It’s been
three years since Fukushima hit the headlines and one should ask if lessons
have been learned.
Germany is
phasing out nuclear and not because the tree-hugger community has taken over
the government but it’s the realisation in all political spectra that nuclear
does not work and that renewables bring huge benefits. But against the general
perception Germany is still producing more electricity with nuclear than Britain
and at its height three times as much as Britain now. Germany tried really hard
to make the dream work, having endless amounts of energy with no risk building
some 36 nuclear power stations, many of them in ground-breaking designs.
Germany has also quite a few sites where nuclear waste is stored and Gorleben,
Morsleben and Asse jump to mind. The latter two were supposed to be perfectly
safe ‘Endlager,’ (deep geological repository) but they turned out to be not so
safe consequently the cosily search for a perfect last resting place for the
nuclear waste goes on.
ARD
Tagesschau is the equivalent to BBC news
As proven
over the last so many decades the nuclear lobby manages again and again to mix
wishful thinking with some science and sell that science fiction in glossy
brochures to the government.
Here we
are in 2014 in Britain and if it all goes to plan we will subsidise yet another
nuclear folly with billions in exchange for some electricity to be on the grid
in 10 years time. How much exactly will we get for our money is anyone’s guess?
To put it in perspective, the 16 nuclear reactors currently on the grid
produced 64 Terawatt hours of energy in 2012. That is one-third less of
electricity generated in Germany from renewables installed between 2002 and
2012. Let me put this another way, over 10 years enough generating capacity
from renewables was installed in Germany to increase the electricity supply by
over 92 Terawatt hours to 136TWh that’s some 37% of Britain’s electricity needs,
leaving the 64TWh the 16 nuclear plants produced well behind.
The
Greens, whilst in power in Germany put a political framework into place to
encourage electricity generation from renewables. After Fukushima Merkel went
back to the nuclear phase out policy the Greens negotiated but different to the
Greens still subsidising with vast amounts of fossil fuel and sadly in
particular coal.
The rush
to renewables in Germany has also contributed to the relative health of the
German economy and different to Britain has had less black outs and is
exporting plenty if electricity. Different to any other form of electricity
generations the costs of renewables have steadily declined while all others
gone up and that will not change. But just when you thought things could not
get any worse, the government decided to go full steam ahead with fracking. The
catalogue of problems which come with this technique are very well known,
proven and still the government is sleepwalking into the next disaster just
like with nuclear. Who is profiting?
Fracking as well as nuclear makes economically
and ecologically no sense, well it makes perfect sense for a few lucky ones but
not for the majority of humanity nor the environment. Subsidising fracking in
the form of tax breaks, subsidising nukes by milking every electricity costumer
is simply insulting. Fracking does create tremors or even earthquakes, does
impact on drinking water in particular as it uses huge quantities of water and
releases methane as well as other gases and radioactivity. All proven and well
documented, we are not only gambling our
own but also our children and their children’s future creating a catalogue of
very difficult problems.
What makes
matters worse that we can choose much better well proven and established
technologies. We are fortunate today more than ever before being in the
position to harvest affordable, plentiful energy, create substantial
employment, economic growth and prosperity for many rather than just a few. But
in order to do so we have to desperately upgrade the electric grid. It’s known
that in order to utilise renewables to their full potential, in particular
solar and wind the electric grid has to be able to distribute the electricity
quickly and efficiently. Somewhere the sun will shine or the wind blow and
somewhere else somebody is needing that electricity. Unfortunately through the
lack of investment, a Wild West style capitalism of the ugliest form and a
government run and controlled by lobbyists the national grid was never upgraded
to take the electricity generation fluctuations which can come with some
established renewables. In fact it is in
the interest of the energy generating and supply lobby to keep the grid ‘as it
is’ old and tired incapable to distribute the power quickly and efficient it in
order to maintain their monopoly.
In times
of austerity money has to be spend wisely and only if the grid is upgraded we
can use renewables to their huge potential. Therefore, billions of pounds have
to made available for the grid not HS2. Poor and in particular short-sighted
energy policy and/or bad governance are to blame for fuel or general poverty
but not renewables nor the 'green crap'.
Still, despite all the odds energy generation
from renewables has increased at a tremendous speed in Britain, hopefully more
and more people will see the benefits renewables bring and the press will
nourish a more constructive debate on these matters.
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