Germany says goodbye to nuclear power for good

Germany disconnected its last three nuclear power plants at midnight from Saturday to Sunday, and with that it executes the final atomic shutdown and ends an entire era.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
16 April 2023 Sunday 04:58
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Germany says goodbye to nuclear power for good

Germany disconnected its last three nuclear power plants at midnight from Saturday to Sunday, and with that it executes the final atomic shutdown and ends an entire era. The closure was planned for December 2022, but the energy emergency caused by the Russian gas cut in the context of the war in Ukraine led the coalition government of social democrats, environmentalists and liberals of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to postpone the shutdown until April 15, 2023, to ensure the supply of electricity during the winter.

The three plants, Isar 2 (Bavaria), Emsland (Lower Saxony) and Neckarwestheim 2 (Baden-Württemberg), stopped working forever, but the social consensus on the progressive abandonment of nuclear energy, since 2011 this decision was taken by the coalition government of conservatives and liberals of Chancellor Angela Merkel, has diminished in the current situation of energy unrest. The 2011 decision took place after the Fukushima disaster and after years of protests by the Greens against the nuclear pathway.

Now, the majority of Germans (59%) are against saying goodbye to atomic energy, compared to 34% who consider this step correct, according to the survey by the Infratest dimap institute for the public television ARD awakened this week Twelve years ago, in June 2011, 54% supported the decision to gradually abandon nuclear energy, compared to 43% who thought otherwise.

The Scholz Government claims that the electricity supply is guaranteed thanks to the high levels of gas storage, the new liquefied gas terminals on the coast and the expansion of renewable energies. In a joint statement on Thursday, the Ministries of Economy and Climate and Environment, both in the hands of the Greens, stressed that Germany "puts an end to the era of nuclear power" with the final execution of the decision taken in 2011.

"The security of energy supply in Germany is and will continue to be guaranteed; if an international comparison is made, it remains very high", declared the Minister of Economy and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck. The plan headed by the greens in the Executive is to generate 80% of the electricity consumed in the country with renewable sources by 2030 (last year, this percentage stood at 46.3%), before achieving the climate neutrality by 2045.

But the defenders of nuclear energy say that Germany will not be able to supply itself without this energy if it wants to phase out fossil fuels and achieve its goal of neutrality because, they say, wind and solar energy will not fully cover the demand. Throughout the year 2022, the last three active nuclear power plants accounted for barely 6.4% of Germany's electricity consumption, when the previous year this percentage had been 12.6%, according to the Office Federal Statistics (Destatis).

The task of safe and permanent storage of the highly radioactive waste accumulated after six decades of civilian use of nuclear energy remains pending. There are about 27,000 cubic meters of waste that must be stored in a suitable geological formation for this purpose, to be selected using transparent mechanisms and scientific criteria.

Every transport of waste to the temporary depot in Gorleben (Lower Saxony) - where almost half of the refuse is - has generated pitched battles between demonstrators and anti-riots. The rest of the waste is stored in nuclear plants that have already been dismantled. By 2031, the construction of the atomic cemetery must have been agreed, which must be ready by 2050.

The energy crisis reactivated the social and political debate on the shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants in operation, and strained the coalition, with social democrats and greens in favor of closure, and liberals insisting on a new extension. The conservative opposition considers it "a black day for Germany".