Now Germany is serious about going it alone!
Of the year walk three nuclear power plants from the grid, there are only three left from the former 17. But they will also be switched off by the end of 2022.
After the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan (2011), the federal government agreed on the gradual phase-out of nuclear power. The then black and yellow government switched off the eight oldest reactors immediately and withdrew the planned extension of the service life for German nuclear power plants, which had only been approved a few months earlier.
Critics consider the nuclear phase-out to be hasty, referring to the good CO2 balance of nuclear energy. In some neighboring countries, nuclear power is more friendly: the Dutch government announced this month, for example, that it wanted to build two new nuclear power plants and keep another one connected for longer.
Internationally, the German special route causes head shaking. The Wall Street Journal recently said in a comment: “Never has a country worked so hard to make itself vulnerable.”
Because the problem is: The electricity demand in the country will continue to rise, also due to the massive promotion of electromobility. And: Energy prices are at a record level, electricity prices are higher than anywhere else in the world. With the phasing out of nuclear energy, they will continue to rise because there is a lack of power from the nuclear power plants.
Which plants will be shut down?
Now three nuclear power plants will be switched off at once: in Brokdorf, (Schleswig-Holstein), Gundremmingen (Bavaria) and Grohnde (Lower Saxony).
The reactors are shut down on New Year’s Eve and are finally disconnected from the power grid shortly before the turn of the year. All processes are precisely planned; a nuclear power plant cannot be stopped at the push of a button.
After that, the reactors will, strictly speaking, continue to operate, and the radioactive decay processes inside will continue. The so-called post-operational phase and the subsequent gradual demolition of the systems drag on over many years. The deconstruction therefore secures the job for most of the employees.
What remains: Isar 2 (Bavaria), Neckarwestheim 2 (Baden-Württemberg) and Emsland (Lower Saxony), which must follow by the end of 2022 at the latest. The German nuclear phase-out will then be completed after eleven years.
Was the nuclear phase-out a mistake?
The federal government wants to replace the soon-to-be-missed nuclear energy primarily with renewables. They should make up 80 percent of the electricity mix by 2030. But: The expansion of renewables is stagnating, for the first time since 1997 the total amount of renewable electricity is even falling! The share of renewables is also falling: The Federal Environment Agency estimates the share of green electricity for the year as a whole at 42 percent; in 2020 it was 45.3 percent.
► The result: We are importing more and more electricity from abroad! In the past quarter, 14.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity came from other countries – 12 percent of the total amount of electricity and an increase of 13.6 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year (12.5 billion kWh).
CDU veteran Wolfgang Bosbach (69) warns BILD: Because of the nuclear phase-out, “a significant amount of energy will have to be imported” for a secure energy supply in the future – possibly “from nuclear power plants that are not as safe as those in Germany are still online. That would be a political joke. “
The nuclear phase-out has therefore been the subject of heated discussions in recent years. Also because nuclear energy is still important for the German power supply: According to the Federal Statistical Office, it accounted for 14.2 percent of the total amount of electricity in Germany in the third quarter – a significant increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year (12.9 percent).
It is also a fact: the shutdown harms the climate
Even the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), which is critical of nuclear power, anticipates rising CO2 emissions as a result of the nuclear phase-out. The soon to be missing nuclear power will “mainly be replaced by fossil fuels and increasing imports”, writes the institute in a weekly report from November.
In the meantime, politics is sticking to the nuclear phase-out. On Wednesday evening, Economic and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (52, Greens) reaffirmed in “heute journal”: “The nuclear phase-out is correct” and referred to the high costs of nuclear energy. In Die Zeit, too, Habeck rejected the charge that the nuclear phase-out had been a mistake – but at the same time confessed that Germany would miss its climate targets for 2022 and 2023.
The nuclear power plant in Brokdorf is historic
Thousands of people demonstrated against the building during the environmental and anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s and 1980s. The first major demonstration took place in 1976. There were also violent clashes between militant participants and the police. Due to court decisions, the work was suspended between 1977 and 1981, but was then resumed.
On February 28, 1981, opponents of nuclear power organized a demonstration that was banned by the authorities. The police erected barriers, but tens of thousands made it to the construction site. With an estimated 100,000 participants, it was considered the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in Germany to date.
Militant opponents of nuclear power used twins and incendiary devices, the police reacted with irritant gas, water cannons and low-flying helicopters.
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