Essay for Have Fun And Play

Nuclear power phase-out

The nuclear power phase-out is a very big theme for a long time, but especially since the last accidents in Japan. In my essay I am going to concentrate mostly on the German reactions to this event and the pros and cons of clear energies.

What happened in Japan

On Friday, March 11^th the biggest ever measured earthquakes with a magnitude of 9.0 occurred in Japan. These earthquakes lead to a 10m high tsunami wave which hit the northeast coast of the country. Together those two events destroyed the landscape and took many lives and homes. Also 11 of the 54 total atomic power plants in Japan had to be shut down. The one in Onagawa had a fire in the turbine building. In another power plant, Fukushima 1, the cooling system of one of the six reactors fell out. These circumstances made the government call out the atomic state of emergency.

On Saturday, March 12^th a serious explosion in reactor one in Fukushima 1 destroys the roof and walls of the reactor building. It is obvious that radiation escapes out of the power plant although the Japanese government understates the seriousness of these, how they call it, accidents. It is possible that a core meltdown takes place, which could lead to a disaster beyond all expectations.

In the following days the crisis heats up. I am not going into detail anymore because the facts can be read all over the World Wide Web and the situation should be clear.

Reactions in Germany

Of course there was a huge condolence with all victims and their families in Japan. Also there were many aid and donation programs for the Japanese population but this is not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the political exploitation and the societal scare mongering. It is often said that the Germans exaggerate every bad thing and have a very pessimistic view in general. As far as I have experienced it at least the first thing seems to be true. Anyhow soon after the incidents in Japan the German population feared nuclear power plants more than ever and the politicians used this fear to get more followers for their party by telling them to phase-out of the nuclear power dependence. Promises were made to test every atomic power plant in Germany to ensure the safety of those plants. But what were those promises for? Not to take the fear of the population but to get them as voters. Sure it wasn’t told that every power plant gets checked regularly and if it was then only in a short clause. How can it even be that such a catastrophe is needed to let our power plants be checked? I don’t think so, but the politicians had only the next election days in their mind.

For these election days there were a lot more promises made and a lot of crap was told. For one thing was that Germany could get out of the dependency of nuclear power plants within very little time. But fact is that more than 20% of the energy production in Germany is produced by nuclear power plants. What the politicians tell us is that they want to phase-out as soon as possible, but what they don’t tell us is that this is impossible without immense costs which of course the population will pay. I think everyone wants to phase-out of the nuclear energy production and change to clean energy but this cannot be done without immense costs and nor should it be done. I think we should use the nuclear power plants for some decades. Why? Because the safety standards are very high in German plants and they have quite some advantages. On long term we shouldn’t use them at all but now they safe jobs as well as that the variable costs to run them is nearly zero in relation to what they produce.

Although many people grasped the speeches of the politicians as crap or at least exaggerations to get voters, there were a lot more that feared nuclear energy and wanted immediate results. Now the industry nation Germany is shutting down a lot of nuclear power plants and losing a lot of money.

Conclusion to the reactions

The phase-out of nuclear power is a necessary step. Although it is very unlikely that the set time zone of the government can be kept. And probably most important of all we will lose a lot of money and the population will have to pay for it although they probably didn’t get that yet.  

What renewable energy alternatives exist?

Renewable energies are energies which source replenishes very fast or where the usage of them doesn’t deplete the source. The most common sources of such energy are sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat. I am going to name some advantages and disadvantages of some of these.

Sunlight:

The positive thing about solar energy is that it is environmental friendly and that there is an infinite amount available.

One negative point about solar energy is that the costs to produce solar cells and complete photovoltaic installations are very high. Furthermore solar cells consist of chemicals and ecologically damaging material. Therefore the disposal of the cells is not very environmental friendly. Last but not least solar energy is not very reliable, since it is dependent on weather and season of the year.

Wind

Beneath the positive points that hold for each renewable energy, wind energy has some more advantages as for example that the use of space is very little. Furthermore it is quite cheap to build wind power plants.

But still there are a lot disadvantages as well. As well as the solar energy there are some dependencies that make the wind energy very unreliable. They need to be build in regions at the coast or on mountains to get the most energy but exactly on those places it is hard to settle industry. Wind is not savable so it needs to be transformed into energy right away. Wind power plants do not provide a lot of energy and are very noisy, so they need to be placed in quite a large distance to housing areas. Last and perhaps also least some of birds and bats die due to collision with the rotor blades.

Water

Water power plants have a very high efficiency and once build a power plant can endure up to 100 years. They can provide a flood control and improve the navigability of rivers.

By building big water power plants you make a huge intervention in the natural life, since you destroy natural habitats. The flowing waters are interrupted by the impoundment. At big reservoirs there is the possibility to lead to an earthquake. Often it is necessary to resettle whole villages to place a water power plant. There is also the danger that in rivers with only a little water flow there can occur a kind of flood wave if the power plant needs to deliver a huge amount of energy very fast. Also water power plants endanger the fish stock and makes nearby bottomland fruitless.

Conclusion

There exist already a lot of renewable energies, but none of them is perfect yet. Still they are way better than nuclear energy is, but we should keep in mind that they also have disadvantages.