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Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages. The plants have between them a 9,000 megawatt (MW) capacity, but Germany generates more electricity than it consumes, and has been exporting some of the surplus to France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power. Early this month, three plants shut down automatically due to failures in their transformers. The other four have been out of service for months, and are undergoing expensive repairs. The breakdowns come at a time when the planned phasing out of nuclear power is under attack. In 2002, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens decided that all nuclear reactors would be phased out by 2021. At the same time, the government launched a massive investment programme in renewable energy, making Germany the leading country in Europe in use of the sun and wind as energy sources. According to official figures, Germany generates 15 percent of the electricity it consumes from renewable sources. A law passed in 2008 sets a target of generating at least 30 percent of electricity through renewables by 2020. Additionally, on Jul. 13, a group of large German companies announced a joint investment of 400 billion euros (560 billion dollars) in setting up solar thermal plants in the Sahara, to generate at least 15 percent of all electricity needed in Europe by the year 2020. But Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Jul. 1 that she would reverse the phasing out of nuclear power if her Christian Democratic Party wins the general election in September, and can form a coalition with the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Merkel presently rules in coalition with the SPD. "Nuclear power remains an indispensable component of the German energy mix," Merkel told the annual meeting of Atomforum, a group represe

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages. The plants have between them a 9,000 megawatt (MW) capacity, but Germany generates more electricity than it consumes, and has been exporting some of the surplus to France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power. Early this month, three plants shut down automatically due to failures in their transformers. The other four have been out of service for months, and are undergoing expensive repairs. The breakdowns come at a time when the planned phasing out of nuclear power is under attack. In 2002, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens decided that all nuclear reactors would be phased out by 2021. At the same time, the government launched a massive investment programme in renewable energy, making Germany the leading country in Europe in use of the sun and wind as energy sources. According to official figures, Germany generates 15 percent of the electricity it consumes from renewable sources. A law passed in 2008 sets a target of generating at least 30 percent of electricity through renewables by 2020. Additionally, on Jul. 13, a group of large German companies announced a joint investment of 400 billion euros (560 billion dollars) in setting up solar thermal plants in the Sahara, to generate at least 15 percent of all electricity needed in Europe by the year 2020. But Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Jul. 1 that she would reverse the phasing out of nuclear power if her Christian Democratic Party wins the general election in September, and can form a coalition with the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Merkel presently rules in coalition with the SPD. "Nuclear power remains an indispensable component of the German energy mix," Merkel told the annual meeting of Atomforum, a group represe

(AGI) - Rome, June 6 - Italy has offered ample reassurance and guarantees to Germany and Hamburg authorities that all trains loaded with garbage departing from the Campania region will be checked, including by special fire department units. Such is the news on the waste emergency. Italian reassurances follow the discovery of traces of radioactivity in Hamburg in a load of waste material arriving from the Campania region. Next week some eight trains should leave Italy and head for waste disposal plants in Germany. Some voices claim that radioactive traces contained in waste delivered to Germany are due to the presence of "131 iodine" used in scintigraphy, a nuclear medicine examination that is used to diagnose bone tumours and thyroid cancer.

Politicians in Germany are calling for the US to remove nuclear arms stored in Germany after a report pointed to safety deficits at US atomic weapon sites in Europe.

Some 50,000 anti-nuclear protestors demonstrated in Berlin on Saturday against Germany possibly reversing a decision to abandon atomic energy and extending the life of its nuclear power plants. The marchers, backed by 400 tractors, demanded that Germany stick to its commitment to close all nuclear plants by 2020 and also called for the closure of a radioactive dump at Gorleben in eastern Germany. The police refused to give an estimate of the crowd but organisers - ranging from the Greens to members of the Protestant church - put the figure at 50,000 people, marching from the Berlin train station to the Brandenburg Gate.

A West German provincial leader placed a nuclear waste dump near the border with communist East Germany out of revenge for the East Germans doing the same on their side of the border. So claims a retired geology professor involved in the 1970s search for a salt deposit to be made a nuclear dump. Gerd Lüttig told the ddp news agency that's how Gorleben came to be chosen in 1977 by the Conservative premier of Lower Saxony state, Ernst Albrecht. Out of 100 salt deposits investigated, all of them in northern Germany, Gorleben was in the final shortlist of eight. Lüttig says Albrecht wanted a location near the border because the East Germans "got us into hot water with their final repository at Morsleben". Gorleben and Morsleben are about 95 kilometres apart as the crow flies, by road Morsleben is 120 kms south of Gorleben. Both villages were close to the border that separated the two Germanies at time when the communist regime still killed people trying to escape across what was regarded as the world's deadliest border.

With nuclear power on many Albertans' minds these days, those seeking insight before picking sides may find it instructive to look to Europe, where France and Germany have adopted opposing philosophies on the issue. Germany has legislation in place that calls for the shutdown of all of the country's nuclear reactors by 2022. France, which is slightly smaller than Alberta, is building its 59th reactor. How did the two countries arrive at such divergent views? Matthias Eickhoff remembers April 26, 1986, as the day he became one of Germany's many anti-nuclear activists.

Germany's opposition parties have urged the government to press for a nuclear-free Germany, saying the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons based in Germany would be signal that NATO is serious about disarmament. German parliamentarians have come out in support of US president Barack Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world during a one-hour debate in Germany's Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, on Friday. "The time is right for a new beginning on nuclear disarmament," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, referring to an agreement earlier this month between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dimitry Medvedev, aimed at negotiating a new deal on strategic nuclear arms reduction.

In the wake of a French investigation into reports that nuclear waste is sent from French plants to Siberia, news has emerged that Germany has a long tradition of shipping toxic waste to Russia. The German anti-nuclear group "Ausgestrahlt" said that since 1996, Germany's only uranium enrichment plant in Gronau has shipped about 22,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride, which is a compound used in the uranium enrichment process, to Russia. "Ausgestrahlt" reported on Wednesday that only 10 percent of that was returned to Germany as enriched uranium. The anti-nuclear activists said the remaining 90 percent was stored in Siberia, outdoors and in rusting containers. Uranium hexafluoride is highly toxic and corrosive to most metals.

In the wake of a French investigation into reports that nuclear waste is sent from French plants to Siberia, news has emerged that Germany has a long tradition of shipping toxic waste to Russia. The German anti-nuclear group "Ausgestrahlt" said that since 1996, Germany's only uranium enrichment plant in Gronau has shipped about 22,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride, which is a compound used in the uranium enrichment process, to Russia. "Ausgestrahlt" reported on Wednesday that only 10 percent of that was returned to Germany as enriched uranium. The anti-nuclear activists said the remaining 90 percent was stored in Siberia, outdoors and in rusting containers. Uranium hexafluoride is highly toxic and corrosive to most metals.

This weekend over 15,000 people turned out to disrupt a delivery of nuclear waste across Germany -- one of the largest such protests in years. The German press expects the nuclear issue to play a big role in next year's election campaign. When the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which saw his Social Democrats paired with the Greens in a governing coalition, announced in 2000 that the country was phasing out its nuclear power plants, it seemed that decades of anti-nuclear activism in Germany could be laid to rest. Indeed, protests against atomic power virtually disappeared from the calendars of political ativists.

"Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen predicted on Saturday that Germany would be free of nuclear power by 2030, eight years later than originally planned. * Merkel plans major tour of US in April - National (21 Feb 10) * US 'accepts' German troop increase - Politics (27 Jan 10) * Obama musical thrills ardent German fans - Society (18 Jan 10) Röttgen, a member of the conservative Christian Democrats, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that even by the most sceptical of forecasts, Germany would reach its goal of getting 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, thus allowing the country's remaining nuclear power stations to shut down. Renewable sources currently supply 16 percent of Germany's electricity."

"Nuclear power stations pose a threat to three out of four Germans, according to a new study published Tuesday by the German Environmental Foundation. But the government has recently decided to extend nuclear power. The figures are based on the foundation's 'Nuclear Power Atlas,' which counts the number of people living within a 150-kilometer (93-mile) radius of each of the 17 nuclear power stations in Germany - putting them in immediate danger in the event of a nuclear accident. Between 5.4 million and 11.8 million people were counted within the various zones, which cover most of the western and southern regions of Germany. The city of Bremen, within 150 kilometers of six nuclear powers stations, is particularly at risk. "

"Germany is restarting exploration of its highly controversial potential nuclear storage site at Gorleben after a ten-year moratorium. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said Monday further security analyses would take another seven years and no one could say today if the disused salt mine in central Germany was suitable for holding the radioactive waste from the country's 17 nuclear plants. Roettgen added even if Gorleben turns out to be suitable, the storage facility will not open before 2030. Gorleben was chosen as a nuclear storage site three decades ago and was partially explored until 2000 for an estimated euro1.5 billion ($2 billion)."

Anti-nuclear activists in Germany are gearing up for another transport of highly active nuclear waste to run through France and Germany from 7 to 9 November for dumping at the north German village of Gorleben. About 20,000 police will be deployed to guard the consignment against thousands of demonstrators. At http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html is a newswire run by the protest movement. It already has some run-up stories on it.

Hundreds of German students protest the dumping of reprocessed nuclear waste at a storage center in the town of Gorleben. Germany annually sends the spent fuel of its nuclear power plants to France and Britain for reprocessing and later the waste is returned to Germany for dumping at nuclear storage centers. A train carrying the toxic remains was to leave France on Friday, and arrive at a storage facility in the town of Gorleben on Monday. The Friday protest took place in the nearby town of Luechow.

Berlin - As a trainload of nuclear waste crossed Germany Sunday, riot police drew batons to push back demonstrators who tried to block a railway line. On Saturday, the train had been delayed for more than 11 hours by three militants who chained themselves to a track near the French border. Police had to carefully dismantle a lump of concrete buried under the track to detach the trio. Protesters later tried to occupy another railway line, 500 kilometres to the north, where the train was expected to arrive on Monday. The remains of nuclear fuel rods are bound for a German nuclear waste warehouse.

Thousands of protesters held up a truck convoy carrying nuclear waste in Germany Monday, repeatedly invading a 20-kilometre road leading to a secure storage warehouse. Police said the protests, the biggest since 2001 during the waste transport operations, which take place every few months, were also more violent than usual. Protesters had tried to undermine a railway, seize a truck and shot signalling flares at a police helicopter. Federal police commander Thomas Osterroth said, "A few of them are willing to be very violent." The 10,000 police at the scene were ordered to clear the road before the trucks departed from a railway freight yard carrying the 11 containers. They were bound for the storage site at Gorleben where tons of similar waste are already guarded round the clock.

Germany has returned over 20 pounds of highly enriched uranium fuel to the U.S. for safeguarding from terrorists or potential misuse, the government said Tuesday. The National Nuclear Security Administration said the spent fuel shipment was transported by ship and rail under secret and secure conditions. Spokeswoman Casey Ruberg said the material was secured at the federal Savannah River site near Aiken, S.C., on Sept. 23. Overall, nearly 115 pounds of spent fuel, originally provided by the United States for use in research reactors, has been returned to the United States from Argentina, Portugal, Romania and Germany during the past year, the agency said.

Germany's environment minister made himself out to be a crisis manager in the scandal surrounding the Asse nuclear waste storage facility. But the problem has not been solved -- and the issue threatens to derail the CDU's plans to postpone Germany's nuclear phaseout.

Berlin - Germany is investigating 150 tons of steel items imported from India which were contaminated with radioactivity, the news magazine Der Spiegel said in an report to appear in its Monday issue. It said the most serious case was 5 tons of stainless steel wool which had to be disposed of by a nuclear-waste company, GNS. The contamination was thought to be the result of the radioactive isotope cobalt 60, which is used in nuclear medicine, being inadvertently mixed with steel scrap and being melted down at three Indian steel works. Anyone near the container of steel wool, which had been intercepted in August last year in the German port of Hamburg, would have received one millisievert of radiation in 24 hours. Spiegel said German regulations treated more that one millisievert in an entire year as unsafe.

The German and French nuclear industries face numerous challenges and criticisms. Seven German nuclear plants failed to generate any electricity in July due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany didn't suffer any power shortages. The plants have between them a 9,000 megawatt (MW) capacity, but Germany generates more electricity than it consumes, and has been exporting some of the surplus to France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power. Early in July, three plants shut down automatically due to failures in their transformers. The other four have been out of service for months, and are undergoing expensive repairs.