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Poland Mocks Anti-Nuclear Hysteria in Germany
7 May 2011
Throughout Poland, the media have criticized and mocked the hysteria in neighboring Germany, asking, what in Hell is going on there, that Germans seem to be dominated by fear, whereas no such phenomenon can be reported from the Polish population? Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has been urged by German politicians, particularly Brandenburg Minister President Matthias Platzek (SPD), to drop plans for a Polish nuclear power plant near Gdansk, has categorically ruled this out, reiterating the commitment to complete that power plant by 2020. Tusk said that if Poland wants to reduce its dependency on natural gas imports from Russia, it has no other alternative than to develop nuclear power. So far, Poland does not have nuclear power. Tusk added that the project near Gdansk is not located on or near any seismic fault line, and that Poland had already taken into account German concerns, when dropping plans to build a nuclear power plant in Gryfino, close to the border with Germany, last year. The plant at Gdansk is 300 km farther east. Also, Teresa Kaminska, technical leader of the Gdansk construction project, said she was puzzled by the discussion in Germany about Fukushima, since "even in such an emergency situation, no major fall-out of larger quantities of radioactivity has been observed in Japan," which she believes shows that "once again, it has been proven that nuclear power is a safe form of power generation." If people fixate on Fukushima, they overlook the fact that Japan is operating more than 50 nuclear reactors on its territory, none of which has produced a catastrophe to date. |