E.t was a political firecracker on New Year’s Eve. Shortly before the turn of the year, the EU Commission sent a draft paper on taxonomy to the member states, in which gas and nuclear energy are to be recognized as sustainable forms of energy under certain conditions. With such regulations, the EU wants to set uniform criteria for ecological management. In Germany, the opponents of nuclear power could not believe their ears: should investments in nuclear power plants be considered “green” in the future? Didn’t the EU hear the climate policy shot? But Rainer Klute was sitting at home in Dortmund and thought: Well, I always knew!
Klute, who once ran for the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament with the pirates, has been fighting for a renaissance of German nuclear energy for years. With his association “Nuklearia” he is something like the sinking pool for all those who have always considered the German phase-out of nuclear power to be wrong. Together with several hundred members in the association “for modern and safe nuclear energy”, Klute organizes lectures on the benefits of nuclear power, discusses the safe storage of nuclear waste, holds vigils in front of the last piles, which are to be shut down by the end of 2022. And now, through the EU’s taxonomy plans, he sees himself finally confirmed in what he has long been convinced of: nuclear energy is ecological because the climate change cannot succeed without it.
What to do when the sun isn’t shining
Klute’s calculation is the same as that of all nuclear proponents, who are now feeling on the up again: Renewable energy sources such as wind and sun are fantastic as long as they provide electricity. But if the wind isn’t blowing or it’s a dull winter day, so there is a so-called “dark doldrums”, then there is a problem because green electricity cannot be stored long and comprehensively enough to bridge such shortages of days or weeks . Especially not when the electricity demand from millions of electric cars will be many times higher than it is today. So you currently have to secure renewable energies with conventional power plants. Because the last three German nuclear power plants will also be switched off at the end of 2022, these are primarily coal-fired power plants in addition to natural gas power plants, which, unlike nuclear power plants, produce a lot of CO2 and should actually be taken off the grid as soon as possible due to the climate targets. Energy policy nonsense, believes Klute: “Without clean nuclear power, the CO2 target will not be achievable. Other countries rely on a combination of renewables and nuclear energy. We, on the other hand, have to leave dirty coal and gas power plants connected to the grid in order to secure the electricity supply. “
“Clean” nuclear power? And what about the worst case scenario, the biggest accident that can be assumed, with Chernobyl and Fukushima, with thousands and thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear waste, for which no “safe” repository has been found even after decades? Klute waves it away. He is a computer scientist, a sober numbers person who meticulously weighs risks against each other. And when he comes to the end of the cost-benefit analysis that the probability of a devastating nuclear accident or environmental damage caused by nuclear waste that is radiating for thousands of years but buried deep in the earth is less than that of an almost certain climate catastrophe, then it is clear what he chooses. When Germany turned away from nuclear power after the reactor disaster in Fukushima in 2011, Klute was also shocked at first. Especially because his son was doing research at the university in Sendai, Japan, around 100 kilometers from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant. But then he sat down and did some research. He studied reactor designs and risk assessments, radiation biology and the body’s repair mechanisms. In the end, he called his son and said, “Stay in Japan. There is no danger for you! ”Since Fukushima, what an irony, Klute has been fighting for nuclear power.
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