50,000 join anti-nuclear power march in Berlin
The Local 5 Sep 09
Some 50,000 anti-nuclear protestors demonstrated in Berlin on Saturday against Germany possibly reversing a decision to abandon atomic energy and extending the life of its nuclear power plants. Continue reading
Germany in nuclear turmoil before election
For Merkel, no clear way out of nuclear woes
PRESS TV 06 Sep 2009 Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany escalates ahead of national election, with some 50,000 activists marching in Berlin to demand the shut down of the country’s 17 aging nuclear power plants. Continue reading
German customers are saying ‘No Thanks” to nuclear power
Many German customers are saying ‘No Thanks” to nuclear power
American German Business News Flavia Westerwelle 24 August 09
After the recent nuclear reactor shutdown at the Vattenfall Kruemmel nuclear plant near Hamburg, Germany, many German customers are preferring green energy.On July 4th, 2009 the Kruemmel nuclear plant near Hamburg had been running for less than two weeks after a two year shutdown, when a sudden drop of voltage send shopping centers and traffic lights in Germany’s second largest city into an hour long blackout.After this incident the green energy company Lichtblick saw a dramatic jump in customers, with ca. 200 new customers per day.
This corresponds to a 70 % increase in customers for Lichtblick, a Hamburg-based company providing energy from renewable sources, with a mix of hydro, wind, solar and biomass power.It looks like the recent series of problems at nuclear plants combined with the issue of storing the nuclear waste has trigger a process of rethinking by many German customers eager to find a long term solution for Germany’s energy needs.
Many German customers are saying ‘No Thanks” to nuclear power « American-German Business News
Germany’s nuclear waste problem shows long term danger for waste storage
Salting it Away (and Other Problems with Nuclear Waste)
Miller McCune By: Michael Scott Moore | July 29, 2009
Germany’s vaunted salt mine solution for low-level nuclear waste has proven to be full of holes……………………….
Around 12,000 liters of groundwater leak into the mine every day. Some of it mixes with the radioactive waste. A few weeks ago, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) finally admitted that some brine collected in Asse II had traces of tritium and caesium 137.
But last year the German public learned that the group in charge of maintaining Asse II at the time had known about the accumulation of suspect water since 2005…………………….The public outrage led German politicians to take the mine out of the Helmholtz Institute’s hands and place it under the BfS. But Asse II has also leaked groundwater since at least 1988 — meaning, at the very least, that decades of Cold War research conducted there failed to solve some of the most basic problems of nuclear storage……………….Along with 120,000-odd barrels of radioactive slop, according to a report last year, highly radioactive plutonium waste and even a few spent fuel rods were dumped in the mine………….
It’s hubris for a government to think it can safely store nuclear waste beyond the lifetime of the government itself. The trouble with Asse II has been a chastening example. Political promises, stern-sounding policies, and even scientific assessments from 1989 (which said the mine had no leaks) all proved to be as full of holes as the mine itself.
Germany’s nuclear misadventures continue
PRESS TV 25 July 09
Technical problem at two more nuclear reactors in Germany have fuelled the anti-nuclear debate,…………………..The latest mishaps came less than three weeks after a fault at the Kruemmel reactor cuts power and water supplies to thousand of homes, breathing new life into the major campaign issue which has divided the country’s coalition government ahead of the September elections…..
…….a recent poll revealed more public opposition to atomic energy……………
…….Technical faults are not the only demons haunting the country’s nuclear issue.
Last week, a report by Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) questioned the safety of a controversial nuclear waste dump facility in Asse, rating the salt-mine storage facility as one of the most unreliable nuclear waste dumps in use after officials found radioactive water leak.
Nuclear reactor shuts down after malfunction
Nuclear reactor shuts down after malfunction
The Local 24 Jul 09
One of Germany’s most modern nuclear power stations was shut down on Friday due to a technical fault, operator RWE said, less than three weeks after problems at another reactor hit the headlines.
The Emsland reactor in northwest Germany, which supplies around 3.5 million households, underwent an automatic shutdown at 3:00 am (0100 GMT), RWE said in a statement……………………In early July, the Krümmel reactor near Hamburg was shut down after problems – not long after it had been reopened following two years of repairs.This reignited the nuclear debate in Germany, which decided in 2000 under then chancellor Gerhard Schröder to mothball its 17 reactors by about 2020 amid strong public opposition to atomic energy.
The World from Berlin: Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever
Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever
SPIEGEL ONLINE Josh Ward 17 July 09 Two recent mishaps have provided an opportunity for anti-nuclear forces in Germany — and their flagbearer, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel — to take the offensive. But some German commentators think that, in trying to win votes for his party, Gabriel might actually drive them into the arms of the Greens.German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel is taking advantage of two recent accidents related to the country’s nuclear energy industry to press home his — and most of the country’s — opposition to nuclear energy………………….……….The Krümmel nuclear power plant operated by the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall near Hamburg automatically shut down on July 4 after a fault in a transformer. And, on Tuesday, officials announced that the troubled Asse underground nuclear waste storage facility, a former salt mine, was having renewed problems with major water leakage………………….
……….According to a recent survey by the Forsa polling institute, almost two-thirds of Germans support the closing of the country’s remaining nuclear power plants.
The World from Berlin: Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International
Nuclear power regulation becomes political minefield
Nuclear power regulation becomes political minefield
Deutsche Welle 13.07.2009
A short circuit that led to an automatic shutdown at the Kruemmel nuclear power plant in northern Germany sparked a debate over who should oversee nuclear power operations and how tight regulation should be.
The malfunction was the second such incident in several days at the plant in northern Germany, which had only just re-opened after two years of repairs following a malfunction in a transformer that had caused a fire and a shutdown.
Vattenfall, the power plant’s operator, has since said it failed to install an important safety sensor, and that all of Kruemmel’s 80,000 fuel rods had to be checked after some appeared to be defective.
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Deutsche Welle 08.07.2009
Four days after a technical failure shut down a nuclear power station in northern Germany, operator Vattenfall admitted to having made a mistake, while Social Democrats and Green are urging a boycott.
Vattenfall admitted that a mistake had been made at the Kruemmel nuclear power station and confirmed that it had fired the plant manager. The Swedish operators said the head of the reactor had broken an agreement with German authorities to install discharge detectors on a transformer.
It was a short-circuit on one of the transformers that caused the Kruemmel plant to shut down last weekend, thus restricting power supplies across much of the city of Hamburg.
Vattenfall has now said it will not repair the electrical transformers, responsible for the supply of power to on-site machinery, but will replace them entirely. As a result, the reactor will not resume operations for several months.
The latest incident at Kruemmel, just one of many problems that have dogged the plant over the past years, has sparked furious political debate over the security of nuclear fuel technology.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4464985,00.html
Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region
Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region Google News By Arnaud Bouvier – 7 July 09 GEESTHACHT, Germany (AFP) — For 20 years, children from a small rural northern German region — where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite — have been contracting leukemia at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world and no one knows exactly why.Nineteen cases of leukemia among children under 15 have been recorded since 1989 in the region of Elbmarsch, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the city of Hamburg, three or four times the average rate.”Such a high rate of leukemia is unique in the world,” according to Hayo Dieckmann, a health official in the nearby town of Lueneburg who is also a medical doctor…………………………………………..
Campaigners, however, point out that within two kilometres of the region lie the Kruemmel nuclear power station and the GKSS scientific research centre, both of which they believe are to blame for the leukemia outbreaks.
The “citizens’ association against leukemia in Elbmarsch” (BI) believes that a nuclear accident took place at the GKSS centre, only six months after the devastating meltdown at Chernobyl.
The campaigners say that a radiation leak occurred at the centre — which operates a small nuclear reactor for research purposes — on September 12, 1986, which was later covered up by the authorities……………………………
Campaigners also point an accusing finger at the Kruemmel nuclear power plant which reopened on June 24 after a fire broke out there two years ago.
The plant hit headlines again at the weekend in the wake of two further malfunctions, one of which plunged part of Hamburg into darkness and knocked out the city’s traffic lights.
At the end of 2007, a national survey of nuclear power stations in Germany showed that the risk of contracting cancer rose dramatically for children living near a power plant.
Asse nuclear dump contains explosives
Asse nuclear dump contains explosives The Local 26 Jun 09 CETOnline: The controversial salt-mine nuclear waste storage facility in Asse, Lower Saxony is not only crumbling but also contains unknown amounts of explosive, it has emerged………………………………The DDP report said an explosives storage chamber still containing a variety of dynamite-related substances, can be found near the area where the radioactive waste is being kept.
Files from the Research Centre for the Environment and Health (GSF), which used to run the storage facility, show that over the last few years a bog of radioactive salt water has built up by the entrance to the explosive chamber.
‘The question now is not whether nuclear energy is clean, but is it sustainable to provide power?’
‘The question now is not whether nuclear energy is clean, but is it sustainable to provide power?’ indian express.com by Neha Sinha Jun 06, 2009 – “FRANZJOSEF SCHAUFHAUSEN, Deputy Director General of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, s………………………..Germany is trying to phase out nuclear energy and we don’t support nuclear energy becoming CDM projects. We have scientific studies on the table showing that it is possible to have a future without nuclear energy. We had a very long discussion in Germany on nuclear energy.
The question now is not whether nuclear energy is clean, but is it sustainable to provide power? The position of the German government is that nuclear energy is too risky. At the moment in Europe, we don’t have the possibility to store the very dangerous nuclear waste which is produced from nuclear energy. Also uranium is limited. We have to construct an energy future working with energy efficiency and renewable energy.
‘The question now is not whether nuclear energy is clean, but is it sustainable to provide power?’
Gorleben nuclear storage site developed illegally
Gorleben nuclear storage site developed illegally The Local 29 May 09lThe salt dome at the Gorleben nuclear waste depot was developed illegally to be permanent storage facility, according to an internal assessment by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) attained by daily Frankfurter Rundschau on Thursday. Since work began on the underground facility in the 1980s, only permission for “exploration” has been granted. But even without an official authorisation, the paper said that costs for assessing the salt dome for its suitability had been high because “the construction of the permanent storage depot was begun parallel to the investigation.”
The Federal Office for Radiation Protection did not want to confirm the existence of the document, but did admit that costs had been higher than necessary.
Some €1.5 billion has been invested in the site.
Work at Gorleben has been suspended since 2000, when the government decided to wait until 2010 to resume the controversial project.
The appearance of the documents has confirmed the doubts of nuclear energy opponents, who believed that Gorleben had been earmarked as a permanent storage depot before the safety of the salt dome had been adequately investigated.
Nuclear energy is deeply unpopular in Germany
Gorleben nuclear storage site developed illegally – The Local
Asse nuclear waste workers getting radiation scans
Asse nuclear waste workers getting radiation scans The Local : 22 May 09 12:31 CETOnline: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090522-19443.htmlThe Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) announced Friday they will take on a large operation to test radiation-exposure levels of both current and former workers at the atomic waste depot Asse near the town of Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. With this health monitoring programme, we want to find out if the cases of cancer and leukaemia of former Asse workers had anything to do with the radiation exposure of their work,” BfS spokesman Werner Nording said in a statement on the authority’s website…………………….Officials are now trying to determine what to do about dangerous nuclear waste which has been stored at the increasingly unstable site since 1978.
Asse nuclear waste workers getting radiation scans – The Local
1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?
1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?
Sydney Indymedia April 29th, 2009 By Diet Simon, adapting Cecile Lecomte’s report A 25-car train half a kilometre long has just carried 1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium through the most densely populated region of Germany – destination unknown, presumably France.
The train left Germany’s only uranium enrichment plant at Gronau (52° 12′, 160 km south of Hamburg) in the night from 27 to 28 April.Usually trains from the German-Dutch-British-owned enrichment plant close to the city of Münster and the Dutch border have taken depleted uranium to Rotterdam for shipment to Russia, where it’s been dumped in the open air.
The Urenco company is extremely secretive about the transports. This time journalists were told by federal police that the train headed for Duisburg and on to France.That would have taken the dangerous cargo through the densely populated Ruhr and Rhineland areas – if the police information is correct…………….
…….The train from Gronau was held up by two hours because a female French activist who lives in Germany, 27-year-old Cécile Lecomte, had abseiled over the tracks from a road overpass. She and other climbers have made such a name for themselves in disrupting nuclear transports that police now always have climbing specialists along on the trains to take the protesters down……….
………….”The aim is to reveal the secret atomic transports from the Gronau uranium enrichment plant and to draw people’s attention to the policy of Urenco,” she writes. ………………………..“Radioactivity knows no borders. What kind of an end to atomic power is it if Gronau is expanded, thereby supporting the construction of new nuclear plants – such as the EPR in Flamanville, France – by supplying the product to power stations all over the globe.
“The waste is carted right across Europe in secret transports. That is no solution to the nuclear waste problem. On the contrary, the population is exposed to ever more dangers, the environment is polluted ever more…..”………………….’
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