No thanks to nuclear power policy

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20. Mai 2005 By Stefan Dietrich
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Many of the politicians who are in power today cut their political teeth in battles waged under the banner of “Atomic energy? No thanks!“ Now, as responsible, mature politicians they might look back on some of their beliefs from those good old days and chuckle. But the memory of the fight against nuclear energy remains sacrosanct. As a result, Germany has taken an energy course that is hard to comprehend and even harder to justify.
For a long time, the majority of the public shared the parties' objection to nuclear energy. But this feeling has faltered for those who have now grasped the correlation between rising energy prices and the “asparagus fields“ of wind turbines that the government has planted on once pristine countrysides. These doubts are likely to grow as the nuclear shutdown plan created by the national coalition of Social Democrats and Greens takes hold. The process will make clear that Germany will have few followers among the 31 countries that use atomic energy.
So far the coalition's “turnaround“ has been consistent only in its destructive element: The use of nuclear energy, which provides half of the basic load supply of electricity, will be discontinued under a plan that will shut down all 19 nuclear power plants by 2020. The planned nuclear waste storage facilities in Gorleben and Konrad are on hold. And public research funding in this area has been basically halted.
But the federal government still has left a central question unanswered: How will a continuous supply of energy be secured once all of the nuclear plants are out of service?
The government is planning to more than double the “generating capacity“ of wind energy, in particular with large, sea-based wind farms in the next 10 years. On paper, at least, the “generating capacity“ of 36,000 megawatts would make up for the lost production from the nuclear plants. But, in reality, one can expect only a fixed increase of 2,200 megawatts, according to a report by the German Energy Agency. Wind is just too unreliable. Ninety-four percent of the energy supply would have to be covered some other way. Solar power will be able to make only a symbolic contribution. A substitute for nuclear energy is supposed to come from natural-gas power plants. But they produce carbon dioxide.
Because wind energy is produced so far away from consumers, we will soon need 850 kilometers (528 miles) of new power lines, projected to cost about €1.1 billion ($1.4 billion). In northern Germany, people are already calling for subterranean lines, which would increase the price by at least eight times. Investments in the high double-digit billions will be devoured by the wind farms at sea and the necessary sea cables. The law on renewable energy already states that consumers will have to pay for that.
The Greens and environmental associations are surprisingly insensitive when it comes to the potential environmental hazards that arise from the industrial generation of electricity with wind rotors. In the past, the existence of hamsters and bats was enough to stall important infrastructure projects for decades. Today, “bird strike“ by wind turbines is just as negligible as the greatly increased threat of ship accidents. The top priority is to comply with the Kyoto protocol, which is designed to reduce pollution caused by green house gases. But when it comes to reducing carbon dioxide, the use of wind energy is not the best solution. To achieve this goal, it costs four times as much as investing in the increased efficiency of conventional power plants or electrical appliances. With solar energy, the ratio is even more unfavorable.
Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin is betting on global market prices for fossil fuels to finally reach the level that the Greens wanted it to attain back in the 1990s: DM5 per liter of gasoline. That amounts to €2.56 today. The federal government has driven this process quite far already by imposing various surtaxes and compensation regulations. But the effort has scared off investors who are frightened not only by high wages and taxes, but also by the highest energy prices in Europe. Only the awakening of a new generation will be able to chase away this ghost.

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