nuclear-news

closure of Germany’s NNP installations, previously scheduled to be shuttered as late as 2036, would give Germany a competitive advantage in the development of renewable energy, 

Germany’s renewable energy sources surge after Fukushima crisis, ARAB NEWS, By JOHN C. K. DALY, Sep 9, 2011  The worldwide implications for nuclear power advocates in light of the 11 March disaster at Japan’s Daichi Fukushima nuclear complex, battered first by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, are slowly unfolding.

So, what are the alternatives?

Shifting gears since the beginning of the year, a trend accelerated by Japan’s Fukushima debacle, in a statement released by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), commenting on renewable energy input to the country’s national grid since January, “Renewable energies have crossed the 20 percent mark in Germany for the first time.”

Last year, Germany’s green energy consumption totaled 18.3 percent of total demand.

Following Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that her government’s goal was to draw 35 percent of production from renewable energy sources by 2022.

While Germany’s total energy consumption remained stable at 2010 levels of 275.5 billion kilowatt-hours, energy from sources like wind, biomass, hydroelectric plants, solar panels and waste incineration rose to 57.3 billion kilowatt-hours in the first six months of 2011.

Wind power, Germany’s most important renewable energy source at present, rose to 20.7 billion kilowatt-hours of total usage, with biomass contributing 5.6 percent, solar 3.5 percent and hydroelectric power a modest 3.3 percent.

Germany’s new energy policies will depend on the installation of new renewable power capacities with an amendment to the Renewable Energies Act stipulating the doubling of the nation’s share of green power to 35 percent minimum no later than 2020 with an especial emphasis on offshore wind farms…..

As Japan is one of the world’s leading technological states and yet was subjected to the Fukushima disaster, Berlin obviously concluded that engineering cannot factor out every natural random event. Like Japan, Germany is a densely populated state, and a nuclear incident and its attendant debris was obviously adjudged as not worth the risk.

Looking at the transition not as a debacle but an opportunity, Chancellor Merkel said the closure of Germany’s NNP installations, previously scheduled to be shuttered as late as 2036, would give Germany a competitive advantage in the development of renewable energy, commenting, “As the first big industrialized nation, we can achieve such a transformation toward efficient and renewable energies, with all the opportunities that brings for exports, developing new technologies and jobs.”….

what the future will look like is anyone’s guess, and the global nuclear lobby is most unlikely to go quietly into that gentle night.