Germany circles the drain
From
FOX News:
Germany Will Shut Down All Nuke Plants by 2022
Gremany's governing coalition said Monday it will shut down all the country's nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision, prompted by Japan's nuclear disaster, will make Germany the first major industrialized nation to go nuclear-free in years.
It also completes a remarkable about-face for Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government, which only late last year had pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country's 17 reactors -- with the last scheduled to go offline in 2036.
But Merkel now says industrialized, technologically advanced Japan's helplessness in the fact of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the risks of the technology.
"We want the electricity of the future to be safe, reliable and economically viable," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Monday after overnight negotiations among the governing parties. "We have to follow a new path."
While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision -- which still requires parliamentary approval -- dramatically speeds up that process.
A couple of things -- the drop-dead date is eleven years away so there is plenty of time for the next Chancellor to rescind the decision and this decision refers to only the existing reactors, not to any ones that might be built in the future.
The reality:
Merkel's government ordered the country's seven oldest reactors, all built before 1980, shut down four days after problems emerged at Fukushima. The plants accounted for about 40 percent of the country's nuclear power capacity.
Shutting down even more reactors, however, will require billions of euros (dollars) of investment in renewable energies, more natural gas power plants and an overhaul of the country's electricity grid.
Germany, usually a net energy exporter, has at times had to import energy since March, with the seven old reactors shut down and others temporarily taken off the grid for regular maintenance work.
Still, the agency overseeing its electricity grid said Friday that the country will remain self-sufficient.
The government has stressed that Germany must not rely on importing power from its nuclear-reliant neighbors.
And the death knell:
Environmental groups welcomed Berlin's decision.
These enviros are spreading their Malthusian doom and gloom over the world using laptops while they totally fail to recognize that the technological advances that allowed the laptop to happen also apply to other technologies such as nuclear reactors. Today's designs are inherently safe -- they can not melt down and the spent fuel issue is a matter of a few hundred years, not tens of thousands...
And yes, the typo: "
Gremany's" is from FOX News's own website -- I took a screencap and will see how long it stays up...
Posted by DaveH at May 30, 2011 11:40 AM