Germany will completely abandon nuclear energy and technology by 2022, this decided by Angela Merkel’s government. Merkel and German activist leaders think they can competitively power the country with windmills, biogas, solar, and blind faith. The last nuclear reactors so will go offline by the year 2022. Read here.China, seeing a golden opportunity, aims to capitalise on Merkel’s hasty, panicked decision and now hopes to lure German engineers and nuclear scientists to China in order to accelerate its own use of nuclear energy (hat-tip: The Liberale Institute here), so writes Der Spiegel here:
The People’s Republic wants to profit from Merkel’s nuclear power stop. Peking wants to attract researchers and employees from German power plants. The country has embarked without any hesitation on a path to nuclear energy – the Chinese all but exclude a disaster like that in Fukushima.”
China is not worried about nuclear accidents and safety issues. Gee I wonder why? I wonder if an unemotional look at the following graphic might have something to do with that:
Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/lowering-deaths-per-terawatt-hour-for.html
China’s leaders are bewildered by Germany’s hysterical move. Der Spiegel quotes a CNEA deputy:
It is false that a country with so few resources of its own would abandon nuclear power, Deputy General Secretary of the Chinese Atomic Agency CNEA, Xu Yuming, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His criticism also included an offer to the German nuclear specialists: ‘We invite the German specialists to research for us in China and to work. The German nuclear plants are mong the best in the world, the engineers and scientists have a great reputation’.”
China has ambitious nuclear energy plans for the future as it gets set to put the country on a rapid development course. According to the World Nuclear Association, 62 reactors are currently under construction worldwide, 27 in China alone. Here’s what the rest of the planet, outside of the Berlin Enviro-Wall, is doing.
Plants under construction (a few selected countries)
China: 27 reactors
Russia: 10
India: 5
Germany: 0
German nuclear engineers and scientists won’t have have any trouble finding work, that’s for sure. Many more reactors are being planned – 158 in total.
Reactors planned:
China: 50 reactors
India: 18
Japan: 12
Russia 14
USA: 9
Germany: 0
And many more are being proposed (324 reactors in all):
China: 110 reactors
India: 40
Italy 10
Russia 30
Ukraine: 20
Japan: 12
Russia 14
USA: 23
UAE: 10
Vietnam: 12
Turkey: 4
Poland: 6
Germany: 0
Not everyone is happy about Germany cutting and running on nuclear energy. Especially industry that relies on cheap and reliable energy are not pleased about it. For example, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche is not happy and is quoted in Die Welt here, calling it a “risky and emotional decision” that makes Germany a less attractive location for industry.
China has got to be laughing.
Nice work.
Instead of developing new coal and shale gas Germany is going to import massive amounts of Palm Oil (Germany already is one of the biggest importers).
There won’t be a tropical forest left when the Greens get their way.
The most dangerous aspect of the Germans is their susceptibility from extreme ideologies and doctrines and their megalomanic commitment to spread those ideologies and doctrines globally at any price.
It’s time to leave, we’re all jews now.
More great ideas from Germany
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/05/29/climate-dictatorship-of-the-en
Apparently Germany is planning more coal fired plants. This is like a comedy of errors. 🙂
Thanks Ron. Nice to see that Benny and I aren’t the only ones writing about this. Hard to believe the CDU Party has gotten so kooky and dangerous. I’m still hoping they’ll distance themselves from Schellnhuber and the PIK. The words keep coming back: “It’s bad enough to oppressed by a minority, even worse to be oppressed by a majority”.
Gosh, that kind of central planning worked so well for the peasant farmers under Stalin. It should be a slam dunk for energy too.
Certainly Germany does not need nukes. De-industrialisation and rationing can make up the shortfall. People do not need electricity 24 hours per day. Many countries only get 2 to 4 hours a day. One hundred years ago most people had no electricity. Subsistence agriculture will keep people busy.
Subsistance agriculture – result? Life will nasty, brutish, and short.
Leaving a dictatorship in the making for an already existing dictatorship is not what i would call a deal.
Germany’s nuclear power plant knowledge is not remarkable; our reactors are from the 1970ies; pressures are low and nothing exciting happens there, only that it’s nuclear power instead of a coal burner that heats the water. Just a pressure cooker, and not state of the art compared to a modern gas powered plant.
And the power plant engineers in Germany, and the top notch turbine designers, are busy increasing the efficiency of non-nuclear plants.
The Chinese won’t get anyone.
You can’t eat coal, Rudy, and you can’t buy food if you don’t have a job/work.
Hope you folks (EU) aren’t counting on a new Marshall Plan…
Now that you respond to him i realize Rudy wasn’t being sarcastic.
Rudy, if you and your fellow Green Communist Teachers gain the power, count me out in your Khmer Rouge Forced Subsistence Agriculture paradise; i’ll take a one way ticket to Canada.
@Rudy Kraus
“De-industrialisation and rationing can make up the shortfall.
From which mental institution did you escape Rudy Kraus, just asking.
The last time de-industrialization and rationing took place in Germany was during WWII. Do you want to return to those times or do you prefer the days of the which trials when people were burned because a thunderstorm destroyed the crops?
I’m still figuring out too, if Rudy is simply being sarcastic or serious. If he’s serious, to “de-industrialize” and to “ration” energy to just 4 hours a day, wow! Cant find words yet how to describe the “new” Germany then.
Soon it will be cheaper to run your own diesel generator than buy electricity off the grid. Merkel’s “conservative” government will have to hire more police to prevent people from doing that, especially since you can run it on low tax heating oil (the ultimate sin in Germany is to circumvent their outrageous taxes)
Just one clarification: Producing your own electric power is not forbidden and under certain circumstances actually encouraged, namely when it is so called “Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung”, IOW, a micro cogeneration plant – for instance, a gas driven ignition engine that delivers heat as well as electricity. More and more such devices come on the German market.
The government is actually interested in keeping the lights on… it gives them more tax revenue.
Google for
“förderung kraft-wärme-kopplung”
How do those figure in to the CO2 emission mandates???
Hmm… i think the idea is to increase efficiency; when some household needs to replace an old oil or gas burner with a new one, it’s better they get one of these ignition engines so they get the same heat as before but as a boon produce some electricity as well. Kind of like a small improvement.
And they can run on biofuels. Burn Borneo instead of coal.