Countdown for the nuclear phase-out: On New Year’s Eve, three of the six remaining nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down. The last three reactors should go offline in exactly one year – then the phase-out would be officially over.
Decades of dismantling
The nuclear power plants in Brokdorf (Schleswig-Holstein), Grohnde (Lower Saxony) and Gundremmingen (Bavaria) were shut down in the last hours of 2021, according to the operators. The legally prescribed dismantling of the nuclear power plants will take many years to complete – in Brokdorf around 2040. In Grohnde, the plant was shut down after around 36 years of operation. With almost 410 billion kilowatt hours, it produced more electricity than any other power plant unit in the world, said the operator PreussenElektra.
Almost 100 opponents of nuclear power celebrated the historic moment of the shutdown with anti-nuclear flags and sparklers. In Gundremmingen, the shift team disconnected the generator from Block C from the power grid at 8 p.m. Nikolaus Valerius, Chief Nuclear Energy Officer of the operator RWE Power, explained: “With the shutdown of the last boiling water reactor in Germany, an era came to an end at the Gundremmingen site.”
Above all Brokdorf was considered a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement. Since 1986, opponents of nuclear power had persistently demanded “shut down immediately” with vigils in front of the factory gates on the 6th day of each month – in memory of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In February 1981, around 100,000 people had already demonstrated against the construction of the reactor .
Germany and Austria versus France
After the closings, only three nuclear power plants will supply electricity by the end of 2022: Isar 2 near Landshut (Bavaria) and the reactors in Emsland in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg. However, two plants that produce fuel and fuel assemblies for export may continue to operate afterwards.
The federal government at the time sealed the phase-out of nuclear energy in 2011 after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. Recently, however, more supporters of nuclear energy have expressed themselves again because – unlike in the case of electricity production from coal, for example – significantly less climate-damaging carbon dioxide is produced.
The EU Commission wants to classify investments in gas and nuclear power plants as climate-friendly under certain conditions. This emerges from a draft of a legal act by the Brussels authority, which became public on New Year’s Day shortly after it was sent to the EU member states. Implementation can only be prevented if a qualified majority of the member states oppose it.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) announced on Saturday for Germany that “we will not see” approval of the EU Commission’s new proposals. Austria’s climate protection minister Leonore Gewessler even threatened legal action. However, France, for example, has traditionally relied heavily on nuclear power and also in the context of the energy transition.
(hag)