Germany is maintaining the course of its exit from nuclear power despite the energy crisis: the country disconnects its last three reactors on Saturday and is betting on a successful green transition without atomic energy.
On the banks of the Neckar river, not far from Stuttgart (south), the white steam escaping from the Baden-Württemberg nuclear power plant will soon be just a memory.
Same thing further east for the Bavarian complex of Isar 2 and that of Emsland (north), at the other end of the country, not far from the Dutch border.
While many Western countries depend on nuclear power, Europe’s leading economy is turning the page. Even if the subject will have remained controversial until the end.
Germany is implementing the decision to phase out nuclear power taken in 2002, and accelerated by Angela Merkel in 2011, after the Fukushima disaster.
Fukushima showed that “even in a high-tech country like Japan, the risks associated with nuclear energy cannot be 100% controlled”, justified the former Chancellor at the time.
The announcement convinced public opinion in a country where the powerful anti-nuclear movement was first fueled by fears of a conflict linked to the Cold War, then accidents like Chernobyl.
The invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, could have called everything into question: deprived of Russian gas, of which Moscow cut off most of the flows, Germany found itself exposed to the darkest scenarios, from the risk shutdown of its factories to that of being without heating in the middle of winter.
A few months before the date initially set to close the last three reactors, on December 31, the tide of opinion began to turn: “with high energy prices, the hot topic of the climate, voices are of course raised to extend the power stations”, testifies Jochen Winkler, mayor of the municipality of Neckarwestheim, where the power station of the same name is living its last hours.
The government of Olaf Scholz, in which the Greens party, the most hostile to nuclear power, has finally decided to extend the operation of the reactors to secure the supply. Until April 15.
“There might have been a new discussion if the winter had been more difficult, if there had been power cuts and gas shortages. But we had a winter without too many problems”, thanks to the massive import of liquefied natural gas, notes Mr. Winkler.
For the mayor of the town of 4,000 inhabitants, of which more than 150 work at the power plant, “the wheel has already turned” and there was no longer time to “go back”.
Sixteen reactors have been closed since 2003. The last three plants provided 6% of the energy produced in the country last year, while nuclear represented 30.8% in 1997.
Meanwhile, the share of renewables in the generation mix reached 46% in 2022, compared to less than 25% ten years earlier.
The current rate of progress in renewables, however, satisfies neither the government nor environmentalists and Germany will not achieve its climate goals without a serious push.
These objectives “are already ambitious without phasing out nuclear power – each time we deprive ourselves of a technological option, we make things more difficult”, notes Georg Zachmann, specialist in energy issues for the Brussels think tank. Bruegel.
The equation is even more complex given the goal of shutting down all coal-fired power plants in the country by 2038, many of them by 2030.
Coal still represents a third of German electricity production, with an increase of 8% last year to compensate for the absence of Russian gas.
Germany must install “4 to 5 wind turbines every day” over the next few years to meet its needs, warned Olaf Scholz. The step is high compared to the 551 units laid in 2022.
A series of regulatory relaxations adopted in recent months should make it possible to accelerate the tempo. “The process of planning and approval of a wind project takes on average 4 to 5 years”, according to the federation of the sector (BWE), for which gaining one or two years would already be “considerable progress”.
11/04/2023 10:09:12 – Berlin (AFP) © 2023 AFP