Germany dims N-plants, hopes to keep lights on

After the Fukushima tragedy, Germany disconnected eight of its oldest 17 reactors within days

Nuclear plants have long generated nearly a quarter of Germany’s electricity. But after the tsunami and earthquake that sent radiation spewing from Fukushima, half a world away in Japan, the government disconnected the eight oldest of Germany’s 17 reactors – including the two in this drab factory town of Biblis – within days. Three months later, with a new plan to power the country without nuclear energy and a growing reliance on renewable energy, parliament voted to close them permanently. There are plans to retire the remaining nine reactors by 2022.

As a result, electricity producers are scrambling to ensure an adequate supply. Customers and companies are nervous about whether their lights and assembly lines will stay up and running this winter. Economists and politicians argue over how much prices will rise.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s just go for renewables,' and I’m quite sure we can someday do without nuclear, but this is too abrupt,” said Joachim Knebel, chief scientist at Germany’s prestigious Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

He characterised the government’s shutdown decision as “emotional” and pointed out that on most days, Germany has survived this experiment only by importing electricity from neighbouring France and the Czech Republic, which generate much of their power with nuclear reactors.

Then there are real concerns that the plan will jettison efforts to rein in manmade global warming, since whatever nuclear energy’s shortcomings, it is low in emissions. If Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, falls back on dirty coal-burning plants or uncertain supplies of natural gas from Russia, isn’t it trading a potential risk for a real one?

The International Energy Agency, generally a fan of Germany’s green-leaning energy policy, has been critical. Laszlo Varro, head of the agency’s gas, coal and power markets division, called the plan “very, very ambitious, though it is not impossible, since Germany is rich and technically sophisticated.”

Even if Germany succeeds in producing the electricity it needs, “the nuclear moratorium is very bad news in terms of climate policy,” Varro said. “We are not far from losing that battle, and losing nuclear makes that unnecessarily difficult.”

The government counters that it is prepared to make huge investments in improving energy efficiency in homes and factories as well as in new clean power sources and transmission lines. So far, there have been no blackouts.

Juergen Grossmann, chief executive of the German energy giant RWE, which owns two closed reactors here in Biblis, about 40 miles south of Frankfurt, expressed skepticism. “Germany, in a very rash decision, decided to experiment on ourselves,” he said.

Germany’s planners believed they could forgo nuclear energy in large part because of the country’s remarkable progress in renewable energy, which now accounts for 17 per cent of its electricity output, a number the government estimates will double in 10 years. On days when the offshore wind turbines spin full tilt, Germany produces more electricity from renewable sources than it uses, according to European energy monitors.

Exceeding expectations

Germany has “exceeded everyone’s expectations on renewable power,” said Varro, showing that it could be cost effective and reliable.

Until it closed the reactors, Germany was Europe’s leading energy exporter.
With a total of 133 gigawatts of installed generating capacity in place at the start of this year, “there was really a huge amount of space to shut off nuclear plants,” Harry Lehmann, a director general of the German Federal Environment Agency and one of Germany’s leading policymakers on energy and environment, said of the road map he helped develop.

The country needs about 90.5 gigawatts of generating capacity on hand to fill a typical national demand of about 80 gigawatts a day. So the 25 gigawatts that nuclear power contributed would not be missed – at least within its borders.

To be prudent, the plan calls for the creation of 23 gigawatts of gas- and coal-powered plants by 2020. Why? Because renewable plants don’t produce nearly to capacity if the air is calm or the sky is cloudy, and there is currently limited capacity to store or transport electricity, energy experts say.

New coal and gas plants will use the cleanest technology available and should not aggravate climate change, government officials said, because they will operate within the European carbon-trading system in which plants that exceed the allowed emissions cap have to buy carbon credits from companies whose activities are environmentally beneficial, thus evening out the environmental ledger.

Electricity prices are expected to rise by 35 to 40 euros ($50 to $60) per household each year, or less than 5 per cent, the government estimates. Although nuclear energy generally costs less than newer options, German law has long stipulated that renewable energy must be purchased first even if it is costlier.

But skeptics consider government assumptions overly optimistic. Stefan Martus, the mayor of Philippsburg, says he believes energy costs could rise more dramatically than government estimates; the price of permits to offset dirty power plants is highly unpredictable and variable, like the value of stocks. And the International Energy Agency does not think Germany – or any other country – will be able to reduce its emissions at a reasonable cost without nuclear power.

Energy agency officials also question predictions that electricity use will decline an additional 10 per cent over the next decade given the projected expansion of electric growth of the German economy. The average German family already uses only about half the electricity of its US equivalent.

Even before Fukushima, nuclear energy’s days in Germany were numbered. Biblis had been the site of giant national antinuclear demonstrations, and Germany was already enacting a plan for slowly phasing out nuclear energy by 2023.

The country had become the world leader in wind power and a master at squeezing more energy efficiency out of appliances and homes, having built tens of thousands of self-heating “passive houses.”

Still, Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a physicist, decided last fall to extend the operating licenses of Germany’s nuclear plants over concerns that innovation alone would not satisfy the country’s energy appetite.

Despite Fukushima, industry experts and residents of reactor towns like Biblis and nearby Philippsburg were stunned by the suddenness of the about-face. Both towns will lose hundreds of jobs and millions in tax revenue.

German energy companies, however, say they have been handed a national energy template that looks good on paper but is technically challenging. Although the country’s production of energy is bounteous, they say it is not always available where and when it is needed.

Northern Germany has offshore wind and coal deposits, but southern Germany – a manufacturing epicenter that is home to Mercedes, BMW and Audi – has no plentiful local fuel source other than nuclear. Germany’s current grid is highly decentralised, lacking high-voltage transmission lines to move electricity over long distances.

The country has been pouring money into biomass plants and solar installations – millions of panels now sit on German roofs and fields. Despite recent technological improvements, solar electricity is still far more expensive to generate than wind, gas or nuclear power. And output can be highly seasonal.

Germany’s hope that gas and coal plants will temporarily replace some of the lost nuclear generation may be hard to fulfill — power companies remain lukewarm about building them especially given the German policy of buying “clean” energy first.