NEI Nuclear Notes

This happened last week : Angela Merkel's U-turn on nuclear energy became even more gear-crunching on Tuesday when she announced the temporary closure of seven of Germany's nuclear power stations. The chancellor said that reactors built before 1980 would be taken offline while an urgent review of their safety was carried out. "Safety has the priority in all our deliberations," Merkel declared after she met politicians from affected German states. This isn’t enormously surprising, as Germany has a rather fraught relationship with its nuclear plants. Put Germany in our search box and you’ll see we’ve covered German top-spinning over nuclear energy for a long time. So another whipsaw fast change in the wake of the events in Japan seems wrong-headed but not completely unexpected. In any event, I thought, if Germany has to import electricity, it’ll probably get a fair amount from neighbor France – which of course would be a bit hypocritical. What I did...

If Germany keeps its nuclear plants alive for 15 years past the current 2022 deadline – and taxes them to help support a move to renewable energy – that’s good news for renewable energy, isn’t it? “It’s probably detrimental for offshore [wind],” Hodges said. “Keeping that much nuclear power online means electricity prices will be stable and maybe even with some downside potential. That suggests less investment” in wind energy. Well, boo-hoo. Electricity that is lower cost and free of carbon emissions? Surely, it is to die of shame. Hodges is Charlie Hodges, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It gets better. “The decision is step backward to the energy technology of yesterday,” said Hermann Albers, president of the German Wind Energy Association. “The government is squandering the potential for wind energy.” I always dislike this argument because it assumes that the new is shiny and bright while “the energy technology of yesterday” is gray and dingy. But let’s...

From Deutsche Welle , more on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's call to restore Germany's nuclear energy program: Although Merkel has long championed a three-way mix in electrical power generation—fossil, renewables and nuclear—she has in the past been cautious in openly advocating a reverse in official government policy to phase out nuclear power by 2021. That all changed at a top-level weekend meeting of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in the Bavarian town of Erding. The anti-nuclear decision, passed into law by the government of her Social Democrat predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, was "absolutely wrong," Merkel said as the meeting ended Monday. At a joint press conference, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his country's interest in partnering with Germany: "The desire of the French is to work with our German friends to produce nuclear energy". President Bush begins his final, ei...

Details from Energy Daily . For more, see We Support Lee .

Last week, we wrote about how German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was hedging her bets on overturning her nation's planned nuclear phaseout for fear of shattering her coalition government. Today, the European Tribune picks up on the same theme . Meanwhile, Earth News is in denial . UPDATE : More from We Support Lee . Even more, here .

From Bloomberg : Germany's big four power companies including E.ON AG and RWE AG will be forced to improve the efficiency of their power plants under government plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Chancellor Angela Merkel, after talks in Berlin today with utility chief executives, said that she expects power plant productivity to be raised 3 percent each year from 2010, adding that progress would be monitored. With new energy-saving projects, the steps are vital to reducing national emissions by up to 40 percent by 2020, she said. ``It's clear that we have no choice but to act'' to combat global warming, Merkel told reporters in Berlin after the government's third energy summit. ``There is some doubt about whether our goals can be reached,'' she said, though the proposals are ``a reasonable path'' to achieving German targets. Merkel's decision to spearhead carbon dioxide reduction in the European Union adds pressure on the government to fulf...

From Der Spiegel : The fact that the German government renounced nuclear energy in 2000 and pledged to take its last plant off the grid by 2020 might lead you to think that it would scale back its nuclear research programs. What, after all, is the point in spending money on developing a technology which is on its way out? However, the current administration seems reluctant to give up nuclear quite yet -- at least not totally. German Research Minister Annette Schavan raised eyebrows this week with her announcement to DER SPIEGEL that she would increase research spending between 2008 and 2011 by up to €40 million. Most of the money has been earmarked for young researchers working on nuclear waste storage and nuclear security issues. [...] Meanwhile, over at the Green Party -- which governed together with the Chancellor Gerhard Schröder when parliament approved the phaseout -- party boss Reinhard Bütikofer said he viewed the plan as an open provocation. "Each euro which is spent on d...