Germany takes most of its Nuclear Plants offline

[n2doc]

By JUERGEN BAETZ, Associated Press

Saturday, May 21, 2011

(05-21) 07:11 PDT BERLIN, Germany (AP) --

More than three-quarters of Germany's nuclear power plants were offline Saturday due to maintenance work or shutdowns ordered by the government after Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, utility companies said.

Only four of the country's 17 nuclear power plants were online after the energy utility RWE AG took its Emsland plant off the grid Saturday.

Environmentalists accused the utilities of staging simultaneous maintenance shutdowns while threatening blackouts to put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, which appears determined in the wake of the Fukushima Dai-ichi catastrophe to phase out nuclear power within ten to 15 years. A decision on that policy is expected in June.

"We are afraid that the utilities could intentionally stage a blackout to influence people in the debate on phasing out nuclear power," said Jochen Stay of anti-nuclear group Ausgestrahlt.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/05/21/international/i071139D13.DTL

[FreakinDJ]

1. Asshats all around

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Hard to tell if the complaint is valid or not

Maintenance shutdowns are normally planned well in advance and coordinated across the national/regional grid. Presumptively any shortfall is due to additional government ordered shutdown of particular plants post Fukushima.

[kristopher]

3. Hard to tell if your presumption of an innocent nuclear industry is valid or not.

Especially since you always defend that industry. Why do you do that; do you also presumptively defend the coal industry and the petroleum industry? If not, why not?

[bananas]

6. When Enron did it in California, the talk shows were full of pro-nuke bs

telling us we had to build nukes because there wasn't enough generation.
It was a total scam.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. Actually it is easy to tell that you are constructively clueless

I have a growing solar plant, (currently 8.5KW) on my property so I must be pro coal

[kristopher]

10. And I have a mini-nuclear reactor in my backyard...

Claims like that on the internet are worthless. I judge names on the internet strictly by the contribution made. Your activities are consistent and clear.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. Would a picture of a bi-directional meter soothe your pride?

I too judge people by their contributions...its why many of us mock you

[bananas]

4. Get real - Enron pulled that crap here in California. nt

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Then it should be easy to verify

Are there any shutdowns that were not preplanned or Government ordered? The OP does not say one way or the other, nor does anything else that I can find.

[kristopher]

11. That is our point - instead of verification of a position, you exonerated the INDUSTRY

And you still haven't answered the question about whether you defend all industries like you defend the nuclear industry? Do they have a special status for some reason or are you generally trusting of corporate ethics?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. I did no such thing...but thanks for playing

[GliderGuider]

5. People bitch when they're operating, then bitch when they're not.

Make up your minds, folks.

[phantom power]

8. +oo

[AtheistCrusader]

14. I lost track of the SHUT THEM DOWN NOW posts a long time ago.

Can't please everyone I guess.

[Nederland]

16. +1000

[Nihil]

22. You got it.

Instead of bitching, they should be taking the opportunity to treat
this as a practice run (except they want 17/17 closed down) ...

:shrug:

[SpoonFed]

15. Can somebody smack whomever...

gave this person license to quote Berlin time in PDT timezone.

[Divernan]

17. Atomkraft Abschalten! (Switch off nuclear power!)

"While the government is expected to officially decide how quickly it wants to abolish the technology in June, Merkel's conservative allies from Bavaria state went ahead late Friday and voted in favor of a ban on nuclear power from 2022 onward.

"Merkel on Saturday embraced their decision, saying the 2022 target is "very ambitious" but is in the right timeframe, DAPD news agency reported.

"Nuclear power usually generates about 23 percent of Germany's electricity — about the same level as in the U.S. — but with the shutdowns it is now contributing less power than renewable energies, which normally provide 17 percent of Germany's power.

"Nuclear power has been very unpopular in Germany ever since radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster drifted across the country.
(from the OP link)

[Divernan]

18. Enlightening Der Spiegel interview on irrevocably phasing out nuclear plants

German nuclear plants ARE going away - by 2021 at latest estimate.

Interesting details are to be found in an interview with Winfried Kretschmann. He is the new governor of Baden-Württemberg and the first-ever leader of a German state from the Green Party. In a SPIEGEL interview, he talks about redefining economic growth, his plans to make industry more environmentally friendly and the IRREVOCABLE phasing out of nuclear power in Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,7635...

Kretschmann: It goes without saying that every new wind park has an impact on the landscape, but that's a completely different order of magnitude compared to the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity and the associated severe damage this does to our planet. Not to mention nuclear power, which creates waste that produces deadly radiation over thousands of years.

Kretschmann: I never said being a Green state governor would be a piece of cake. We can't deny that we have spent nuclear fuel. So you have to put it somewhere. I don't take the not-in-my-backyard approach. And surely there's nothing wrong with the fact that scientific criteria are being used to look for a suitable storage site across Germany. People who won't allow even that should get off their soap boxes and take responsibility. However, until the last nuclear power plant in Germany has been shut down for good, nobody is going to agree to a nuclear storage facility in their state. People have to be convinced that it's over and no more waste is going to be produced. Only then can you ask people to take spent fuel if a suitable geological formation can be found. After all, you have to put that waste somewhere.

Kretschmann: No. The last nuclear power plant has to be shut down irrevocably. We now have a tremendous opportunity to negotiate an agreement with the German government and the German parliament (and to) agree on an irrevocable phase-out of nuclear power. We have to seize this opportunity.

Kretschmann: Not at all. Our policies are sustainable and responsible. Even so, living in a democracy also means inheriting your predecessor's mistakes. Nuclear power is an example of this, and you have to be responsible about it. That's one of our core values. So we certainly can't avoid the issue of nuclear waste, even if it's simply an inherited problem.

____________________________
And don't forget, Angela Merkel is a trained physicist. When she takes a hard line against nuclear power, it means more than when some paid shill employed by the nuclear industry spouts off rationalizing, enabling and defending it.

[truedelphi]

19. Here is USA Wall Street wants no part of financing nuke plants.

So Obama government is stepping froward to "loan" fifty three billion bucks to these weasels.

[Divernan]

20. Not so much weasels as desperate guys who aren't qualified for other high paying jobs

This desperation blinds them to outrageous cost overrides, short and long term environmental and health consequences, and, in short, any dangers associated with nuclear power. This desperation leads some nuclear supporters, when posting here, to respond with snarls and fury when their livelihoods are threatened by any anti-nuclear policies or studies.

Decades ago, nuclear power was touted as safe, clean and cheap. It's turned out to be none of those.

[Yo_Mama]

21. Paranoid Environmentalists?

Nuclear plants do need scheduled maintenance. Seven of the older plants were ordered shut down in the wake of Fukushima. That leaves only 10 - Germany has had a plan to phase out nuclear power since the 1990s, so they haven't been building new ones.

So it is very easy for normal maintenance schedules to produce this situation. The RWE AG maintenance has been scheduled for months. There were also requests for inspections that might have a few more plants down than expected, but the point is that the nuclear industry just doesn't work this way.

If you will read the article, two of the reactors are supposed to be up before June. To the degree maintenance can be safely scheduled, it is usually scheduled during times of lower power draws.

There are a lot of reasons why the environmentalists' claim is stupid:

This is an older article from 2010.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html
Ever since Chernobyl the German public has not been in favor of nuclear power. If you will scroll down, you'll see a table showing that as of 2001, 7 of the plants were scheduled to be shut down by the end of 2012, and all the rest of the plants were scheduled to be permanently out of operation by 2022. Then in 2010 they decided to extend their lives, because the Germans are quite dependent on their NPS's for electricity. So after Fukushima this year they decided to shut down the oldest 7 already.

These plants are older and you would expect them to be down for quite a bit of maintenance anyway.

The other thing is that an additional tax was put on nuclear fuel, which led companies to consider changing plant operational parameters - they needed to go for more of the remunerative power consumption at the demand end rather than the lower-paid baseload. That requires changing plant operational performance, and while it is possible to cycle nuclear plants up and down, you want to be careful when you are doing it. Fuel burns differently. So you would expect these plants to require more frequent shutdowns for fuel inspections.

Here's another article that mentions the issue:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C_New_plans_for_German_reactors_2012101.html

The extension of operational limits on German nuclear plants came with a hefty tax of €145 per gram of uranium or plutonium set to net the government some €2.3 billion per year. This is causing German utilities to reconsider their operating regimes, possibly away from the baseload role to follow demand curves instead. All German plants were built to have load-following capability and can moderate output by a few percent per minute. This practice, however, comes with operational issues such as potential uneven burning of nuclear fuel in the core and additional stresses on some components.

[kristopher]

23. Comments by interested parties

Germany could face widespread winter blackouts following Angela Merkel's "knee-jerk" decision to decommission the country's nuclear power stations, according to German power grid operators. ... "largely exhausted" ... "large-scale supply disruptions" ... "safe supply ...could be severely compromised,"

- Grid operators make money by transmitting power. Their business model is dependent on centralized large scale generation of electricity. The distributed grid that goes along with a renewable energy based energy infrastructure ultimately slashes public dependence on large-scale transfers of power relative to what the current model requires. Yes we still need to ship electricity around, but the quantity that will need to be shipped becomes a small fraction of what will be generated at the local level.




The industry group German Atomic Forum cautioned against abandoning nuclear power without careful consideration. "A quick and rash exit from German nuclear power would raise costs for the whole economy, make us miss climate goals, raise our reliance on fossil fuels and make our power supply less secure, meaning more power imports and problems with network stability," said president Ralf Gueldner. "It would also spark intense debate in the European Union," he added.

- Self explanatory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/23/germany-nuclear-shutdown-winter-blackouts

Be afraid, be very, very afraid....

[SpoonFed]

24. Translation...

If you threaten to quit letting us suck heavily at the public teet,

we will make you cold and dark this winter,
we will throw a tantrum and destroy the economy,
we will trash talk your commitment to the environment,
and we will fuck with the distribution network to make everyone look bad

it will be so bad, everybody in Europe will be talking about it.

Big corporations are big sociopaths.
I thought that was pretty clear already.

It's pretty scary when the heavy weights have no problem directly threatening the leaders of a democratic country.

[Confusious]

25. I guess logic doesn't factor in, does it?

Shutting down or taking away 20% of anything immediately will cause problems, whether it's food, fuel or electricity.

As far as some of the shutdowns, seems they were scheduled, and the boot licking politicians didn't plan for that.

Neither did the anti-nukes, but then again, reality isn't a strong suit of theirs, given some of the Pie they're passing around here.

[SpoonFed]

26. Oh great, you again...

I cannot fathom how shutting down or taking away 20% of nukes will immediately cause problems, at least technical problems. It will only cause problems if the whole system is poorly designed and requires 100% operational capacity at all times. Nuke is only around 22% of Germany's electrical power generation IIRC from some post I read around here lately, so are we really talking 20% of 22%? or roughly 5%?

Furthermore, the clear threats, idle or otherwise, from "the interested parties" as kristopher's post puts it, belies the motives and methods with which the corrupt nuke industry is going to play this out.

Add to that, that the imaginary doomsday scenario that all the neighboring countries around Germany are also at a fragile 100% operational capacity and unable to sell any excess power to Germany, this seems like an unlikely scenario also.

It seems the likely scenario is that the nuke industry and affiliates are going to ramp up their dishonest efforts in the democratic political sphere to get the politicians to bend to their will when their constituents apparently support getting out of nukes.

But thanks for weighing in with your version of what's logical.

[Confusious]

27. You don't know how an electric grid works, do you?

That's pretty clear from your statement. Par for the course I guess.

I would explain, but I don't think you really care. Doesn't matter what realities there are, just do as you want.

look up "brownout" if you'd like to learn something, but I doubt you will.

Someone save us from the cocksure. Bertrand Russell. look it up.