End of an era: Germany shuts down its last three nuclear power units
Since 2003, 16 nuclear reactors have already been shut down in Germany
Last weekend, the era of nuclear power in Germany, which lasted more than 60 years, finally came to an end. On the night of Sunday, April 16, the authorities disconnected the last three nuclear power units from the grid.
Source: RFI
Despite the suspension of russian gas supplies and ongoing debate, the last operating nuclear power plants in Germany have been shut down: Isar 2 in Bavaria, Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg and Emsland in Lower Saxony. They generate 6% of the country's electricity.
Thus, Germany has completed the path of gradual abandonment of nuclear energy, which lasted more than 20 years and intensified after the radiation disaster at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi NPP.
Earlier, since 2003, 16 nuclear reactors had already been shut down in Germany.
According to the energy transition plan, the country's last three nuclear power plants were supposed to close at the end of 2022.
However, the government of Olaf Scholz postponed their shutdown until mid-April 2023 due to the cessation of russian gas supplies and the threat of a severe energy crisis. However, the situation with filling gas storage facilities in Germany turned out to be better than expected.
In 2002, the then Minister of the Environment in Gerhard Schröder's (SPD) government, Jürgen Trittin, who represented the Greens, made the first decision to phase out nuclear power plants. The final point was made by the disaster at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, when the German government, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, finally put an end to the fate of nuclear power plants.
The share of renewable energy sources ("green energy") in Germany has increased from 25% to 46% in ten years. However, Germany remains the top CO2 emitter in Europe: coal-fired power plants still generate a third of the country's electricity. And in the last year, the share of coal increased by 8% as russian gas supplies were cut off.
Background. Earlier it became known that Germany would extend the life of two of its three operating nuclear power plants until April.
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