Skip to main content

German Environment Minister Calls for Shutdown of Older Nuclear Generating Stations

By Eric McErlain
The long-term political fight over Germany's nuclear generating capacity took another interesting turn over the weekend as the government's environment minister proposed shutting the nation's older nuclear power plants in exchange for allowing the country's newer units to operate longer:
The German Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has called for seven of the country's oldest nuclear reactors to be closed down immediately.

Justifying his demand, Mr Gabriel pointed to recent breakdowns at two ageing nuclear plants.

Germany is committed to phasing out nuclear power by 2020.

Mr Gabriel told a German newspaper that it would be of great technical benefit from the safety standpoint to close the oldest reactors now.

As a trade-off, newer reactors could be kept running longer.
As I'm sure many of you already recall, the government led by Prime Minister Angela Merkel is a coalition comprised of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats -- and in this case the Prime Minister and her environment minister are on opposite sides of the divide.

In any case, this proposal sound a lot like a plan that was floated by the owners of Neckarwestheim I nuclear generating station back in December 2006. Then again, a lot has changed since then, especially if Merkel is able to lead her party to victory in the next election without the help of the Social Democrats -- something that might mean overturning the German nuclear phaseout completely.

For more on reaction to the proposal, see Spiegel Online. For our archive of posts on Germany, click here.

UPDATE: In case you missed the official response from Merkel's party, here it is:
The party's general secretary, Ronald Pofalla, rejected Gabriel's latest proposal.

"It is not a case of old or new, but of safe or not," Pofalla said on ZDF television. He argued that there were no indications that the plants in question failed to comply with the required safety standards.
Labels:

Comments

Joffan said…
Herr Gabriel's call is in sharp contrast to his inflexibility earlier this year towards Biblis A, as discussed at We Support Lee in May.

Now he wants to push "technical benefits", however suspect, but previously he was only interested in bureaucratic lists of alternatives published in legislation.

Perhaps he sees the end of his anti-nuclear opportunity arriving. One can hope.
September 4, 2007 at 2:57 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more