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ENERGY: Germans Want Nuclear Plants Phased Out

Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Apr 27 2010 (IPS) - After tens of thousands of people turned out to protest against any extension of life to existing nuclear power plants, it seems clear that Germans continue to be emphatically opposed to nuclear energy.

On Apr. 24, some 125,000 people came together to build a 120 km – long human chain around the two nuclear power plants of Brunsbuettel and Kruemel, in the northern federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, near the city of Hamburg. This was the largest demonstration against nuclear power held in Germany since the early 1980s.

The demonstration was both to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the tragic accident that destroyed the nuclear power plant of Chernobyl, Belarus, on Apr. 26, 1986, and oppose the German government’s plans to prolong the lifespan of 17 nuclear reactors currently in operation.

The facilities in Brunsbuettel and Kruemel are symbolic of the dangers posed by nuclear power plants – according to official figures the two installations have suffered 778 technical breakdowns.

In Brunsbuettel alone 76 technical accidents happened between 2002 and 2006. Also, the power plant is one of the oldest in Germany, and was due to be shut down down later this year.

The mass demonstration was organised by environmental activists, local inhabitants, opponents of nuclear energy, and the Green and Social Democratic parties. Both parties ruled Germany between 1998 and 2005, and negotiated and approved in 2001 the phasing out of nuclear power by 2022, when the most modern facility will reach 32 years of operation.

In the framework of this phasing out, three nuclear power plants were shut down in 2002 and 2005. Four other nuclear power facilities are scheduled to be closed down this year, and three more in 2011 and 2012. All other plants are to be shut down by 2022.

But the conservative coalition government of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), elected in September 2009, has announced that it will reverse the phasing out, and instead prolong the lifespan of all plants still in operation.

In a declaration on Oct. 26, 2009, the government declared that “nuclear energy is a bridging technology until the time when it can be reliably replaced by renewable energy.”

Without nuclear energy, the statement goes on, Germany “would not be able to meet (its) climate targets [of reducing greenhouse gases], enjoy tolerable energy prices and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. This is why [the government is] prepared to extend the operating life of Germany’s nuclear power plants on condition that strict German and international safety standards are met.”

According to plans leaked to the press, the government favoured the functioning of the plants until the 2050s. That would add up to a lifespan of 60 years, instead of the 32 years approved at the beginning of the operation of the first nuclear plants in the 1970s.

The government’s final decision has yet to be announced.

Most analysts believe that the government is holding back the announcement due to electoral considerations: An important regional election will take place May 9 in the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia. According to opinion polls, the incumbent local government, formed by the CDU and the FDP, will be voted out of office, in favour of a Social-Democratic-Green coalition.

An opinion poll carried out mid-April also suggests that a majority of the German citizenry opposes the prolongation of the lifespan of nuclear plants. According to the poll, carried out by the Forsa public opinion research group, 56 percent of the people questioned are against the government plans.

Therefore, and taking also the demonstration of April 24 into account, the conservative government may have made its nuclear reckoning without the people’s will. The human chain involved people from every strata of society and cut across generations.

“I brought my grandchildren to this demonstration, because I believe that nuclear power is an inhuman technology that concerns the youngest generations, and which ought to be forbidden,” Max Moeller, a former police officer, told IPS. Moeller, his wife Maria, and two grandchildren, joined the human chain in the city of Hamburg, some 300 km northwest of Berlin.

Moeller said he and Maria have been demonstrating against nuclear power since 1983. “We always knew that nuclear power, from the uranium mines to the disposal of radioactive waste, constitutes a deadly machinery,” he pointed out.

Maria, his wife, added: “The accident of Chernobyl confirmed our suspicions.”

The German government is also facing popular opposition to its plans to build a deposit for radioactive waste in the salt dome of Gorleben, some 200 km northwest of Berlin.

Environmental activists say the decision of using the salt dome as nuclear waste site in 1977 was based solely on political considerations – the site is located near the former border with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and in a sparsely populated zone.

Yet another conflict is plaguing the German nuclear energy industry: The temporary dumping of radioactive waste at Asse, another salt dome located in the same region of Gorleben, and which contains some 125,000 barrels with 47,000 cu m of nuclear rubbish, is risking collapse, and must be evacuated and restored.

The estimated cost of the restoration works is well over five billion US dollars.

Similar demonstrations against nuclear energy took place this weekend in other European countries. In France, hundreds of demonstrators marched in several cities to protest against government plans to build new nuclear power plants.

The human chain in Germany has reactivated the opposition among many veterans of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Freia Hoffmann, a music professor at the University of Oldenburg, and who participated in the historic battles of the late 1960s and early 1970s against the nuclear power plants in her homeland of Baden Wuerttemberg, in the southwest of the country, told IPS: “My husband and I will call all our friends and organise new demonstrations against nuclear power.”

Hoffmann said that besides the dangers represented by nuclear power, “the technology is unnecessary. Germany can have enough electricity only using renewable energy sources.”

Indeed it can. As part of the phasing out of nuclear power, the Social Democratic-Green government launched in the early 2000s plans to develop sun, wind, biomass and other renewable energy sources.

As a consequence Germany generates more than 15 percent of its energy using renewable sources. Experts and officials from the environment ministry forecast that by 2020 Germany could generate up to 30 percent of electricity from renewable sources.

Energy experts like Olav Hohmeyer, professor of the economics of energy at the University of Flensburg, some 400 km north west of Berlin, and former member of the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU, after its German name), told IPS that by 2050 Germany could generate all energy using renewable sources, “if only the government takes that right decisions.’’

Among the right decisions, Hohmeyer listed “phasing out nuclear power, denying operation authorisation to coal-fuelled generators, and instead upgrading the grids and further supporting the growth of the renewable energy sector.”

A similar conclusion was reached recently by the European Climate Foundation (ECF). In the study ‘Roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon Europe,’ the ECF shows that Europe could by 2050 reduce its greenhouse gases emissions by 80 percent compared to the levels of 1990 using exclusively renewable sources, and still generate enough electricity to meet growing demand.