Wedded to Nuclear Power

One happy Czech couple tied the knot last week at the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant near the German border a couple days ago.

As the article notes, 55% of Czech continue to support an increased nuclear power capacity, standing in stark contrast to their German neighbors to the north and west, where huge protests recently against nuclear power have rattled Angela Merkel's already frail government. The German press is deeply anti-nuclear as well, and it is interesting to compare Czech and German reports from the Fukushima crisis. Nevertheless, the article linked above points out that since Chancellor Merkel's moratorium on building of new nuclear plants, Czech energy exports to Germany have increased fivefold. The fact of that matter is that Germany, or any other nation, cannot run on good feelings and so-called "clean energy." But if they want to pay for other people's energy, so be it. What would be interesting, cynical, and wholly expected, as the article notes, is German efforts to make it more difficult for other nations (including those that aren't on the world's most active fault lines) to build their own nuclear plants and sell the power to Germany. This will obviously result in higher prices for energy for everyone, higher consumption of fossil fuels, and more subsidies to solar plants in cloudy nations.

So congratulations to the elementary school teacher and her new husband. May they live long, happy, warm, comfortable lives in the shadow of the cooling tower, and may those towers continue to keep them warm and comfortable, if not always happy.