Anna Veronika Wendland’s book “Nuclear Power? Yes, please!”

Dhe advocates of the energy transition, who have firmly relied on the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and nuclear power, have been confronted with a new reality since the Ukraine war. With the absence of Russian natural gas, which should actually play a key role in the restructuring of the energy system, imported oil and hard coal from overseas as well as domestic lignite are becoming attractive again. There is open discussion about whether, in view of the energy crisis and the high price of electricity, it is necessary to operate the three remaining nuclear power plants – Neckarwestheim 2, Isar 2 and Emsland – longer than until the end of this year. Breaking a taboo for opponents of nuclear power.

For Anna Veronika Wendland, on the other hand, there is no question that nuclear energy is necessary for a secure energy system, but above all it can make an important contribution to achieving the Paris 1.5 degree target. She considers the phasing out of nuclear power, decided by the black-red government under Angela Merkel in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, to be a mistake that has exacerbated the current situation. The historian of Eastern Europe and technology was once an active opponent of nuclear power, as she admits right at the beginning of her book.

Her path to becoming a supporter of nuclear power is just as exciting to read as her experiences in the early 1990s when she visited the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Chernobyl that was damaged in 1986. Her in-depth knowledge of nuclear technology, which she shares in her book, is primarily based on experiences and observations she made while researching German nuclear power plants for her habilitation thesis.

A decade was lost in climate protection

For the author, the advantages of nuclear energy are obvious: Because nuclear power plants are not dependent on the weather, the time of day or the season, they do not need any electricity storage. They work just as reliably as coal and gas power plants, can be regulated within a certain output range, just almost CO2₂-free. Around eight million kilowatt hours of electricity can be generated from one kilogram of uranium-235, while the same amount of hard coal would only generate around two and a half kilowatt hours of electricity. Wendland has no doubt that German nuclear power plants are safe. They would even survive a plane crash, as simulations have shown.

Nuclear power can meet the increasing demand for clean energy, for example to generate enough green hydrogen by electrolysis in Germany, to operate the many heat pumps or to charge all future electric cars and to decarbonize industry. As a nuclear power advocate, Wendland is also in favor of the rapid expansion of wind power and solar systems. She complains that the promotion of renewable energies through the EEG law has pushed the dismantling of nuclear energy, which means that a decade of climate protection has been wasted.

It would have made more sense to reduce coal-fired power generation first. If you had in the year 2000, when the share of nuclear energy in the CO₂-free power generation was still almost thirty percent, the renewables built on this base, the proportion of CO₂-poor power sources, according to Wendland, today eighty percent – and the goal that the federal government is aiming for in 2030 has already been achieved. Because also sufficiently affordable CO₂-If free electricity were available, one would be far less dependent on gas, oil and coal than today.

No significant public relations

To ensure that Germany achieves the climate targets set and at the same time remains an industrialized country, the author proposes a CO₂-free energy system consisting of about 60 percent renewable and about 40 percent nuclear energy. Then, in their opinion, the enormous power demand of an estimated at least 1500 terawatt hours in 2050, which corresponds to three times the current demand, could be covered without fossil fuels. However, this would require 40 new, modern nuclear power plants and four times the capacity from wind power and photovoltaics installed today. The first power plants could be connected to the grid as early as 2038, when the coal phase-out was phased out.