Scrapped Nuclear Plants Open Energy Gaps in Daimler’s Hometown

[phantom power]

Matthias Schuele’s aluminum foundry stands a 30-minute drive from a nuclear reactor that supplied electricity for more than three decades until German Chancellor Angela Merkel switched it off in March.

His furnaces today are backstopped by power generated in Austria while Merkel’s government spars with utilities including EON AG over how to add 20 gigawatts of fossil-fuel plants and offshore wind farms, and 3,600 kilometers (2,237 miles) of high- tension cables fast enough to keep his lights on.

“I can’t imagine how they’re going to install wind turbines at the pace that’s needed here,” said Schuele, 44, whose family firm produces engine-cooler parts for MAN SE trucks and casings for the electric motors in Bayerische Motorenwerke AG cars in the southwestern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. “I can’t see where it will all end.”

Schuele’s predicament is shared by 470,000 family firms and global corporations led by Daimler AG (DAI), Porsche SE (PAH3) and Robert Bosch GmbH across Baden-Wuerttemberg, whose economic output exceeds Belgium and Luxembourg combined. That puts the German state at the heart of a continent-wide test of energy production and markets as governments seek alternatives to nuclear power in the wake of the meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima reactor in March.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-06/scrapped-nuclear-plants-open-energy-gaps-in-daimler-s-hometown.html

[DCKit]

1. We are doomed. Just accept it.

DU would be worthless and no fun at all without you and your co-workers.