On Friday, Germany shut down half of the six nuclear plants it still has in operation, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power.
According to CTV News Canada, the decision to phase out nuclear power and shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy was first taken by the center-left government of Gerhard Schroeder in 2002.
The Schroeder government decreed Germany’s final retreat from using nuclear power by 2022, but the phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010 when the government of conservative-liberal Angela Merkel decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule.
On 14 March 2011, in response to the renewed concern about the use of nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster, and in light of upcoming elections in three German states, Merkel declared a 3-month moratorium on the reactor lifespan extension passed in 2010.
On 15 March, the German government announced that it would temporarily shut down 8 of its 17 reactors, i.e. all reactors that went online before 1981. Yet the German population staged the biggest protest ever held in Germany on March 26, demanding that all the nuclear reactors be shut down permanently.
In light of the public response, on May 30, 2011, the German government announced a plan to shut all nuclear reactors by 2022.
The end of nuclear power in Germany
The three reactors now being shuttered were first powered up in the mid-1980s. Together they provided electricity to millions of German households for almost four decades.
One of the plants – Brokdorf, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Hamburg on the Elbe River – became a particular focus of anti-nuclear protests that were fueled by the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in the Soviet Union, reports ABC News.
The other two plants are Grohnde, about 40 kilometers south of Hannover, and Grundremmingen, 80 kilometers west of Munich.
Advocates of atomic energy argue that nuclear power plants can help Germany meet its climate targets because very little carbon dioxide is given off, and continuing to use nuclear power will help in the country reaching its climate goals.
However, the German government said this past week that decommissioning all the nuclear plants and then phasing out the use of coal by 2030 won’t affect the country’s energy security or its goal of making Europe’s biggest economy “climate neutral” by 2045.
“By massively increasing renewable energy and accelerating the expansion of the electricity grid we can show that this is possible in Germany,” Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck said.
Germany’s remaining three nuclear plants — Emsland, Isar, and Neckarwestheim — will be powered down by the end of 2022.
