German Nuclear Phaseout: Pro and Con [View All]

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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/