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It started as a pacifist movement around a fence outside a nuclear power plant. Five decades later, efforts to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants will end with echoes of the Cold War era that began, as Russia’s war in Ukraine serves as a reminder of the risks and promise of nuclear power.
Germany’s three remaining reactors will shut down on Saturday – ending nuclear power generation in Europe’s largest economy. But it comes when the continent grapples with the question of whether it can secure enough energy to drive its economy and keep its homes warm while also reaching its ambitious climate targets.
The German move made more of the industrial world. The UK, Finland and France are adding nuclear energy as a reliable source of electricity with very low carbon emissions. Last year, Poland signed with Westinghouse Electric to build its first nuclear power plant, about 200 miles east of the German border.
In the United States, the Biden administration is backing technology to build a new generation of small nuclear reactors as a “mass decarbonization” tool.
Some polls show that even Germans, once closed in their country, still have doubts: In a survey commissioned by Germany’s largest daily, Bild, 52 percent oppose the end of nuclear power, as the country begins to depend on fossil fuels. from Russia.
Robert Habeck, the economy minister and a member of the Greens party, confirmed that Germany can manage its nuclear exit. The country’s natural gas storage tanks, he said, are more than half full — a significant cushion with summer almost over. And Germany is rapidly building a liquefied natural gas terminal that allows it to import gas from cargo ships instead of through Russian pipelines that once provided 55 percent of Germany’s supply.
“The security of energy supply in Germany has been ensured during this difficult period and will continue to be ensured,” said Mr. Habeck in an interview with Funke Media Group. In contrast, the new European nuclear plant has been a “fiasco,” he argued, plagued by soaring costs, construction delays and maintenance problems. “Our energy system will be structured differently: We will have 80 percent renewable energy by 2030.”
Nuclear power has long been a fault line of German politics. Peace activists shocked by the Cold War have opposed atomic energy since the 1970s, with some becoming founding members of the Greens, which now form Germany’s three-party coalition government. The antinuclear movement grew after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster created a cloud of nuclear fallout that reached West Germany, leaving a scarred memory across generations.
In 2000, the left-wing government had approved a plan to shut down Germany’s nuclear power, but the conservative government led by Angela Merkel canceled it.
But the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 caused German sentiment to change dramatically towards atomic energy once again, and Ms. Merkel abruptly reversed course. His government has enacted legislation to decommission Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors by the end of 2022.
The nuclear debate took another twist last year when Germany faced its first winter without fuel from Russia. As officials urged businesses and consumers to reduce their energy consumption or ration their faces, Chancellor Olaf Scholz extended the life of the last three plants until April 15 to ensure enough energy at a reasonable price until spring.
But with no end in sight to the war in Ukraine, business leaders are warning that now is not the time to dismiss relatively cheap sources of electricity.
“We must continue to do everything we can to expand energy supply and not limit it any more,” said Peter Adrian, head of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in a statement, warning that electricity instability could jeopardize the country’s position as a country. industrial power.
on Thursday, two dozen scientists and Nobel Prize winners from around the world sent a letter to Mr. Scholz urging people to reverse the path, calling nuclear power a valuable alternative to power plants spelling greenhouse gases.
“Germany’s electricity grid remains one of the most carbon-intensive in Europe,” the letter’s organizers, an alliance called RePlanet, said in a statement.
The International Energy Agency said last year that nuclear power could be crucial in helping reduce carbon emissions in line with the goals of the Paris climate deal. He argued that nuclear might play a role in developing a carbon-free synthetic fuel known as green hydrogen.
But climate and energy experts predict that Germany’s nuclear shutdown will make only a small, temporary increase in carbon emissions – counterbalanced in the next few years by increases in solar and wind.
Andrzej Ancygier, an expert at the think tank Climate Analytics in Berlin, rejected the argument that nuclear power is more reliable than wind or solar. He pointed to drought and high temperatures last summer, which forced several European countries to shut down reactors when the rivers used to cool plants fell too low, or the water became too hot.
“We have reached a place where the planet is becoming warmer, more dangerous and unstable. We could end up in a bad place,” he said. “Security is an issue here. It’s something we forget, but we shouldn’t have it.
Germany’s environment minister, Steffi Lemke, stressed that the war in Ukraine increases the risk of nuclear power.
“We are facing a situation where the nuclear power plant in Ukraine is being shelled because of Russia’s war of aggression and has become a target of military conflict,” he told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “Nuclear power plants were never designed for that kind of situation.”
Germany’s three reactors scheduled to shut down are safe and can continue to provide power at low cost for years, making the decision to shut down expensive, said Georg Zachmann, a climate and energy expert at the Bruegel think tank. in Brussels. At the same time, he said, plants built in the UK, Finland and France have gone over budget, making the energy they could provide up to three times more expensive.
“I wouldn’t argue that only the Germans are crazy,” Mr. Zachmann said. “Shutting down existing nuclear power is expensive, and building new is expensive.”
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