If you believe the federal government, it is not fundamentally opposed to nuclear power. When Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens talks about it, he sounds open-minded, sober, not like an ideologue. The question of nuclear energy, he said recently in a video, is one “that is totally virulent and is also often discussed”. Habeck goes through point by point, which in the current crisis speaks for leaving Meiler on the net, leaning his arms loosely on the table, his shirt rolled up. In the end, Habeck sees few advantages. We would, is the message. But it’s useless.
Those who argue in this way have the advantage that they do not have to talk about beliefs. Constraints are objective. Everyone has to bow to them, including those who advocate nuclear power. The only question is whether it is really a question of compulsions.
One of the main arguments of the traffic light coalition is: Germany has a heating problem, not an electricity problem. Habeck only confirmed this this week. “Nuclear power doesn’t help at all” against gas shortages, he said in Vienna. The government itself contradicts this. It recently recommended that large companies buy emergency power generators. Would she do that if she didn’t think winter power outages were a possibility?
Mark Helfrich, spokesman for energy policy for the Union faction, also assumes that many people will heat with electricity next winter, for example by using fan heaters. That could be cheaper than turning up the heat. Especially when gas should become scarce. In the worst case, it could even be the only way to keep the apartment warm. “We can already see that many people buy a fan heater in the summer,” says Helfrich.
Experts have a different understanding of stretching
Anyone who heats with electricity uses a lot of energy, and that on days when the sun hardly shines through and the wind is not blowing, so solar cells and wind turbines are of little use. In the worst case, “there could be a power problem after all,” says Anja Weisgerber from the CSU, chairwoman of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Helfrich therefore considers the argument of the federal government to be a “merciless reduction”. And she wants to do without nuclear power, of all things, which is also produced when it’s dark and windless, and in an environmentally friendly way? The government argues similarly when it comes to getting the last reserves out of the fuel. This is called stretching. The coalition explains it like this: In the summer, the operating nuclear power plants reduce their output, but they can remain connected to the grid longer in the winter. So bottom line, they don’t deliver more energy, just later. The coalition thinks that’s nonsensical, because as much electricity as possible is already needed to relieve the gas-fired power plants and save gas for the winter. Once it’s there, it’s too late.
However, experts have a different understanding of stretching. The point is to use the fuel in such a way that it continues to produce electricity beyond its planned expiry date. For this purpose, the fuel elements are rearranged and used more efficiently. So they deliver more energy than originally intended. TÜV Süd has estimated this for the Isar 2 power plant in Bavaria. He reckons it could be producing electricity for more than 1.5 million homes by next summer. The testing association even assumes that it is possible to restart Block C of the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in the state.
According to the paper, a reactor core can be assembled with the remaining fuel elements, which “fulfills all safety-related boundary conditions”. It could supply almost as much additional electricity as Isar 2. That would supply almost three million households for a year. How much additional energy the still running piles in Emsland and Neckarwestheim could generate is uncertain. Experts agree, however, that there is something to be gained from them too. The effort seems manageable. **You don’t have to get new fuel, you don’t have to build a new reactor, just get permits.**
Do you really risk a new Chernobyl?
Experts consider this to be distorted. The physicist Ulrich Waas was a member of the Reactor Safety Commission until recently and helped to develop the “major safety review”. He says it takes time, but most of it can be done at a desk. It’s about checking whether new knowledge has been added that makes it necessary to rebuild the reactor. About evaluating incidents and adapting the manual. Most of this takes place while the power plant keeps running. Because it’s about fundamental things, not so much about the system itself. It is checked once a year anyway, and also regularly in between. If you encountered a security problem, you would switch it off immediately. In addition, European nuclear power plants had to pass several tests after Fukushima. For the Bavarians, for example, it came out that not even a large aircraft crashing into the plants would cause a core meltdown. How much safer, Waas asks, should they become?
When it comes to approval, the traffic light is even wrong. This is shown by a legal report by the University of Bochum commissioned by the Economic Council of the CDU. The operating license does not even expire when the power plants go offline. After that, they have to keep running for a while before you can switch them off completely. What ends is permission to feed in electricity. The coalition could grant that again. All she has to do is change the Atomic Energy Act. That’s why the experts don’t see that the power plants suddenly have to be much safer. Only new buildings have to meet the standard of a new building.
But what about the staff, asks the federal government. The corporations had already sent many people into retirement and they probably didn’t want to return from the bathing island to the cooling pool. So there are supposedly not enough people left who know how to operate nuclear power plants. The result is a safety risk here, too. Those who have worked in the nuclear power plant or who still do, present it differently. Waas says many would come back if they could only feel that they were not being demonized. Andreas Schultz, department manager at the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, which has already been taken offline, sees it similarly. Of course, recruiting staff is expensive, he says. But Schultz knows many who would be willing to come back. He even believes that they would work longer shifts if it was for Germany’s security. “What politicians use as arguments are bogus arguments. If you want to, all problems can be solved.” “It’s also a question of European solidarity”
Now the government says: If necessary, we can get energy from Europe, after all we are a community based on solidarity. In that regard, however, there is bad news. A few days ago, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton warned that Germany should leave its nuclear power plants connected to the grid for longer. Energy politicians fear Breton’s words have something to do with a problem in France. The country is lagging behind in maintaining its nuclear power plants for a number of reasons, including the pandemic. Many plants are idle. If they don’t run again in winter, electricity could become scarce even in France.
The traffic light should not be based on being able to buy cheap electricity in the neighboring country if necessary. Rather, France might want to get some from Germany. That doesn’t mean that the lights are going out here, but it does mean that electricity will become even more expensive. “Let’s say then: We don’t care, we shut down the nuclear power plants?” Asks Helfrich from the CDU. “I don’t want to imagine that. This is also a question of European solidarity.”
This will become all the more urgent if Russia continues to exploit any dependence on raw materials in the future. Many experts are convinced that gas will fail as a bridging technology for the energy transition. That leaves coal and nuclear power as sources of energy. One of them has little to do with climate protection. If you now rely on nuclear power, you would have to extend the service life for years, get new fuel rods and train staff.
Then there is the question of how much energy should cost. They are already discussing what can be done about commodity prices in traffic lights. Wolfgang Steiger, General Secretary of the Economic Council of the CDU, has a simple answer: “Nuclear power is the cheapest energy available on the market.” It would stabilize the price, in contrast to subsidies, which often hardly help.
In business, they are particularly irritated that the government prefers to remain true to old beliefs rather than taking precautions. The director of the German Economic Institute, Michael Hüther, says: “If we have such an emergency, we have to be given all the flexibility we have. For me it’s like an insurance premium: Sure, it costs something, but basically it’s about being prepared for the absolute worst case scenario Wipe out nuclear energy in the coalition. “SPD and Greens are pushing constructed practical constraints, although their rejection is purely politically and ideologically motivated. If electricity becomes scarce or really expensive in winter, then this federal government is responsible. And no one else.”
Oh boy,I sure can’t wait to see how this Winter will go for the Germans. It would either be a blood bath or just a blood drop,it depends only on their luck
I’m sorry for our German friends (we love you!), but the ***schadenfreude*** is way too good to be ignored:
We fucking told you so
Could Nuclear help Germany? Let’s ask opposition politicians and nuclear proponents.
Russia really getting their money’s worth by covertly funding anti-nuclear green parties across Europe.
5 comments
If you believe the federal government, it is not fundamentally opposed to nuclear power. When Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens talks about it, he sounds open-minded, sober, not like an ideologue. The question of nuclear energy, he said recently in a video, is one “that is totally virulent and is also often discussed”. Habeck goes through point by point, which in the current crisis speaks for leaving Meiler on the net, leaning his arms loosely on the table, his shirt rolled up. In the end, Habeck sees few advantages. We would, is the message. But it’s useless.
Those who argue in this way have the advantage that they do not have to talk about beliefs. Constraints are objective. Everyone has to bow to them, including those who advocate nuclear power. The only question is whether it is really a question of compulsions.
One of the main arguments of the traffic light coalition is: Germany has a heating problem, not an electricity problem. Habeck only confirmed this this week. “Nuclear power doesn’t help at all” against gas shortages, he said in Vienna. The government itself contradicts this. It recently recommended that large companies buy emergency power generators. Would she do that if she didn’t think winter power outages were a possibility?
Mark Helfrich, spokesman for energy policy for the Union faction, also assumes that many people will heat with electricity next winter, for example by using fan heaters. That could be cheaper than turning up the heat. Especially when gas should become scarce. In the worst case, it could even be the only way to keep the apartment warm. “We can already see that many people buy a fan heater in the summer,” says Helfrich.
Experts have a different understanding of stretching
Anyone who heats with electricity uses a lot of energy, and that on days when the sun hardly shines through and the wind is not blowing, so solar cells and wind turbines are of little use. In the worst case, “there could be a power problem after all,” says Anja Weisgerber from the CSU, chairwoman of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Helfrich therefore considers the argument of the federal government to be a “merciless reduction”. And she wants to do without nuclear power, of all things, which is also produced when it’s dark and windless, and in an environmentally friendly way? The government argues similarly when it comes to getting the last reserves out of the fuel. This is called stretching. The coalition explains it like this: In the summer, the operating nuclear power plants reduce their output, but they can remain connected to the grid longer in the winter. So bottom line, they don’t deliver more energy, just later. The coalition thinks that’s nonsensical, because as much electricity as possible is already needed to relieve the gas-fired power plants and save gas for the winter. Once it’s there, it’s too late.
However, experts have a different understanding of stretching. The point is to use the fuel in such a way that it continues to produce electricity beyond its planned expiry date. For this purpose, the fuel elements are rearranged and used more efficiently. So they deliver more energy than originally intended. TÜV Süd has estimated this for the Isar 2 power plant in Bavaria. He reckons it could be producing electricity for more than 1.5 million homes by next summer. The testing association even assumes that it is possible to restart Block C of the Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in the state.
According to the paper, a reactor core can be assembled with the remaining fuel elements, which “fulfills all safety-related boundary conditions”. It could supply almost as much additional electricity as Isar 2. That would supply almost three million households for a year. How much additional energy the still running piles in Emsland and Neckarwestheim could generate is uncertain. Experts agree, however, that there is something to be gained from them too. The effort seems manageable. **You don’t have to get new fuel, you don’t have to build a new reactor, just get permits.**
Do you really risk a new Chernobyl?
Experts consider this to be distorted. The physicist Ulrich Waas was a member of the Reactor Safety Commission until recently and helped to develop the “major safety review”. He says it takes time, but most of it can be done at a desk. It’s about checking whether new knowledge has been added that makes it necessary to rebuild the reactor. About evaluating incidents and adapting the manual. Most of this takes place while the power plant keeps running. Because it’s about fundamental things, not so much about the system itself. It is checked once a year anyway, and also regularly in between. If you encountered a security problem, you would switch it off immediately. In addition, European nuclear power plants had to pass several tests after Fukushima. For the Bavarians, for example, it came out that not even a large aircraft crashing into the plants would cause a core meltdown. How much safer, Waas asks, should they become?
When it comes to approval, the traffic light is even wrong. This is shown by a legal report by the University of Bochum commissioned by the Economic Council of the CDU. The operating license does not even expire when the power plants go offline. After that, they have to keep running for a while before you can switch them off completely. What ends is permission to feed in electricity. The coalition could grant that again. All she has to do is change the Atomic Energy Act. That’s why the experts don’t see that the power plants suddenly have to be much safer. Only new buildings have to meet the standard of a new building.
But what about the staff, asks the federal government. The corporations had already sent many people into retirement and they probably didn’t want to return from the bathing island to the cooling pool. So there are supposedly not enough people left who know how to operate nuclear power plants. The result is a safety risk here, too. Those who have worked in the nuclear power plant or who still do, present it differently. Waas says many would come back if they could only feel that they were not being demonized. Andreas Schultz, department manager at the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, which has already been taken offline, sees it similarly. Of course, recruiting staff is expensive, he says. But Schultz knows many who would be willing to come back. He even believes that they would work longer shifts if it was for Germany’s security. “What politicians use as arguments are bogus arguments. If you want to, all problems can be solved.” “It’s also a question of European solidarity”
Now the government says: If necessary, we can get energy from Europe, after all we are a community based on solidarity. In that regard, however, there is bad news. A few days ago, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton warned that Germany should leave its nuclear power plants connected to the grid for longer. Energy politicians fear Breton’s words have something to do with a problem in France. The country is lagging behind in maintaining its nuclear power plants for a number of reasons, including the pandemic. Many plants are idle. If they don’t run again in winter, electricity could become scarce even in France.
The traffic light should not be based on being able to buy cheap electricity in the neighboring country if necessary. Rather, France might want to get some from Germany. That doesn’t mean that the lights are going out here, but it does mean that electricity will become even more expensive. “Let’s say then: We don’t care, we shut down the nuclear power plants?” Asks Helfrich from the CDU. “I don’t want to imagine that. This is also a question of European solidarity.”
This will become all the more urgent if Russia continues to exploit any dependence on raw materials in the future. Many experts are convinced that gas will fail as a bridging technology for the energy transition. That leaves coal and nuclear power as sources of energy. One of them has little to do with climate protection. If you now rely on nuclear power, you would have to extend the service life for years, get new fuel rods and train staff.
Then there is the question of how much energy should cost. They are already discussing what can be done about commodity prices in traffic lights. Wolfgang Steiger, General Secretary of the Economic Council of the CDU, has a simple answer: “Nuclear power is the cheapest energy available on the market.” It would stabilize the price, in contrast to subsidies, which often hardly help.
In business, they are particularly irritated that the government prefers to remain true to old beliefs rather than taking precautions. The director of the German Economic Institute, Michael Hüther, says: “If we have such an emergency, we have to be given all the flexibility we have. For me it’s like an insurance premium: Sure, it costs something, but basically it’s about being prepared for the absolute worst case scenario Wipe out nuclear energy in the coalition. “SPD and Greens are pushing constructed practical constraints, although their rejection is purely politically and ideologically motivated. If electricity becomes scarce or really expensive in winter, then this federal government is responsible. And no one else.”
[Denial](https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/w0d7ex/energiemangel_atomkraft_hilft_eben_doch/)
Oh boy,I sure can’t wait to see how this Winter will go for the Germans. It would either be a blood bath or just a blood drop,it depends only on their luck
I’m sorry for our German friends (we love you!), but the ***schadenfreude*** is way too good to be ignored:
We fucking told you so
Could Nuclear help Germany? Let’s ask opposition politicians and nuclear proponents.
Russia really getting their money’s worth by covertly funding anti-nuclear green parties across Europe.