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This affects Germany, too, and I suppose any country with a democratic form of government: One of the first policy victims of Japan's incoming Liberal Democratic Party is likely to be the commitment to phasing out nuclear power. The promise made after Fukushima does not sit well with the pro-business...

Stephan Kohler We’ve left Germany alone for awhile, you may have noticed. We perhaps overstressed the country’s difficulties in its projected transition from nuclear energy to (mostly) renewable energy sources. Maybe there was too much glee on our part at what is, after all, a terrible decision. The...

"It should make you think..." Stefan Guttler in Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass (1976) The news out of Germany could be better, but your feeling about it may depend on how much sympathy you have for a country that keeps shooting its own feet : Germany's surcharge for renewable energy...

Color Bloomberg unimpressed : Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says RWE AG’s new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It’s fired with coal. And Herr Dieter Helm, energy policy professor? Also not impressed:...

It should come as no surprise that environmentalists oppose the use of nuclear energy in the same way they oppose coal or the fracking technology that is unlocking huge new reserves of natural gas. Currently nuclear energy provides about twenty percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Their attack...

Germany wants to put one million electric cars on the road by 2020 but is falling a wee bit short – to date there are about 4500 such cars clogging up the autobahns. And maybe that’s a good thing, at least in the short term : But the Ministry of Economics and Technology argues that placing strict limits...

We promise not to beat the horse until it starts beating us – and we’re probably close to that point – but say, how is that shift to renewable energy going in Germany ? The country’s third-largest aluminum producer, Voerde Aluminium GmbH , filed for bankruptcy amidst trade groups advocating affordable...

A little irony – and a touch of tunnel vision: With audacious hypocrisy, American pro-nuclear pundits have been indulging in the familiar sport of losers – the relentless bashing of the more successful. This should pique our interest. Bashing the more successful is a regular sport over here. With nuclear...

Today's Washington Post features an unsigned editorial that asks an important question: CAN THE WORLD fight global warming without nuclear power? One major industrialized country — Germany — is determined to find out, and another — Japan — is debating whether to try. Both illustrate how hard it would...

Germany is exhibit A for the economic havoc that turning off nuclear facilities can wreck if care and planning aren’t taken. No energy source should be seen as an economic trap or be allowed to become one – it’s one reason the term “energy diversity” is bandied about – and countries should be able to...

Almost too awful : If a crisis over Iran curbs the supply of liquefied natural gas while Japan's nuclear fleet is shut, it could cause an economic impact greater than that from the March 2011 earthquake, the former executive director of the International Energy Agency said Thursday. With 20% of its...

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) wants you (or, really, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whom he was addressing at a hearing) to know : “Fifty percent of our electricity is produced by coal, 20 percent by nuclear power. Yet, when I look at your budget, I look at huge increases in renewable energy funding, which...

Although Germany has become something of a whipping post on this blog, it’s hard not to look at its energy profile since it decided to close its nuclear facilities and not see something like chaos. But a lot of that chaos is incipient, so there’s time – not a lot, but still some time – to figure out...

Nuclear energy isn’t a trap for the unwary. When a country decides to invest in nuclear energy, it does so knowing the risks and benefits. If it invests heavily in nuclear energy – think France, Germany, Russia, China, The U.S. - it has done a good deal of study over many years to determine the value...

First, an additional tidbit on our coverage of IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011 , where we learned that the rumors of nuclear energy’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Just consider this chart from page two of the “Key Graphs” part of the report.  As you can see, the IEA sees nuclear’s future more...

We return, once more, to Germany where details are starting to emerge on the real costs of their nuclear phase out. Let’s start with emissions. According to an estimate by Laszlo Varro, the head of the gas, coal, and power markets division at the International Energy Agency emissions will rise significantly...

A new study from consulting company Capgemini said that Europe may have trouble “keeping the lights on” this winter thanks to the nuclear phase-out in Germany. Following its reactor shutdowns, Germany began to import electricity from its neighbors, including more than 2,000 MW per day from France. During...

From Mohamed ElBaradei , the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency: "There will be, in the short term, a slowdown in some countries. But others like France, India or China [won't see] an impact on their [nuclear] programs," he says. A little more: "For example, China...

Nuclear energy. It’s expensive, right? That’s what a lot of our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace keep saying. Alright, then let’s shut down some plants and start saving money, right? Surely, just on a cost basis alone, it makes sense. To be fair, let’s replace the electrons...

Even after the Fukushima Daiichi facility achieves a cold shutdown and even if no one becomes sick or dies as a result of the accident – no one has so far – the impact to the nuclear energy industry on a global basis is not yet in full focus. This lack of focus became, um, clearer after I read an interesting...

We suppose you could call it a running debate : Stating that the country's atomic energy program is self-sufficient in terms of human resources, advisor to Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Prof MGK Menon on Monday said, "In the past two decades, the country has successfully been able...

One of the big arguments against nuclear is that it simply costs too much. Well, if the latest reports from Germany are anything to go by, consumers are going to have to pay more without it. As reported here earlier, Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power and is hoping to shut down all of its...

A couple of days ago, I expressed a little disappointment that Bahrain was not joining the nuclear family – well, maybe it will, but it doesn’t seem to be on its radar right now. So let’s replace that bit of grimness : Like many others, Jordan is not giving up on its nuclear program, which it considers...

Continuing on with our analysis of Grist’s anti-nuclear campaign, the following is what we think about Mr. Jungjohann’s third and fourth pieces. Grist’s Part Three - States fight back against nuclear power, even as the feds remain in its thrall In his third piece , Mr. Jungjohann claims, with little...

Color us surprised. The House Appropriations Committee unveiled yesterday its version of the Fiscal Year 2012 budget for the Energy Department with an unexpected line item. We’ll have more on the nuclear energy-specific aspects of the House budget tomorrow or Monday – there’s a markup of the bill later...