Germany pledges to shut down all its nuclear plants by 2022 following Fukushima distaster

we have some damns in the area I live in (Sauerland/Siegerland) actually it is a nice solution, but I think there will be no more new dams in future since it costs a lot of terrain. and the northern part of Germany is pretty flat.

They go for windparks offshore and of course on the countryside (when I look out of my windows I see 10 windmills). furthermore a lot of private persons have solar panels ontop of their roof and VW and RWE are trying to push a home- power- plant (www.greencarcongress.com...)

If I could decide something I would also install some big geothermal plants in the vulcanic Eifel region

reply to post by purplemer

Germany has no natural gas or oil deposits but is planning on meeting its energy consumption targets by becoming one of the greenest countries in the world.

Germany becoming the greenest country in the world by replacing their nuclear plants by coal & gas plants?
Come on, give me a break.
I myself live in Germany.

First of all, the ecologist party (die Grüne) had an agreement with the SPD (socialist party) when the SPD was in power, that they would shut down their nuclear plants at some point.
Then came the CDU (Christian democrats), who first pushed the end of life of the nuclear plants further in time, then after Fukushima they suddenly went backwards and want to close everything soon.
All this is being done in a rush, as a reaction to Fukushima - I agree this is not German to simply react to the event without real planning.

Renewable energies are being looked at, but even German people and companies agree today that these energies are extremely unefficient - at the moment. I fully agree that we should continue to push to make them working properly.

This poorly planned action is going to cost billions of € (yep, with my taxes), electricity price is going to rise (it is already high and steadily rising, German people are getting miffed about it).
And the skies are going to receive even more soot and CO2.

You may not like the nuclear energy, that is another debate, but please do not say that Germany will be the greenest country in the world.

This is 2013, the words of Merckel in regard to the distant future mean nothing and are only for politics. You know other leaders will modulate things as they please after Merk is gone.

My guess is that this is just to boost current oil prices.

Remember Guantanamo is supposed to be closed by 2012 and that was a short term thing. Beleiving something a politician says will happen in the future is insane.

Its the same as selling hope.

reply to post by KarmaComa


This is just fear mongering. How many people here know that coal puts radioactive ash into the atmosphere?
www.scientificamerican.com...

Burning fossil fuel is hugely polluting inefficient way of producing energy. Germany will kill a lot more of its vegetation, animals, and harm the populations living close to the power plants. There are a lot of safer reactor designs that they could have upgraded to( the french have been selling these to India, China etc), these have close to zero probability to go critical. They could also change their technology to thorium based reactors(that cannot go critical), I am sure US,India or China would sell them their Thorium reactors or technology.

The reason why the Japanese had problems is because they were using an old design that was not maintained properly. Plus, Germany is not exactly known for huge earthquakes or tsunamis even if nuclear reactors were that bad. This is just a case of people without any intellect running the country; sadly they have good company in their peers in Asia and the Americas.

reply to post by purplemer


Kudos to Germany, now if only the US would do the same I'd feel a lot better about the world. The US has a bunch of nuclear plants along or nearby the New Madrid fault line and if that fault line should ever have a massive earthquake then I'm afraid what will happen will be like 20 fukushima's all at once, not to mention the same could happen to all of the nuclear power plants in the US in the event of some sort of EMP attack or large CME from the sun. We need to illuminate the threat from not just the US but from the world which would be effected in such an event.

reply to post by KarmaComa


I'm still happy they have plans to shut down their nuclear power although I would agree that they hardly the greenest country in the world. Seriously, if countries wish to be green and reduce the cost of energy they should adopt solar energy. It's incredibly efficient and as near as I can tell is highly ignored because its not as profitable. Think about it. If every residence had solar panels on its roof no one would need to pay for electricity because the solar panels would provide more then enough. I've never seen anyone with a lot if political influence ever suggest such a thing though. Interesting isn't it?

reply to post by purplemer


Just shows how hypocritical these germans are and all the governments that are so called working for us, and this also shows how gullible the populations are.

check out Thorium and you will see that the use of Uranium is purely so tptb can make weapons out of the waste and has nothing to do with anything else. Thorium only has a half life of 26 days in its broken down format is four times more abundant than uranium and you cannot make weapons out of it.

The yanks made one Thorium reactor in the 50s proved it all worked and then quickly shut the program down.

I wonder if we will ever introduce FMRI machines that scan the brain and can detect if these scum that are meant to be representing us are lying to us, I guess they have got the population so brainwashed that that will never happen.

reply to post by an0nThinker


I think the real reason the japanese had problems is that the japanese emperor was trying to take over the control of the illuminati but as he is from a lesser family they taught him a lesson, HAARP was used to destroy fukishima tptb are the ones who control the football teams and they put the date and time of the quake into the football scores on the opening day of the jap season a week earlier,

as most people can't get their heads round this just put the games into chronological and then alphabetical order and you will see this if you want to that is,
also if you looked at the footage the day after the quake the authorities who were at sendaii put out another tsunami warning and once everyone had evacuated an explosion occured, bit convenient that i thought, and it also looked like it could have been a controlled explosion.

reply to post by purplemer


whatever happened to steam plants? I'll be honest i dont like steam plants either since alot of tree's suffer but atleast they are radiation free, if only there was a renewable resource which in 1 acre of land gave 10 times more paper than 1 acre of trees a renewable resource which can be used to make natural plastic and none pollutant oil just as strong as diesel. OH wait there is! :O too bad all the governments have made it illegal for fake reasons and the idiots just believe the media without any evidence. Oh well. durrrrrrrrrr

I have been using solar power for over 15 years. It's green, it's renewable however it is so very limited. You can charge batteries, run some lights and fences but that is about all. Without some new breakthrough in battery and solar cell manufacturing it's gone about as far as it can go.

Wind power is as good as dead because it kills our protected raptors, birds of prey and gliding birds. Also, only 20% of America has enough wind to turn the turbines.

Geo-thermal has such huge upfront cost with no guarantee of return that only government subsidized operations in which the taxpayer is left footing the bill are in operation.

For the foreseeable future it's a mix of Hydro, coal fired and nuclear power.

reply to post by an0nThinker

We agree 100%.
My dad has been working in French nuclear plants for about 30 years, so I know a thing or 2 about them, and you are right, French design (which is based on American design by the way) is very safe.
Now French & Germans have been developing a new design together.
From my dad's experience, I know that most important is still the human factor (e.g. Tchernobyl is a human failure on a poor design, but had the humans not "hiccuped" and tried some fancy stuff, nothing would have happened).
France's reactors used to be 100% state controlled, with a motto of safety first. They are slowly getting privatised.
Fukushima was a complete hiccup, because some guys tried to "save" the reactor (in a not so rubostly designed plant) instead of shutting it off directly from the beginning and asperse the whole reactor to kill it off.

Thorium reactors is indeed an alternative that deserves to be pursued.

But you know, politics think only about the next elections, so the time span of their ideas is several months to a very few years at most. And Merkel is no exception.
So with Fukushima and all the fear mongering about it, she took this hastly decision

reply to post by KarmaComa


The french reactors might be based on some US technology but I know that they are build completely differently.
French reactors are like cars, the same design replicated exactly everywhere. Japanese and US reactors are build like buildings with each one being different and most have some design flaws. The reason old ones keep on running in Japan and US is because its impossible to build a new one with all the econut legislation and suing going on.