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Nuclear Plants in Europe Are Delayed

14 March 2011 21:33 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. With the crisis in Japan raising fears about nuclear power, Germany and Switzerland said Monday that they would reassess the safety of their own reactors and possibly reduce their reliance on them, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€.
Doris Leuthard, the Swiss energy minister, said Switzerland would suspend plans to build and replace nuclear plants. She said no new ones would be permitted until experts until had reviewed safety standards and reported back. Their conclusions will apply to existing plants as well as planned sites, she added. Swiss authorities recently approved three sites for new nuclear power stations.
Germany will suspend â€œthe recently decided extension of the running times of German nuclear power plants,â€ Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. â€œThis is a moratorium and this moratorium will run for three months.â€ She said the suspension would allow for a thorough examination of the safety standards of the countyâ€™s 17 nuclear power plants.
â€œThere will be no taboos,â€ Mrs. Merkel said.
Even when the three months is over, Mrs. Merkel warned, there would be no going back to the situation before the moratorium.
Across Europe, officials worried about the Continentâ€™s use of nuclear power as cooling systems failed at a third nuclear reactor in Japan and officials in that country struggled to regain control.
The European Union called for a meeting on Tuesday of nuclear safety authorities and operators to assess Europeâ€™s preparedness. Austriaâ€™s environment minister, Nikolaus Berlakovich, called for a European Union-wide stress test â€œto see if our nuclear power stations are earthquake proof.â€
In Germany, with Mrs. Merkelâ€™s center-right coalition facing important regional elections this month, the move was apparently in part an effort to placate the influential anti-nuclear lobby and give her coalition some breathing space before making a final decision about nuclear energy.
The foreign minister Guido Westerwelle called for a new risk analysis of the countryâ€™s nuclear plants, particularly regarding their cooling systems. He is the leader of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, which strongly supports nuclear power.
A previous government, led by the Social Democrats and Greens, pushed through legislation in 2001 to close all of the countryâ€™s nuclear plants by 2021. But Mrs. Merkelâ€™s center-right government reversed that decision last year and voted to extend the lives of the plants by an average of 12 years.
Nuclear energy provides about 11 percent of Germanyâ€™s energy supply but its contribution to electricity output is about 26 percent.
In Switzerland, the suspension of plans to build and replace plants will affect all â€œblanket authorization for nuclear replacement until safety standards have been carefully reviewed and if necessary adapted,â€ Ms. Leuthard, the energy minister, said in a statement.
Switzerland has five nuclear reactors, which produce about 40 percent of the countryâ€™s energy needs.
Ms. Leuthard said she had already asked the Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate to analyze the exact cause of the problems in Japan and draw up new or tougher safety standards â€œparticularly in terms of seismic safety and cooling.â€
In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said his government would not revise its ambitious program of building nuclear reactors but would â€œdraw conclusions from whatâ€™s going on in Japan,â€ Russian news agencies reported. Nuclear power currently accounts for 16 percent of Russiaâ€™s electricity generation.