Also, this is how anti-nuclear people work here in Germany:
1) Complain about nuke power being somewhat subsidized, but never mention that renewable energy is highly subsidized
2) Complain that the operation of nukes costs so much money, but then go ahead making massive protests & demonstrations at, and tie themselves to, the train tracks of the Castor transports. This causes extreme delays in the transport, requires way more police personnel then normally required for that longer time. And last time, the managed to tie them to the tracks in such a way that workers had to actually cut these tracks apart and repair them afterwards.
3) Complain about the fact that there is no suitable terminal storage facility, but actively work against getting one built.
4) Complain about old, unsafe reactors, but force the government to ban companies from building new and safer ones. At the same time this also causes the companies to keep the old ones running even longer, prolonging the risk.
For example,here in Germany, if you have a photo-voltaic system running (solar cells), the energy companies are forced to buy that electricity, and the PV owner gets about 43 Euro-Cent per kilowatt-hour. Regular electricity costs "only" about 13 or 14 Euro-Cent per kW/h. And in that price there is the added premium of 3 or 4 Cents per kW/h included that results from the "Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz (EEG)", which means "renewable energies law".
This means that _everyone_ has to pay a premium to keep that system alive. I'm absolutely sure that if those people who have contracts for getting only renewable energy instead of the regular energy mix, would have to pay the _full_ price, they surely would be the first ones to scream "we want nukes!". After all, that price would be at least 50 to 60 Cent per kW/h, if the PV owners already get 43 Cent....
And they have the balls to complain that nuclear energy is partially subsidized. Hypocrisy at it's finest, i tell you.
Let's not forget that they also want to have electric cars everywhere instead of combustion engines. But somehow they don't spend a minute thinking about where that amount of electricity should come from. Let alone the problems of manufacturing and disposing suitable batteries.
I simply fail to see how all that is supposed to work, and to be achieved, in the long run. Without exception they all completely ignore the energy, material, production, build and space needed to switch to renewable energy completely. For them, wind-parks and solar-panels seem to grow on trees, install themselves, hook themselves up to the grid, and need no space at all. And of course these technologies are obviously able to produce electricity 24/7, regardless of the fact that most of the day there isn't enough sun or wind.
But hey, i'm happy to switch to renewable energy. Bring me a bunch of anti-nuke people and a bunch of stationary bicycles with fat dynamos, and i'm sure i can manage to hook them to my distribution box. Presto, renewable energy!
Greetings,
Chris
