From: Kai Becker (kmb@kai-m-becker.de)
Date: Fri Mar 22 2002 - 01:43:58 MST
Am Freitag, 22. März 2002 02:48 schrieb Robert J. Bradbury:
> Are the folks over there *crazy*? (No offense to citizens
> in the respective countries intended.)
Ah-hm. The current deal between government and the power companies is based
on a total sum of terawatt the existing (16?) nuclear power plants in
Germany are permitted to produce. It's up to the companies, which of the
plants they want to switch off first.
The candidate of the german opposition btw had announced to remove this law
in case he wins the elections in September. Unfortunately, the power
companies said "no, thanks, we'll stay to the deal" ;-)
If you're interested in the reasons: Nuclear power is too expensive here.
German people get extremly nervous when a NPP is placed next to their house
and garden. Noone wants to live near any site that deals with radioactive
material, not even those who would vote pro nuclear power.
Planning and dealing with protests, law suits, hearings, etc. costs
enormous amounts of time and money. Considering the population density
here, you won't find a place far enough away from the cities.
Next problem is the waste. There is still no technology safe enough to keep
that stuff away from the biophere for the next 20.000 years. And the power
companies are required to provide an "Entsorgungsnachweis", the signed plan
how they will handle their waste and the costs. The existing technology is
also expensive here, because of very high safety measures.
All in all, nuclear power in Germany today is more expensive than old
fashioned carbon burning - or buying cheap (and unsafe) power from Czechia,
France or Russia. It's pure coincidence (and the magic of globalization),
that the commercial interests and the people's interests go into the same
direction. High risk technology has no good standing here. If the industry
in Europe will find the way to really modern and safe power technologies in
time remains to be seen.
Kai
P.S. IMHO, when we sum up all costs of fission based nuclear power
production, including everything necessary to minimize the risk of medium
to large accidents, theft of radioactive material, etc., this technology
will always be more expensive than lower risk technologies, simply because
the necessary man power and bureaucracy is much higher.
-- == Kai M. Becker == kmb@kai-m-becker.de == Bremen, Germany == "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"
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