Full-up with energy - is nuclear energy still worthwhile?

Nuclear engineering is a technology with sensible relationship between econ omy and ecology, a high level of safety, outstandingly good availability an d positive influence on Germany as an industrialised country. Dirk Stiller comes to this conclusion in this contribution. Compared with fossil energy sources such as coal or gas, not considering capital investment, nuclear en ergy entailing fuel costs of about 0.03 DM/kWh is well competitive. At the same time nuclear energy guarantees the supply dependability for West Europ e which itself has only small resources of fossil fuels. One important reas on for the low price for natural gas so far is that Germany has so far been able to resort to nuclear power stations as alternative. The ecological aspects of nuclear energy must above all be considered in th e global context. The emission of CO2 can be drastically reduced through ut ilising nuclear energy. This is necessary for two reasons, because it is no t only necessary to stop increase of the already existing greenhouse effect . It is also necessary to compensate the energy demand in threshold and dev elopment countries, covered for the time being with fossil fuels, by the CO 2-free nuclear energy in highly industrialised countries. For this contribution Dirk Stiller was awarded the new generation prize of the KTG in 1998. The author is studying che mical engineering at the Univer sity of Dortmund. His chief interests thereby lie in the field of energy pr oduction engineering and safety engineering. At present the 30 year old aut hor is working on his study thesis in the nuclear power station Emsland.