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‘There’s a lot of posturing’: Europe’s nuclear divide grows as one plant opens and three close

Guardian Jon Henley Europe correspondent, and Kate Connolly in Berlin, 21 Apr 23,

When Europe’s first new nuclear reactor in 16 years came online in Finland, it was hailed by its operator as a “significant addition to clean domestic production” that would “play an important role in the green transition”.

The opening last Sunday of the long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 plant, Europe’s largest, means about 40% of Finland’s electricity demand will soon be met by nuclear power, which the government says will boost energy security and help it achieve its carbon neutrality targets.

Across the Baltic Sea and just hours before the Finnish plant came on stream, Germany was finally pulling the plug on its last three nuclear power plants, shutting down the steaming towers of Isar II, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II reactors late on Saturday.

The environmental group Greenpeace, at the heart of Germany’s long-lived and powerful anti-nuclear movement, organised a party at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. “Finally, nuclear energy belongs to history,” it proclaimed.

There are few clearer illustrations of Europe’s nuclear divide. One faction, led by Germany, argues that the costs are too high and the risks – from reactor accidents and toxic waste – are, as the Green environment minister, Steffi Lemke, put it, “ultimately unmanageable”.

Another, headed by France, argues equally forcefully that nuclear power is a reliable, low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels for electricity, and that phasing it out as Europe tries to meet vital green targets is ecologically damaging and economically senseless.

The debate is not new. But with a third of the bloc’s nuclear reactors nearing the end of their original lifespan by 2025, and a legally binding aim of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, it is becoming increasingly intense.

The energy shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which brought an end to cheap gas imports and led Germany to briefly delay closing its last nuclear plants, has only entrenched the divisions.

“There’s a lot of posturing,” the centrist MEP Pascal Canfin, who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee, said. “Different member states have made very different choices and have very different positions – and interests.

According to Eurostat, 25.4% of the EU’s electricity was nuclear generated in 2021, with 100-odd reactors in 13 member states. France, which has 56 operable nuclear reactors, accounting for just over half of that total.

The divide across the bloc, though, is stark. If France has the highest share of nuclear in its electricity mix (almost 70%), followed by Slovakia (52.4%) and Belgium (50.6%), others hardly touch it. The Netherlands stands at barely 3%…………

Advocates of its “Energiewende” green transition plan note that the 46% share of its electricity generated by renewables is far greater than the share that was produced by nuclear when its phase-out was first announced in 1998.

While its plan, aimed at winning long-term public and industry support, will increase fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in the short term (coal is due to be phased out by 2038 or earlier), Germany argues it will also stimulate renewables growth.

Immediate energy supply concerns meant public opinion swung against the shutdown last weekend, but polls before the war in Ukraine showed broad support for the principle. Other countries hold similar views.

Several have already phased out nuclear, or plan to do so. Italy shut all its plants in 1990, after a 1987 referendum (in a 2011 plebiscite, held weeks after the Fukushima disaster, 94% of voters rejected a government plan to reintroduce nuclear power).

Belgium was planning to close the last of its seven reactors by 2025, but recently extended the life of the two newest for a further decade, saying they were “critical to our energy security”. Spain aims to phase out its five active plants by 2035.

Other opponents include Portugal, Denmark and Austria – which, along with Luxembourg, is suing the European Commission for classing nuclear energy as a “bridge technology” on the path to net zero, and thus as a “green” investment.

In the French-led pro-nuclear camp, meanwhile, are Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – which this year launched an alliance to boost nuclear cooperation within the bloc.

Far from phasing out nuclear, Romania has doubled production in the last 15 years; Hungary and the Czech Republic have increased theirs by a fifth. Sweden is drafting a law to allow it to build more, while France aims to extend its plants’ life to 50 years and open at least six new ones by 2035.

“Certain countries have made the extreme choice of turning their back on nuclear energy,” President Emmanuel Macron said when unveiling his plans in February. “Not France.” The country launched its nuclear programme after the 1973 oil crisis; a poll last year showed nearly 80% of voters support it, up 20 points from 2016.

The nuclear standoff – at its most tense between France and Germany – has the potential to disrupt a range of vital EU projects, from changes to the bloc’s electricity market to the Green Deal programme supporting industry’s transition to net zero…………………………  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/21/europe-nuclear-divide-grows-one-plant-opens-three-close-finland-germany

April 23, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

Whaa -at ? Bill in North Carolina legislature would define nuclear as source of CLEAN energy

North Carolina Public Radio | By Rusty Jacobs, April 19, 2023

“…………………………… The bill, which advanced through the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee on Wednesday, would change statutory language from “renewable” to “clean” energy, and would add nuclear facilities to that category along with wind and solar.

“I am for the least cost (sic) energy consumers have to buy,” Newton said…………..

Sen. Mike Woodard (D-Durham), a member of the Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee, expressed reservations about a bill that would change statutory language from “renewable” to “clean” energy and add nuclear facilities to that category along will wind and solar.

…………….The bill now goes to the Senate Rules Committee.  https://www.wunc.org/environment/2023-04-19/bill-north-carolina-legislature-nuclear-source-clean-energy

April 21, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Germany and Finland: Two sides of the nuclear power coin in Europe

“What we see in Germany is a measured but speedier version of a European trend: the decline of the nuclear industry,”

“It’s a progressive closure — the replacement rate is insufficient for nuclear energy to survive.”

The shutdown of the remaining German reactors coincides with the startup of a new reactor on the Finnish coast

IGNACIO FARIZA. El Pais, Madrid – APR 19, 2023 

As chance would have it, the shutdown of the Germany’s remaining nuclear reactors coincided exactly with the opening of a new one in Finland, the first in over 15 years in the European Union (EU). Both countries are highly vulnerable to the vagaries of Russian energy sources, but represent two opposing European visions of the always controversial nuclear energy.

The timing could not have been more incongruous. Almost 12 years after Angela Merkel’s administration decided to abandon nuclear power following the Fukushima (Japan) disaster, three plants were disconnected from the grid and mothballed: Isar 2 (Bavaria); Neckarwestheim 2 (Baden-Württemberg); and Emsland (Lower Saxony). A few hours later, in the early hours of the morning, the largest reactor in Europe was inaugurated 1,000 miles to the north. After almost 15 years of construction and many cost overruns, the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant started producing 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, about one seventh of Finland’s total electricity demand.

The start-up of the Finnish reactor was a rocky road: it was first scheduled to be completed in 2009 and cost $12 billion, three times more than the original estimate. With Finnish conservatives holding a firm grip on power, more nuclear power projects are expected. Petteri Orpo, the front-runner in the prime minister race, often says in campaign speeches that nuclear power should be “the cornerstone of Finnish energy policy.”

The brutal energy shock aggravated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has recently rekindled the debate about the role of nuclear power in Europe. Germany delayed the closure of its reactors by four months amid the energy crisis, and several political parties (including Merkel’s center-right CDU party) have reversed their original positions. The International Energy Agency (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s energy arm) has emerged as a leading advocate for nuclear reactors in a context increasingly dominated by renewable energy. A report by the International Energy Agency last summer noted the growing momentum for nuclear energy in many countries given rising fuel prices and growing concerns about stable energy supplies……………….

Although wind and photovoltaic energy are gaining traction in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and most populous country, fossil fuels will have to fill some of the gap left by the nuclear plant shutdowns (6% of Germany’s electricity in 2022). Highly polluting coal plants still produce a third of the country’s electricity but will have to close by 2038……………………….

Consultant and environmentalist Mycle Schneider, author of one of the most comprehensive annual report on the global state of nuclear power, doesn’t see it that way. “What we see in Germany is a measured but speedier version of a European trend: the decline of the nuclear industry,” he told EL PAÍS in an e-mail. “It’s a progressive closure — the renewal rate is insufficient for nuclear energy to survive.”

Schneider, a German expert based in Paris, says in the last 30 years EU countries have connected 16 new reactors, closed 47 and started construction on only two: Flamanville 3 (in France) and Olkiluoto 3. “Since the construction of these facilities began, the cost of solar [photovoltaic] energy has plunged by 90% and wind power by 70%. It’s simply impossible for a nuclear plant to compete with those low costs,” he said. Over the same period, the EU has added 157 GW of solar energy capacity, wind has added 175 GW, and nuclear has accounted for a 24 GW loss in capacity.

Paris and Berlin dominate the debate

Apart from the diverging paths of Berlin and Helsinki, the nuclear energy debate is still dominated by the two major continental powers: Germany, which has the unwavering support of Spain and Austria, and France, supported by several Eastern European countries.

Broad swaths of German society vehemently oppose nuclear energy, unlike French society and its government. France depends highly on nuclear energy, even during 2022 when a plague of technical issues caused shutdowns of many power plants. 60% of France’s electricity is nuclear, perhaps because prior to its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva — a global power in nuclear plant construction — was majority-owned by the French state. Areva was the lead engineering firm for Olkiluoto 3. However, the future of nuclear energy will not be driven by France, Germany or the EU, says Zurita, but by “China, India, South Korea and the other emerging countries” that are growing so rapidly.  https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-04-19/germany-and-finland-two-sides-of-the-nuclear-power-coin-in-europe.html

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Finland, Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Jonathon Porritt: Germany’s nuclear nous vs UK nuclear nutters.

So that’s another dead duck in the case made for new nuclear. Which just leaves the final barrier: the continuing reality that our nuclear weapons capability still depends very heavily on maintaining a civil nuclear power programme – not just to guarantee a continuing supply of nuclear engineers and R&D funding, but to keep the public in the dark about the increasingly insupportable costs of renewing our notionally ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent.

I’m celebrating today – for the simple reason that Germany closed down its three remaining nuclear reactors on Saturday 15th April.

I’ve followed the nuclear debate in Germany ever since I first got involved in green politics back in the 1970s, and was hugely inspired by the campaigns of Die Grünen against both nuclear power and nuclear weapons – seeing the two as inextricably linked. Interestingly, it’s as controversial a debate now as it was then – with a majority of people in Germany (including some Die Grünen voters) still believing that nuclear power should be part of the electricity mix.

As I argued back in 2011, I did not agree with the decision of the Merkel Government (in coalition with Die Grünen) to close down all its remaining reactors in response to the Fukushima disaster – well before the end of their scheduled operational lifetime. Inevitably, this decision caused an (albeit temporary) increase in burning coal and gas.

That’s now water under the bridge – and Germany’s energy system will now be completely nuclear-free, even if it will be dealing with the legacy of its nuclear waste for many years to come. As the German Environment Minster, Steffi Lemke, said: ‘Three generations have benefitted from nuclear power in Germany, but about 30,000 generations will be affected by the ongoing presence of nuclear waste.’

But my celebration has been sadly attenuated by the current nuclear frenzy going on here in the UK. I’ve been through many periods of nuclear hype over the years, but nothing quite like this one – with all the mainstream political parties, the industry itself and all mainstream media (including some sorely deluded muppets in the BBC and the Guardian) ramping up their ‘nuclear renaissance’ rhetoric in increasingly dishonest and fact-free ways.

I suspect they see this as a ‘now or never’ moment before economic reality kills off nuclear power once and for all – when that combination of renewables-storage-efficiency is so massively outperforming nuclear as to starve all nuclear options of the capital they will still need. Government subsidy can only go so far.

In the meantime, however, we have a Government still strenuously seeking investors in its godforsaken plans for two more ludicrously expensive reactors at Sizewell C – an asset that already looks totally stranded even before a Final Investment Decision is taken.

Even that, however, is just a sideshow in comparison to the hype around prospects for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) here in the UK. In March, the Chancellor announced a new competition to identify the best value SMR design for the UK, with a view to its eventually handing over a full £1bn in co-funding to get that design off the ground. Ludicrous. But full marks to the Tories for ‘recycling’ here: the announcement sounded almost identical to the earlier competition it announced back in March 2016. (And it was only the fifth time that the Chancellor reconfirmed plans for a new Great British Nuclear agency!)

Apart from the nuclear industry itself, and all its happy-clappy cheerleaders, the majority of independent commentators continue to point out that SMRs cannot possibly deliver what we now need: safe, affordable, ultra-low-carbon electricity that can actually make a practical difference in meeting our Net Zero target by 2035.

And that’s before one thinks about the nuclear waste nightmare: a new study published in Proceedings of the American National Academy of Sciences estimates that SMRs will create 30 times as much nuclear waste (per unit of electricity generated) as conventional reactors.

It’s all just a massive waste of time and public money – but with devastating consequences. If we could just free ourselves of our residual hankering after nuclear power, we could (finally!) double down on the infinitely more cost-effective renewables-storage-efficiency alternatives. With massive benefits in terms of decarbonisation, jobs, addressing fuel poverty and so on.

The case for this transition (away from fossil fuels and nuclear) is now incontrovertible but two remaining barriers stand in the way of us doing what Germany has managed to do.

The first is the endlessly repeated argument from nuclear industry spokespeople that nuclear power is the only way of providing the baseload generation our current electricity supply system depends on – once big thermal coal and gas plants are taken off the grid. There was indeed a time when grid stability depended on ‘always on’ big power stations. But that is now widely seen (outside the nuclear industry) to be a completely outmoded concept.

……………………… , the Government acknowledges that there is now no specific baseload expectations of nuclear or anything else. It is now all about ‘lowest cost’, rather than baseload,………..

So that’s another dead duck in the case made for new nuclear. Which just leaves the final barrier: the continuing reality that our nuclear weapons capability still depends very heavily on maintaining a civil nuclear power programme – not just to guarantee a continuing supply of nuclear engineers and R&D funding, but to keep the public in the dark about the increasingly insupportable costs of renewing our notionally ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent.

Which takes us right back to the origins of the German anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s. These ‘evil twins’, nuclear weapons and nuclear power, have forever been joined at the hip, and always will be until the world rids itself of the deadly incubus of nuclear weaponry.

April 20, 2023 Posted by | politics, UK | 1 Comment

As Germany ends nuclear era, activist says there is still more to do

By Riham Alkousaa 13 Apr 23 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-ends-nuclear-era-activist-says-still-more-do-2023-04-15/?fbclid=IwAR2vNrwrRP0HzRERH0bM02b4-zC1-Zd9NAhDKtbpSleRXrTvHbRlOa0HRzs

  • Germany is closing its last three reactors on Saturday
  • Smital says protest against nuclear power is not over
  • Cites fuel assembly, enrichment facilities still operating
  • Anti-nuclear movement helped spawn Germany’s Greens

BERLIN, April 15 (Reuters) – Heinz Smital was a 24-year-old nuclear physics researcher when he first saw how far nuclear contamination could spread after the Chornobyl disaster in 1986.

A few days after it occurred he waved a damp cloth out of a window at the University of Vienna to sample the city’s air and was shocked by how many radionuclides could be seen under a microscope.

“Technetium, Cobalt, Cesium 134, Cesium 137 …Chornobyl was 1,000 kilometres away … That made an impression,” Smital, now 61, said as he told Reuters about his life-long activism against nuclear power in Germany.

On Saturday Germany will shut off its last three reactors, ending six decades of nuclear power which helped spawn one of Europe’s strongest protest movements and the political party that governs Berlin today, the Greens.

“I can look back on a great many successes where I saw injustice and many years later, there was a breakthrough,” Smital said, showing a photo of himself in 1990s in front of the Unterweser Nuclear Power Plant, which was closed in 2011 following the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to Fukushima by doing what no other Western leader had done, passing a law to exit nuclear by 2022.

An estimated 50,000 protesters in Germany formed a 45-kilometre long (27-mile) human chain after the Fukushima disaster from Stuttgart to the Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Plant. Merkel would announce Germany’s planned nuclear exit within weeks.

“We really stood hand in hand at a certain point in time. I was also in the chain … It was impressive how that formed,” Smital said.

“That was a great feeling of a movement and also of belonging …a very nice, communal, exciting feeling that also develops a power,” Smital said.

One of the long-running movement’s early successes came in the 1970s when it managed to get plans for a nuclear plant in Wyhl in western Germany overturned.

THE GREENS

In parallel, a divided Germany during the Cold War also saw a peace movement evolve amid concerns among Germans that their land could become a battlefield between the two camps.

“This produced a strong peace movement and the two movements reinforced each other,” said Nicolas Wendler, a spokesperson for Germany’s nuclear technology industry group KernD.

Moving from street protests to organised political work with the establishment of the Greens party in 1980 gave the movement more power.

It was a Greens-coalition government that introduced the country’s first nuclear phase-out law in 2002.

The nuclear phase-out is a Greens project … and all parties have practically adopted it,” said Rainer Klute, head of pro-nuclear non-profit association Nuklearia.

On Saturday, both Smital and Klute stood as protesters at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, one celebrating the end of nuclear power, the other lamenting its demise.

“We have no other choice but to accept the phase-out for the time being,” Klute said.

Yet for Smital, the reactor closures do not mean the end of his activism.

“We have a uranium fuel assemblies factory in Germany … we have uranium enrichment, so there is still a lot that needs to be discussed here and I will be on the street a lot …very gladly,” he said.

Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; editing by Jason Neely

April 20, 2023 Posted by | Germany, opposition to nuclear, politics | Leave a comment

Germany’s last nukes shut down — Beyond Nuclear

As planned, Germany closed the last of its three operational reactors on April 15. These were kept running beyond their original December 2022 shutdown dates, largely as a political concession to conservative minority partners within the German government, as their electricity was not actually needed. The German winter energy crunch was related to a cutoff of gas imports from Russia, needed for heating. Since German heating is not electric, nuclear power had no role to play in easing that situation.

Amidst all the false propaganda in circulation that the German nuclear shutdown has caused a rise in coal use in Germany, it’s important to note an important historical fact that is the genesis for the German green energy revolution — known in Germany as the Energiewende.

Germany’s last nukes shut down — Beyond Nuclear

The Renewable Energy Act of 2000 stipulated as a pre-condition, that if nuclear power plants were to be shut down, these would be replaced by renewable energy and not by fossil fuels. And by creating a favorable and reliable investment environment for renewables, this is exactly what happened. Given its starting point in 2000, the growth of renewables has been stratospheric and Germany is well on target for its 2045 carbon-neutral goal. It also plans to phase out all coal use by 2038 at the latest and possibly by 2030. Moreover, while the nuclear share of Germany’s electricity market in 2000 was around 30%, today it is less than 6%.

Recent slight increases in brown coal (lignite) production in Germany were not for domestic consumption but market driven and, ironically, to meet winter electricity needs in nuclear France, which saw more than half of its not-so-reliable nuclear power fleet go down. More information about why Germany’s Energiewende is working, can be found in the 5th edition of our Talking Points. (Headline photo: Jakob Huber/Wikimedia Commons)

April 19, 2023 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

SEN. MARKEY AND REP. LIEU ANNOUNCE LEGISLATION TO LIMIT U.S. PRESIDENT’S POWER TO UNILATERALLY START NUCLEAR WAR

 https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-markey-and-rep-lieu-announce-legislation-to-limit-us-presidents-power-to-unilaterally-start-nuclear-war

17 Apr 23

Bill would  prevent any American president from launching a nuclear first strike without Congressional approval

Bill Text (PDF)

Washington (April 14, 2023) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, and Representative Ted Lieu (CA-33) today announced the reintroduction of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act to prohibit any United States President from launching a nuclear strike without prior authorization from Congress. The legislation would also institute safeguards to prevent the president from introducing nuclear weapons in a conflict and reaffirm Congress’ singular constitutional authority to declare war. The reintroduction of Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act comes after a year of reckless nuclear threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin in his war of aggression against Ukraine. Fifty-four years ago this week, on April 15, 1969, North Korea shot down a U.S. military plane. According to top aides present at the time, an intoxicated President Richard Nixon allegedly ordered a nuclear strike in response. Thankfully, that order was disregarded and never carried out – however, it exposed the dangerous possibility of a rogue U.S. president ordering a nuclear strike without Congressional authorization.

“No president has the right or the constitutional authority to unilaterally declare war, let alone launch a nuclear first strike,” said Senator Markey. “In the face of Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats, Congress must pass the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act to reaffirm its authority and make clear to world leaders that the United States will uphold its commitment to peace, stability, and democracy.”

“Our founders established a system of checks and balances for a reason—no one person should have the ability to launch a war that would end life as we know it,” said Representative Lieu. “Congress alone has the constitutional duty to declare war, and decide whether a nuclear launch is necessary. In the wake of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine, and given the volatility of autocrats like war criminal Vladimir Putin, the threat presented by unpredictable use of nuclear weapons has never been clearer. I’m proud to join Senator Markey in reintroducing this important legislation, which will establish necessary guardrails to the President’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.”

A copy of the legislation can be found HERE.

The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act is endorsed by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Council for a Livable World, Foreign Policy for America, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Global Zero, Win Without War, and Ploughshares Fund.

In 2022, Senators Markey and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Representatives John Garamendi (CA-03) and Don Beyer (VA-08) led 51 of their colleagues in a letter to President Joe Biden urging the U.S. to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons. On the one-year anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the lawmakers condemned President Putin’s nuclear threats and Russia’s violation of the New START Treaty.

April 19, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

German nuclear phaseout – a victory of reason over the lust for profit

Millions of people worked towards this day for years. People who protested
against reprocessing plants, nuclear waste transport, unsafe nuclear waste
storage facilities and the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Those decades of resistance were worth it. The German nuclear phase-out is a
victory of reason over the lust for profit; over powerful corporations and
their client politicians.

It is a people-powered success against all the
odds. I thank all the brave people who took risks for their beliefs;
everyone who took part in demonstrations; all the people who signed
petitions and sent letters of protest. And I’m proud of the role Greenpeace
has played in opposing high-risk nuclear technology.

Greenpeace 15th April 2023 https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/59219/tschuss-atomkraft-end-nuclear-power-germany/

Tschüss, Atomkraft: the end of nuclear power in Germany

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Virginia lawmakers kill Governor Youngkin’s amendment to define nuclear energy as renewable

The Hill, BY ZACK BUDRYK – 04/14/23 

Virginia’s Democratic-controlled Senate rejected an amendment to an energy bill this week that would have allowed nuclear and hydrogen power to qualify as renewables.

In a 22-18 party line vote on Wednesday, the Senate rejected several amendments offered by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to state legislation that would qualify certain biomass facilities as renewable energy.

Mike Town, executive director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, said the organization is “grateful” for the vote…………………………..

The vote is the latest clash between Youngkin and the upper chamber of the legislature on environment and energy issues…………………….   https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3951137-virginia-lawmakers-kill-youngkin-amendment-to-define-nuclear-energy-as-renewable/

April 17, 2023 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

A new era’: Germany quits nuclear power, closing its final three plants

“There will be a moment of decision as to whether nuclear really has a future”

By Laura Paddison, Nadine Schmidt and Inke Kappeler, CNN, 15 Apr 23

Germany’s final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday, marking the end of the country’s nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades.

Nuclear power has long been contentious in Germany.

There are those who want to end reliance on a technology they view as unsustainable, dangerous and a distraction from speeding up renewable energy.

But for others, closing down nuclear plants is short-sighted. They see it as turning off the tap on a reliable source of low-carbon energy at a time when drastic cuts to planet-heating pollution are needed.

Even as these debates rumble on, and despite last-minute calls to keep the plants online amid an energy crisis, the German government has been steadfast.

“The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable,” Steffi Lemke, Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, told CNN.

“We are embarking on a new era of energy production,” she said.

A plan decades in the making

The closure of the three plants – Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim – represents the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago. But its roots are even older.

In the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement in Germany emerged. Disparate groups came together to protest new power plants, concerned about the risks posed by the technology and, for some, the link to nuclear weapons. The movement gave birth to the Green Party, which is now part of the governing coalition.

Nuclear accidents fueled the opposition: The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl that created a cloud of radioactive waste which reached parts of Germany.

In 2000, the German government pledged to phase out nuclear power and start shutting down plants. But when a new government came to power in 2009, it seemed – briefly – as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy.

Then Fukushima happened.

In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to melt down. For many in Germany, Japan’s worst nuclear disaster was confirmation “that assurances that a nuclear accident of a large scale can’t happen are not credible,” Miranda Schreurs, professor of environment and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich, told CNN.

Three days later then-Chancellor Angela Merkel – a physicist who was previously pro-nuclear – made a speech called it an “inconceivable catastrophe for Japan” and a “turning point” for the world. She announced Germany would accelerate a nuclear phase-out, with older plants shuttered immediately.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, provided another plot twist.

Fearful of its energy security without Russian gas, the German government delayed its plan to close the final three plants in December 2022. Some urged a rethink.

But the government declined, agreeing to keep them running only until April 15.

For those in the anti-nuclear movement, it’s a moment of victory.

“It is a great achievement for millions of people who have been protesting nuclear in Germany and worldwide for decades,” Paul-Marie Manière, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, told CNN

A polarizing energy

For critics of Germany’s policy, however, it’s irrational to turn off a low-carbon source of energy as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify……………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………..supporters of the nuclear shutdown argue it will ultimately hasten the end of fossil fuels.

Germany has pledged to close its last coal-fired power station no later than 2038, with a 2030 deadline in some areas. It’s aiming for 80% of electricity to come from renewables by the end of this decade.

While more coal was added in the months following Fukushima, Schreurs said, nuclear shutdowns have seen a big push on clean energy. “That urgency and demand can be what it takes to push forward on the growth of renewables,” she said.

Representatives for Germany’s renewable energy industry said the shutdown will open the door for more investment into clean energy……….

Representatives for Germany’s renewable energy industry said the shutdown will open the door for more investment into clean energy.

“Germany’s phase-out of nuclear power is a historic event and an overdue step in energy terms,” Simone Peter, president of the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE), told CNN. “It is high time that we leave the nuclear age behind and consistently organize the renewable age.”

The impacts of nuclear power shouldn’t be overlooked either, Schreurs said, pointing to the carbon pollution created by uranium mining as well as the risk of health complications for miners. Plus, it creates a dependency on Russia, which supplies uranium for nuclear plants, she added.

Nuclear has also shown itself to have vulnerabilities to the climate crisis. France was forced to reduce nuclear power generation last year as the rivers used to cool reactors became too hot during Europe’s blistering heatwave.

A million-year problem

Now Germany must work out what do with the deadly, high-level radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Currently, the nuclear waste is kept in interim storage next to the nuclear plants being decommissioned. But the search is on to find a permanent location where the waste can be stored safely for a million years.

The site needs to be deep – hundreds of meters underground. Only certain types of rock will do: Crystalline granite, rock salt or clay rock. It must be geologically stable with no risks of earthquakes or signs of underground rivers.

The process is likely to be fraught, complex and breathtakingly long – potentially lasting more than 100 years.

BGE, the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal, estimates a final site won’t be chosen until between 2046 and 2064. After that, it will take decades more to build the repository, fill it with the waste and seal it.

What are other countries doing?

Plenty of other countries are treading paths similar to Germany’s. Denmark passed a resolution in the 1980s not to construct nuclear power plants, Switzerland voted in 2017 to phase out nuclear power, Italy closed its last reactors in 1990 and Austria’s one nuclear plant has never been used.

But, in the context of the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices and pressure to reduce carbon pollution, others still want nuclear in the mix.

The UK, in the process of building a nuclear power plant, said in its recent climate strategy that energy nuclear power has a “crucial” role in “creating secure, affordable and clean energy.”

France, which gets about 70% of its power from nuclear, is planning six new reactors, and Finland opened a new nuclear plant last year. Even Japan, still dealing with the aftermath of Fukushima, is considering restarting reactors.

The US, the world’s biggest nuclear power, is also investing in nuclear energy and, in March, started up a new nuclear reactor, Vogtle 3 in Georgia – the first in years.

But experts suggest this doesn’t mark the start of a nuclear ramp up. Vogtle 3 came online six years late and at a cost of $30 billion, twice the initial budget.

It encapsulates the big problem that afflicts the whole nuclear industry: making the economics add up. New plants are expensive and can take more than a decade to build. “Even the countries that are talking pro-nuclear are having big trouble developing nuclear power,” Schreurs said.

Many nuclear power plants in Europe, the US and elsewhere are aging – plants have an operating life of around 40 to 60 years. As Germany puts an end to its nuclear era, it’s coming up to crunch time for others, Schreurs said.

“There will be a moment of decision as to whether nuclear really has a future”

CNN’s Chris Stern contributed reporting.

April 16, 2023 Posted by | Germany, politics | 1 Comment

Nuclear storage dump opponents sweep into Theddlethorpe parish council

Residents have organised against storage plans

The Lincolnite, By Daniel Jaines Local Democracy Reporter 13 Apr 23

Candidates opposing a nuclear storage dump have surged to power in Theddlethorpe in a demonstration of local opposition.

Eight of the ten seats on two Theddlethorpe Parish Councils – St Helen’s and All Saints – have been filled uncontested by people against to Nuclear Waste Service’s plans for a Geological Disposal Facility in the village.

Nearby residents were in uproar after it was announced last year that the Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal could become the entry point for a nuclear storage facility to dispose of around 10% of the UK’s nuclear waste.

The new councillors, who will automatically become councillors after the May 4 local elections, are all part of Theddlethorpe Residents Association.

Members Brian Swift and Andrew Spink formed it after their application to join the parish councils were rejected in 2021.

Mr Swift said: “We were both turned down, but shortly after this we got together with a few neighbours and formed the Theddlethorpe Residents Association with the aim to give the parish a collective voice and to counter the PC’s negative stance.”

Since its inception, the residents association has garnered more than 120 members and holds regular events.

However, Mr Swift said the anti-GDF sentiment of the members would not mean other views would be unwelcome.

“Despite the fact that the majority of the councillors are now anti-GDF ,we are keen to stress that all points of view are welcome. Our priorities are to carry out the parish council’s functions to the best of our ability and to do our utmost to see that the village thrives and continues to be the friendly, united place we all call home,” he said………………………. more https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2023/04/nuclear-storage-dump-opponents-sweep-into-theddlethorpe-parish-council/—

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April 15, 2023 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, politics, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear is not the solution to our energy troubles.

France pays a price for its energy security. President Macron has announced plans to build 6 new reactors by 2050 – and they’re much needed to replace the country’s ageing fleet of power stations – but he was warned very publicly just two months ago that he needs to have a credible programme to deal with the fourth issue: nuclear waste and both from the new planned plants and from the new ones. Right now, France’s nuclear waste facilities are close to over-flowing. In reality, if you’re worried about reactor safety, you should really be a lot more worried about nuclear waste. The full decommissioning process for a nuclear plant takes between 20 and 30 years. ……………….Furthermore, those small, modular nuclear power stations on which the Tory position relies? According to research published last year by Stanford University and the University of British Columbia, they produce more waste than conventional nuclear power plants.

Reaction Giga Watt, April 13, 2023

Both the current UK government and the likely next government want to embrace nuclear power. 

Rishi Sunak has commissioned an energy review that will focus on “carbon capture and storage, small modular reactors and the like”. Keir Starmer’s proposed “Great British Energy” would invest in nuclear energy alongside wind, solar, tidal and other emerging technologies. There’s nothing new about nuclear power and if it was the solution to all our problems – and on the face of it, it should be – the world would have already fully embraced nuclear, risks and all. So why haven’t we?

…………  burning fossil fuels is very much not consequence free and we’re only just starting to get serious about those consequences and no amount of “clean” coal, unleaded fuel, catalytic converters, wonderful though they are, can make up for this.

Secondly, nuclear power is scary: the world’s first public demonstrations of nuclear power were at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Roughly once a decade since then, the world has provided us with reminders of just how frightening nuclear power can be: the Cuban Missile Crisis, Three Mile Island, Exercise Able Archer, Chernobyl, Fukushima and Zaporizhzhia are all examples from the past 60 years where the perils of a nuclear world have been brought home to us. 

………………………………………………………………….. It’s also true that the rise of more sophisticated terrorist organisations made the public and thereby politicians wary of the nuclear industry especially from 9/11 onwards. If terrorists can fly two large aeroplanes into the heart of the biggest financial centre in the world then surely an isolated power station would be a much easier target………….. At Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine during the current conflict, the issue is less about the impact on the reactors themselves from Russian shelling but the impact on waste storage facilities and power supplies to cooling and safety systems

……….As the Zaporizhzhia reactors were being switched off, they still needed to be continuously cooled with water from the Dnieper to ensure safe shutdown because they produce so much heat. Uranium-filled fuel rods, the source of nuclear fission within the reactor, are immersed in water for around 10 years after they are used before they reach a temperature at which they can be safely handled. It’s this efficiency that makes nuclear power an unusual part of the energy mix as, unlike gas or coal, you can’t easily turn the output up or down. Nuclear energy just is.

This means that in a system that requires flexibility, and remembering that UK electricity demand can swing between 40 GWs and 20 GWs in just one day, nuclear power is unsuited to modern demands. ………………….

France pays a price for its energy security. President Macron has announced plans to build 6 new reactors by 2050 – and they’re much needed to replace the country’s ageing fleet of power stations – but he was warned very publicly just two months ago that he needs to have a credible programme to deal with the fourth issue: nuclear waste and both from the new planned plants and from the new ones. Right now, France’s nuclear waste facilities are close to over-flowing. In reality, if you’re worried about reactor safety, you should really be a lot more worried about nuclear waste. The full decommissioning process for a nuclear plant takes between 20 and 30 years. ……………….Furthermore, those small, modular nuclear power stations on which the Tory position relies? According to research published last year by Stanford University and the University of British Columbia, they produce more waste than conventional nuclear power plants.

Part of the problem with waste is that, even as we approach the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear power stations, there is still no global consensus on how best to handle high level nuclear waste because the timeframes are so immense. What seems like an obvious solution today – for example, storing waste in deep geological repositories hundreds of metres below the ground – may end up being a total disaster in 500 or even 5,000 years’ time. What do those timescales mean? It means asking Henry VIII, King of England in 1523, to make decisions about the country we live in today. Unsurprisingly we have ended up with a halfway house: everyone agrees that toxic waste can be treated and converted into less dangerous (but still very dangerous) forms; everyone also agrees that it’s probably best if it’s stored underground but no one can yet agree what underground means and what the risks will be over the centuries to come.

And if the timescales are immense, then so are the costs: the Sellafield facility in Cumbria is being decommissioned with a current cost estimate of £121 billion which does not included the placing of the waste from the site into a geological disposal facility, the location and timing of which are to be determined, which will cost another £53 billion.

At least Henry VIII would not have had to deal with our fifth hurdle: the British planning system and an island cluttered with around 65 million people and it’s this, perhaps above all, that makes new nuclear projects vanishingly unlikely. I don’t want to live next to a nuclear power station of any size and I doubt many Reaction subscribers would either but because we live in an age of Nimbyism, it’s doubtful that any of us will be asked to do so anyway. Even if we are, and if the project is approved, investment is found and if construction starts, you can look forward to the project, counting from today, delivering power in roughly 2035 and that’s being very optimistic.

……………………. over the past ten years, the UK has done so much to change its energy mix that investing in nuclear now, with all the cost, time and controversy involved, would be a significant mistake. It seems unlikely that it will take Sunak and Starmer, arch-pragmatists that they both are, very long to work this out.  https://reaction.life/nuclear-is-not-the-solution-to-our-energy-troubles/

April 15, 2023 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Holtec seeking $300M from Michigan to restart Palisades nuclear plant

Beth LeBlanc and Carol Thompson, The Detroit News 13 Apr 23

Lansing — The Florida-based owner of a shuttered nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan is asking the State of Michigan for roughly $300 million in taxpayer assistance to help it restart operations at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station.

Holtec International approached a few regional lawmakers recently about the plan, but a formal request has not yet been made to the state, said Rep. Joey Andrews, a St. Joseph Democrat who represents Covert Township in Van Buren County, where the nuclear plant is located.

“It’s bridge money to help them get from ending the decommissioning process to beginning operating against,” Andrews said of the funding request, which was first reported by The Herald-Palladium.

The more than 50-year-old plan was decommissioned by then-owner Entergy Nuclear last year before the company sold the facility to Holtec. The nuclear power plant shut down last May.

Holtec said it was approached by the state last month to restart the plant to address “the need for zero-emission clean energy.” Representatives for the energy company presented plans last month to resume operations at the plant to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission………………………….

State Rep. Angela Witwer, the Delta Township Democrat who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said she had not yet received a formal request for the funding. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment……………………….

……..the $300 million inventive request from Holtec would rank among the largest in straight incentive payments the state has given to businesses.

The restart of the Palisades plant would mark the first time an American nuclear plant resumed operations after being decommissioned………..

Holtec currently is using a decommissioning trust funded by Consumers Energy customers to pay the salaries of the roughly 220 workers decommissioning the site. But the money is restricted to decommissioning efforts and can’t be used to restart a plant, Andrews said…………………………

The reopening has met opposition from anti-nuclear groups worried about the challenges of reversing decommissioning.

 https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/politics/michigan/2023/04/12/holtec-seeking-300-million-from-michigan-to-restart-palisades-nuclear-power-plant-lake-michigan/70109338007/

April 14, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

German government rejects new call to delay nuclear shutdown

The German government has dismissed calls for a last-minute delay in shutting down the country’s last three nuclear power plants this weekend

By FRANK JORDANS – Associated Press, Apr 12, 2023

BONN, Germany (AP) — The German government dismissed calls Wednesday for a last-minute delay in shutting down the country’s last three nuclear power plants this weekend.

Opposition politicians and even some members of the Free Democrats, a libertarian party that’s part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing alliance, have demanded a reprieve for the remaining reactors, which were already operating without requisite safety checks.

“The nuclear phase-out by April 15, that’s this Saturday, is a done deal,” Scholz spokesperson Christiane Hoffmann said.

Successive German governments planned a phase-out of nuclear power. The last three plants originally were scheduled to shut down on Dec. 31, 2022. Scholz ordered a postponement last year amid concerns that Germany might face an energy shortage due to the war in Ukraine.

Lawmakers approved the extension on the condition the plants, which began operation more than 30 years ago, would cease operating by mid-April of this year……………..

[Keeping the reactors going] would be both illegal and costly, according to Environment Ministry spokesperson Bastian Zimmermann. The ministry oversees nuclear safety in Germany.

Zimmermann said the three reactors — Emsland, Neckarwestheim and Isar II — last underwent safety checks in 2009 and such inspections normally need to occur every 10 years. The requirement was only suspended due to the shutdown planned for the end of 2022, he said.

Any further lifetime extension for the plants would require comprehensive and lengthy security checks again, Zimmermann said.

The country is still searching for a location to permanently store almost 2,000 containers of highly radioactive waste for thousands of generations.

The Economy Ministry dismissed concerns that Germany won’t be able to meet its energy needs without the nuclear power plants, which currently produce about 5% of the country’s electricity.

Ministry spokesperson Beate Baron said recent studies showed Germany would be able to maintain its power supply with coal and gas-fired power plants and renewables such as wind and solar, while remaining a net exporter of electricity.

Baron said the government wants to phase in the use of hydrogen that can be produced without greenhouse gas emissions and fired up quickly on days when there’s little sun or wind for renewables.  https://www.atchisonglobenow.com/news/world/german-government-rejects-new-call-to-delay-nuclear-shutdown/article_93c1beb6-7d8a-51ed-b48d-68ac8ba0fbb3.html

April 13, 2023 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Netherlands energy experts recommend limiting energy demand, see little or no role for nuclear power, but Cabinet wants nuclear anyway.

Cabinet moving forward with nuclear plant plans, despite experts seeing “limited role” NL Times 13 Apr 23,

Minister Rob Jetten for Climate and Energy will move forward with plans to build two new nuclear power plants, he said at the presentation of Expert Team Energy System 2050’s advice on making the Netherlands climate neutral. In that advice, presented in The Hague on Wednesday, the team of experts sees “no or a limited role” for nuclear energy…………….

The final decision on the nuclear power plants will be made in about a year and a half,” Jetten said. “This advice will also be taken into account.”

In the report, the expert team said that new nuclear power plants only make sense if the demand for electricity doubles or triples and the Netherlands has to supply energy to neighboring countries.

The report was also critical of the Cabinet’s choice of Borssele as the destination for the nuclear power plants. According to the Cabinet, Borssele already has knowledge, experience, and support for working with nuclear power, and the energy can be converted into hydrogen. But experts don’t see it as a good choice. “A lot of electricity is already being generated at the coast with wind farms at sea. With nuclear power plants added, the electricity grid is overloaded.”………………………………………

For the energy transition to succeed, it is necessary to limit the energy demand. And that will require cooperation from citizens. The experts see many opportunities in local energy systems. In 2050, many neighborhoods should be energy-neutral or even energy-positive, using energy generated in the district for their limited consumption. If the energy generated remains in the neighborhood, it puts little strain on the high-voltage grids.

Citizen involvement and fairness are the most essential conditions for a successful energy transition, the experts said. “In order to achieve our climate goals, our energy system must be CO2 neutral within 20 years. We can only do that if we put citizens first and offer them opportunities and support to participate, now, here, later, and elsewhere,” co-author Aniek Moonen said. As an example of a fairer policy, she mentioned tackling poorly insulated homes and investing in locally generated energy. 

 https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/12/cabinet-moving-forward-nuclear-plant-plans-despite-experts-seeing-limited-role
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April 13, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

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