CAN the world fight global warming without nuclear power? One major industrialized country — Germany — is determined to find out, and another — Japan — is debating whether to try. Both illustrate how hard it would be. To date, nuclear is the only proven source of low-emissions “baseload” power — that is, electricity that's always on, day or night, powering round-the-clock elevators in Tokyo or office buildings in Munich. Yet both Germany and Japan are poised to prematurely shutter their large nuclear sectors, giving up all of that guaranteed, low-carbon electricity generation in an anti-nuclear frenzy, on a bet that they can multiply their generation of renewable electricity within a decade or two. Before the Fukushima Daiichi disaster last year, Japan derived a third of its electricity from nuclear power. Now, with all but one reactor offline, the country's consumption of crude and heavy fuel oil for power generation has roughly tripled. Even with that backup fossil-fired power, though, the government worries that the electrical system will fail during peak summer demand if utilities don't switch on reactors. The Financial Times' Gerrit Wiesmann reports a similar situation in Germany, which has committed to closing all of its reactors, even as its power grid teeters and its electricity sector emits more carbon than it must after eight reactors shut down last year. With both countries making the paths to their emissions goals more difficult, anti-nuclear activists justify this mess by insisting that renewable energy sources will pick up the slack. – Excerpts from The New York Times editorial __
