Germany's Environmental Minister Speaks of the "Coal Renaissance."

[NNadir]

I'm pretty pissed off right now by some of the mindless "It's not either nukes or coal" crap that comes out of the mouth of the highly paid (off) anti-nuke industry/religion.

Of course, the poster child for the "renewables will save us" crowd is Germany.

This story is a little old, but Germany has done nothing to change its reliance on coal, and of course, as usual the anti-nuke community couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel waste, dangerous fossil fuel terrorism, dangerous fossil fuel mining, dangerous fossil fuel war, or dangerous fossil fuel depletion.

In Germany, where they plan to buy some of the coal for their new plants from South Africa, they couldn't care less about African worker's rights either.

There is NOT ONE member of the anti-nuke religion, NOT ONE, who can deal with the fact that after the Gazprom executive - acting as German Chancellor - engineered the "renewables will save us nuclear phase out" - Germany announced 26 new coal plants.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2396828,00.html

Like all religions, the anti-nuke religion sticks its fingers in its ears and screams "LAH! LAH! LAH!"

But let's cut to the chase, OK?

Right now nuclear power - which is continuous baseload power and has nothing to do with cute solar and wind toys, all of which are intermittant - provides 30% of Germany's electricity.

So what does the German government say?

He (the German environmental minister Gabriel) also said that "by 2020 it will be possible to cover 20 to 25 percent of our energy demand with renewable sources."

Also said?

Well what else did he say?

But Environment Minister Gabriel, of the SPD, told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag that there was no need for nuclear energy and that even coal, used to produce half of Germany's electricity, was undergoing a "renaissance."

You scratch the surface of an anti-nuke, you find a fossil fuel apologist, not just sometimes but all the time.

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/3984

[rockymountaindem]

1. Don't mince words

tell us how you really feel :)

[NNadir]

2. You know, I could be a little too restrained.

Maybe I should be a little more forceful.

I mean there's been 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide, dangerous fossil fuel waste, added to the atmosphere since Amory Lovins started selling snake oil to the American public.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Reading that picture caption (first link) was like biting into foil ...

"Some say coal power plants free of harmful CO2 emissions are the future" x(

Oh, so "some say", say some? What is this, PFOX Neus? Is there some way around that whole conservation-of-mass problem I haven't heard about? Have the laws of stoichiometry been repealed by an act of Parliament? (A little off-topic, I know, but ... GAG!)

[wtmusic]

4. 2020 is a long way off

And it's unlikely Merkel will still be a figure in public life, so she can promise whatever she wants.

The silver lining is that "At an EU energy summit in Brussels earlier this month, the majority of EU leaders agreed nuclear energy was the future for Europe."

[markoller]

5. The truth for a change

I am glad to hear the truth about nuclear power for a change. Even the scare stories about radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons are grossly exaggerated. Only ground burst produce significant fallout, and that only remains hazardous while airborne. Furthermore, the longer the half-life of a radioactive isotope, the weaker the radioactivity.

[wtmusic]

7. Welcome to DU markoller

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

Yes nuclear fuel can be deadly and harmful to the environment. In the grand scheme of things coal is far more so. We have seen a significant shift of attitude around here and much of it is thanks to NNadir and others who come armed with facts and perspective.

[jpak]

8. Nonsense - the Chernobyl commercial nuclear *disaster* released large quantities of "fallout"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v329/n6142/abs/329825a0.html

Chernobyl radionuclides in a Black Sea sediment trap

K. O. Buesseler*, H. D. Livingston*, S. Honjo*, B. J. Hay*, S. J. Manganini*, E. Degens†, V. Ittekkot†, E. Izdar‡ & T. Konuk‡

* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA
† Geologisch Paläontologisches Institut, Universität Hamburg, D-2000 Hamburg 13, FRG
‡ Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, Deniz Bilimleri ve Teknolojisi Enstitüsü, Izmir, Turkey

ABSTRACT

The Chernobyl nuclear power station accident1–3 released large quantities of vaporized radionuclides, and, to a lesser extent, mechanically released small (<1–10 m) aerosol particles2,4. The total release of radioactivity is estimated to be of the order of 1–2 x 1018 Bq (3–5 x 107 Ci) not allowing for releases of the xenon and krypton gases2. The 137Cs releases of 3.8 xlO16 Bq from Chernobyl can be compared to 1.3 x 1018 Bq 137Cs released due to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing1. Chernobyl-derived radionuclides can be used as transient tracers to study physical and biogeochemical processes. Initial measurements of fallout Chernobyl radionuclides from a time-series sediment trap at 1,071 m during June–September 1986 in the southern Black Sea are presented. The specific activities of 137Cs, 144Ce and 106Ru in the trap samples (0.5–2, 4–12 and 6–13 Bq g-1) are independent of the particle flux while their relative activities reflect their rates of scavenging in the order Ce>Ru>Cs.

<end abstract>

[razzleberry]

6. German coal is not a carbon dioxide problem

solutions ...

cheat
lie
buy carbon offsets (that you sold to yourself)

lots of ways to balance the carbon books,
just be creative

[NNadir]

9. Thanks for that lucid explanation. Let's calculate the number of dead Africans that could offset

German coal output.

Germany released 317 million tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste from coal burning in the form of carbon dioxide in 2004.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh4co2.xls

From natural gas, now sold to Germany by the prominent anti-nuke Gerhard Schroeder, Germany released 181 million metric tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the form of carbon dioxide.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh3co2.xls

Of course, Germany and it's "Green Party" couldn't care less about this dangerous fossil fuel waste which is why they couldn't care less about announcing a plan to phase it out, although they have announced a plan to phase out their largest, by far, source of climate change free gas energy.

According to the "couldn't care less" mentality, their new plants will be "clean coal" plants because they will "only" release 17 million tons of carbon dioxide per year as opposed to 20 million tons of "conventional" coal plants.

I refer to the original article, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2396828,00.html taking the Neurath dangerous fossil fuel plant as typical of the 26 Germany is building.

This adds up, for 17 plants, to an additional 442,000,000 million tons of the dangerous fossil fuel waste that Germany will be adding.

The per capita dangerous fossil fuel waste (as carbon dioxide) release of an African is 1.17 tons per person. This compares with 10 tons for a German and about 20 tons for an American, but only before the new German dangerous coal plants come on line.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1cco2.xls

Thus the number of Africans who will have to die to offset new German coal, either by war, malnutrition, thirst, disease and accidents incurred mining coal for Germany in South Africa is 377.8 million, or a little over half the African population.

This seems like a small price for going "Green" like the former Chancellor of Germany, the Gazprom executive Gerhard Schroeder.