Germany To End Nuclear Power By 2022

dcollins writes "Germany on Monday announced plans to become the first major industrialized power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022... Germany has 17 nuclear reactors on its territory, eight of which are currently off the electricity grid... Already Friday, the environment ministers from all 16 German regional states had called for the temporary order on the seven plants to be made permanent... Monday's decision is effectively a return to the timetable set by the previous Social Democrat-Green coalition government a decade ago. And it is a humbling U-turn for Merkel, who at the end of 2010 decided to extend the lifetime of Germany's 17 reactors by an average of 12 years, which would have kept them open until the mid-2030s."

Comments

By coincidence...

[TheRaven64]

France has stated that it will open several new nuclear reactors before 2022, and will increase the amount of power that it exports to Germany.

Re:By coincidence...

[angel'o'sphere]

Currently france is not exporting relevant amounts of power to germany. In fact before the 7 reactors got shut down a few weeks ago, germany had an overcapacity of 40% and exported power to european countries.
Ofc due to grid load, maintanance of power plants or economic considerations there is also power imported all the time from everywhere in europe.
That is just how the grid works.

You know, a steel plant is unexpectingly shutting down. The power plant which is planned in to feed it has now a large surplus. Running it on 50% of its capacity is not economical. So you shut it down to standby and buy the power from France or Slovakia.

Also power export and import is in a large scale directly to end customers. It is not that "germany" is buying power in France. It is that the Steel Company XYZ in Duisburg is doing so. Or that the cooling houses of Food Company ABC in Munich is buying power from Norway.

angel'o'sphere

Serious question;

[cablepokerface]

Where does the power come from then!?

The government must now determine how it can make up the difference with renewable energy sources, natural gas and coal-fired plants.

I mean, really? That'll end up being 90% coal at the very least. I love sentiment driven politics, It's crappy, but waaay more interesting.

Re:Serious question;

[Minwee]

While that fact is interesting and unexpected, it only applies until something goes wrong.

While everything is going right, nuclear power is quite safe.

While everything is going right, coal power still kills 24,000 people in the USA alone every year. And that's not even mentioning things like the 48 tons of mercury released into the air and water every year by perfectly functioning coal plants in which nothing has gone wrong.

Even Greenpeace only puts the death toll from Chernobyl at 200,000 from 1990 to 2004, less than two thirds of what American Coal accomplished over the same time, and they didn't even have an accident to blame. That's just business as usual.

So, yeah, go Coal. Let's put an end to those dangerous nuclear plants and return to safe, clean power.

Re:Serious question;

[PhreakOfTime]

Nobody needs to repeat that study, because like you said, it's not relevant.

But you know what is relevant? Instead of all that stuff going up in smoke, it now gets stored in giant piles of waste. Usually on site, but sometimes at an offsite disposal facility. Such fun things as; arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds.

Perfectly safe, until this happens that is.

If it's down to coal or nuclear...

[Khenke]

If I had to choose between burning coal and fission reactors, I'd keep the nuclear.

Yeah, I know people are scared because of what have happened in Japan, but I STILL rather have 100 nuclear plant in my backyard with a 0.0001% chance of killing or making me sick than one coal plant that are 100% sure to be bad (1) for my health.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station: The combustion of coal contributes the most to acid rain and air pollution, and has been connected with global warming.

Re:First in a long line I hope!

[DaveV1.0]

Or, he can stay where he is and experience the effects of burning coal and gas directly.
 
As someone recently said "Nuclear power damages the environment and causes health issues when there is an accident. Coal and gas damages the environment and causes health issues as a consequence of normal operation."

Re:First in a long line I hope!

[nojayuk]

Hydro-electric dam failures have killed hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Indeed, a small (non-power-generating) dam in Fukushima prefecture broke during the recent big earthquake in Japan, killing at least four people at the dam itself and washing away a couple of villages downstream with some inhabitants reported as missing presumed drowned. That's a lot more people than were killed by the tsunami and earthquake at the two Fukushima plants and (obviously) a lot more than have died from radioactivity releases caused by the reactor failures.

Hydro power is a proven killer with a long history of mass deaths due to structural failures and operating problems. It's not in the same class as coal and oil due to the amount of pollution and CO2 it produces for the amount of energy it outputs but in terms of ill-effects it's way ahead of nuclear in any scale you care to compare it with.

Re:First in a long line I hope!

[khallow]

Did you know to this day 20% of Belarus's farmland is unusable?

No, and you didn't know either because it isn't true. The original BBC story states that 20% of Belarus was contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. Much of that land (probably everything aside from a bit that lies within the Chernobyl exclusion zone) is being used.

So tell me how do you plan on making all of the land usable again?

You can always reuse such land for industrial purposes. Or plant a crop that aggressively absorbs cesium or other problem isotopes.