extending nuclear plant lifetimes

ENERGY | 28.08.2010

Study recommends extending nuclear plant lifetimes

The report was based on a range of scenarios for plants

A study commissioned by the German government has recommended an extension of up to 20 years to the life nuclear power plants, according to reports. The government faces resistance if it presses ahead.

Experts from Germany's Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne (EWI) were asked to give their advice to the government on a range of scenarios about extending the operational lifetimes of plants by 4, 12, 20 and 28 years.

The study recommended that nuclear power plants should be kept open for between 12 and 20 years more than currently planned, the German news magazine Focus reported Saturday.

A number of studies, many of which have come to different conclusions, have been recently issued by think-tanks and environmental organizations.

After a tour of power plants around the country, Merkel said on Friday that renewable energies should supply half of all energy needs by 2050 and that nuclear and coal power would continue until supplies could be met entirely by clean energy.

Evaluating outcomes for climate, economy

The chancellor has completed four days of touring energy facilities

The assessment was based factors such as electricity price, energy security and carbon emissions. According to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, experts believe that an extension would allow "the best outcomes for climate protection and the economy."

The coalition government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which aims to overhaul its energy policy by the end of September, received the study on Friday. The phasing out of German power plants had been planned by the Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.

According to a law passed in 2002 by the then-ruling SPD-Greens coalition, all of Germany's nuclear power plants were due to go off line by 2022.

Merkel's government has said it intends to extend that deadline. Until recently, it had been thought that any legal change would need to be approved by the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house, which represents country's 16 states.

Bypassing the upper house?

State ministers plan to take a fight against any extension to the Constitutional Court

However, after the May election in North Rhine-Westphalia, the center-right coalition lost its majority in the upper chamber and plans to bypass the Bundesrat entirely were hinted at - infuriating opposition parties.

The government now faces resistance to its plans with nine out of 16 German states opposed to them, including Hamburg, Thuringia and Saarland which are led by Merkel's own Christian Democrats.

Ministers from both North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate have said that they will press for judicial review at Germany's Constitutional court, if the government goes ahead without Bundesrat approval.

A poll released by ZDF television on Friday showed that 56 percent of those surveyed were opposed to an extension while 38 percent support them.

Author: Richard Connor (AFP/dpa/AP)

Editor: Sean Sinico

ecological space

23 August 2010 Last updated at 21:26 GMT

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Space is the final frontier for evolution, study claims

By Howard Falcon-LangScience reporter, BBC News

Mammals had plenty of space in which to thrive after the extinction of the dinosaurs

Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.

He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.

But new research identifies the availability of "living space", rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.

Findings question the old adage of "nature red in tooth and claw".

The study conducted by PhD student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol is published in Biology Letters.

The research team used fossils to study evolutionary patterns over 400 million years of history.

Focusing on land animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - the scientists showed that the amount of biodiversity closely matched the availability of "living space" through time.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Competition did not play a big role in the overall pattern of evolution”

Professor Michael BentonBristol University

Living space - more formally known as the "ecological niche concept" by biologists - refers to the particular requirements of an organism to thrive. It includes factors like the availability of food and a favourable habitat.

'Lucky break'

The new study proposes that really big evolutionary changes happen when animals move into empty areas of living space, not occupied by other animals.

For example, when birds evolved the ability to fly, that opened up a vast range of new possibilities not available to other animals. Suddenly the skies were quite literally the limit, triggering a new evolutionary burst.

Similarly, the extinction of the dinosaurs left areas of living space wide open, giving mammals their lucky break.

This concept challenges the idea that intense competition for resources in overcrowded habitats is the major driving force of evolution.

Continue reading the main story

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What is the impetus to occupy new portions of ecological space if not to avoid competition?”

Professor Stephen StearnsYale University

Professor Mike Benton, a co-author on the study, explained that "competition did not play a big role in the overall pattern of evolution".

"For example, even though mammals lived beside dinosaurs for 60 million years, they were not able to out-compete the dominant reptiles. But when the dinosaurs went extinct, mammals quickly filled the empty niches they left and today mammals dominate the land," he told BBC News.

Alternative view

However, Professor Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, US, told BBC News he "found the patterns interesting, but the interpretation problematic".

He explained: "To give one example, if the reptiles had not been competitively superior to the mammals during the Mesozoic (era), then why did the mammals only expand after the large reptiles went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic?"

"And in general, what is the impetus to occupy new portions of ecological space if not to avoid competition with the species in the space already occupied?"