Stavros Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Germany to shut down 7 reactors Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany will take seven of its 17 reactors offline for three months while the country reconsiders plans to extend the life of its nuclear power plants. Merkel said Tuesday that Germany will temporarily shut down reactors that went into operation before the end of 1980, affecting seven reactors. The decision comes amid fears sparked by the crisis under way at Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear power plant. Merkel spoke after meeting with the governors of states that have nuclear power plants. A previous government decided a decade ago to shut all 17 German nuclear plants by 2021, but Merkel's administration last year moved to extend their lives by an average 12 years. That decision was suspended for three months on Monday. It's probably been quite some time since Germany last worked on something with Japan... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanMatterhorn Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Elections are held in 3 states (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatine and Saxony-Anhalt) in less than two weeks. The public opinion now strongly opposes nuclear power instead of leaning slightly against it as before, so Merkel pretty much had no alternatives left open here. Though she lacks legal prerequisites to enforce this measure, the energy giants have already agreed on shutting down their reactors to prevent huge image damage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terse Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 More surprising is that Japan has asked the USA for assistance. The last American nuclear 'experiment' didn't do them much good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stavros Posted March 16, 2011 Author Share Posted March 16, 2011 Probably because the last time the Americans visited Fukushima, it was to extract POW's from the prison camps in 1945. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeliX Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Didn't realise Germany was at risk of Tsunamis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilitantDogOwner Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 And earthquakes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Didn't realise Germany was at risk of Tsunamis. You cannot plan for the previously inconceivable. The consequences of multiple simultaneous incidents have to be considered eg. Sept 2001 showed that. The nuclear industry has sometimes been touted and shilled as a solution to either CO2 or peak oil. But nuclear power is inherently unsafe IMO because the consequences of failure, however unlikely, are so very much more significant. The nuclear industry in general also has a very poor record with respect to providing accurate assessments etc. Nuclear power belongs in bygone era of overly complex solutions. Anyhow - as a consequence of what has taken place, very few people alive today will ever again want to live near a nuclear power station. Any politician with any political sense knows that nuclear power is politically finished. The candidate who is opposed to nuclear power will get more votes from now on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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