Siemens To Exit Nuclear Power Business

jones_supa wrote in with a link about the future of nuclear power in Germany. The story reads: "German industrial giant Siemens is turning the page on nuclear energy, the group's CEO Peter Löscher told the weekly Der Spiegel in an interview published on Sunday. The group's decision to withdraw from the nuclear industry reflects 'the very clear stance taken by Germany's society and political leadership.' Along with abandoning nuclear power, Germany wants to boost the share of the country's power needs generated by renewable energies to 35% by 2020 from 17% at present."

Comments

Re:Lessor of two evils...

[GameboyRMH]

Problem is that it takes more energy to produce a solar panel than the panel takes in over its lifetime.

BULLSHIT

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/794/

Re:This is Slashdot . . .

[ultranova]

Unfortunate, though. Slashdot is usually a great place to find opinions from those with first hand experience. However, when it comes to nuclear power, it might as well be a site for the nuclear lobby. Those with first hand experience are either too intimidated to post or accused of being liars when they do.

There has been two truly serious (someone gets hurt) accidents in the 60-year history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl killed 31 people; Fukushima has yet to kill anyone. Both were caused by a combination of corruption and exceptional circumstances. Contrast this with the 100,000 people who die yearly as a result of coal power working exactly as it's designed to: nuclear power wins hands down on pretty much every metric, even if we count the evacuees of Chernobyl and Fukushima as casualties.

So, while "first hand experience" of things going wrong makes for nice propaganda for Greenpeace, there simply aren't that many people with it. Decisions should be based on actual statistics, not on who can come up with the most moving sob story. Unless, of course, you don't actually care about making the best or even a good decision, but only on adhering to your ideology (Greenpeace) or getting re-elected (Germany).