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Page added on December 25, 2011

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Collateral Damage From Fukushima Hits Europe

Several leading European electricity providers and nuclear power plant constructors now count as part of the collateral damage caused by the tsunami that destroyed the Japanese nuclear power plant of Fukushima last March.

In reference to the German government’s decision to phase out nuclear power soon after the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Johannes Teyssen, CEO of E.ON, one of Germany’s leading electricity providers and power plant operators, warned the public that the industry’s balance sheet would be affected by “extraordinary costs caused by (these) market shifts and regulations.”

Data tabulated by the Free University of Berlin suggests that each of the eight nuclear power plants, had they remained in operation, would have generated a net income of one million euros per day for E.ON and other providers.

Earlier this month E.ON, along with Germany’s three other leading electricity providers RWE, Vatenfall and EnBW announced plans to slash 20,000 jobs, and braced themselves for losses amounting to billions of dollars.

E.ON predicted an unprecedented depreciation of the company’s value by three billion euros (3.9 billion dollars), and said it would be compelled to reduce its worldwide personnel by 11,000 in the coming months.

The three other companies also warned that a further 10,000 jobs would have to be sacrificed in 2012 to make up for operational losses, portending a mass exodus of skilled and semi-skilled labourers from the industry.

The state-owned French company AREVA, a specialist in the construction and management of nuclear power plants as well as a premier operator of uranium mines and nuclear waste facilities, also announced billion-dollar losses and substantial personnel cutbacks.

Back in November AREVA reported losses of up to 1.6 billion euros for 2011 and anticipated losses worth 2.4 billion euros in the coming fiscal year.

An AREVA spokesperson said that these losses were due to the company’s unprofitable investments in uranium mines in countries like Namibia and South Africa.

The spokesperson also estimated that AREVA would invest an additional 150 million euros in the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant – a so-called third generation pressurised water reactor (European Pressurised Reactor or EPR) that has become virtually synonymous with the enormous economic risks associated with nuclear power.

AREVA started constructing the Finnish plant in 2005 with an estimated construction cost of 3 billion euros. However, delays and mismanagement could likely double the cost to some 6.6 billion euros.

AREVA’s other EPR project in Flamanville, France began in December 2007 at an expected cost of 3.5 billion euros and was scheduled for completion in 2012.

Last July, however, AREVA’s partner Electricité de France (EdF) announced that estimated costs have exploded to 6 billion euros and warned that completion of construction is delayed to 2016.

Additionally, AREVA’s long-term and lucrative partnership with the German electronic giant Siemens came to end this year, when the latter terminated its nuclear energy business unit following the uproar over Fukushima.

While few of the corporations have publically acknowledged Fukushima as the major crack in the nuclear industry’s foundation, experts like Stefan Schurig, director of the climate energy director of the World Future Council, are convinced that “Fukushima was one of the last nails in the coffin for nuclear energy.

“The Japanese catastrophe confirmed existing doubts about the safety of nuclear energy,” Schurig said. “It is only a matter of time before all countries phase out nuclear power.”

Schurig pointed to the lingering tragedies of the Fukushima crisis, such as widespread contamination of the surrounding area with Caesium 137, irreversible oceanic pollution and food supplies made inedible by poisoned farmland, problems whose effects will be felt for many years to come.

“The whole region will be uninhabitable for years,” Schurig said.

Many believe that last year’s disaster in Japan had a more profound impact on the energy market than previous environmental disasters.

“The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by the explosion at Deepwater Horizon in 2010, had no sensible (or lasting) effects on the use of fossil combustibles,” Schurig said.

“But Fukushima put an end to the myth that highly industrialised countries like Japan could guarantee absolute safety and control over the production of nuclear energy,” he pointed out.

In addition, he said, the catastrophe of Fukushima exposed nuclear power’s hidden costs and potential shortfalls.

For instance, the Japanese operator of the nuclear power plant Tepco is currently weathering compensation claims totalling over 34 billion euros for 2011 alone.

In contrast, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and biomass energy are considerably less expensive and will become ever more so with development of the technique, Schurig said.

As if to confirm Schurig’s assertion, E.ON announced this month that, parallel to reducing its share of nuclear power, it would invest 7 billion euros in renewable energy sources, particularly offshore wind turbine parks and thermo solar technology, over the next five years.

IPS



7 Comments on "Collateral Damage From Fukushima Hits Europe"

  1. DC on Sun, 25th Dec 2011 12:58 pm 

    A lot of people are employed in industries that are toxic and just plain dangerous. Auto, airlines, chemical, you name it, we employ people to produce products and services designed to kill us. At a statisically acceptable rate of course…

    Dont shed a tear for any losses in the nuclear industry, taxpayers of the world own the lions share of those plants, but the wonderful arrangment where the industry and its profits are privately held, but all the risks and upfront costs are paid by taxpayers.

  2. Kenz300 on Sun, 25th Dec 2011 2:55 pm 

    Quote — “Schurig pointed to the lingering tragedies of the Fukushima crisis, such as widespread contamination of the surrounding area with Caesium 137, irreversible oceanic pollution and food supplies made inedible by poisoned farmland, problems whose effects will be felt for many years to come.”
    “The whole region will be uninhabitable for years,” Schurig said.
    ———————-

    Wait until the costs to dismantle the 400+ nuclear plants around the world needs to be paid. They keep trying to extend the life of those plants so that they do not have to deal with the nuclear waste and disposal. The costs to dismantle them will be astronomical.

  3. unspokenhermit on Sun, 25th Dec 2011 3:22 pm 

    Completely agreed with what DC said. We must identify not only Nuclear industry but all other industries that will bring no good for this universe and we should take strategies to replace those industries with environmental friendly sustainable alternatives.

    I recently came across these atmpospheric simulations, produced an American independent organization, that indicate TEPCO vastly under-reported radionuclide emissions from the Fukushima Plant.

    http://www.datapoke.org/blog/8/study-modeling-fukushima-npp-radioactive-contamination-dispersion-utilizing-chino-m-et-al-source-terms/

    http://www.datapoke.org/partmom/a=40

    I’ve suspected for some time that the publicly released emissions data had been manipulated – If the models are correct I suppose this re enforces my hunch. Is there anyone here that can help us explain the implications of this model?

  4. Stan on Sun, 25th Dec 2011 4:32 pm 

    This blog post makes the common mistake of not quantifying the actual harm, compared to the benefits, of different energy sources.

    Totaled together, the costs of the Fukushima accident will be in the range of $100 billion, for an energy source that provides 16% of worldwide electricity.

    The external costs of coal total to close to $2 trillion PER YEAR.

    Renewables have their own environmental impacts. Biomass tends to be particularly dirty when used at large scale. We have no viable zero-emission storage technology for the intermittent renewables, so they lock us into using mainly fossil fuel. When one looks at how much the efficiency of the fossil fuel backup drops when one adds in wind, the net energy provided by wind drops significantly.

    Many building efficiency measures increase indoor air pollution.

    The only way to get to reasonable answers is to quantify the real impacts of all of the different energy options.

  5. BillT on Mon, 26th Dec 2011 2:35 am 

    Stan, nuclear was a loser from the start and would not exist if not for the US government pushing nuclear plants to produce the materials they needed for those thousands of bombs. If you think that the wealthy elite care about how many people that these plants kill or the costs in the future, you are a fool. All they care about is profits. If the next 1000 generations are stuck with deadly waste to manage and contain, they don’t care. They will have made their billions. F— you and me.

  6. Kenz300 on Mon, 26th Dec 2011 8:16 pm 

    Quote — ” AREVA’s other EPR project in Flamanville, France began in December 2007 at an expected cost of 3.5 billion euros and was scheduled for completion in 2012.

    Last July, however, AREVA’s partner Electricité de France (EdF) announced that estimated costs have exploded to 6 billion euros and warned that completion of construction is delayed to 2016.

    Additionally, AREVA’s long-term and lucrative partnership with the German electronic giant Siemens came to end this year, when the latter terminated its nuclear energy business unit following the uproar over Fukushima.
    ————————

    The costs are just too high.

    The dangers are just too great.

  7. Anonym on Tue, 27th Dec 2011 12:56 pm 

    The article has a totally upside down and ignorant headline.

    The collateral damage has hit europe and all of the nothern hemisphere as nuclear fallout already in march and april 2011.

    The economies that quit nuclear power will not have any damage at all, but much more and sustainable profits.

    Germany and China were already going in the right direction before Fukushima and the world will follow. In 2010, 50% of the worldwide newly installed wind energy has been built in China (18GW).

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