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NUCLEAR

Nuclear weapons meet starts in Vienna

Monday sees the start of a major two-day conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at Vienna's Hofburg palace.

Published: 8 December 2014 08:42 CET
Nuclear weapons meet starts in Vienna
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier with Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz. Photo: APA (Tatic)

Hosted by Austrian foreign minister Sebastien Kurz, the conference is expected to bring more than a hundred countries to the discussion, which will join together in a call for disarmament.

“Nuclear weapons are not only a permanent threat to all humankind but also a relic of the cold war that we must finally overcome. The international nuclear disarmament efforts require an urgent paradigm shift, not the least in light of the danger of further nuclear weapons proliferation”, said Kurz at a previous meeting in February.


Delegates to the meeting were greeted by people wearing radiation suits and carrying scintillation
detectors to measure possible radiation exposure.  Photo: Paul Gillingwater

The Vienna Conference will build on an initiative launched in 2013 that draws to focus attention on the humanitarian consequences of and risks associated with nuclear weapons.

There have been two international conferences on the dangers, in Oslo, Norway, in March 2013, and Nayarit, Mexico in February 2014. Since the launch of the initiative the number of states participating in the initiative has grown from 127 in Oslo to 146 in Nayarit.

The Vienna Conference will focus on the short and long term consequences of nuclear weapons explosions, on public health, the environment, climate disruption, food security, migration, development related issues, infrastructure, and other consequences.
 
It will also address various risks that could result in deliberate or accidental nuclear weapons explosions such as human error, negligence, miscalculation, technical errors and vulnerabilities of nuclear weapons and their infrastructure. Moreover, the Conference will give an overview on existing international law and the possible consequences of nuclear weapon explosions.
 

Delegates with radiation exposure could expect a decontamination spray, and any
necessary medical attention from the Red Cross.  Photo: Paul Gillingwater
 
US & UK join, but Russia, China and France absent
 
The US and Britain took part Monday for the first time in a conference of some 800 delegates from more than 150 countries exploring the risks posed by the world's 16,000 nuclear warheads.
The two countries, out of nine nations believed to have nuclear weapons, had shunned two earlier gatherings in Norway last year and in Mexico this March.
Also present in Vienna from the nine were again Pakistan and India, but absent were Russia, France and China, although a Chinese think-tank close to the country's government was present, organisers said.
Other no-shows were North Korea, which has conducted three nuclear tests, and Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East's only atomic-armed state, although it has never acknowledged it.
The two-day meeting will focus on the potential short- and long-term consequences of a nuclear explosion, the impacts of nuclear testing and the risks of an accidental atomic blast.
 
It includes Setsuko Thurlow, 82, a wheelchair-bound survivor from the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, who made an impassioned speech warning against the "ultimate evil" of nuclear weapons.
Organisers hope it will also inject some momentum into troubled global moves to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons ahead of a May 2015 conference to review progress implementing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
"As long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of their use — deliberately or inadvertently — remains real. Such a scenario, more than any other human action, has the potential of ending life on this planet as we know it," said Sebastian Kurz, foreign minister of hosts Austria.
 
"There could not and would not be a winner in such a scenario. We have the collective responsibility for ourselves and future generations to do our utmost that they will never be used again," he said.

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ENERGY

Why Germany’s nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future

The Bavarian village of Gundremmingen is so proud of its nuclear power station that its coat of arms is graced with a giant golden atom.

Published: 5 March 2021 09:14 CET
Updated: 5 March 2021 10:31 CET
Why Germany's nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future
Gundremmingen nuclear power plant. Photo: DPA

But change is coming to the village, with the plant facing imminent closure under Germany’s energy transition policy.

Former village mayor Wolfgang Mayer’s house has direct views of the imposing complex with its two 160-metre cooling towers — taller than the spires of Cologne Cathedral.

The plant still produces 10 billion kWh of power per year, though parts of it have already been shut down — enough to provide the entire Munich metropolitan region with electricity.

The power station will be decommissioned on December 31, 2021, along with two other facilities in northern Germany.

By the end of 2022, Germany will have achieved its goal of completely phasing out nuclear power, set by Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 30, 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

SEE ALSO: Berlin agrees to compensate power firms for nuclear phase out

The plan represented a dramatic change of course by Merkel’s ruling conservatives, who just a few months earlier had agreed to extend the lifespan of Germany’s oldest power stations.

But it was met with widespread public support in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear movement, fuelled first by fears of a Cold War conflict and then by disasters such as Chernobyl.

Village church

In Gundremmingen, however, the decision has been a tough pill to swallow.

The nuclear power station has been “as much a part of the village as the church” and it feels as though “something is dying”, said Gerlinde Hutter, owner of a local guest house.

According to Meyer, it will take at least 50 years to remove all radioactive material from the site after the plant has been decommissioned.
The German government is still looking for a long-term storage site for the country’s residual nuclear waste.

Gundremmingen is not the only German village facing big changes as the country strives to implement its energy transition strategy.

Renewables have seen a spectacular rise since 2011 and in 2020 made up more than 50 percent of Germany’s energy mix for the first time, according to the Fraunhofer research institute — compared with less than 25 percent ten years ago.

The declining importance of nuclear power (12.5 percent in 2020) “has been compensated for by the expansion of renewable energies”, Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic research institute, told AFP.

Nuclear power stations have therefore not been replaced by coal, though the fossil fuel does still represent almost a quarter of the electricity mix.

The gas dilemma

In fact, the phase-out of nuclear energy has been joined by another plan, announced in 2019, to close all of Germany’s coal-fired power stations by 2038.

This presents a particular challenge for Germany, which remains the world’s leading producer of lignite.

Mining for the brown coal, which is highly polluting, continues to lead to the destruction of villages in the west of the country in order to expand huge open-cast mines.

If Germany is to free itself from lignite, renewables such as wind, solar, biomass and hydropower will have to make up 65 percent of the energy mix by 2030.

Yet the country, which has long been at the forefront of wind energy in Europe, installed only 1.65 gigawatts (GW) of wind farms last year — the lowest level in a decade, according to the WindEurope advocacy group.

To meet the government’s targets, Germany would have to add 9.8 GW of solar and 5.9 GW of onshore wind annually, according to Kemfert.

But the development of new areas for wind or photovoltaic energy production is complex, with plans often coming up against resistance from local residents and the risk of damage to the landscape.

And unless storage and distribution can be improved via so-called virtual power plants, these new forms of energy do not have the same stability as thermal or nuclear power.

To secure its supply, Germany could therefore be tempted to build more gas-fired power stations.

But this would risk reinforcing its dependence on Russia, as illustrated by the controversy surrounding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

A gas-fired power station is already in the works for the town of Leipheim, just around the corner from Gundremmingen.

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