Angela Merkel caused a flurry when she buckled to Green lunacy and ordered the safe and boringly reliable German Nuclear fleet to be shut down.
Consequently she is going to kill a lot of Germans.
When asked how they were going to make up the shortfall from closing the nuclear plant the German government just mumbled and looked at their shoes. Then we found out that their grand plan involved building 5800 MW of Lignite burning coal plant.
That's right. They are building Lignite burning coal plant to replace nuclear....
A German government minister enthused that the new coal plant would be easier to throttle than older coal plant so could be used in conjunction with wind and solar.....
No I'm not making this up. (honest)
But there is also another 12.2 GW of nuclear yet to close. I expect a lot more mumbling and shoe viewing from the German government in the near future.
Anyway, back to the main thrust of this post.
How many Germans are going to be killed by this madness?
Well, Professor Hansen of the Goddard Space Research Center (one of the most respected scientists in the world) has calculated how many respiratory deaths have been averted by nuclear power. The number is currently 1.85 million (and rising).
But of course, you can always work the figures back the other way and figure out how many people you will kill by replacing nuclear plant with dirty Lignite burning coal plant.
Professor Hansen in his paper (HERE) references another peer reviewed paper by Markandya & Wilkinson (HERE) and particularly this table.
Notice that for every TW/hr of nuclear you replace by Lignite you kill an extra 32.6 people per year. You also cause 298 cases of severe cardio-vascular distress and over 17000 lesser illnesses.
These Lignite burning monsters are new. So their capacity factor should be around 70%. So we get about 36 TW/hrs of power in a year from them.
Every year, this madness (so far!) is killing (32 x 36) 1150 people and causing 11,000 more serious respiratory illnesses. Minor illnesses come in at over half a million. That is EVERY YEAR.
AND that is just these few new stations that do not even make up the current deficit from closing the 8 nuclear plants in 2011 !!
The German nuclear Fleet is/was 20GW in total. Replacing that lot is going to need a helluva a lot of Lignite. And a mountain of dead Germans.
Clearly, it will not just be the German Nuclear Industry that will have it's name followed by the initials R.I.P. in the near future.
