there were 3 total meltdowns which occurred within hours of the cooling going offline. The telegraph article that you cite (published in march) is full of lies by ommission that filled the msm during the days following the disaster.
From the following link –
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/japan.nuclear.report/
‘Nuclear experts and scientists have long suspected this sort of damage to the containers of the reactors at the crippled plant, as well as a full meltdown of the fuel rods in reactors 1, 2 and 3’
You also wrote
‘Again, this occurred due to the decay of fission products, not an ongoing fission reaction.’ and
‘There is no nuclear furnace melting down to China. There is a temporary elevation of radioactivity due to 137-Cs, but the iodine is gone now. Hysteria will not help.’
Then why is reactor 1 showing a reading of 205 sieverts per hour!?
http://atmc.jp/plant/rad/?n=1
How do you propose that anything, robot or human is going to be able to get near this thing in order to stabilize it?
Make no mistake, this is an environmental catastrophy with no end in sight.
I wonder why Russia is planning and constructing so many reactors when it has oooodles of oil and gas?
German’s per capita income (at purchasing power parity) is only 3/4 that of the US. When they say that Europeans consume less oil than Americans, that’s in part because they are simply poorer, and not by a little bit.
By 2016, the IMF forecasts that German GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) will be only 2/3 that of Singapore.
“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?
When the dams bust they flood large areas and drown people,
“According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province,[5] in the province, approximately 26,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and famine. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were affected.”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
To our euro states government friends, I’d like to say “Here, let me help you reload that Luddite gun so you can shoot yourself in the other technological foot! It will hurt like hell and leave you crippled, while the inefficiencies of the sustainable infection continues to destroy your economic foundations unchecked, but it’s a Green infection so it must be good for you!”
That’s real solid (aka dense, thick, opaque, mud stupid) Green thinking…
Luther Wu asks:
Mon ami, are you expressing dreams and opinion, or are facts extant to support those statements, s’il vous plait?
As a Registered Professional Chemical Engineer (with no proof) I believe that cold fusion has been adequately demonstrated and will be proven this fall.
See http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360#comments et al
Alex says:
May 30, 2011 at 6:15 am
Prices are already over 20 cents in Germany!
Wow. I pay 4.5 cents low tarif, 5.6 high tarif. With taxes it averages at 8 cents.
I live in an earthquake zone, within reach of a reactor. Just had a miniquake a few weeks ago.
Doing a cost/benefit analysis isn’t hard. The changes that a earthquake strong enough to cause the reactor to go chernobyl are so astronomically faint they have my permission to build another one in my backyard.
Don’t forget, it took a major earthquake, a tsunami, multiple chemical explosions to cause the current damage to almost half a century old reactor in Japan. Which is still limited compared to chernobyl.
If anything it proved beyond a shadow of doubt that nuclear energy is the safest form of all.
Ian E says: “This is great news for those of us in the UK: one of our key rivals is to commit suicide!”
Rivals? Rivals? Germany is part of the EU. The UK is part of the EU. You probably don’t remember voting to be admitted, but Herr Schnellhubris assures us that democracy is an outmoded concept. If the UK fails to fall into line or if the people rebel against its pretend-government of twits, after freezing in the dark, who will provide the shock troops called in to “restore order?” Got it in one! For those who still have electricity for their TVs, the BBC will interview the “German tourists.”
Good news from my perspective, as a weak German economy will mean the end of the repressive and undemocratic EU. The Euro is already in deep trouble and this could be the final straw that breaks the camels back. Can’t happen soon enough for me!
“The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
May 30, 2011 at 5:15 am”
Living is just too expensive and too (potentially) dangerous. I suggest you check yourself into an asylum to solve this. They will take good care of you.
Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chairman of the UN/IPCC, tells it like it is::
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
Any questions?
Nobody, really?
It’s even here on Brietbart: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.7a2801a3386edab0f0599fdf44c4ec31.741&show_article=1
As for the mainstream media, do you suppose they are covering up for nuclear power? Maybe you’re just not looking too hard for the story?
Bought the last 3.2kW generator in my local Aldi (which is, of course, a German company)….
Wonder if they’d like to buy it back..??
This is a response to the vociferous and sustained protests and boycotts and bockades by Greenstrife, Fiends of the Earth and others which has been strengthened by the Fukoshima meltdown. In truth all of Germany’s nuclear plants are approaching 30 – 40 years of age and the problem is that the new equipment needed to replace a lot of the control mechanisms is incompatible with the old plants …
The wind farms here generate more than enough power to make up the shortfall, but not always when it is needed. The second problem is that it can’t all be distributed. A newspaper recently carried a graph showing the demand and supply and the mismatch in power supply versus demand – when we need more we generally don’t have the solar or the wind and when we do have them we have an oversupply.
It must also be acknowledged that the politicians are not bothered by the possible power outages, they are more worried by the recent elections which returned Green majorities in two of the “Lande” and the loss of support from the Centre Parties by morons voting against nuclear policies of the current government. When the “Brown Outs” start to hit, watch the idiots change tack …
How is stopping the production of the most toxic waste in the world a bad idea? Radio active ground water found a mile from site, and nuetron beams, prove you are all deniars. Never knew this site was so biased. Radio active wild life ( Not just wild pigs) food and ground water are no big deal ??? Take another look at chernobyl contamination and get a clue. Even tepco has stated all three reactors have melted to some degree. Fools all right but they are not Germany THEY LEARNED FROM THERE GROUND WATER CONTAMINATION, when will you?
REPLY: Sir, If you wish to label us “deniers” from the cowardly safety of a psudonym, and insult the memory of the Jewish people, at least have the decency to learn to spell it correctly. Otherwise, kindly STFU – Anthony Watts
Delusional… this in the article:
…and:
Not gonna happen. Not without shifting manufacturing to China and washing their hands of as much industry as they can, while adding to the Chinese (i.e., net world) pollution.
There has been much written here at WUWT about how badly wind is failing. By 2020, the Germans will have enough information about wind farms to be able to make a more informed decision. Will they? As long as the greens press their delusional state of mind on everyone else, probably not.
This is such a ludicrous direction to go in, given the non-existence of the threat of quakes and tsunamis in Germany. Not the least of which is how many of those nuclear plants are anywhere near the sea.
It is said that David Cameron and his Father in Law are heavy investors in Wind Power. If this is true then that explains why we are wasting Billions on wind power to replace Nuclear and Coal. I ask myself why we are not spending the wasted money on developing Thorium based Nuclear Power generation, surely it would solve so many problems and avoid the madness that is Green Hysteria biased Renewables?
The Germs will rue the day they decided to axe Nuclear Power.
France is going to be the new Saudi Arabia of the EU. 75% from nuclear – that’s what I call forward thinking. ;O)
Smokey says:
May 30, 2011 at 10:01 am
Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chairman of the UN/IPCC, tells it like it is::
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
Any questions?
Well yes – just one.
If all the industrialized countries that were the ‘rich’ countries are de-industrialized due to IPCC policies, where will the riches and largesse come from to be redistributed?
Poland should build a bunch of nuclear power plants. It looks like they’ll soon have a market for as much power as they can produce.
Curious says:
Question…. you guys are weather people… what’s going to happen to all that radiation spewing at Fukushima if that supertyphoon hits the area…. curious about that……
It will be diluted to irrelevance; and it will diminish each day as it naturally decays and “goes away” via nuclear decay as it has a half life (unlike elemental poisons).
BTW, “all that radiation” is basically safe enough for folks to work inside the plant (with cautions).
Yes, there will be “issues” in the area for quite some time. Bioconcentration of Cs-137 in plant matter for a decade+ will make farming inside 10 km or so of the nuclear facilities a dicy or forbidden thing for a generation. Then it will heal all on it’s own as the toxic stuff decays away. (This cleaning process can be speeded up by things like planting mustard or pigweed that bioaccumulate minerals much more than most, then just harvest and sequester. Were I running things in Japan right now, I’d have a crop duster dust the area with mustard seeds so as to help prevent the migration of contamination into deeper ground levels).
Billy Liar says:
Joe Public says:
…meltdown has been in full effect since March 11
How far down has it got?
Where will it come out on the other side? (presumably not China)
I didn’t see a smiley on that, hope it was a joke… “China Syndrom” is a bad metaphore and a worse movie.
The core melts were “partial” in two of the units and in the other (#1 IIRC) it’s sitting on the bottom of the containment being cooled with water.
The biggest issue is just that as the fuel geometry changed, it is now harder to get to “completely cold”. ( I don’t count the busted pipes as part of the core melt problem. They were most likely caused by the quake.) But the biggest technical issue for the clean up / cooling is that some of the pipes and fittings are broken so they are accumulating contaminated leakage water fast.
BTW, if you don’t think that dumping this in the sea is a solution, realize that the ocean already contains somewhere over several BILLION TONS of Uranium…. adding a few kilo of contaminants (in many tons of coolant water) is essentially nothing to the ocean. I’d much rather they ran it through filtering equipment first, and they are building some, but are doing the “slow and careful” (and IMHO, too late) approach when they ought to just set up a giant “Doughboy” swimming pool full of adsorbant and run the water through it. (Some clean up fast is better than no clean up too late… IMHO). But the yankie tendency for working “field expedient solutions” does not seem to be in Japan; and has been exterminated in anything “nuclear” where regulation runs supreme…
We’ve had a pretty good running discussion of the technical issues here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/japan-nuke-sequelae/
Yes, it’s a mess. It is NOTHING compared to the tidal wave / quake damage and disaster. That it has been allowed to push the 10’s of Thousands of dead, injured, mangled, and destitute off the front page is a sin and “crime against humanity”.
There have been few injured by the plant, and MAYBE one dead (though even that is unclear). A km or two around the plant will be a “workers only” area for a few years and a 10 km or so radius will be a “no grow” area for a couple of decades. That’s about it. Oh, and TEPCO will get economically whacked and will need to spend a hugh amount of time and money figuring out how to get the slag heap that was a core out of each containment building and reprocessed into something usable or storable.
Far easier, IMHO, than trying to get chemical contamination out of the ground water from all the toxic CHEMICALS that were spilled when the tsunami swept away all the equipment holding them.
But the world has decided to “go crazy” with panic, so it will. In 10 or 20 years when it’s very dark and cold, they will change their minds. Until then, China and France can dominate the nuclear industry; and with it gain economic dominance. I’m OK with that. I speak French…
The German greens will be happy about the ending of nuclear as they push Germany towards more coal plants. Oh the irony hurts!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/10/germany-coalplants-idUSLDE7290OR20110310
HelmutU says:
May 30, 2011 at 3:38 am
“Our goverment has gone totally mad. This is the end of the german democracy and the beginning of an eco-dictatorship. I hope that there is a place for a refugee in the USA, ”
Helmut,
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