Chancellor Angela Merkel has responded to her party’s stinging election defeat on Sunday by pledging to speed up Germany’s exit from nuclear power.
“My view of nuclear energy has been changed by the events in Japan,” she said on Monday after a meeting of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to discuss the loss of the state of Baden-Württemberg, the party’s stronghold for 58 years, to the resurgent Green Party. “I have learned a lesson from what happened in Japan.”
The Greens, vehement opponents of nuclear power, surged in the rich southwestern state on a wave of public fear of nuclear power following the Fukushima accident. The party will rule the state in a coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
And just what will all those stoic Germans do when the lights go out because the Muslim brotherhood has cut off their oil and Russia has cut off their natural gas?
There is not that much natural wind in Germany, so pretty little windmills are out. There isn’t that much sunshine either so photovoltaic cells won’t power many things. Perhaps France will sell them electricity for a king’s price. But will the Germans use French electricity knowing that it was generated by nuclear power? Wouldn’t that be nearly as immoral as generating the power themselves? What to do, what to do?
This is a crazy response to the Japanese situation. Germany is not prone to large earthquakes nor to tsunamis. A review of aging nuclear plants and a phased transition to newer designs would be sensible. This, not.
Squirrels running in little cages attached to micro-generators???
There was article in the liberal in the liberal Guardian newspaper that pointed out the Japan was hit by a Richter 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami. The number of deaths, if any, from the nuclear reactors will be infinitesimal when compared to the tsunami. The technology was 1970’s. He took it as a ringing endorsement of the safety of nuclear power.
How many people die in German coal mines?