Germany Pledges to Shut Down All Its Nuclear Plants by 2022 Following Fukushima Disaster

[Bittereinder]

Germany will shut down all its nuclear reactors by 2022 in a dramatic reversal of its nuclear policy following the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Officials immediately shut down seven of the country's oldest plants in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.
Environment minister Norbert Roettgen has now announced that it will shut all 17 of its power stations over the next 11 years.

Chancellor Angela Merkel set up a panel to review the future of nuclear energy in the aftermath of the Japanese disaster.
Mr Roettgen said: 'It's definite: the latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision.'

The oldest eight nuclear reactors will remain permanently shut - seven were closed temporarily following Fukushima and another has been off the grid for years.
Six more will close in 2021 and the remaining three, Germany's newest plants, will remain open until 2022 as a safety cushion to ensure there is no disruption to supply.

Mrs Merkel backtracked in March on an unpopular decision just months earlier to extend the life of ageing nuclear plants in Germany, where the majority of voters oppose atomic energy.
Her Christian Democrats, their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union and junior coalition partner the Free Democrats met on Sunday to discuss the nuclear future after an ethics commission ended its deliberations this weekend.
Some politicians had wanted a clause allowing for the agreement to be revised in future.
The Free Democrats wanted a flexible window for the exit, plus the option of bringing back at least one of the seven oldest nuclear reactors in case of emergency.

The coalition has agreed to keep one of the older reactors as a 'cold reserve' until 2013, if the transition to renewable energies cannot meet winter demand and if fossil fuels are not enough to make up for a potential shortfall.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1NqkBzgX5

Can and will Germany power itself with Coal derived power or will it mean more dependence on Russian gas? Also what about the carbon is evil train of thought? I don’t think this is a bad idea however, in light of the current green retardation wave we are experiencing wont this bring all the confused rebels without a cause out onto the streets as has been the case over Nuclear power?

[Hersir]

This is not good, nuclear power is one of the best options we have available at the moment. Coal is much worse, and wind, solar and tidal, earth power or fision is far off to be good enough

[GroeneWolf]

This is not good, nuclear power is one of the best options we have available at the moment. Coal is much worse, and wind, solar and tidal, earth power or fision is far off to be good enough

If you mean with fission you mean so called cold fission, that is not just far of from good. It is still far from being done in practice. The other options are either limited or do more harm then good if deployed on a large scale.

[velvet]

Can and will Germany power itself with Coal derived power or will it mean more dependence on Russian gas? Also what about the carbon is evil train of thought? I don’t think this is a bad idea however, in light of the current green retardation wave we are experiencing wont this bring all the confused rebels without a cause out onto the streets as has been the case over Nuclear power?

Well, nuclear power only makes up (depending on who you ask) between 16 and 20 percent of our energy anyway. But we also export around 20 percent of all produced energy, so electricity shortages will not appear.

Shutting down all 17 today would require 2 older coal plants go back online and another 3 or so that run right now with half-power would have to go full-power again. If all would go offline today that is.

We use already more green energy (solar, wind, tidal, low energy houses etc) than nuclear energy, steadily going near the 30 percent already. Specially tidal energy holds a lot of potential with just lately developed technique and currently in pilot projects.


However, one important thing for non-Germans to know: this is not anything like a "success of the current govt coalition". In fact, it is less, far less, than what was already decided upon ten years ago. And as far as I can tell from what I heard, it will cost the taxpayer billions and billions, because this FRAUD now (and it needs this title really) opens knowingly a whole range of backdoors for the energy monopolists to make us bleed.

In Germany, nuclear power was introduced some 40 years ago as a Bridge Technology, it was never intented, wanted or planned that this was a permanently used energy form. Ten years ago, another govt coalition also put it into law that the monopolists with money printing plants (that's what a NPP really is) have to shut down one after another til 2017.

Last year in autumn Ms Merkel and her criminal bunch of doctor title fraudsters decided, without and against the Bundestag, the exit from the exit plans and expanded the life spans of NPPs, criminally irresponsible also those of the now immediately shut down ones which are totally unsafe and stone old.

Then came Fukushima and now they suddenly wanted to be greener than the Greens, promising "immediate" exit from that technology, only to now throw this BS packet out. When I saw that yesterday how they cheer themselves for this I almost had to puke. They are such a self-righteous bunch of digusting and dangerous people....


But many people are fed up, and the parties involved (CDU, FDP) got their bill for all the BS they did already. Baden-Württemberg got its first Green minister president, and the FDP was kicked out of every Landtag in which have been elections since then. People do not want Liberal market policies anymore, and they are fed up with all the pandering to global players.

Sure, we lack a real political alternative here, and so people vote Green and SPD instead, but at least it shows that people arent completely dead yet and have a limit what shit the govt can pour upon them without that their voting habit changes like in the past. We'll see.

[dark mind]

I consider nuclear power to be dangerous and devilish, yes devilish! nuclear power is dangerous and can turn a whole country into a waste land and destroy a whole people

I personally am in favor of coal power plant, there is quite a lot of coal in Germany and I do not actually believe in the climate change.

I am not a great friend of the Green Party but I think they are less immoral and irresponsible than CDU and FDP ("conservative" and liberal party)

The CDU is a bunch of hypocrites in my opinion and the worst party of all, in fact I quite like Winfried Kretschmann, the new green president of Baden Württemberg, his haircut reminds me on Hindenburg

[Hersir]

Well, north-Europe isnt prune to big earth quakes and we have good technology to maintain the nuclear powerplants.

How can you not belive in climate change? One thing is to no belive that humans are not causing it, but to write it off entireliy isnt correct.

[wittwer]

Good for them! These are old facilities that need to be taken offline and decommisioned. In order to pickup the power short fall, new fourth and fifth generation facilities need to be built. These Units are more efficient and much much safer than the old Fukushima Reactors or the ones Germany is currently using. This replacement project would be a tremendous multi-billion Euro Economic shot in the arm for not only Germany, but the whole of Europe and America.

Talk about killing two major problems with one stone...

[Thusnelda]

Well, nuclear power only makes up (depending on who you ask) between 16 and 20 percent of our energy anyway. But we also export around 20 percent of all produced energy, so electricity shortages will not appear.

It depends on the state. Here in Bavaria around 60% of the energy is nuclear energy (http://www.chiemgau24.de/nachrichten...s-1162145.html). We also have one of the most modern atomic plants with Isar 2. There´s no atomic plant in Nordrhein-Westfalen as far as I know.

Shutting down all 17 today would require 2 older coal plants go back online and another 3 or so that run right now with half-power would have to go full-power again.

Well sorry velvet, but this calculation is a green trap and ideology-ridden. Not even the Green parts supports the thesis that only two new coal plants are needed. Then there is the problem with the lack of efficiency of regenerative energies, the problem of energy storage (to save it for times of Volllast) and the problem of incalculability because solar- or wind plants are dependent from weather. Germany as a very industrialized country can´t rely on regenerative energy alone, and then there´s the problem with the prizes for regenerative energy who is more expensive and subventionated by energy taxes. And then the last giant problem is how to get the regenerative energy from Northern Germany (where most wind plants are, for example at the sea) to Southern Germany - it would mean to built broad energy train paths through nature, villages and forests.

I´m not convinced of our German politics who acts by emotions and not by rationality on the energy issue.

Anyway, my family made sure to buy nuclear energy by switching back to E.ON Bayern who is the owner of most Bavarian nuclear plants. This is supposed to be a clear statement for nuclear energy for the time being and against the green hysteria.

[Neophyte]

Electrical energy is traded on a global basis, you will find that the German power grid is connected to the Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Russian grids and so on. So the withdrawal of German nuclear power will push up prices all over. So, if those plants are taken off-line now, we can all expect huge electrical bills the coming winter.

[SaxonPagan]

This is not good, nuclear power is one of the best options we have available at the moment. Coal is much worse, and wind, solar and tidal, earth power or fision is far off to be good enough.

Nuclear power is great when all is going well and it's a much cleaner option than coal, for example. My Dad was a miner and every year there were a lot of fatalities down mines, in addition to the thousands of miners who died prematurely due to lung-related illnesses. Also, I wouldn't like to go back to the days of smog over all the major cities - especially when you consider that the population has doubled since then and one can only imagine what it would be like nowadays

On the other hand, one good nuclear disaster and your number's up!!! I'm really in a bit of quandary here TBQH but am tempted to regard this initiative (all things considered) as a step in the right direction. Mind you, as long as neighbouring countries have their reactors it's little more than a futile gesture and I don't see France giving up hers any time soon