Nuking our energy future

[kristopher]

Nuking our energy future
Published Thursday September 29th, 2011
by alec bruce


When one of the world's largest manufacturers of nuclear power plants declares it's washing its hands of the entire industry, you have to wonder how noble are its intentions. After all, mega-corporations do not, as rule, make broad humanitarian gestures without having tucked a joker or two into their back pockets.

Still, Germany's leading industrial and engineering conglomerate, Siemens, begs to be taken at its word when it insists, as it did last week, "This is our answer to the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy. The chapter for us is closed."

The words were actually Chief Executive Officer Peter Loescher's, published in a recent edition of Spiegel magazine. He was referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's announcement in May that all 17 of the country's nuclear reactors would be permanently shuttered by 2022, replaced by an industrial policy that will invest in wind technologies. And if he was being astonishingly honest, his reversal was equally startling. For, only two years ago, he had this to say about his company's atomic ambitions: "In view of global climate change and the increasing power demand worldwide, for us nuclear energy remains an essential part of a sustainable energy mix."

From "for us nuclear energy is crucial," to "for us the chapter is closed": All in slightly more time than it takes to gestate an elephant. Of course, the nuclear dilemma has always been the pachyderm in the big, rambling room of clean, renewable power - as it is neither clean nor renewable.

Unlike Germany...

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/1443862