Germany may well be regarded as the nation where the endgame of
nuclear power began. The conservative and pro-business German
government proposed a law to switch off all nuclear power plants by
the end of 2022. Polls indicate that 85 percent of Germans want
nuclear power to be phased out within a decade. A clear technical
and economic vision of a clean energy future, and a renewed
determination for rational energy policies, fuel this demand.
Like other industrial nations, Germany was swept up in the 1950s by
the illusion that nuclear power would be a safe source of energy and
a fountain of peace and prosperity. But in the 1970s, local
opposition to a planned reactor near the Swiss border first stopped
construction and then became the nucleus for an increasingly
knowledgeable and influential antinuclear movement.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 again focused Germans on the
need to invest in anything but nuclear. To this day, radioactive
pollution levels from Chernobyl are such that wild berries,
mushrooms and game from certain parts of Germany are not safe to
eat.
Where would the United States be today if, 20 years ago, influential
Republicans with small hydropower dams in the Rockies had a federal
law that required utilities to buy hydroelectric power at
predictable rates and to guarantee priority access to the power
grid? The 1990 German Power Feed-in Law (Stromeinspeisegesetz) does
just that. It has accelerated the shift to green energy in Germany.
Conservative forecasts suggest Germany will achieve 35 percent
renewable power in its energy mix by 2020, 50 percent by 2030, and
80 percent by 2050.
The course of nuclear power in Germany appeared set in 2000 when the
federal government negotiated a phaseout with the nuclear power
industry. Since then, technologies and the industrial base for a
great energy transformation have been put in place. Concerns about
climate change have added urgency.
Today, the vision is of a smart power grid, fed by a mixture of
large and small distributed renewable power plants, with electric
cars providing grid-connected storage when parked, stabilizing the
power grid.
Contrast this with the history of direct (and hidden) subsidies for
the nuclear industry. Were all these taxpayer costs reflected in the
price of nuclear power, not one plant would run.
What might be the international consequences of Germany ending
nuclear power use? Other nations are also pulling back. Switzerland
aims for a slow phaseout. Italy has ended nuclear illusions with a
referendum. A similar outcome might be expected in Sweden. Japan
also is reducing nuclear power.
Expect increased pressure to change the statutes of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, or perhaps even a call to
disband it. Without "civilian" use of nuclear technology to contend
with, reform of the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
can be envisioned.
R. Andreas Kraemer is the director and CEO of the Ecologic Institute in Berlin and chairman of the Ecologic Institute in Washington, D.C.
The article first appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle on June 17, 2011. The arguments behind the short article are laid out in more depth in
an essay published by the American Institute for Contemporary German
Studies in their AICGS Advisor
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July 8, 2011
Matthew J. Zambito, SUNY, (1)