Interview Conducted by Philip Bethge und Rafaela von Bredow
continue reading at DER SPIEGEL International
Interview Conducted by Philip Bethge und Rafaela von Bredow
continue reading at DER SPIEGEL International
Von Philip Bethge, DER SPIEGEL 47/2014
Der Ausbau der Windenergie ist für die Vogelwelt kein Grund zum Tirilieren. Die Tiere werden von den gewaltigen Flügeln der Windräder massenhaft zerschreddert. Die Länderarbeitsgemeinschaft der Vogelschutzwarten hat deshalb schon 2012 eine Neufassung ihres “Helgoländer Papiers” von 2007 vorgelegt, in dem die Experten empfehlen, wie weit Windräder mindestens von den Brutplätzen verschiedener Vogelarten entfernt sein sollten. Halten sich die Windkraftbauer daran, so die Hoffnung, werden weniger Vögel durch die Rotoren getötet. Das Problem: Die Studie liegt bis heute unveröffentlicht bei der zuständigen “Bund/Länder-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Naturschutz, Landschaftspflege und Erholung” (Lana). Und der Vorwurf wird laut, dass die Lana die Veröffentlichung absichtlich verzögert, weil manche Umweltministerien ihre Windenergie-Ausbaupläne gefährdet sehen. Noch dazu ist den Vogelwarten inzwischen aufgetragen worden, die Ergebnisse zunächst mit dem Bundesverband Windenergie zu diskutieren. Eine staatliche Fachbehörde wird also dazu verdonnert, ihre wissenschaftlichen Empfehlungen vor Veröffentlichung mit einem Lobbyverband zu besprechen. Das ist etwa so, als würde eine Studie zu den Risiken des Rauchens zum Korrekturlesen an die Tabakindustrie geschickt.
Die Windenergiebranche hat großes Interesse daran, die Vogelwärter zu beeinflussen. So empfehlen die Experten in dem neuen Papier, den Mindestabstand, den Windräder von Rotmilan-Horsten haben sollten, von 1000 auf 1500 Meter zu erhöhen. Für die Anlagenbauer wird es damit mancherorts noch schwieriger, Standorte für Windkraftwerke zu finden. Bei anderen Vogelarten haben die Fachleute die Mindestabstände allerdings gesenkt. Umso unverständlicher ist es, dass die Lana das “Helgoländer Papier” verschleppt.
Natürlich muss die Windkraft weiter gefördert werden. Doch auch der Artenschutz muss zu seinem Recht kommen. Für den gefährdeten Rotmilan etwa ist Deutschland das wichtigste Brutgebiet. Auch um Planungssicherheit für die Windenergiebranche zu schaffen, sollte deshalb vor einem weiteren Ausbau der Windkraft bundeseinheitlich verbindlich geregelt werden, welchen Platz die Technik der Natur einzuräumen hat. Niemand besitzt dafür eine bessere Expertise als die Vogelschutzwarten.
Von Philip Bethge, DER SPIEGEL 18/2014
Dürfen ein paar Wale und Wasservögel die Energiewende behindern? Der Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Nabu) klagt jetzt gegen den Offshore-Windpark Butendiek vor Sylt, weil Bau und Betrieb der Anlage Schweinswale und die extrem scheuen Seetaucher stören könnten. Ein Milliardenprojekt steht auf dem Spiel. Es geht um Haben oder Nichthaben von 288 Megawatt Ökostrom. Und die Naturschützer plagt ein schlechtes Gewissen, weil sie doch eigentlich für den Ausbau der Erneuerbaren sind.
Dennoch ist die Klage des Nabu vor dem Verwaltungsgericht Köln richtig. Butendiek liegt inmitten von gleich zwei EU-Naturschutzgebieten. Nur weil der damalige grüne Bundesumweltminister Jürgen Trittin das Projekt protegierte, wurden dort schon 2002 80 Windräder genehmigt – gegen den Rat des Bundesamts für Naturschutz. Trittins Entscheidung war falsch. Auch die Windparks Dan Tysk, Amrumbank West und Borkum Riffgrund 2, deren Genehmigungen ähnlich windig sind, müssen auf den Prüfstand. Es gibt genügend alternative Offshore-Standorte, an denen kein Schweinswal kalbt und kein Prachttaucher fischt.
Bereits heute sind in der Nordsee 28 Windparks mit etwa neun Gigawatt Leistung genehmigt. Über 50 weitere Parks sind in Planung. Gleichzeitig deckelt die Novelle des Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetzes den Windstrom auf 6,5 Gigawatt bis 2020 und auf 15 Gigawatt bis 2030 – Zeit und Spielraum genug, um ökologisch verträgliche Offshore-Standorte auszuwählen. Das Bundesamt für Naturschutz muss die bereits begonnenen Rammarbeiten für Butendiek sofort stoppen. Sonst ist der Umweltschaden angerichtet, bevor über die Nabu-Klage vor Gericht entschieden wird. Und am Ende muss womöglich der Steuerzahler für den Rückbau eines halbfertigen Windparks geradestehen. Deutschland braucht Butendiek nicht – aber seltene Tiere brauchen ihre Rückzugsräume.
By Philip Bethge
How did Europe’s rivers look before they were tamed — back when they were allowed to flow freely through the beds they spent centuries carving out?
Most of the Continent’s waterways, like the Elbe, the Rhine and the Danube, have long since been hemmed in. But examples of Europe’s largely vanished wilderness remain. Such as the Vjosë, which flows unfettered through its valley in southwestern Albania, splitting off into tributaries that once again flow together in a constant game of give-and-take with solid ground.
“With every flood, the Vjosë shifts its course,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, a conservationist with the organization RiverWatch, as he looks across to the narrow ribbon of alluvial forest that clings to the side of the valley. “The river fills the entire valley,” says the 52-year-old. “Such a thing in Europe can only be found here, in the Balkans.” Then he pauses. On the opposite shore, a cormorant takes flight.
The Vjosë: 270 kilometers (168 miles) of river landscape, from the Pindus Mountains of Greece all the way down to the Adriatic Sea. Not a single dam disturbs the water’s course. No concrete bed directs its flow. And every pebble tells a story, says Eichelmann — of pristine mountain enclaves, of waterfalls, gorges and lakes.
The ‘Blue Heart of Europe’
The Vjosë is not alone. Several crystal clear, untamed rivers rush through many countries in the region. “The blue heart of Europe beats in the Balkans,” says Eichelmann, who, together with environmental organization EuroNatur, works to preserve these natural water systems….
SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?
Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.
SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.
Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.
SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?
Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.
SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?
Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.
SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!
Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.
SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?
Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.
SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?
Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.
SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?
Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?
SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.
Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.
SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.
Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.
SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?
Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.
SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?
Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.
SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?
Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.
SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?
Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.
SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?
Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.
SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?
Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.
SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?
Kaku: In principle, yes.
SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?
Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.
–> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International
‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’
SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?
Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…
SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?
Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.
SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?
Kaku: Yes, of course.
SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?
Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.
SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?
Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.
SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?
Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”
SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’
Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.
SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?
Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.
SPIEGEL: How comforting.
Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.
SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?
Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?
SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.
Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.
SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?
Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?
SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?
Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.
SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?
Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”
Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.
SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!
Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.
SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.
Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.
SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?
Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?
Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.
SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow
The road to the construction site is flanked by ruins. At one point, there’s a church that looks like its steeple has been shaved right off. An icy wind whistles through empty farmlands.
The buildings, which are slowly decaying at the foot of a small hill, are relics of the former German province of East Prussia. Now they are located in the eastern part of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, located between Poland and Lithuania.
At the top of the knoll, three cranes are pivoting. A massive construction pit comes into view, 20 meters (66 feet) deep and 500 meters long. Visitors can walk down a ramp to reach its bottom of sand-brown dirt.
Yevgeniy Vlasenko, the director of the nuclear power plant that will be built on the site, slips on his hardhat. With Vyacheslav Machonin, his construction supervisor, trailing close behind, Vlasenko heads for a mass of freshly poured concrete blocks. All around, workers are bending the iron rods that will be used in the building’s ring-shaped foundation.
“The reactor with its fuel rods will rest on top of this,” Vlasenko explains. His construction supervisor proudly reports to him that his workers are mixing 2,000 cubic meters (70,000 cubic feet) of concrete per hour for the structure. Should there be a core meltdown, the extremely hot uranium will drip down and be trapped in this basin. But, of course, Vlasenko insists that things “will never get to that point.”
Vlasenko doesn’t want to spoil the good mood on the construction site. Everything is reportedly going according to plan: In four or five years, at most, the first block of the new Kaliningrad Nuclear Power Plant will begin generating 1,200 megawatts of electricity. “Then we’ll sell the energy to Europe,” Vlasenko says. “Including Germany.”
Build Reactors ‘Until Your Noses Bleed’
The gaunt director and his more rotund construction supervisor can’t help but laugh a bit about the irony of selling nuclear power to Germany, now that it has decided to phase out its own nuclear power plants by 2022. “You used to build fantastic nuclear power plants, elegant and solid,” says Machonin, who is now working on his ninth such construction project.
Before this project, Machnonin was in the southwestern Iranian city of Bushehr. “There, we took over and finished the Siemens building project,” he says. “And we adopted some things from you there.” Both of them shake their heads. “How could the Germans just throw everything away,” asks Vlasenko. “Nuclear energy isn’t on its way out; it’s at the beginning of a renaissance.”
(-> Read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)
Vlasenko is employed by Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear company that is building a third of the nuclear power plants currently under construction across the world. The German and Russian opinions about the future of nuclear energy couldn’t be more different. While Germany has decided to abandon atomic energy, Russia is unflagging in its commitment to the power of nuclear fission.
Indeed, during a celebration marking the opening of a new reactor, Russian leader Vladimir Putin called on those in his country’s atomic industry to build nuclear power plants “until your noses bleed.” Likewise, he has plenty of derisive things to say about Germany’s nuclear anxieties. “I don’t know where they intend to get their heat from,” he says. “They don’t want nuclear energy; they don’t want natural gas. Do they want to go back to heating with wood?”
No Economic Sense
A year after the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, it is clear just how little the nuclear lobby and its government supporters have been unsettled by the disaster in Japan. But rejection of nuclear energy is growing among people the world over — and building new reactors makes no sense in economic terms.
On the face of things, it would appear that little has changed. Only a few countries, such as Switzerland, Italy and Belgium, are joining Germany in turning their backs on nuclear energy. Indeed, it is primarily Russia and the United States, the two nuclear heavyweights, that are competing in a new atomic race, though this time with technologies geared toward civilian purposes. New nuclear power plants are being built with particular relish in emerging economies, such as China and India, who want to satisfy at least part of their energy needs with uranium (see graphic).
For the builders and operators of nuclear energy plants, the accident in Japan came at what might be considered a bad time. After years of stagnation, not only the emerging economies of Asia — China, South Korea and India — but also Russia and the United States were beginning to put greater emphasis on nuclear energy. This decision was driven not only by the growing energy needs of the newly industrializing nations, but also by fears related to carbon emissions and climate change.
This prompted the backers of nuclear energy to make frantic attempts to downplay the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, with the aim of nipping the debate about nuclear safety in the bud. For example, John Ritch, the director-general of the World Nuclear Association, asserted that the disaster hadn’t cost anyone their life. “Nuclear power will be even safer after Fukushima,” Ritch told the BBC in November, “and will continue to mature as the world’s premier non-carbon technology.”
Declining Support
Ritch’s views are shared by Roland Schenkel, a German physicist who used to be the director-general of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. Fukushima, he says, did not prove that nuclear energy is risky elsewhere in the world. “Clearly, these plants were not appropriately protected against well-known specific risks, such as earthquakes and tsunamis.”
Still, all of these efforts at placating and winning citizens over have apparently failed. Already in June 2011, the leading British polling company Ipsos MORI identified a decline in global support for the continued use of nuclear energy or its expansion. In a survey of around 19,000 people in 24 countries, the company found that only 38 percent of respondents approved of nuclear energy, which put it at the bottom of the lists of energy sources, far below even coal-generated energy. The survey also found that the greatest numbers of people who had changed their minds about nuclear energy in the wake of Fukushima were found in South Korea, followed by Japan, China and India.
A poll conducted for the BBC in late November 2011 suggests that these survey figures are not a flash-in-the-pan reaction to the dramatic television images from Fukushima. Only 22 percent of the over 23,000 people questioned for the poll considered nuclear energy to be relatively safe and backed its further expansion. Somewhat surprisingly, there was also an increase in the number of people rejecting the construction of new nuclear power plants in France and Russia, where nuclear energy has traditionally enjoyed strong support. While the views of Americans seemed to be unaffected by events in Fukushima, there was even a slight gain in support for nuclear energy among the British, which might have something to do with the fact that many environmental activists there have embraced nuclear energy as a tool for combating climate change.
China Leads the Pack
On balance, it would be a stretch to speak of a renaissance in nuclear power. According to official figures, there were 436 nuclear power plants still operating around the world at the beginning of March 2012, or eight fewer than the record figure reached in 2002. “If you also subtract the reactors in Japan that have been taken off the grid, the number is only 388,” says nuclear expert Mycle Schneider. “That’s not exactly a renaissance.”
Indeed, despite all the upbeat rhetoric from the atomic industry, hardly any nuclear expert seriously believes there will be a significant increase in the number of nuclear power plants in operation around the world. Schneider points out that existing reactors have a high average age and are gradually being disconnected from the grid. “The nuclear power plants being planned or under construction will not make up for this unstoppable reduction,” he adds.
Granted, according to statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 63 nuclear power plants are currently being built. However, a number of these are projects with no end in sight, such as the dozen plants that have already been on the organization’s list for more than 20 years. The current record is held by the second reactor unit of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in the US state of Tennessee, whose construction commenced in 1973. The Westinghouse reactor is supposed to finally begin operation this year, but its launch was recently pushed back yet again.
China leads the pack with 26 new nuclear power plants. Despite its skyrocketing energy needs, the country still conducted safety checks at all of its new plants in the wake of Fukushima. Construction work on several new plants is scheduled to commence this year, and a number of plants, such as the Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern China, are supposed to begin generating energy. However, officials have not approved any new building projects since March 2011, the month of the Fukushima disaster.
China is also putting much emphasis on renewable energy. Indeed, in 2010, the country boasted 42,287 megawatts in installed wind energy capacity, or over four times as much as its nuclear reactors can generate. This gradual turning away from carbon-based energy production is also supposed to continue, with plans calling for 100,000 megawatts of wind energy and 43,000 megawatts of nuclear energy capacity by 2015.
Resistance in India
India is following China in terms of both skyrocketing growth and the expansion of its nuclear-energy capabilities. Speaking at the India International Nuclear Symposium in late February, Minister of Power Sushil Kumar Shinde praised nuclear energy as both cheaper and “greener” than imported coal.
Nevertheless, after Fukushima, there has also been growing resistance to nuclear energy among Indians. In October 2011, demonstrations were held against the Rosatom-built power plant in Koodankulam, on the southern tip of India, which have succeeded in postponing its start-up.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has complained that environmentalist groups based in the US and Scandinavia backed the demonstrations. “The atomic energy program has got into difficulties because these NGOs … don’t appreciate the need for our country to increase the energy supply,” he said in the February edition of Science magazine.
Still, the anti-nuclear movement is thrilled. “It’s already remarkable that these sorts of problems are suddenly appearing in such tightly run countries as India and China,” says Tobias Münchmeyer, a Greenpeace nuclear expert based in Berlin.
New Plants for America
But for the time being, Western builders of nuclear power plants can still take comfort in all of the contracts they have from emerging economies. It is primarily US-based reactor-builders like Westinghouse who are the big players on the global stage. Back in 2007, Westinghouse, which is a subsidiary of Toshiba, and a partner signed contracts to build four new nuclear facilities in China. Two AP1000-type reactors are currently being built in Sanmen, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. The first reactor is scheduled to enter operation in 2013. Construction work is simultaneously being conducted at the Haiyang facility on the eastern coast of China.
Plans also call for new nuclear power plants to be built in the United States. In early February, for the first time since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the construction of two new Westinghouse reactors. Workers have already dug up the ground and laid the power lines for the reactors in the pine forests of the southeastern state of Georgia. The two 1,000-megawatt giants, which together cost $14 billion, are scheduled to go online in 2016. The new reactors are part of an expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant operated by the energy supplier Southern Company near the city of Augusta.
If the nuclear industry is to continue supplying 20 percent of America’s energy, there’s no way to avoid building new plants. The fact is that many of the 104 nuclear reactors currently in service in the United States are extremely old, and most of them have already been operating for over 30 years. To buy some time, since 2000, the NRC has extended the operational life span of 71 reactors to 60 years.
The main focus of criticism are the 23 ancient boiling water reactors, developed by the US industrial giant General Electric. These are the same type of power plant that blew up in Fukushima.
The US Department of Energy has $18.5 billion in federal guarantees available for building new nuclear power plants. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, praises the expansion project in Georgia as pioneering. “The Vogtle project will help America to recapture the lead in nuclear technology,” he says.
Approval could also soon be in the works for two reactor blocks in South Carolina. Indeed, energy suppliers are putting added pressure on the NRC, which has already received applications for some 30 additional reactor blocks. Still, critics doubt that all of the planned facilities will actually be built. Even under the best of conditions, a single nuclear power plant costs, per megawatt of capacity, almost twice as much as a coal-fired power plant and almost four times as much as a gas-fired one.
For this reason, Amory Lovins, an energy expert at the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, thinks that the supposed renaissance of atomic energy is nothing more than a nuclear-industry fabrication. Indeed, since a significant portion of the financing for nuclear facilities comes from federal subsidies and private investors are hardly ever involved, Lovins compares the situation to a form of “nuclear socialism.”
“The nuclear industry is in a desperate effort to demonstrate that it is healthy,” he says. “Loan guarantees are not a sign of economic health,” he adds, in the same way that “blood transfusions are not a sign of medical health.”
Germany Supports Plants Elsewhere
Rainer Baake, a former senior official at Germany’s Environment Ministry who is viewed as the architect of the nuclear phase-out passed by the Social Democrat-Green coalition government in 2002, also finds it hardly surprising that there is not “more serious thinking about new reactors in any country with a liberalized energy market.” He notes how two new nuclear power plants in France and Finland are not being financed according to standard market rules. “Costs have doubled, as have construction times,” Baake says. “As a result, investment bankers regard the buildings as a kind of cautionary warning.”
Even more surprising is the fact that Germany, the country so openly set on phasing out its own nuclear energy, intends to provide government support to the construction of a new nuclear power plant in far-away Brazil. Sitting on Economics Minister Philipp Rösler’s desk is an application for a so-called Hermes export credit guarantee from the German government valued at €1.3 billion. In the Brazilian municipality of Angra dos Reis, located in the southern part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, the French nuclear giant Areva wants to build a nuclear power plant that German engineers had planned to build in the 1980s.
A report compiled by a Brazilian nuclear expert on behalf of the German environmental organization Urgewald finds that the proposed Angra location is dangerous. Wedged between the sea and steep slopes, the reactor would be practically defenseless against a tsunami or one of the region’s frequent earthquakes. Worse yet, there is only a single coastal road on which the population could be evacuated. “We have the potential for a catastrophe that could even surpass Fukushima,” the report says.
Likewise, the report notes that the Angra location doesn’t meet the criteria that Eletronuclear, the Brazilian regulatory agency, “currently uses to identify suitable locations for future nuclear power plants.” This month, Germany’s Economics Ministry plans to decide whether it will make the construction of Angra 3 possible by extending a loan guarantee.
In the wake of the Fukushima accident, the German government raised the prospect of also no longer granting Hermes loan guarantees for the export of nuclear technology should the country decide to phase out its own nuclear energy facilities. Since then, however, the issue has not been discussed. Klaus-Peter Willsch, a prominent member of Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats and a member of the parliament’s Budget Committee, even disputes the claim that safety considerations played a role in the government’s decision to phase out nuclear energy. “We only did it on account of people’s sensitivities,” he says.
Phasing Out the Phase-Out
Everything is relative, it would seem, including Germany’s nuclear phase-out. The Rosatom higher-ups working in Kaliningrad on the nuclear power plant project have their own thoughts about that, as well. Project director Sergey Boyarkin finds it rather convenient that the second reactor block in Kaliningrad is scheduled to enter into service at the end of the decade, right when Germany is supposed to be shutting down all of its plants. “We are making an offer to German energy companies that we could lay a power line from Kaliningrad, along the Nord Stream gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea,” Boyarkin says. Doing so, he adds, would help Germany avoid shortages in its power grid.
The Russian nuclear executive also thinks it’s conceivable that, before that could happen, Germany might once again phase out the phase-out. The first phase out he’s referring to is that passed in 2002 by the Social Democrat-Green coalition government led by then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and then-Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer, which was then postponed by 12 years in 2010 by Chancellor Merkel. “Merkel has already revised once what Gerhard and Joschka passed back then,” Boyarkin says.
Translated from the German by Josh Ward
Celina Harpe holds up the map like an indictment. “The oil companies are into Moose Lake now,” she says, angrily tapping the paper. Workers have apparently already begun surveying the land.
“I cried when I heard that,” says Harpe, the elder of the Cree First Nation community based in Fort MacKay in the Canadian province of Alberta. “That’s where I was born.”
Her feet are shod in moose-leather moccasins decorated with brightly-colored beads. Over her neatly-pressed trousers she wears a checked lumberjack shirt.
Harpe gets up off her worn sofa and steps out onto the terrace of her blue-painted log cabin. The mighty Athabasca River is just a stone’s throw away. “We can’t drink the water anymore,” says Harpe, 72. Berries and medicinal herbs no longer grow in the woods. Even the moose have become scarce. Harpe wrings her wrinkled hands. “We can’t live off the land anymore,” she laments. “Our livelihood has been taken away from us, and they haven’t even asked if they can use the land.”
An unequal battle is being waged in Alberta. Multinational oil companies are talking about the biggest oil boom in decades. Standing in their way are people like Celina Harpe, whose culture and health are threatened because the ground under their feet contains the planet’s third-largest reserves of crude oil.
Geopolitical Significance
Experts estimate that up to 170 billion barrels of crude oil could be extracted from Canada’s oil sands. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more black gold. In addition, the Alberta deposits are of huge geopolitical significance. Indeed, the US already buys more oil from neighboring Canada than from all the nations in the Persian Gulf region put together.
Very soon, still more of the so-called bitumen could be helping to fire up the US economy. President Barack Obama wants to decide by the end of the year whether it is in his country’s interests to build a 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) pipeline from Alberta to Houston in Texas.
This pipeline, named Keystone XL, could pump up to 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. But whereas the industry is dreaming of an oil rush, protests against the plans are growing. Environmentalists spent two weeks in August and September demonstrating in front of the White House against the exploitation of Canada’s oil sands. Among others, they have the support of 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and former Vice President Al Gore.
The protesters’ rage is directed at a form of oil considered the world’s dirtiest. Ecologists are also worried about the fate of wetlands and water reservoirs along the route of the planned pipeline, including the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies no fewer than eight US states with water.
Above all, the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands could also lead the US to put off seriously thinking about renewable energy sources for many decades to come. “The point is not to get ourselves hooked on the next dirty stuff,” says US environmentalist Bill McKibben, one of the spokesmen of the anti-oil sands movement. He thinks the exploitation of the sands would make it impossible for America to meet its CO2-reduction targets.
‘A Dirty Needle’
“It’s [like] a drug addict reaching for a dirty needle from a fellow addict,” NASA climate researcher James Hansen says. “It’s crazy, and the president should understand that and exercise leadership and reject the pipeline.”
Criticism of the plans is also coming from Europe. Only last week the European Commission decided to define oil extracted from oil sands as particularly harmful to the environment. If the European Parliament and EU member states agree, it will make it particularly expensive to import it into the European Union. Importers could, for example, be forced to invest in organic fuels to compensate for the increase in CO2 emissions. The Canadian government is opposed to such moves.
The area around the town of Fort McMurray, a ramshackle assortment of ugly purpose-built houses in northeastern Alberta, is the epicenter of the oil sands industry. Beefy four-wheel-drive vehicles race along the town’s roads. In winter the temperatures fall to as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s when the locals retreat to the Boomtown Casino or the Oil Can Tavern, a neon yellow-illuminated bar of dubious repute.
The first oil prospectors came to the region more than a century ago. The commercial exploitation of the oil sands began with the construction of the first extraction plants in the mid-1960s. Suncor and Syncrude were the first two companies involved, but rising oil prices have since attracted the industry’s giants, including Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.
(-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)
Heavy equipment is used to dredge out a mixture of sand, clay, water and heavy oil created from the plankton of a primeval ocean. The upward thrust of the Rocky Mountains pushed the reserves into their present position about 70 million years ago. The area of Alberta underneath which the oil sands lie today is about the size of Iowa (see graphic on left).
The Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Fort McMurray contains a sample of oil sand under a glass dome. Visitors can open a small hatch and smell the contents. Crumbled oil sand looks like coffee grounds, and stinks of diesel. It is the stench of big money.
Some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Fort McMurray, the smell hangs in the air day and night. The drive north along Highway 63 leads into the seemingly endless pine forests of the boreal climatic zone. But the woods soon open up, affording a clear view of the smokestacks of an immense industrial complex in the center of an apocalyptic-looking lunar landscape.
Yellow sulfur tailings flash in the distance. Walls of earth surround a gigantic pit in which Caterpillar 797F industrial tippers are shunting to and fro. Each of these tippers can carry up to 360 metric tons of oil sand in a single load. Their wheels alone are four meters (13 feet) high. The plant is the Mildred Lake Mine belonging to the Syncrude company. Approximately 300,000 barrels of oil are produced on the site every day.
Oil sands contain about 10 percent bitumen on average. To separate the oil from the mixture, the sand is put into a caustic soda solution at about 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). The bitumen floats to the top of the slurry, from where it can be skimmed off. It is then upgraded to produce what is known as synthetic crude oil (see graphic).
A Dirty Business
This procedure enables more than 90 percent of the bitumen to be extracted from the oil sands. The only problem is what to do with the remaining few percent. Mixed with water, sand and clay, it ends up in huge storage basins that already span an area of about 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) in Alberta. The sand quickly sinks to the bottom, leaving a gel-like suspension of minute particulate matter that takes up to 30 years to settle.
The sludge also contains heavy metals and chemicals. Environmentalists accuse the operators of allowing some of the water to seep into the ground. Indeed, elevated concentrations of lead, cadmium and mercury have been measured in the nearby Athabasca River and Canadian Indians speak of deformed fish and complain that their people are contracting rare forms of cancer. A definitive connection with the oil sands extraction, however, has not yet been made.
From a hill at the edge of the Syncrude site you can look straight down into the ponds. Oily streaks cover the surface. Last October, 350 ducks landed here during a hailstorm. Their feathers covered in bitumen, they all had to be euthanized. Hollow shots from propane canons now echo across the seemingly endless plains to frighten other birds away. Scarecrows tied to oil barrels bob gently on the ponds.
Biologists hired by the oil companies are trying to reclaim the land. The hill on the edge of the Syncrude site, for example, is directly above a former mine. A sign informs visitors that if they return in 20 years time, they will find “a landscape reclaimed with lakes, forests, wetlands,” an open invitation for “hiking and fishing.” For now, bison graze on a nearby meadow.
Gripped by Desperation
Environmentalists say this is all just greenwashing. “This land is definitely being destroyed forever,” says Melina Laboucan-Massimo, gazing scornfully across the artificial oasis surrounded by gouged out earth. The 30-year-old works as an energy expert for Greenpeace and fights for the rights of the first nations, as Canada’s native inhabitants are known. Laboucan-Massimo is herself a member of the Cree nation, and was born in the area.
When she sees what is happening to her tribe’s traditional homelands, she seems to be gripped by desperation. Only last April, a pipeline burst just a few miles from her aunt’s house, spilling 4.5 million liters (1 million gallons) of oil.
Although there are agreements between the native inhabitants and the Canadian state giving the first nations land and usage rights, it’s not clear what the contracts mean for the exploitation of the oil sands. The Canadian Supreme Court is currently considering an appeal by several first nations for a greater say in oil exploitation. Some 23,000 Canadian Indians still live in the oil sands area.
“My father’s family lived off the land,” says Laboucan-Massimo. “My grandparents hunted, they fished, they trapped; they lived in a more symbiotic relationship with the earth.” Many native Canadians now work for the oil industry: “They are essentially getting paid to destroy their children’s future,” she says.
For years now, Laboucan-Massimo has been fighting an exhausting battle against the industry. “So far they have only developed like 3 percent of the tar sands in Alberta,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of hope if they develop as much land as they want.”
Numerous new opencast mines have already been approved; many others are still in planning. The prospect of a direct pipeline to heavy-oil refineries in Texas has prompted investors to reach for their checkbooks.
Oil Tanks in the Forest
The International Energy Agency predicts production of conventional oil will soon reach its peak. Oil production in Alberta, by contrast, could more than double to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2025. At today’s prices, that means that the oil sands in Canada, exploitable with today’s technology, are worth about $16 trillion.
And production costs are falling constantly. Whereas a barrel of oil used to cost almost $75 to produce, new production methods promise to cut that to about $50.
The eight-seater Beechcraft Super King Air 350, leased by Cenovus Energy, takes off into the skies over Fort McMurray. While the plane is gaining altitude, the shimmering Athabasca River comes into view. Then the mines. From the air they look like oozing wounds in the midst of the green forest. Soon square clearings can also be seen, each with its own oil derrick. Straight roads slice through the forest; the trails left by the geologists searching for the oil sands below.
As the plane descends, oil tanks and chimneys appear near a lake. Christina Lake is the name of this Cenovus production plant, one of the world’s most modern. But there’s no sign of a mine; the oil sands at the site are being drilled here rather than dug up.
About 80 percent of the oil sands in Canada are too deep to be retrieved using opencast mining. More than 50 years ago, US geologist Manley Natland came up with idea to separate oil and sand below ground rather than digging them up first. Natland suggested superheating the oil sands so that the bitumen liquefies and can be pumped to the surface. Only now are the required machines available. Engineers can now pump 250 degree Celsius (480 degree Fahrenheit) steam through a borehole and deep down into the ground.
‘10,000 Barbecues’
Cenovus perfected the procedure at Christina Lake. The plant is currently undergoing a dramatic expansion. By the end of the decade, the planners hope it will be producing 258,000 barrels a day, enough to supply some 4 million US citizens with energy for 24 hours.
“We expect to produce oil at this facility for more than 30 years,” says Drew Zieglgansberger of Cenovus. The youthful-looking manager in blue overalls leads the way to one of five towering steam generators that form the heart of the oil factory. Zieglgansberger climbs a ladder on the front of the gigantic structure and looks through a small window into the white-hot fire burning at 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), turning water into super-heated steam. The plant generates as much heat as “10,000 barbecues,” the manager proudly declares.
Operating the mammoth oven is a dirty business. Natural gas is burned to bring the machines up to their operating temperature. In fact the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil is needed to recover 10 barrels of oil. The European Commission has calculated that recovering oil from oil sands is about 22 percent more harmful to the environment than conventional crude oil. The US Environmental Protection Agency has even suggested it creates 82 percent more greenhouse gas emissions.
But that’s not all: Heating bitumen also releases sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and heavy metals into the air, all of which later return to earth as acid rain. The Canadian Ministry for Natural Resources has confirmed that drilling generates twice the emissions as conventional oil production. Worse still, it’s not clear how drilling affects the water table. The independent Council of Canadian Academies regrets that such information is “absent.”
Zieglgansberger accepts that there are problems. “Yes, we have the dirtiest oil in the world”, he openly admits. But it’ll be another 50 years before renewable energy can replace oil. “It is needed as a bridge to the next energy source.”
Destined to Be Lost Forever
Industry lobbyists are increasing their pressure on Washington. Pipeline operator TransCanada has close ties with the office of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The company’s current chief lobbyist was a top advisor to Clinton during the 2008 presidential primaries.
Most analysts already assume that Obama will eventually authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. Too many jobs are believed to be on the line, and oil has too great a strategic significance to the US.
Nevertheless, the pipeline’s opponents continue to rally their supporters. A human chain around the White House is planned for early November. However McKibben doubts it will have much of an impact. “The oil companies have more money than God,” he says.
Time clearly appears to have run out for the native inhabitants of Alberta’s northeast. Their traditional way of life seems destined to be lost forever. Cenovus Manager Zieglgansberger takes a sober view of the situation: “We are now neighbors, whether they want us here or not.” The oil man is at pains to stress that he respects first-nation traditions. “We bring our stakeholders out with us before we do any disturbance,” Zieglgansberger assures us.
Such respect seems to be rather limited. When tribal elders discovered a traditional burial ground on the site of one of the Cenovus plants, the oil company agreed to preserve the holy shrine.
The cemetery now lies in the middle of the industrial complex on a tiny square of land spared from the lumberjacks.
Now the native Indians must pass directly by the oil tanks to honor their dead.
Translated from the German by Jan Liebelt
Q: US-president Barack Obama has to decide before the end of the year if TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline can go forward. Which effects would the construction have?
Laboucan-Massimo: If this pipeline is built, the amount of tar sands that will be produced in Alberta is going to increase enormously. And thats problematic because we are already seeing unchecked tar sands development in Alberta. We are already hearing of contaminated water sources. We are already seeing the boreal forest being destroyed and the woodland caribou disappear from the areas where tar sands development takes place. It’s not a thriving, living ecosystem anymore. Also, there is a potential risk for leaks and spills all along the pipeline corridor, and TransCanada does not seem to be able to guarantee that a spill won’t happen. Part of the Keystone-Pipeline has already been built, and we have seen 12 spills already in its first year of operation.
Q: What’s wrong with producing oil out of Alberta’s oil sands?
Laboucan-Massimo: Oil from the tar sands is an unconventional fossil fuel. It is a lot harder to reach than conventional oil. It takes more energy, more water and results in more carbon emissions than conventional fossil fuel sources. The ecological footprint is huge. The oil companies have only developed about three percent out of the land they are seeking to exploit. If they develop as much as they want to, that is gonna be very problematic for the way that people live here.
Q: You were born in this area. As a person connected to the land – how do you feel about the oil sands industry?
Laboucan-Massimo: It really hurts my heart to see the effects on the land, the animals, the people and the water. Our cultural fabric is based off this land. My Dads side of my family was very connected to the land. They lived off the land, they hunted, they fished, they trapped, they lived in a more symbiotic relationship with the earth. Before colonization, the earth was in a pristine condition for a reason. The indigenous people that lived here had a deep understand and respect for the land. They had traditional ecological knowledge. They knew that what you do to the land you do to yourself. What we see now, however, is a disconnection between people and the earth. People cannot access certain parts of their traditional territories anymore because they are being cut off by the leases that are given out to multinational oil corporations who don’t have the same regard for the land as the people that have lived their for thousands of years.
Q: What kind of impact do you see on the people?
Laboucan-Massimo: People have called this resource a curse, and for good reason. There are serious health issues like respiratory illnesses, emphysema or asthma, and also elevated rates of certain cancers. We are not only seeing it in the people, we are seeing it in the animals too. People have found fishes in the Athabasca River that have tumors on them, that have crooked spines. Food, which was once extremely healthy, is now becoming contaminated.
Q: But local people benefit a lot from the oil exploration.
Laboucan-Massimo: I don’t agree with that, I see a lot of inequity. The community that I was born into for example still has no running water. Also, a lot of schools are being underresourced in the communities to this day. The industry likes to say ‘we provide jobs’, but how long will those jobs last? If it is a construction job, the job will be over when the plants are all set and done. Fact is: Its just a wage. You are getting paid to essentially destroy your children’s future. You are getting paid to be around toxic chemicals. You are getting paid to potentially have health effects in the future and to destroy the very land that your ancestors lived upon. Billions of dollars are taken out of resources from our traditional territories, and yet, this development is not benefiting the people that actually live here. It is benefiting the companies. And their people don’t live here. They don’t have to live out the consequences of the destruction of the land.