The operating hours of the Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland nuclear power plants in the federal states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony are scheduled to end on Saturday, April 15th. The German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) emphasized that the nuclear phase-out was “irreversible”.
The last three of the original 17 German nuclear power plants, which will then be taken off the grid, would “sooner or later go into dismantling,” Habeck told the newspapers of the German Funke media group (Monday editions). A new construction of nuclear power plants has always presented itself as an economic fiasco – whether in France, Great Britain or Finland.
“Security of energy supply was guaranteed”
“There is also no interest on the part of German operators in building new nuclear power plants. Our energy system will be structured differently: by 2030, 80 percent of our energy will be renewable,” says Habeck. When asked whether he could guarantee the security of the energy supply after the nuclear phase-out, he said yes.
“The security of energy supply in Germany was guaranteed in this difficult winter and will continue to be guaranteed,” said Habeck. “We have the situation under control thanks to the high filling levels in the gas storage facilities and the new liquid gas terminals on the north German coasts, and not least thanks to more renewable energies.”
It was also a difficult farewell to coal
Most recently, however, Germany was still generating a lot of energy with hard coal and reactivating old locations due to the natural gas crisis last year. In addition to phasing out nuclear power, Berlin is also planning to phase out coal by 2038 at the latest.
According to the original schedule, the last three German nuclear power plants should have been taken off the grid at the end of last year. Because of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis, the “traffic light coalition” of SPD, FDP and Greens decided to let the three reactors continue to run over the winter.
Clear majority against shutdown
Opinions about the exit differ not only in German politics, but also in public. Almost two-thirds of Germans recently spoke out in a survey against the shutdown of the last nuclear power plants. Almost a third (32 percent) supported continued operation for a limited period, 33 percent an unlimited extension of the service life. Only 26 percent think the shutdown is right at the moment.
Only the supporters of the Greens are in favor of the shutdown with a majority of 56 percent. On the other hand, the voters of the other two coalition parties are more likely to reject it. Only 31 percent of SPD supporters are in favor of ending the use of nuclear power now. Among the FDP voters it is only twelve percent. Even among supporters of the Left Party, only 37 percent are in favor of a shutdown. With the CDU/CSU it is 16 percent, with the AfD only six percent.
Reconstruction as a major task
The German nuclear power plants that have already been shut down were shut down in several waves, some are (still) in different stages of dismantling, since nuclear power plants cannot simply be taken off the grid and demolished. For the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lingen, Lower Saxony, for example, the operator RWE expects the first dismantling phase, including post-operation, to last 14 years, as it was said on the Easter weekend.
“According to our current planning, we assume that the plant will be demonstrably free of any radioactivity in 2037 and can therefore be released from the scope of the Atomic Energy Act,” said a spokesman for the German energy company. “Then the conventional plant dismantling takes place” – i.e. the demolition of the plant complex.
Not just demolition
According to the German nuclear technology industry association KernD, the post-operational phase alone usually lasts four to five years. In this phase, the fuel elements are taken from the plant to the on-site interim storage facility and parts of the plant are dismantled. Only then does the actual decommissioning phase begin.
According to RWE, the costs for the post-operation and dismantling of a nuclear power plant vary between 500 million and one billion euros, depending on the size, age and operating hours of the plants. At around 90 percent, concrete, glass, scrap and plastic made up the majority of the waste during dismantling. Anything that can be recycled will be recycled.
