More Germany News

["Tom Savin" <lexicon@hotbot.com>]

Good Morning Radsafers,

I just got this article from the Associated Press, thought it might be of interest.

You might as well buy your German beer now - in a few years there won't be any made because they'll be burning the ingredients to generate electricity!



Germany To End Nuclear Power Use 

 By TONY CZUCZKA 
 Associated Press Writer 

 BERLIN (AP)  Germany's government and its nuclear power industry agreed Thursday to
 end the country's use of atomic energy, a plan officials said could take the plants off line
 beginning in 2002. 

 The deal, clinched by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the nuclear plants bosses after
 more than a year of haggling, envisages the last plant shutting down in about 20 years. 

 Schroeder's center-left government took over in late 1998 promising to negotiate an end to
 nuclear power, an issue especially dear to his junior coalition partner, the environmentalist
 Greens party. 

 Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Greens leader who has tussled with nuclear plant
 operators, called the accord an acceptable compromise and urged his party to back it. 

 He said the first plant could shut down in late 2002, though he stressed that power
 companies had leeway with the start and end of the timetable. 

 ``If that flexibility is not used, the first nuclear power plant would go off-line at the end of
 2002,'' he said in a radio interview. 

 The Greens have pressed for the phaseout to start before the next election in fall 2002 so
 they can present their voters with a major achievement. 

 By agreeing with the power bosses that the government would legislate a nuclear
 phaseout, the Greens had achieved their prime goal in the talks, Trittin said. 

 At an early morning news conference, Schroeder announced that the two sides had
 compromised on how quickly the phaseout would take effect, with the government allowing
 two extra years of running time. 

 Industry leaders said they regretted the early closures. ``But we accept the primacy of the
 political system,'' Ulrich Hartmann, chairman of the Veba utility, said after 4 1/2 hours of
 talks. 

 Germany's 19 nuclear plants provide almost a third of the country's electricity. But the
 country also has a large anti-nuclear lobby that regularly targets shipments of nuclear fuel
 or waste with massive, sometimes violent protests. 

 Schroeder, a Social Democrat, initially said his government would legislate plant closures
 after a year if a voluntary deal couldn't be reached with plant operators. But the
 negotiations dragged on over 18 months and were marked by bickering between the
 partners over how quickly the plants should be forced off-line. 

 The final deal allows a total lifespan of 32 years for power plants, Schroeder said. He did
 not say exactly when the last nuclear energy production will end. But the newest German
 plants came on line in the late 1980s, which means their 32 years should be up around
 2020. 

 Environmental activists, including some regional Greens leaders, charged that the phaseout
 was far too slow. The German Union for the Protection of Nature called the accord an
 affront. 


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