Germany retires nuclear energy – 04/11/2023 – Environment

The energy crisis has not changed Germany’s determination to abandon nuclear energy: on Saturday (15), the largest European economy will shut down its last three power plants, betting on a green transition without atomic reactors.

On the banks of the River Neckar, an hour’s drive from Stuttgart (in the southwest of the country), the countdown has begun: the white smoke that rises from the Baden-Wurttemberg power plant since 1989 will emanate for the last time.

The same will happen further east, in the Bavarian complex of Isar 2, and to the north, in Emsland, on the other side of the country, close to the Dutch border.

Many western countries rely heavily on nuclear energy and are betting on this technology to reduce carbon emissions. But Germany is turning the page, even though the issue has been controversial from start to finish.

Germany implements the decision to phase out nuclear energy adopted in 2002 and which former Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to accelerate in 2011, after the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan.

The announcement had the backing of public opinion in a country where the powerful anti-nuclear movement was fueled first by fears of a conflict linked to the Cold War and then by accidents such as Chernobyl in 1986.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which meant the end of cheap gas and a drastic cut in Russian supplies, forced, despite everything, to postpone for a few months the final shutdown schedule, initially scheduled for December 31 .

It was necessary to assess gloomy scenarios, which included the shutdown of its factories or the lack of heating in the dead of winter, and measure the impact of the crisis on public opinion, which was showing signs of oscillation.

‘Things have changed’

“With high energy prices and the crucial issue of climate change, it is clear that voices have been raised to extend the use of the plants”, admits Joseph Winkler, mayor of the town of Neckarwestheim, where the eponymous plant is living its last hours.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, with the participation of the Greens, the party most hostile to the nuclear sector, finally decided to extend the exploration of the three reactors until April 15th.

“If we had had a more difficult winter with power cuts or gas shortages, there could have been a new discussion. But we overcame it without many problems, thanks to the massive importation of liquefied natural gas”, explains Joseph Winkler.

For the mayor of this city of 3,500 inhabitants, of which more than 150 work at the plant, “things have changed” and the time for a possible “regression” in the process of abandoning the nuclear sector, already largely implemented, has passed.

The nuclear sector accounted for 30.8% of the energy generated in Germany in 1997, the highest level, and only 6% last year.

Since 2003, 16 of the 19 reactors that the country once had have closed. The share of renewable energy in German production has risen from 25% 10 years ago to 46% in 2022.

Five wind turbines per day

However, the current pace of the green transition does not satisfy the government or environmental advocates. Without strong momentum, Germany would miss its climate targets.

These targets “are already ambitious without abandoning the nuclear sector and every time we deprive ourselves of a technological option things get more difficult”, explains Georg Zachmann, an energy expert at the Bruegel think tank, based in Brussels.

The equation gets even more complex when you take into account the goal of closing all coal plants in the country by 2038, with a first wave of closures in 2030.

Coal still accounts for a third of German electricity production, with an 8% increase last year to make up for the absence of Russian gas.

Germany needs to install “four or five wind turbines a day” in the coming years to meet its needs, warned Olaf Scholz. The quantity is high when compared to the 551 units installed in 2022.

In addition, the pace of installation of photovoltaic equipment should more than double, according to calculations by the specialist group Agora Energiewende.