We have seen the flaws in the ointment with Japan's nuclear catastrophe. There are so many advantages to solar energy production, and only one disadvantage - the government won't set up the right incentive structure. The Japanese situation proves how vulnerable are the many nuclear energy plants and not just because a lot of them sit on fault lines. It's about the huge quantities of nuclear waste that are stored at the sites with just a few feet of water and a corrugated metal roof over them. These are the real threats not the nuclear rods that are currently producing energy. The spent fuel rods which amount to nuclear waste pile up in insufficientlty protected storage tanks while the main energy producing rods are well protected in containment structures. In both cases, however, they are dependent on pumped water to prevent meltdowns. The spent fuel rods can melt down just as well as the rods currently in use. But at least in the Japanese case there were no structures to contain them. When electrical power to the plants was cut by the Tsunami, all the nuclear fuel spent or otherwise became liable to meltdown, explosion and dispersion of radioactivity. Hydrogen explosions at the plant, if not the earthquake and tsunami themselves, cracked the flimsy structures that the nuclear waste or spent fuel was stored in. As water drained out, the rods heated up. New water pumped in by fire trucks and dropped from helicopters cooled the rods down but drained out through the leaks producing the highly radioactive water that is now leaking into the ocean. In short you have a ghastly mess. Either keep refilling the tanks thus allowing radioactive water to leak into the ocean or have a complete meltdown as the rods heat up followed by a nuclear explosion equivalent to the explosion of a dirty bomb.
From a wider perspective any energy production that is concentrated in one place, nuclear or otherwise, is subject to being knocked out thus affecting all the people that were dependent on energy from that plant and plunging them into darkness. The disadvantages of nuclear should be abundantly clear. All those stored spent fuel rods constitute a potential gigantic nuclear dirty bomb. The loss of electricity to the cooling pumps, the failure of backup systems and suddenly you have a disaster on your hands of apocalyptic proportions. A bomb set off at a nuclear plant would produce the same results as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The real answer to the nuclear disaster is distributed energy production, and the perfect form of distributed energy production is solar. There are three advantages to distributed solar energy production as they've done in Germany. 1) If a catastrophe occurs in one area, other areas can make up the difference. The whole system is not taken down, just a part of it. 2) A distributed solar network can distribute ownership and profits to a larger number of people with solar panels on their property rather than have the profits concentrated with one central energy corporation. 3) There is no energy loss from the transmission of electricity over long distances because most of the energy is consumed very close to where it was produced. If part of the system is destroyed there is no damage to the environment or spread of radioactivity. Every home that has solar installed will first provide energy for itself and then provide excess energy to the grid for other users. There will be no huge refugee or homeless problem as there is currently in Japan because in the event of a disaster all those not directly affected will not have to leave their homes for lack of energy. In the event of a tragedy affecting part of the grid, the whole system doesn't go down and each home not affected still has energy from its own solar panels.
In Germany the government set up incentives ten years ago that provide for every homeowner or farmer to install solar panels. An average German household, for example, can earn over 2,000 euros ($A3,130) a year from subsidies to install solar panels - double their electricity bill - and pay off all costs within 10 years and earn a pure profit for a further 10. Germany is now in the process of replacing nuclear energy generating plants with distributed solar energy production. The nuclear tragedy in Japan has caused Germans to reassess whether ot not they want to continue their nuclear plants. The following is from an article, "German Solar Energy May Get a Boost from Japan's Nuclear Disaster" by John Blau:
Currently, nuclear energy accounts for 23 percent of German energy and renewable energies 16 percent. Schutz said that renewable energies would be able to cover 47 percent of German energy demand by 2020.
Solar energy is developing rapidly in Germany, thanks largely to its favorable feed-in tariffs. Solar capacity is now around 17 GW, with 7 GW added last year alone.
In cloudy Germany, however, the government sees the greatest potential in wind power. At the end of 2009, the country had 21,164 wind power stations with a capacity of 25.7 GW. By 2025, wind power is expected to account for 25 percent of electricity generation. About 40 off-shore wind farms are planned along the country’s northern coastlines with a capacity of 25 GW.
But Germany will have to invest in new grids that can not only transport energy from the new wind parks but are also capable of handling fluctuating levels of wind and solar energy and of managing energy generated by many small facilities spread across the country.
That will cost money and that could be an issue in a country where energy prices have been going nowhere but up. The Japanese nuclear disaster, however, has heightened fears of the technology and strengthened an anti-nuclear lobby and the opposition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Green Party ahead of upcoming regional elections. Numerous anti-nuclear rallies have taken place across the country.
Germans, who have been closely following the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan, may now be willing to pay more for energy they view as safer and more environmentally friendly.
So Germans have been solarizing at a rapid pace due to government incentives which make it practical for any homeowner or farmer to install solar energy for their own use and for selling back into the grid to provide for other local use. Profits are widely distributed instead of being concentrated with one corporation. A catastrophe in one part of the grid does not affect energy production in other parts, and the rest of the grid could conceivably make up for energy losses in the affected part. Transmission energy loss is minimized compared to central energy production which is then distributed for many miles via transmission lines with consequent line loss. Total power output of Germany's installed solar PV panels is 12.1 GW -- greater than the total power output of Japan's entire 6-reactor Fukushima nuclear power plant. At the current pace of solar development, Germany is on track to generating half its energy from solar by 2020.
Germany, in reponse to the Fukushima disaster, is now planning to abandon both nuclear and fossil fuel energy production in favor of renewables:
In response to the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, Germany has announced plans to go nuclear-free without increasing its reliance on fossil fuels. By ramping up investments in renewables, the German government plans to fight climate change while simultaneously avoiding the risks inherent in nuclear energy. If the plan is successful it could provide a model for other countries that want to shift to greener electricity grids.
In 2000 Germany passed the Nuclear Exit Law, which was supposed to end the country's dependence on nukes by the year 2021. The last few years however have seen a push from Chancellor Angela Merkel to change the law and extend the life of the nuclear fleet. In 2010 with Merkel's support, the government delayed the timeline for closing nuclear plants by twelve additional years. This move was unpopular with the public to begin with, and events in Japan have triggered a new wave of anti-nuclear fervor in Germany. In response Merkel and other leading politicians have reversed their positions on nuclear energy and are embracing a nuke-free future once again.
Merkel's government is looking at speeding up the process for retiring nuclear plants, possibly on an even shorter timeline than originally proposed under the Nuclear Exit Law. However it's notable that a shift away from nuclear power hasn't prompted any significant push to burn more coal and other fossil fuels. Rather Germany plans to replace nuclear plants with renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. All the more impressive is the fact that Germany lacks the vast renewable resources of countries like the United States, parts of which are both windier and much sunnier than Germany. If Germany can phase out nuclear power and fossil fuels at the same time, other countries ought to be able to do the same.
Currently Germany generates slightly under a quarter of its electricity with nuclear power, similar to the United States. The country has seventeen nuclear plants, and the oldest plants will likely be first to be taken offline. Germany is already a leader in renewable energy, and renewables currently meet 17% of its electricity needs. The government hopes to increase this figure to 40% within ten years, and by 2050 Germany plans to be a 100% renewable economy.
All of this flies in the face of an assumption commonly encountered in the US, which holds countries must choose between fossil fuels and nuclear power. Germany seems positioned to successfully abandon both, without any of the dire consequences fossil fuel and nuclear advocates have predicted. Germany expects to have no problem keeping the lights on and adjusting its grid to run off renewable power sources. The United States should be fully capable of doing the same thing.
Fukushima has shown that modern nuclear power isn't safe. Meanwhile climate change goes on, and the imperative to shift away from fossil fuels grows stronger every day. In the face of these two great threats to the planet's livability the question isn't whether to build nuclear power stations or fossil fuel plants. Rather, it's how quickly can the world transition off both?
I previously blogged about decentralized, decorporatized, decommodified solar power as follows:
"But the truly exciting promise of decentral- ized, decorporat- ized, decommod- ified energy and power generation is that individual citizens would not be at the behest of large corporations who would not be able to bottle and sell them power at whatever price they and the speculators wanted to set. This would be a democratized industry, and would represent a situation that enabled the citizens of whatever country to be a yeomanry. Think of the initial years of the US where almost everyone was a small farmer. They provided most of their own needs locally on the farm and put the excess whether it be milk or produce back out on the grid. Ubiquitous power generation via solar would allow a return to the same situation, and would allow a truly uncorporatized democracy to flourish much as it did in the good old days. It would be Thomas Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers come true only the farming would be for energy."
With the right incentives the US is perfectly situated for solar and wind energy production. It could follow Germany's lead and reject fossil fuels which are harmful to the environment and nuclear energy production which can result in horrible disasters. But will it seize the opportunity to do so? The large energy companies want to keep energy production in their centralized hands from whatever source it comes. They are not choosy except when it comes to controlling and centralizing the profits. So their lobbyists will work overtime to make sure that energy production in the US is not decentralized producing an energy yeomanry but continues to pad centralized corporate coffers.
