The collision of nuclear power and climate change is one of the more fascinating political and public policy debates afoot. Today’s case in point: a Financial Times story about a new Deutsche Bank study:
Germany will miss its CO2 emission targets, face rising electricity prices and become “dramatically” more reliant on Russian gas if it keeps to its policy of phasing out nuclear energy, a new study warns.
The 60-page paper by Deutsche Bank will add to the pressure on Angela Merkel, chancellor, to renegotiate the phase-out deal agreed by the previous government in 2000, despite her pledge not to reopen the controversial debate.
Rising concern about global warming and energy security has sparked a lively dispute in Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led grand coalition government about the wisdom of renouncing nuclear energy. Michael Glos, the conservative economics minister, has campaigned vigorously against the phase-out, triggering equally vigorous opposition from Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic environment minister.
This has been obvious for a long time. Worse the domestic equivalent is brown coal, which is a step, a short step, above burning dung.
Further bad news. I talked this weekend with someone who works in nuclear energy regulation. He said that pebble bed designs probably cannot be implemented, because no one knows how to make the “pebbles” strong enough that they can pass safely through the system, which means that the best designs remain pwr such as the new one being built in Finland by a French/German consortium.
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