In the small town of Kalkar in Northern Germany, there is an amusement park with an unusual ‘Alpine Experience’ climbing wall that looks like a power station cooling tower … because that is exactly what it is, or rather was.

The decision to build a prototype fast breeder power station in 1972 was taken because this type of reactor would be powered by the plutonium produced in conventional nuclear power stations, and would therefore produce more fuel than it consumed.

This sounds too good to be true because plutonium is extremely radioactive, and when not used to make atomic bombs, must be stored securely for some 200,000 years.

Despite the obvious environmental benefits of such technology, green ignorance stopped the commissioning of the plant simply because it was ‘nuclear’. The explanations for stopping it were all mistaken, as I hope to show. This is crucial as we have a similar non-scientific, feelings-based fear driving our irrational Net Zero panic.

The mistakes were driven by a series of false assumptions and misunderstandings about the risks and problems of nuclear power generation, which will become obvious as we examine the underlying causes.

Built between 1972 and 1991, at a cost of over €3.5 billion (US $4 billion), the Kalkar 327-megawatt nuclear reactor was never commissioned because of green opposition. At the time, this was caused primarily by the fear generated after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident which made any nuclear power plant seem like bad news.

That’s understandable, I hear you saying, but the facts suggest otherwise. Mistake number one led to a series of bad decisions based on misinformation which has since hindered the development of an alternative source of cheap and reliable power to satisfy the apparent need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The Russian conventional water-cooled reactor at Chernobyl exploded during routine testing because of a serious design fault. Radiation then spread over much of Europe because the builders cut costs by omitting the concrete containment walls and pressure vessels that were installed around similar reactors worldwide. That was mistake number two.

The Kalkar reactor was different to Chernobyl, producing more fuel than it consumed by converting plutonium to uranium, surely a win-win situation. Mistake number three…

A fast breeder reactor produces significantly more heat than Chernobyl-type, uranium-fuelled, water-cooled reactors. This excessive heat is cooled with liquid natrium (sodium) which, in turn, is cooled by water, creating the steam to drive normal turbines to make reliable, stable, and cheap electricity. The steam is condensed as it passes through the turbines and the resulting hot water is pumped to the top of the cooling tower, cooling as it falls like rain to the tower floor where it is collected and recycled to again cool the liquid sodium. Some of the steam escapes from the top of the cooling tower as clouds of white water vapour, which alarmists mistakenly imply is evidence of the CO2 pollution created by all such forms of power generation such as coal and gas. Mistake number four.

France generates 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power because, unlike much of Europe, it lacks sufficient oil, gas, coal, or uranium. For the last 50 or so years it has safely used fast breeder technology to produce sufficient fuel reserves for the next 250 years. Using a technology that eliminates the need to store conventional plutonium waste for over 100,000 years is surely a sensible and sustainable way to generate fossil fuel-free electricity. Mistake number five.

However, at Kalkar, emotional consensus and ideology triumphed over science yet again, and the Fast Breeder Reactor was closed down in 1991 without a trial. The reactor building and cooling tower were sold after partial demolition for €2.5 million and symbolically converted into an amusement park which was a pointless and super-expensive taxpayer-funded monument to green folly.

The loss was further compounded by the futile attempt to replace what would have been 327 MW of reliable, year-round, cheap electricity with intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power (which the once intensely green, tree-hugging, environmental lobby, now claim is the cheapest form of power). They studiously ignore the fact that fossil fuel and nuclear power plants cover just a few hectares of land, produce power >90 per cent of the time, come rain or shine, and last for 60 plus years. Heavily subsidised renewables sterilise hundreds of thousands of hectares of countryside and need replacing every 20 or so years. They also need kilometres of powerlines to get the power to where it is needed. Mistake number six.

Renewable supporters claim that renewable power is cheaper than fossil fuels, yet our power bills keep going up. The claim is based on wrongfully using the so-called levelized cost of renewables (LCOR) which is a deceitful accounting sleight of hand. The real cost of unreliable renewables, must also include the subsidies and the stand-by cost of fossil, hydro, or nuclear fuel power stations or batteries that are needed when the wind doesn’t blow at the right speed and the sun doesn’t shine enough. A traditional power station that is kept on subsidised care and maintenance until needed as backup can only make a loss, unless subsidised. Mistake number seven.

In Queensland where roof-top solar has been widely accepted and installed, wind farms are paid not to produce electricity on sunny days, another invisible subsidy, that adds to the real cost of household and industrial electricity. Mistake number eight.

The Kalkar Fast Breeder Reactor was designed to generate fossil fuel-free electricity and to eliminate the production of dangerous long-lived radioactive waste that would need to be safely stored for half the lifetime of homo sapiens. The history of humanity for just the last 10,000 years would suggest that safe storage for as little as one generation would be an impossibility. Now that renewable electricity has proved itself incapable of supplying Germany’s power requirements, coal-fired power stations are being brought back online. Something that should be thought of in Australia, where decommissioned coal-fired power stations are immediately demolished.

Kalkar-type Fast Breeder Reactors could have been used to supply the deficiencies inherent in power produced by intermittent wind and solar, removing at least partially, the need for fossil fuel-powered generation. Fear of nuclear accidents is as understandable as the fear of coal mine disasters and oil and gas well blow-outs, but both are extremely rare and have usually been caused by design faults. Any attempt to improve the living conditions of the majority of people living on the planet carries risks. The unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, but shipbuilding did not stop. Many motor cars, trains, aeroplanes, and spaceships have suffered similar fates, but we continue to build them as each accident makes a repeat far less likely, and the benefits these inventions bring, far exceed the losses.

The nuclear power industry has grown steadily more reliable, as is evidenced by the lack of accidents in nuclear-powered countries like France, or in the many nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers that constantly sail the seas. It was an unnecessary but perhaps understandable mistake to terminate the Kalkar experiment in the 1970s, but ‘the times they are a changing’ and the world needs to move on, particularly if emissions need to be cut.