**See the updated articles Germany Loses its Mind Follow Up and A Nuclear Renaissance in Germany?.If it ain't broke, don't fix it! That is a piece of conventional wisdom I agree with. However, Germany is more focused on "green" love than common sense.
As reported in an article on Yahoo!, "Germany wants to build 30 wind farms," Germany is going to close 17 nuclear plants and build wind farms instead. Brilliant! Talk about disturbing the environment with 30 new wind farms, ask Teddy Kennedy and Walter Cronkite how they feel about wind farms in Nantucket (story here).
Unfortunately, Angela Merkel has been cowed by the Greens. From the article,
"The government has agreed to honour a decision to close the country's 17 nuclear power plants by 2020 but remains divided over the issue.
Merkel insists that a nuclear phase-out would hinder efforts to slash Germany's dependency on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.
But Tiefensee, a member of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said that investing in windfarms was better than keeping the nuclear plants running.
"We believe in renewable energy and not in nuclear energy.""
Whether or not Tiefensee and the other socialists in Germany "believe" in renewable energy, one can't change the fact that nuclear is more efficient both in cost and energy output. Empirical data is always better than beliefs when it comes to money.
