Germany is today disconnecting its last three nuclear power plants to use energy from the sun and wind

Germany closes this Saturday his last three nuclear reactors and culminates in the abandonment of this kind of energy, a old stakes sometimes misunderstood in a context of climate emergency.

The leading European economy opens a new energy chapter, facing the challenge to abandon fossil fuels while managing the gas crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

“It will be a very moving act for colleagues to shut down the power station for the last time,” said Guido Knott, president of the company PreussenElektra that operates Isar 2, a few hours after its expiration.

Not later than midnight, The Isar 2 (southeast), Neckarswestheim (southwest) and Emsland (northwest) installations will be disconnected from the electricity grid.

The German government agreed to a delay of several weeks from the originally planned December 31 date, but without questioning the decision to turn the page on this type of energy.

farewell to nuclear energy

“The risks associated with nuclear power are absolutely uncontrollable,” said Environment Minister Steffi Lemke this week. In fact, they worry large segments of the population and strengthen the environmental movement.

Greenpeace organized a farewell to the atom at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Saturday, symbolized by the remains of a dinosaur that was defeated by the anti-nuclear movement.

“Nuclear energy belongs to history,” the NGO proclaimed.

In Munich, a “celebration for the exit from nuclear energy” brought together a few hundred people, AFPTV found.

“Nuclear energy, thank you,” writes the conservative daily FAZ on Saturday, underlining the benefits it believes it brought to Germany.

After an initial decision by Berlin in the early 2000s to phase out atomic energy, former Chancellor Angela Merkel accelerated the process after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, a spectacular political turn. Since 2003, Germany has already closed 16 reactors.

“Strategic Mistake”

According to a recent poll for the public broadcaster ARD, 59% of respondents think that giving up nuclear power in this context is not a good idea.

Germany should “expand, not further restrict” energy supply with the risk of shortages and high prices, the president of Germany’s chambers of commerce, Peter Adrian, complained in the Rheinische Post newspaper.

“It is a strategic mistake in a geopolitical environment that remains tense,” said Bijan Djir-Sarai, secretary general of the liberal FDP party, a partner in Olaf Scholz’s coalition government and environmental activists.

The last three plants supplied only 6% of the electricity produced in the country last year, while nuclear power accounted for 30.8% in 1997.

At the same time, the percentage of renewable energy in total production has risen to 46% in 2022, compared to less than 25% a decade earlier.

“After 20 years of energy transition, renewable energy sources now produce about one and a half times more electricity than nuclear power at its peak in Germany,” Simon Müller, director of the Agora Energiewende research center, told AFP in energy transition.

Germany prefers to focus on its target of covering 80% of its electricity needs with renewable energy by 2030 and closing its coal-fired power stations by 2038 at the latest.