Nuclear power in the news - Germany

When the facts do not support the narrative, change the facts. From Smart Planet:

Scandal: Judges airbrush popular nuclear design out of German green tech competition
When a German clean technology group opened the voting for this year�s annual GreenTec Awards, it probably didn�t expect the public to send a nuclear reactor into the final round. This is Germany after all, the country that has gone ardently anti-nuclear in the wake of Fukushima and that loves its solar and wind energy and other renewables.

Oops.

Organizers tallied the online votes and discovered that a novel liquid reactor called the Dual-Fluid Reactor (DFR) had made it through to compete against two other finalists at a gala ceremony this Aug. 30 in Berlin, blogger Rainer Klute reported.

The good greenies at GreenTec then did the honorable thing. According to the people behind the DFR and to Klute, they airbrushed the reactor out of contention by implementing a de facto rule change. Under the switch, public voting - which in the original set of rules was to have elected one of the three finalists - no longer counted. Instead, only members of the GreenTec jury could choose all nominees.

Klute has started a campaign to reinstate the DFR. He wrote:

�People who had campaigned for the award and for the DFR were heavily shocked. Not only they found the decision as such completely incomprehensible, but also the procedure to make it. Changing rules in the course of the game is something that is usually considered less than fair. Most of us (but obviously not all) learned this early in our childhood. No wonder the award�s makers were criticized violently in blogs and social media, especially on their own Facebook page.�

A lot of the ensuing commentary - including a GreenTec explanation on Facebook - has been in German, which unfortunately I don�t read (although I do understand the new German word shitstorm, which is what surrounds the controversial GreenTec move).

I�ve emailed GreenTec twice this week asking for its side of the story. I have yet to hear back from the group, which counts Germany�s energy minister Peter Altmaier as its patron.

The DFR is another atmospheric self-limiting design similar to the LFTR. Inherently safe and the waste only needs to be sequestered for 40 years. Plus, it can burn spent uranium fuel eliminating the need for long-term storage for that waste. More, Faster, Please!