BRUSSELS — Germany on Tuesday became the first European country to shut nuclear plants in the wake of the crisis in Japan as the European Union made plans to test all 143 nuclear power plants in its 27 countries.
Reuters
A plant in Biblis, Germany is among the seven that will be shut down.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said seven plants that went online before 1980 would be temporarily closed and the time would be used to study speedier adoption of renewable energy. All of the plants were built by German contractors.
While Mrs. Merkel asserted that safety was her main concern, opposition politicians accused her of pandering to fear about nuclear power ahead of a regional election this month. She has, in effect, suspended a decision last autumn to keep older plants operating beyond their previously designated life span.
The tests across the European Union are intended to ensure preparedness for emergencies like floods and tsunamis, as well as terrorist attacks, the European energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, said after meeting with representatives of the nuclear industry, electricity companies and governments.
“This is a reassessment, if you like, of all potential risks in the wake of what has happened in Japan,” Mr. Oettinger said.
A crucial element, he said, will be to determine whether the plants had sufficient backup power to continue cooling the reactors if electrical power was lost. The loss of backup power after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan led to overheating and explosions at the Fukushima facility.
If possible, he added, the tests, which will be conducted later this year, should extend to plants in neighboring countries like Switzerland and Russia.
Mr. Oettinger, who became energy commissioner with Mrs. Merkel’s support, appeared Tuesday to shift his attitude toward nuclear energy. “We must also raise the question if we in Europe, in the foreseeable future, can secure our energy needs without nuclear energy,” he told the German television station ARD.
In his native state of Baden-Württemberg, where Mrs. Merkel’s party risks losing power in March 27 elections, Mr. Oettinger was known as a proponent of nuclear power. The state has two plants, one of which is among the seven to be shut down. On Saturday, about 50,000 protesters formed a human chain from the state capital, Stuttgart, to that reactor. On Monday, an estimated 110,000 people demonstrated in 450 towns across Germany against extending nuclear power.
Both Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Oettinger said that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France would raise nuclear safety at the next Group of 20 summit meeting.
Mr. Oettinger said the proposed stress tests should include as many nuclear plants in the European Union as possible. Nuclear power produces around a third of the electricity and 15 percent of the energy consumed in the European Union.
The chief executive of the German power giant E.ON, Johannes Teyssen said he would welcome more common standards for European nuclear safety. Mr. Teyssen declined, however, to rule out blackouts as a result of Mrs. Merkel’s decision, noting that “obviously depends on several factors of demand and supply, on availability of transmission grids, on a lot of issues.”
“With this new unbalance in the system, minor accidents can have major implications,” Mr. Teyssen told reporters in Brussels. “We will try our best to live up to the situation, but the risk of the system has definitely increased.”
The industry made a similar threat almost a year ago when Mrs. Merkel agreed to extend the life of the power plants provided the utilities pay a special tax. The utilities claimed the tax would hinder investment. The 17 nuclear plants in Germany provide about 26 percent of that country’s electricity supply; the 7 older reactors produce about a third of that percentage.
European operators already face narrowing choices over where to locate reactors. Hot water discharged by power stations, combined with rising air temperatures, mean that rivers in France, which relies on nuclear stations for more than 75 percent of its electricity, sometimes become warm enough in the summer to threaten fish and plant life. But building plants on seafronts, where cold water is abundant, may become less attractive because of storms and rising sea levels linked to climate change.
A total of 17 reactors in the European Union use similar technology to the reactors affected in Japan, known as boiling water reactors, according to the European Commission. Of those, 9 reactors in Finland and Sweden are on coastlines, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency, part of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Cevelopment. About 40 percent of reactors in the union’s countries are on coastlines, according to the commission.
The Continent has comparatively weak earthquakes. Even so, nature can pose a threat. During a storm in December 1999, a rise in water levels at the mouth of the Gironde River led to severe flooding at the French plant Blayais, shutting down some safety systems.
Since then, Électricité de France, which operates the plant, has improved water defenses at Blayais to protect against storms and high waves.
Stress tests would have common standards, Mr. Oettinger said, but “if you have a plant which is on the coast, well then obviously flooding and tsunamis will be tested for perhaps more thoroughly than plants situated at much greater altitude.”
The nuclear crisis in Japan is also complicating the debate over whether to pursue nuclear energy in Chile, a country that only last year suffered an 8.8-magnitude earthquake that caused widespread devastation, government officials said this week.
Next week, Chile and the United States are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on nuclear cooperation when President Obama visits Santiago. But given the disaster in Japan, Chile’s energy and mining minister, Laurence Golborne, told reporters that the government needed to study the situation.
“We may decide we don’t want this type of energy and we will have to analyze other sources of energy,” he said. “The country needs energy, and to say no to something means saying yes to other things.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.