A Green Blue print

Is a Nuclear Free Germany the Green blueprint for us all? 

Andrew Chappell 6th June 2011

The path towards a world dependent upon a larger renewable energy source base opened up a little more this week. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, announced this week that they will be phasing out all nuclear power plants by 2022. This comes on the back of great social disquiet regarding initial coalition plans to extend the life of German nuclear reactors. This position has been completely reversed and now Germany is set to lead the way towards a nuclear-free society. 

Voices have been calling from all corners of our planet for a move towards renewables for some time, however is this apparent German wisdom as wise as we all initially conceive?  There are going to be a number of challenges along the way to create this smooth transition from nuclear to green sources of energy. From an optimistic outlook the Germans could yet again become bold leaders of a world too timid to begin bridging the gap towards a green future.

The facts are clear; Germany needs to find sources of energy that amount to around a quarter of its current consumption. Under the current proposal the six oldest reactors, which were temporarily set offline after the Fukushima crisis, will now never be used again. Another plant, the Kruemmel reactor based in northern Germany, which was already offline due to persistent technical problems will be permanently off the books. Six more are planned to go offline by 2021 and a further three by 2022. Note that they are just ‘going offline’ rather than being permanently decommissioned, allowing some room for manoeuvre if everything does not quite go according to plan. 

So from which sources do they expect the slack to be taken up? 

The full article from Andrew Chappell can be found here