Germany retires last nuclear plants in hopes of greener pastures

[아이앤아이월드]

A nuclear plant in near Landshut, Germany, on April 14. | AFP-JIJI

• BY CAROLYNN LOOK, PETRA SORGE AND JOSEFINE FOKUHL BLOOMBERG

Josefine Fokuhl

At 10 p.m. on Saturday, the Isar-2 nuclear plant near Munich will begin winding down its power generation in steps of 10 megawatts per minute.

After about 45 minutes, it will drop to 30% capacity and automatically sever from the national electricity grid. The other two plants still in operation, Neckarwestheim-2 and Emsland, will by then be in the midst of a similar process. By midnight, all three will be offline, ending Germany’s tumultuous six-decade reliance on nuclear energy.

When the three plants, which collectively provided Germany with 6% of its power last year, finally shut off, Europe’s largest economy will face an unprecedented challenge: securing its energy supply without nuclear or Russian natural gas, and with renewables expanding at a slower pace than needed.

The decision to phase out the emissions-free power source — first codified in a 2002 law and finalized after the 2011 Fukushima disaster — also comes at a moment in which many countries are moving in the opposite direction.

While Germans have historically been deeply opposed to nuclear energy, that has shifted in recent years as it has come to be viewed as something like the least bad option in the transition to a green economy. Critics worry that until Germany has sufficient clean-energy infrastructure in place, which could still be years away, the country will draw even more heavily on polluting fuels like coal to compensate for the loss.

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has criticized the move away from nuclear, and in a survey conducted late last year, some 69% of the German public say they would support some form of continued nuclear power use until renewables were able to replace it.

For a brief moment last year, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Chancellor Olaf Scholz to shatter many major taboos of post-World War II German politics, the idea that the country could double down on its commitment to nuclear energy did not seem so far flung.

URL: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/04/15/business/german-nuclear-power-end/