GERMANY’S NUKE CUT WILL WORK – STUDY

'We Can Do It' Says German Environment Agency on Nuclear Phase Out
Paul Gipe, June 7, 2011 (Wind-Works)

"The Conservative German government has issued [Hintergrundpapier zur Umstrukturierung der Stromversorgung in Deutschland], a 14-page document outlining how Germany can close all its reactors by 2017 and keep the lights on…The study found that Germany could close its reactors by 2017, much sooner than the government's official proposal of 2022…[indicating] the intense political debate within and without the ruling coalition of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and her junior partner the neoliberal Free Democrats…

"…[T]he report was issued by an agency within the German Ministry of the Environment, but it was not "commissioned" by the Ministry…[It is expected to] be used by the opposition parties in arguing that the ‘austieg’ or exit from nuclear can be quicker than the Merkel government is proposing…Ironically, the conservative Merkel government has proposed essentially the exit policy implemented by the previous red-green government of Social Democrats and the Greens. Merkel's conservative party rose to power in part on a platform of extending the operation of the existing reactors…[It] was tabled shortly before the Fukushima accident. The policy reversal is historic not only in Germany, but worldwide."

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"Critics of the reversal have charged that Germany will suffer power outages…
import nuclear power from other countries, notably France, and… build massive new coal plants to make up the shortfall…[The report] concluded that Germany can close the reactors within five years and do so…without power outages, without importing nuclear power from other countries, without building new coal plants, and with only a modest increase in the cost of electricity.

"The agency says that Germany can close the nuclear plants by faster development of its renewable sources of energy and the construction of 5,000 MW of new gas-fired generation. The new gas-fired generation will give the grid the needed flexibility in meeting demand while also preserving Germany's commitment to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions…"

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"To the surprise of many critics of Germany's renewable energy program, the country is not a net importer of electricity…[but] a net exporter… and that this will continue as the reactors are taken off line…Germany buys electricity on the liberalized market when it is cheaper than generating the electricity from its own fossil-fired power plants.

"The German Environment Agency estimates that a rapid exit from nuclear will cost ratepayers only €0.006 to €0.008 per kilowatt-hour ($0.009/kWh to $0.01/kWh). This increase, says UBA, is less than the price swings of natural gas and coal during the past year…[T]he higher market price for electricity will reduce the cost of Germany's renewable energy program by decreasing the differential between the market price of electricity and the average cost of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy…"