German nuclear power plants are not safer than Japanese?

German nuclear power plants are in the opinion of nuclear opponents no more secure than Japanese: Can a super-GAU happen in Germany?

16/03/2011

Jochen Stay, spokesman for the anti-nuclear organization "Ausgestrahlt", explains the debate about the safety of nuclear power plants in Germany: „The safety in German nuclear power plants is by no means better than that in the Japanese reactors. Here as there are multiple and redundant security systems. Fukushima shows that they all fail in case of doubt.

The nuclear power plants Isar-1, Philippsburg-1, Brunsbüttel and Krümmel are in principle identical to the reactors in Fukushima-Daiichi - with the difference that the German reactors are all larger than the Japanese. In the Krümmel nuclear power plant, for example, emergency cooling would have to dissipate three times as much heat as in Fukushima Daiichi-1 in the event of a major accident, and far more radioactive inventory could escape.

The nuclear plants in Japan were allegedly designed for earthquakes up to at least 7.75 on the Richter scale. Stronger earthquakes were considered unthinkable. The reactors in Germany are built much weaker - and can not even stand the quake expected here. For example, the Biblis B nuclear power plant is only designed for the weaker half of the earthquakes expected in Biblis. And the reactors of the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant, including the block 2, which only went online in 1989, stand on brittle limestone, which is expected to cause 30 percent more tremors than the permit.

In Japan, it took a tsunami to bring about the so-called station blackout, the dangerous power failure in the nuclear power plant itself. As a result, the cooling then failed, causing the reactor cores to melt. In Germany, there is no need for a tsunami - here a simple storm is enough. Eight times between 1977 and 2004, lightning or storms in a West German nuclear power plant led to the loss of important instruments, to the dreaded emergency power case, or even to total loss, as was the case on 13 January 1977 at the Gundremmingen A nuclear power plant , Especially the older reactors are particularly bad in an accident: their cooling systems are weak, the individual strands about the emergency power supply neither technically nor spatially clean separated.

The last protection against leakage of radioactive substances is shown by Fukushima, the safety container. In Fukushima it is made of steel and surrounded by concrete. In almost all reactors in Germany, however, he is only made of steel - in a serious accident he threatens to burst quickly. He is also far too small for the older reactors and his walls are rather thin. For the old boiling water reactors Isar-1, Philippsburg-1, Brunsbüttel and Krümmel, the base of the containment is also made of steel only. The reactor core can melt it in minutes in an accident. There would be no time for an evacuation.“ (Pm)

Also read:
Health: long-term consequences of radioactive radiation
What meltdown or super-GAU mean?
Radioactive Radiation: Health Effects
Nationwide actions planned for the nuclear phase-out
Doctors demand shutdown of all nuclear power plants

Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixelio.de