Questions for Germany

Leonam dos Santos Guimarães

The article refers to the opinion of Leonam dos Santos Guimarães, PhD. in engeneering and member of the Permanent Advisors Group of the IAEA, on the German decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2022.

The forgoing of the nuclear program by Germany was determined a law from 2001 and is the product of internal politics dynamics of the country, where the Green Party has an important role.

Actually, Chancellor Merkel, in a demonstration of great political courage, managed to alter, in 2010, the original 2001 law, extending the deadline of 2022 by 10 years. The change was carried out mainly due to the difficulties Germany is facing to simultaneously meet that decision and the greenhouse gases emissions reductions goals, as well as to keep a reasonable national energetic security, minimizing the electricity imports from neighboring countries and of fossil fuels, especially natural gas from Russia.

Nonetheless, immediately after the Fukushima accident, on the last march 15, that courage vanished: she turned around, at the beginning temporarily, with the extension of the deadline that had already been decided by the parliament by her proposal, and shortly after determined the shut down of the oldest 8 of the 17 German power plants.

It can be inferred that the sudden shift in her position certainly had as main reason the legislative elections that took place right after, in the month of April. However, the elections took place and still the government was defeated, particularly by the Green Party.

More recently she announced, in a quite “mediatized” fashion, the definite decision of not extending the 2022 deadline. Such decision, thereby, is not new, but was presented as it were, certainly with the political objective of reducing the effects of the electoral defeat suffered by the government.

It is at least curious the fact that the German government resolved to revive the forgoing of the country’s nuclear power plants until 2022, but at the same time to allow the presence of more than a hundred American nuclear weapons in its territory, maintaining fighter jets of its Air Force, under NATO command, ready to equip and launch such weapons, and still participates actively in the modernization of such weapons, which more precise and lethal versions will be installed in its territory in 2017.

Do the German government and society believe that the risks associated with nuclear weapons are lower than those associated with nuclear power plants? Why does the German Green Party oppose so fiercely to nuclear power plants and still accept the presence of foreign nuclear weapons in the territory of its country? Why does the coalition government led by Chancellor Merkel act in such incisive way in the sense of abandoning the nuclear electric generation and is allied to the American military deterrence based on the terror of nuclear weapons? Those are questions that claim for answers.

Annex

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