Living Planet: Environmental Mattters Around the World

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DATE : Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:30:00 GMT
Entered in Database : 2010-01-21 16:30:00
length : 14578175
Link to the Show / Show Notes

This week on Living Planet we take a look at the scandal over Germany's disintegrating nuclear repository at Asse, snow sports' troubling future in the European Alps, a royal rumble over a solar energy park and pioneering efforts to insulate old apartment blocks so they lose next to no heat.
You can download the show or subscribe to Living Planet as a podcast. Click on the links below for the individual reports. Decision reached on disintegrating German nuclear repository

German authorities have announced that nuclear waste will have to be dug up and relocated from a mine that was once considered safe, but looks doomed to collapse.

The Asse nuclear repository – a former salt mine in northern Germany – contains over 125,000 barrels of radioactive waste.

It is also taking on on water at a rate of around 12,000 litres a day. Authorities fear it could collapse and one day poison the local water table. Detlev Möller is a historian who recently had his doctoral thesis published on the history of Asse. He came into the studio and I asked him how the site came to be chosen as a nuclear waste dump in the sixties in the first place.

Interview: Nathan Witkop

The winter weather that blanketed much of Europe in white in recent weeks has been a welcome site for snow sport enthusiasts. But a new study suggests skiing and snowboarding in many parts of Europe's Alps could soon become a thing of the past.

The OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, found that warming in the Alps amounts to roughly three times the global average. The report identifies Germany's mountains as most at risk. So what steps are the country’s ski resorts taking to help preserve them for generations to come? And just how green can ski resorts really be?

Report: Laura Schweiger

Germany is a world leader in solar energy, but not everyone is happy to see a solar park open next door.

Germany's solar boom has been helped along by a law that offers incentives to solar manufacturers and to people putting up solar panels on their roofs. Now one of Germany's wealthiest families wants to get in on the renewable energy game. Prince Albert of the House of Thurn and Taxis wants to build a giant solar park on family land in Bavaria, but residents in a town next to the site are saying "not in my backyard."

Report: Kyle James

For some time, Germany has been making homes that are so well insulated, they barely require gas or electricity for heating – even in the middle of a German winter. Now the techniques are being used to retrofit old apartment buildings, with surprising success.

Using energy efficiently is one of the biggest ways in which countries can cut greenhouse gas emissions, and often save money at the same time. Our homes are a major location for much of our daily energy use and architects in Germany have been leading the way for some time now by designing so called passive houses. Deutsche Welle's Christian Quiring went to Germany's green capital, the city of Freiburg, to check out a world-first effort to renovate a 16 storey apartment bloc according to passive house principles.

Report: Christian Quiring /Vanessa Johnston (voiced)

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