Skip to main content

Gear Crunching U-Turn in Germany

By

Merkel This happened last week:

Angela Merkel's U-turn on nuclear energy became even more gear-crunching on Tuesday when she announced the temporary closure of seven of Germany's nuclear power stations.

The chancellor said that reactors built before 1980 would be taken offline while an urgent review of their safety was carried out.

"Safety has the priority in all our deliberations," Merkel declared after she met politicians from affected German states.

This isn’t enormously surprising, as Germany has a rather fraught relationship with its nuclear plants. Put Germany in our search box and you’ll see we’ve covered German top-spinning over nuclear energy for a long time. So another whipsaw fast change in the wake of the events in Japan seems wrong-headed but not completely unexpected.

In any event, I thought, if Germany has to import electricity, it’ll probably get a fair amount from neighbor France – which of course would be a bit hypocritical.

What I didn’t know was how much political calculus was involved:

Sunday's election in Baden-Wuerttemberg is viewed as the most important of seven state ballots this year. The south-west region is the only one where her centre-right coalition has to face state voters. Its chances of re-election are "small and they have become smaller" due to the nuclear story, said Nils Diederich, political science professor at Berlin's Free University.

Baden-Wuerttemberg is a large state in the southwest that borders France and Switzerland. Since it is one of the most conservative areas in Germany, this is bad news for Merkel’s coalition. But Germany has 16 states and the move against nuclear may not play well on a national level – perhaps not even in Baden-Wuerttemberg:

"The abrupt turnaround hasn't helped," said pollster Manfred Guellner. A majority of her voters "were for using nuclear power, and still are after Japan - and they will be confused by such an abrupt change of course."

Rock, meet hard place. If this move works for Merkel’s party, well, good for her. But the sum of the equation is that she hasn’t helped her country by acting so precipitously – the NRC and the nuclear industry here are doing what Germany is doing without closing the plants – and she may not be helping her party’s cause. We’ll know soon enough.

Angela Merkel – an attractive shot. German newspapers tend to run really harsh pictures of their politicians. Not sure why – but not this time.

Labels:

Comments

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

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more