Societies reliant on nuclear power by some degree can quite easily live without it, a visiting German energy expert says.

Dieter Seifried, a researcher at the Wuppertal Institute, said in a lecture at the Catholic Center yesterday that Germany is making currently making giant strides in developing green sources of energy as it begins the process of shutting down all of its nuclear power plants.

He is visiting South Korea at the invitation of the Korean bishops’ Committee for Environment, which is campaigning for Korea to abandon nuclear power.

According to Seifried, Germany has increased fivefold the amount of renewable energy generated from hydro-electricity, wind farming, biomass (energy from living or recently deceased organisms), and solar power over last 20 years, while its dependency on lignite (brown coal), coal and nuclear power has decreased.

This renewable energy will exceed 20 percent of all energy consumption in Germany this year, he said.

Following the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan earlier this year, Germany decided to abandon nuclear energy within the next 11 years.

Seifried said the Renewable Energy Sources Act of 2000 had played a vital role in moves to shed nuclear power. Under it, the German government financially supports suppliers of renewable energy, which has contributed to a huge increase in solar power over last 10 years.

Such change was realized through public demand, not political manipulation because most of this renewable energy is produced and owned by individuals.

South Korea currently has 21 nuclear reactors, and the government has recently declared it plans to construct more.

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