Europe News
Czechs push for nuclear power revival after Russian gas shutdown
Jan 30, 2009, 13:56 GMT
Ostrava, Czech Republic - Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country chairs the European Union until June 30, called for a nuclear power revival in the wake of a gas crisis that left thousands of Eastern Europeans without heat in the midst of winter.
'Do we want sustainable energy supply with low (CO2) emissions? Then we cannot do without nuclear,' Topolanek told an energy security conference in north-eastern Czech Republic.
While backing atomic power, Topolanek warned against reliance on 'imported' sources of energy.
'Do we want to strengthen our freedom and independence? Then we can't depend on the import of oil and gas to such a large extent,' he said.
Eastern European leaders have warned against generating electricity from gas after the two-week shutdown of Russian deliveries via Ukraine threatened Slovakia's power supply.
Experts say that the continent's growing gas needs have been chiefly fuelled by emergence of gas-fired power plants.
Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs reiterated EU's neutral stance to nuclear power, which leaves its use up to the EU's 27 member states.
Piebalgs, who said he personally backs atomic energy, said opposition in countries such as Austria stand in the way of an EU-wide promotion of nuclear power plants.
The commissioner said the EU would not give nuclear power equal backing with renewable energy. 'There are clear limits to how far the European Union can go with nuclear,' he said.
The commissioner said that the EU could renew atomic-power loans 'if member countries agree.'
'I am ready to go ... as far as we can go in the union,' Piebalgs said. 'There are instruments that I think we should be less shy to use ... and at the same time keep some distance.'
Nuclear energy critics see atomic power plants as costly and warn that countries have yet to figure out how to dispose of atomic waste adequately.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Critics of nuclear power are down to their last ditch arguments - the safety issues they hawked for years are absurdly nonsensical - even though the public has never been informed of the changes made after Three Mile Island, including additional safety systems and a permanent NRC observer at every nuclear plant. The newer generation plants havr virtually no ability to cause harm, regardless of what an operator does or doesn't do. So now they are trying to demonstrate excessive cost. Only problem here is that they must dwell on the build costs rather than the costs of the electricity produced, which, even if those build costs were as high as they claim, would still result in electricity about 1/2 the cost of the lowest cost alternative energy producers (wiind), and the electricity would be enormously more valuable. Wind and the other alternative energy producers are exceedingly expensive to build, when one realizes that they have about 1/3rd the lifespan of a nuclear plant,
require enormous tracts of land and enormous transmision line costs
and cannot replace a single controllable prower plant. Regardless of how many windmills you build, when peak demand goes up next year (as it almost always does), you will still need to build additional controllable power capacity. Think that nuclear requires expensive fuel and costs a lot to decomission? Wrong again. Fuel costs less than 1/2 cent per kilowatthour and decommission costs run .2 cents per kilowatthour. ALL US nuclear plants have plenty of money for decommissioning. Not so for windmills. Nor is there any plan (or money) for removing those thousand tons blocks of concrete that lies underneath each and every windmill.
We susbsidize wind by 1.9 cents per kilowatthour directly (which is MORE than we pay for a kilowatthour from existing nuclear plants) and about the same indirectly via tax breaks.
### While backing atomic power, Topolanek warned against reliance on 'imported' sources of energy.
'Do we want to strengthen our freedom and independence? Then we can't depend on the import of oil and gas to such a large extent,' he said. ###
Most of us want to strengthen our freedom and independence. Whatever it takes.
page: 1
juhaJan 30th, 2009 - 14:29:58
pebble reactors should work fine, and are pretty well idiot proof. then again an idiot will find a way around anything idiot proof, hence the term idiot.
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