Rencontre avec nos homologues allemands
The annual meeting of the German Nuclear Society Young Generation took place at the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Isar from November 20th to 22nd 2014.
50 young professionals gathered for two days of conferences, technical visits and networking opportunities. Denis Janin, SFEN-JG member, was one of the participants.
“Economic Consequences of the German Energy Transition (Energiewende)” was the theme of the two days lectures. This topic was mainly addressed in two aspects. Firstly, the changing German energy paradigm and its consequences on nuclear energy were discussed. The influence of low market electricity prices, the “nuclear fuel tax” burden and the decommissioning costs were particularly debated. Mr. Heil (EnBW Nuclear CEO) and two NPP managers, Dr. Kohlpaintner (E.ON, KKI) and Mr. Scheuring (E.ON, KKG) presented their views on those issues. They highlighted the difficulty to work in an uncertain environment. In this context, they described their employees’ motivation as their biggest challenge and priority. Moreover, the uncertainty on the German nuclear waste storage availability was mentioned as a possible show-stopper for NPP decommissioning plans.
On the other hand, energy economics experts from utilities and grid operators introduced the complex situation they are also facing: absorbing a growing amount of new energy sources – mostly intermittent such as renewables –, preventing electricity supply shortage while base load capacity such as gas fired plant are being closed by utilities for economic reasons. The need to operate more and more NPP in load-follow mode was mentioned. This requirement was confirmed by Dr. Kohlpaintner: in Isar NPP Unit 2, more than 90 % of the days in 2014 were operated in load follow mode to compensate intermittent energy sources.
3 technical visits were offered: a tour of the Bavarian UPM Platting paper factory, enabling the participants to understand the specific requirements of an electricity intensive industry. The visit of Isar NPP unit 1 – Boiling Water Reactor (BWR), stopped in March 2011 following the German moratorium on nuclear energy – and of Isar NPP Unit 2 – Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), authorize to operate until 2022 – were also organized. As KKI-2 is a Konvoi type plant, participants were able to enter the reactor containment and visit the fuel pond while KKI-2 was in full power operation.
This meeting was also an opportunity for Denis Janin to present the 2015 European Forum (ENYGF2015 Conference with link to the website) which will be organised in June 2015 in Paris. The German young professionals looked highly interested and motivated to come to Paris. Overall, participants’ satisfaction was very high to have attended the 2014 KTG-JG annual meeting. For the SFEN-JG and KTG-JG, it was one more occasion to reinforce their long time successful cooperation.
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Denis JANIN, pour la SFEN Jeune Génération