German Nuclear Phaseout: Pro and Con

[wtmusic]

PRO

Hans-Josef Fell (Member German Parliament, Greens Party)

"The current growth rates of power generation from renewable energies have significantly accelerated within the last 6 months. Germany’s amount of power generation from renewable energies has risen from 17% to 20.8 % between late 2010 and the middle of 2011. If Germany held this growth rate, a total supply of eco-power could be reached in Germany until 2030. That means that all power plants could be closed down much earlier than 2020 and that all fossil power plants could be closed until 2030. That would mean a complete decarbonization of the electricity industry could be achieved.

If we continued to rely on fossil resources, a continuous energy supply would be difficult. Energy would become more scarce, less safe and more expensive. But renewable energies don’t know scarcity of resources and thus lead to a safe and cheap energy supply. Ups and downs in supply of energy generated out of sun and wind can be compensated by a mixture of storeable renewable energies such as water, biogas, geothermics and by additional storages. In Brandenburg, Germany, the first mixed power plant – a mixture of windfarm, biogas plant and hydrogen storage system – is put into service.

"Germany will be totally independent and it’ll even increase its electricity exports to its neighbor countries if enough wind and solar supplies are available. This will especially be the case during the summer period, when French nuclear power plants can’t cover Frances needs because they aren’t able to cool their reactors because of low water and high water temperatures in the French rivers."

http://theenergycollective.com/helmuthziegler/66629/germanys-nuclear-phase-out-will-be-successful-and-without-serious-risks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

CON

Mark Lynas, author of The God Species and Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet"

"As a lifelong environmentalist, and author of a 2009 book which laid out the terrifying prospects of uncontrolled global warming, I cannot help but feel that the decisions of the German and Swiss governments rank among the worst climate-related policies of recent years. Carbon emissions cannot do anything other than rise as a result of phasing out the continent’s largest source of zero-carbon power – and doing this just a week after the International Energy Agency reported that 2010 carbon emissions rose to the highest levels ever is little short of criminal.

There is perhaps a certain discomfort about the fact that one of the best options for tackling global warming just so happens to be a technology that greens had spent decades opposing before climate change even hit the agenda. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard green groups insisting that climate change is the “greatest challenge ever to face humanity”. Yet their refusal to reassess their inherited positions against nuclear power suggest that none of them actually believe what they are saying – or that most environmentalists are prepared to take refuge in ideologically motivated wishful thinking even when the future of the planet is at stake.

If the German greens really took climate change seriously, they would instead be pushing for a phase-out of coal – which generates by far the largest proportion of the country’s power and consequent carbon emissions – from Germany’s electricity grid. Instead, the new nuclear phase-out plan will see a hefty 11GW of new coal plants built in years to come, with an additional 5GW of new gas. (Update: Chancellor Merkel is now talking about 20GW of new fossil fuel plant that will be needed.) The only way emissions from these plants could be controlled would be through “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) – yet Greenpeace in Germany has already mounted a successful scaremongering campaign against this new technology, helping to ensure that future fossil emissions will go into the atmosphere unabated."

http://www.marklynas.org/2011/06/germany-italy-greens-nukes-and-climate-change/

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Nuclear's day has clearly passed

What many are not remarking on is the opportunity that the rest of the world has to learn from Germany and Japan as they dismantle their nuclear plants and transition to cleaner forms of power. They will be pioneering a process that the rest of the world will be going through at some point.

[wtmusic]

2. Nuclear's day has not "clearly passed" at all

The Germans are banking on technology which hasn't been invented yet, and in the meantime are relying on some of the dirtiest forms of power available. If it fails, and it certainly could, it will only push us farther into the climate abyss.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Mixed feeling on that

There was a time where we all believed in the "power to cheap to meter" meme. That clearly is not the case. Costs, both fixed and operational are much higher than forecast and the risk much more than originally understood. More importantly, alternative sources are getting cheaper per KWH. Nuclear is pretty clearly in decline, supplanted by newer lower cost technologies.

You are quite right about their being ongoing technical challenges, but at this point they seem to be more along the lines of engineering and not new science. That is where I believe both Germany and Japan can be path finders. They can work out the bugs and the rest of us can leverage off of it.

I do find is amazing that Germany was planning on building new fossil fuel plants to bridge the gaps. Clearly that is trading a risk for a well known problem. Not real smart, unless there is more there that is well understood.

[txlibdem]

6. I can make you all the power too cheap to meter that you could want

You must first give me all the subsidies that fossil fuels like Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas (include military support, free access to public lands, tax breaks, zero liability for public health effects and therefore NO insurance needed, zero expectations of actual cleanup, etc) received during the past 10 years.

[bananas]

10. The Germans aren't banking on technology which hasn't been invented yet, but the pro-nukes are

The upside-down world of pro-nukes!
They are banking on Gen IV breeder reactors which will be even more expensive than the Gen III reactors if they can ever get them to work reliably at all,
they are banking on geologic waste depositories which can last a million years,
they are banking on big-brother surveillance to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation,
some have the delusion that nuclear weapons proliferation is a good thing.

In the meantime renewable technologies make steady progress,
costs going down and technology improving at the same time.

[FBaggins]

4. "suggest(s) that none of them actually believe what they are saying "

Exactly right.

[Nihil]

7. "or ..."

> "... that most environmentalists are prepared to take refuge in ideologically
> motivated wishful thinking even when the future of the planet is at stake"

That is certainly true of a number of people around here.

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

8. +3.14159265 /nt

[bananas]

9. What bullshit.

Lynas is really full of it.
As are a number of people around here.

[Nihil]

11. QED.

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

5. A small reduction in Germany's economic activity would make the nuclear phase-out a non-issue

That's the only sure answer to the whole toxic enchilada of nuclear power, CO2 and ecological devastation. Do a bit less. But is that option on the table? Right.