Amazing. If one reads anti-nuclear blogs her on the DK or "out in the World", so to speak, you'd be seeing, or thinking, nuclear is finished, it's all going to be wind mills and solar cells and butterflies in our species future. EPIC FAIL!
This overly opinionated commenter thinks these folks really need to get out more. Before we get to Finland, lets look at the reality of the planet's energy development:
1. Almost 3 billion people have no access to electrical energy.
2. 5,000 people die a DAY from the use of fossil fuel (excluding those that die fighting for it).
3. Coal remains the biggest producer of electrical energy and is still growing, albeit at a slightly lower rate.
4. Coal is the biggest killer, more than any other source of energy, in the world today.
OK, lets cover development of nuclear energy with those countries supposedly turning away from nuclear.
1. Japan. Still going through it's catharsis, understandably, from losing 20,000 citizens to a tsunami and, though shrinking, a large expensive exclusion zone around Fukushima. Nuclear energy there is seen as terrible by a large double-digit majority of the population. All plans for new nukes put on hold (though a few are under construction). Industrialists question the wisdom of phasing out what has always been a source of cheap energy and essentially powered their economy for 2 decades. Carbon emissions, always inversely proportional to the amount of carbon-free on-demand energy, mostly nuclear and hydro to a limited degree, wind.
2. Germany. Basically it's zero-sum. The German Greens and SPD voted in their pro-coal and pro-natural gas policy and agreed to phase out nuclear. Certainly when this was done it was "popular" though not a burning issue there. Now, it is more a burning issue so they've begun importing more or less regularly lots of energy, both nuclear (zero-carbon) and coal/gas from throughout Europe, plus, some wind at certain times from Denmark (not a lot as Germany has it's own, larger wind sector). They shutdown some of their nukes and increased their coal burning and gas burning and thus their CO2. Despite not being in a tsunami zone, Germans clearly paniced. But nothing there has really changed with regards to new nuclear which no gov't ever pushed since 2000.
3. Italy. Zero-sum as well. Choosing the largest energy NIMBY in human history, they shut down their nuclear power plants after Chernobyl, and decided to import energy from France's huge nuclear fleet instead. Thus they burn more fossil fuel, mostly from N. Africa, than anyone to produce energy. They burn oil to produce electricity. Seriously. The loony gov't of Berlosconi, decided to explore new nuclear, with paper announcements that they would build more nukes. They did not do a referendum on the subject. Fukushima happened, everyone panicked (again) and THEN held a referendum (would be interesting to hold one 3 years from now, but it wouldn't be nearly dramatic). There was, of course, no national discussion on their future, at all. The Referendum was held with a variety of questions concerning the vastly unpopular privatization schemes the right-wing gov't wanted to institute and voters rejected it all.
4. Switzerland. Ahhh...the Swiss. They get about 40% of their energy from 5 nuclear plants. They had 'talked about' building more or newer ones. Then Fukushima. Announced they were going to phase the plants out...after 20 or 30 years. Smart, those Swiss. No plans FOR more nuclear had actually passed any political institution. This commentator bets the house that this will be reversed over the next 10 years as wind and solar fail to show they can run the Swiss industrial economy.
So that's really it...nothing really has changed.
Finland.
So yesterday they announced the building of their second new plant. They have the First of A Kind EPR (yes, over budget, behind schedule, which only means it will take longer to pay off), a French designed Generation III reactor. The Finns like nuclear energy. The more nuclear for them means less money flowing the Russians for buying their gas. Apparently, unlike Germany, they don't have politicians seeking future retirement jobs with Gasprom. Hey, only speculating here...
The Finnish announcement was basically a done deal, if you will, it was about the siting of their plant. They expect to build a lot more plants in the future. Evidently the Finns don't read the Daily Kos anti-nuke diaries or they'd know the industry was finished, kaput, etc.
Sweden.
Even the historically anti-nuclear Swedes haven't drunk from the keg of anti-nuclear vodka. Their phaseout of...their phase out of nuclear energy is still on-going and now more sectors of society are trying to get into the export-to-the-stupid-German syndrome more energy. At any rate, there will, as of now, be no phase out in Sweden (50% nuclear) and at least replacement nukes for the ones they do have.
The Brits.
No one ever talks about them. Odd that, as they speak English (sort of, kind of) and their stuff on line is easily accessible. For a various reason anti-nuclear sentiment in Britain, which does exist, at least in the low double-digit percentages, has never really coalesced into a 'movement' as it has in northern Europe and Germany. Plus, GB has an unusually large number of outspoken pro-nuclear environmentalists...who have parsed the numbers understand that greenhouse gas emissions won't be cut without nuclear. So they are planning on build 12 brand, spank'n, new nukes. That's the plan, anyway. Again, apparently they are not reading RussGirl or Harvey Wasserman. Oh well.
Zee French.
Eeak! 'nuff said.
Poles and Czechs.
These folks are playing the Russian and Swedish export game: hoping to high heaven that the German's actually do increase their wind and solar 'wedges' so they can export cheaper, green, nuclear energy to the Germans. The Poles are taking tenders for their new nuclear plants and the Czechs can't count high enough to figure out how many MORE nuclear plants they want to build.
I think this is actually not healthy, seriously, being motivated by the totally ignorant decision of the German population and taking advantage what is obviously going to be a very, very expensive decision by them. The motivation for any clean energy should be to get rid of the poison plants that burn coal in their own countries first. Export oriented economies are always sitting on a cliffs edge of recession/depression. It makes nations dependent on those exports. We'll see how this pans out but I don't like the motivation myself. Still, the more nukes, the better, as it means coal and gas plants not built.
This was a somewhat swarmy diary. I know. Ergo, as always, when I write these more trolling (but always enlightening so my mother tells me)-like diaries, you can say anything about me you want, attack, hide, etc. Feel free. You'll not get from me on this diary a "say what?" response.
I'm off to next weeks Thorium Energy Conference in NYC, with side trips to Occupy Wall Street as well.