Scientists call for nuclear phase-out
“We are experiencing in a fast pace that the energy transition is not working”
Germany still has three nuclear power plants operating, others may be reactivated: is this the way out of the energy crisis? “If you ignore the illusion of the energy transition, it is possible for these nuclear power plants to continue operating,” says WELT editor Stephen Ost.
“Rising energy prices and declining supply security threaten competition and prosperity” – Professors from German universities are calling for a phase-out of nuclear power to be reversed.
KClimate change and the energy crisis have led many countries to increasingly rely on nuclear power. Germany is a special case: without a significant amount of sustainable energy sources at its disposal (besides coal and climate-damaging forms of gas), Germany still seeks to close its last nuclear power plants at the end of the year and is unsustainable. Depends on wind energy and the sun. A group of 20 professors at German universities is now pushing to fix the German energy transition.
In their “Stuttgart Manifesto”, which the researchers intend to publish shortly, they call for reversing the nuclear phase-out and for the continued operation of German nuclear power plants “as a third climate protection pillar”. Guaranteed with. Air.
In a statement available to WELT, the scientists wrote, “We demand the immediate lifting of the nuclear phase-out paragraph and an investigation into the safety-related operating licenses to keep German nuclear power plants operating.” “With a one-sided focus on the sun, wind and natural gas, Germany was plunged into an energy deficit,” warn researchers working in the technical and economic departments.
They want to send their manifesto to the Petitions Committee of the Bundestag, which will issue it for the general public to sign. If at least 50,000 supporters come together, the scientists can communicate their demands to the Bundestag committee according to legal process.
“Catching nuclear phase-out slows climate protection”
Signers of the “Stuttgart Declaration” fear economic problems resulting from the nuclear phase-out: “Rising energy prices and declining security of supply endanger competition and prosperity,” they write. Stopping Germany’s nuclear phase would slow climate protection because coal power would be needed to ensure electricity supplies – as is already happening in Germany.
More researchers will come, says the initiator of the statement, André Theis, Professor of Energy Storage At the University of Stuttgart: “There is a broad scientific consensus that Germany can no longer ignore the statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Nuclear Energy as a Climate Protection Technology,” he told WELT.
The cooling tower of the Issar 2 nuclear power plant in Bavaria
Source: DPA/Armin Weasel
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified nuclear power as a potential climate protection tool because it generates energy without climate-warming CO2 emissions. The European Union also classifies nuclear power as a sustainable energy source. Nuclear power plants require less space, so unlike wind and sun, they rarely come into conflict with nature conservation, species conservation and landscape conservation. Yet, unlike other countries, nuclear power has had a hard time in the German media since the 1970s, as media research has determined.
The anti-nuclear movement forms the founding core of the Greens party, whose representatives still fear the risk of radioactive radiation being released and the lack of eventual storage for old fuel rods. However, Japan and Ukraine also depend on nuclear power, although these countries have had only two serious nuclear accidents with old-design power plants so far.
The first nuclear waste reserves are about to become operational in Finland and Sweden. Germany’s particular path was criticized by energy experts at the “20 Years of Energy Transition” conference in Stuttgart: the German transformation of energy supply is still in its infancy, complex, expensive, technically immature and ideology shaped. . Keywords will hide serious problems.
Energy researcher Theis reports that the idea for the initiative against nuclear phase-out came up at the Stuttgart conference.
Besides André Theis, other signatories to the “Stuttgart Declaration” are: Buraq Atakani from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Michael Beckman from the Technical University of Dresden, alexander dilger from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Francesca Di Mare from Ruhr University Bochum, Kerstin Eckert from the Technical University of Dresden, Sabine Anders from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Martina Hentschel from the Technical University of Chemnitz, Rafaela Hillerbrand from kit, Antonio Hurtado from the Technical University of Dresden, Matthew Kind from kit, Marco Kocho from Ruhr University Bochum, andrea luke from Castle University, Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz, frank shilling from kit, Harold Black from BTU Cottbus-Seinfenburg, klaus stiglader from Ruhr University Bochum, Robert Stiglitz from kit, Gerhard Wegener from the University of Erfurt, Thomas Wetzel from KIT.
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