German Green Party continues to force nuclear power plant closures

Bad environmental news from Germany. The Green Party, junior members of chancellor Schroeder’s coalition government, have forced through an agreement between the government and four main power groups, to phase out nuclear power entirely over the next 20 years. This is big news, since currently 19 nuclear power plants supply one third of Germany’s electricity. Not even the Greens think that wind, wave or bio-mass will replace more than a tiny fraction of this. Nevertheless, the German Greens are unrepentant and seem to have temporarily forgotten global warming. As Juergen Trittin the Green Party environment minister said as he argued that the industry would not be harmed.

"Why should firms invest in a technology that will only make returns after 15 years while they can be making money out of a modern gas power plant within three, four or five years?"

This makes neither environmentalist nor economic sense. If he’s right and profits from gas power plants are better than from nuclear, there is no need for the agreement. Companies won’t go nuclear anyway. If he’s wrong, he will be responsible for converting one third of his countries electricity supply from a zero carbon emission nuclear fuel, to CO2 emitting gas burning.

How long will it be before these hippie environmentalists stop fighting last year’s battles, and get serious? If they really want to reduce CO2 emissions they should be campaigning for nuclear subsidy.