Energy security is “assured” in Germany, despite the final shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants on Saturday, the environment and economy ministers said on Thursday, adding that this decision will make the country “safer”.
“The high availability of energy supply in Germany remains assured,” they said in a statement. The last three nuclear reactors in operation in Germany -Emsland (north), Isar 2 (south) and Neckarwestheim 2 (west)- will be shut down permanently on Saturday. “The exit from nuclear power makes our country safer because the risks of nuclear energy are not controllable,” added Environment Minister Steffi Lemke.
Germany is implementing the decision to get out of nuclear power taken in 2002, and accelerated by Angela Merkel in 2011, after the Fukushima disaster. To guarantee energy security, Berlin highlights “the high level of filling of the country’s gas reservoirs” (64.5%), thanks to the massive import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) aimed at replacing Russian gas, on which Europe’s leading economy was very dependent.
However, the closure of the last reactors will have been postponed for six months, due to the war in Ukraine, which caused gas prices to soar last winter and raised fears of supply shortages. Ahead of Saturday’s deadline, several political figures have expressed fears for Germany’s climate goals and the country’s energy independence without atomic power. “This is a black day for climate protection,” Jens Spahn, leader of the conservative CDU in parliament, said Tuesday.
The last three reactors provided 6% of the energy produced in the country last year, compared to 33% for coal, which itself has risen by 8% in 2022 due to the gas crisis. Within the coalition itself, members of the liberal FDP party, whose chairman Christian Lindner holds the finance ministry, have called for a further extension of the power plants. “It is a strategic error, in a geopolitical environment always tense,” said the secretary general of the FDP Bijan Djir-Sarai Monday. “We remain faithful to the exit from the atom that the FDP and CDU decided in 2011,” Robert Habeck, the Minister of Economy and Climate, retorted on Thursday. Angela Merkel’s government was led by the CDU, allied with the FDP when the chancellor decided to accelerate the nuclear phase-out.
