Germany ends nuclear era as last reactors power down

BERLIN - Germany switched off its last three nuclear reactors on Saturday, exiting atomic power even as it seeks to wean itself off fossil fuels and manage an energy crisis caused by

the war in Ukraine.

While many Western countries are increasing their investments in atomic energy to reduce their emissions, Germany is bringing an early end to its nuclear age.

It’s “the end of an era,” the RWE energy firm said in a statement shortly after midnight confirming the three reactors had been disconnected from the electricity grid. 

Europe’s largest economy has been looking to leave behind nuclear power since 2002, but the phase-out was accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011 after

the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

The exit decision was popular in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear movement, stoked by lingering fears of Cold War conflict and atomic disasters such as

Chernobyl in Ukraine.

“The risks of nuclear power are ultimately unmanageable,” said Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, who this week made a pilgrimage to the ill-fated Japanese plant ahead of a Group of Seven meeting in the country.

Anti-nuclear demonstrators took to the streets in several German cities to mark the closures. Greenpeace, at the heart of the anti-nuclear movement, organised a celebratory party at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. 

“We are putting an end to a dangerous, unsustainable and costly technology,” said Green MP Juergen Trittin. 

In front of the Brandenburg Gate, activists symbolically slayed a model dinosaur.

‘A mistake’

Initially planned for the end of 2022, Germany’s nuclear exit has

already had to be pushed back once.

As Russian gas supplies dwindled in 2022, officials in Berlin were left scrambling to find a way to keep the lights on, with a short extension agreed until mid-April this year.

Germany, the largest emitter in the European Union, also powered up some of its mothballed coal-fuelled plants to cover the potential gap left by gas.

The perilous context has increased calls domestically to delay the nuclear exit.

Germany had to “expand the supply of energy and not restrict it any further” in light of potential shortages and high prices, German Chambers of Commerce president Peter Adrian told the Rheinische Post daily.

Mr Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition CDU party, said the abandonment of nuclear power was the result of an “almost fanatical bias”. 

Meanwhile, the conservative daily FAZ headlined its Saturday edition “Thanks, nuclear energy,” as it listed benefits it said nuclear had brought the country over the years. 

Outside observers have been similarly irked by Germany’s insistence on exiting nuclear power while ramping up its coal usage, with climate activist Greta Thunberg in October slamming the move as “a mistake”.

‘Sooner or later’

As expected, the Isar 2 in the south-east of the country, the Neckarwestheim facility in the south-west and Emsland in the north-west were disconnected from the electricity network before midnight.

Earlier, Guido Knott, CEO of PreussenElektra, which operates Isar 2, said it would be “a very moving moment” to power down the reactor. 

The three final plants provided just six per cent of Germany’s energy last year, compared with 30.8 per cent from all nuclear plants in 1997. 

“Sooner or later” the reactors will start being dismantled, Economy Minister Robert Habeck told the Funke group ahead of the scheduled decommissioning, brushing aside the idea of an extension.

The government has the energy situation “under control”, Mr Habeck assured, having filled gas stores and built new infrastructure for the import of liquefied natural gas to bridge the gap left by Russian supplies.

Instead, the minister from the Green party, which was founded on opposition to nuclear power, is focused on getting Germany to produce 80 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030.

To this end, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for the installation of “four to five wind turbines a day” over the next few years – a tall order, given that just 551 were installed in 2022.

But the current rate of progress on renewables could well be too slow for Germany to meet its climate protection goals.

Despite planning to exit nuclear, Germany has not “pushed ahead enough with the expansion of renewables in the last 10 years”, said Mr Simon Mueller from the Agora Energiewende think-tank.

To build enough onshore wind capacity, according to Mr Mueller, Germany now has to “pull out all the stops”. AFP