Germany's Gabriel (Env. Minister) Wants Older Nuclear Reactors to Shut Sooner

[jpak]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHtgh9s_KoaI

July 17 (Bloomberg) -- German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he aims to persuade the country's four biggest utilities to shut older nuclear reactors sooner than planned after accidents at two separate sites last month.

Newer reactors could gain capacity if accident-prone older plants were shut ahead of schedule, Gabriel said on national radio today. He plans to meet the chief executives of Vattenfall Europe AG, E.ON AG, RWE AG and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG as early as next month to discuss his plan.

Germany in 2000 under then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder passed a law to phase-out nuclear power by about 2021. Current Chancellor Angela Merkel said on July 3 that Germany may review the planned closure, though not before the next election in 2009. Utilities say they want to switch capacity from newer to older sites in the hope that after 2009 they may be allowed to extend the life of older sites whose licenses are running out.

``What we need is exactly the opposite -- shutting down earlier older reactors that cause us constant difficulties,'' Gabriel, a Social Democrat, told Deutschlandfunk Radio in an interview.

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[phantom power]

1. Weird. Their plan to phase out nuclear is causing them to load obsolete plants.

Instead of loading the newer, better plants.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Just wait. In five years, they will "discover" nuclear energy.

And then it will be endless bragging about Precision German Engineering™.

My German friends Nüni and Nunni said so.

But first, we dance.

--p!

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Vorsprung Durch Fuckup...

...as the survivors say.

[NNadir]

3. Oh. Oh.

It looks like Sigmar Gabriel is angling for a job at Gazprom