Germany to Reverse Course on Atomic Energy?

As a result of their dismal showing in the elections to the Bundestag on September 27, Germany’s left of center Social Democrats (SPD) have been replaced in the former “grand coalition” government with the more conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) by the market oriented Free Democratic Party (FDP). One salutary result has been an apparent reversal of course on the irrational but ideologically fashionable decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear generating capacity. According to Der Spiegel,

The Union (CDU) and FDP will accommodate the nuclear industry – but under stern conditions. The operational lifetime of German nuclear power plants can be extended on condition that high safety standards are met. According to a paper by the new coalition’s working group on the environment made available to Spiegel Online, “Nuclear energy will be necessary as a transitional and bridge technology until climate friendly and more economical alternative means of producing sufficient electricity are available capable of meeting baseload electric generation requirements. Therefore, the operational lifetime of German nuclear power plants will be extended to 32 years.

Ardipithecus and Pliocene Progressivism

It’s amusing to see how little time elapsed between the spectacular discovery of the Pliocene primate “Ardi” and the revelation, based on study of her canine teeth, that she was a “New Soviet Woman,” endowed with all the progressive behavioral characteristics pertaining thereto. In particular, we learn that she lived harmoniously as a co-equal partner with small-fanged males who shared their food with her, helped rear her offspring, and spared her the unseemly spectacle of fighting with other males for her favors. No doubt if we find a few more teeth we will discover that she was an innocent victim of imperialism and colonialism perpetrated by less worthy primates who diverged from the direct human line at a very early date, and that her carbon footprint was unusually small for a Pliocene mammal.

Solar Power and German Ideologues

Der Spiegel has provided us with another edifying example of the difference between sound public policy and ideological grandstanding. It turns out that the outgoing Social Democratic (SPD) “Minister of the Environment,” Sigmar Gabriel, has saddled the German people with a gift that will keep on giving in the form of a debt of at least 27 billion Euros. It comes in the form of a clause in Germany’s “Renewable Energy Law” that grants a subsidy of 43 Cents per kilowatt-hour to producers of solar power – five times higher than the cost of conventional power. But wait, it gets better; the subsidy will remain in effect for at least the next 20 years. And, by the way, that’s just for the facilities that were built between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, new facilities are being built hand over fist. About 2000 additional megawatts are expected to come on line in 2009, providing German consumers with another heaping helping of debt to the tune of 9 or 10 billion Euros. This remarkable example of ideological dilettantism has, at least, resulted in the creation of many new jobs – in China. Following a predictable pattern, German solar cell producers have been ramping down production at home and transferring it to Asia. Meanwhile, as Der Spiegel points out, the subsidies have had such “environmentally friendly” effects as

…keeping the world price of solar panels artificially high. The result: international producers are flooding the German market with solar modules – and very little is left for other countries, in spite of the fact that a solar facility in Africa could produce substantially more electricity than in rainy Germany.

All this comes at a time when the actual cost of solar modules has been in free fall. Spiegel cites an article in the German trade magazine “Photon,” according to which, “Solar power can now be produced much more cheaply than the high subsidies would lead one to believe.”

Judging by the quantitative results, we must assume that wind has been less afflicted by ideological meddling than solar in Germany. Wind facilities currently provide six percent of her power, as opposed to solar’s contribution of less than one percent.

Anti-Nuclear Hysterics

Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz points out the obvious about food irradiation;

Food irradiation is a process by which foods are zapped with a sudden burst of radiation that kills microbes but leaves the food otherwise unaltered. It’s exactly the same process as pasteurization except that it uses radiation instead of heat, with the added benefit that it doesn’t alter the taste or nutritional content of the treated food. It leaves zero radiation in the food. The technique was first developed during WWII and during the next 20 years it was tested, retested and tested again for safety. They force fed generations of lab rats massively irradiated food and never found the least hint of problem. By the early ’60s at the latest, it was proven beyond all doubt that irradiation was a safe and highly effective means of preventing microbial contamination of food.

Despite this overwhelming scientific evidence, ever since the mid-1960s anti-nuclear leftists have demonized irradiation and created such anti-irradiation hysteria that for decades no politician could even think of allowing the irradiation of food, no matter how many lives it would have saved. Virtually everyone who has gotten sick from eggs, meat, vegetables, etc. in the last 40+ years has done so needlessly. The hundreds of immune-compromised people who die of salmonella every year didn’t have to die that way. All of the hundreds of people, many of them children, crippled or killed by E. Coli did not have to suffer. The people killed and maimed by contaminated leafy vegetable didn’t have to die.

True but, as usual, for the “saviors of the planet,” the pose is everything, the reality nothing. Hit & Run reminds us of another familiar example of the same phenomenon; the non sequitur of claiming that global warming is the greatest threat to the planet combined with the rejection of nuclear power in any form. Note the comments at the end of the post. They’re generally civil and well-intentioned, but reveal gross ignorance about breeder reactors. It would be well if people would take five minutes to learn the basics about breeders before commencing to pontificate on the subject.

Benjamin Franklin on State Power

In my literary peregrinations I happened to run across a response Ben Franklin wrote to a scornful letter about the United States published by anonymous minions of the British crown back in 1778. An excerpt:

We propose, if possible, to live in peace with all mankind; and after you have been convinced to your cost, that there is nothing to be got by attacking us, we have reason to hope that no other power will judge it prudent to quarrel with us… The weight, therefore, of an independent empire, which you seem certain of our inability to bear, will not be so great as you imagine; the expense of our civil government we have always borne, and can easily bear, because it is small. A virtuous and laborious people may be cheaply governed, determining, as we do, to have no offices of profit, nor any sinecures, or useless appointments, so common in ancient or corrupted states. We can govern ourselves a year for the sum you pay in a single department, for what one jobbing contractor, by the favor of a minister, can cheat you out of in a single article.

Apparently it didn’t take us all too long to become an ancient and corrupted state.