ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
December 30, 2021
2:33 PM ET
Germany announced that it would shutter its remaining six nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, completely ending its reliance on the renewable source.
“For the energy industry in Germany, the nuclear phase-out is final,” Kerstin Andreae, the head of the nation’s largest energy industry association, told Reuters.
Three of the nuclear reactors will be shut down Friday while the remaining three will be closed in a year, according to Reuters. The German government accelerated its phase down of nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdown in Japan in 2011, a catastrophe that the International Atomic Energy Agency gave the highest level of accident rating.
In 2020, nuclear power accounted for roughly 6% of Germany’s total energy supply and produced more than 11% of its electricity, data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed. By comparison, nuclear power accounted for more than 13% of the country’s total energy supply and produced nearly 30% of its electricity in 2000. (RELATED: Nuclear May Be The Ticket To A Carbon-Free Future. Why Do Environmentalists Hate It?)
“Each country pursues its own strategy to fight man-made climate change,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Dec. 10 when asked if nuclear energy is sustainable, Reuters reported. “What unites us is that we recognize that responsibility and are ambitious.”
Sholz stopped short of explicitly labeling nuclear a renewable energy source, Reuters reported at the time. Nuclear energy doesn’t produce any emissions and is considered clean by the U.S. government.
Germany continues to pursue an energy policy that will make renewables account for 80% of power demand by 2030.
However, the move to shut all nuclear plants in Germany is expected to make the nation more reliant on fossil fuels, according to the Center for Promotion of Sustainable Development. It will also reportedly make Germany more reliant on natural gas imports from Russia, which has been accused of manipulating supplies for geopolitical purposes.
The country ultimately plans to generate most of its power from solar and wind in the future, two renewable sources that have been criticized as unreliable and intermittent. Europe is currently in the midst of an energy crisis largely because wind blew at levels well below capacity, forcing greater natural gas reliance and driving energy bills up. (RELATED: ‘Cannot Power The World With Solar Panels And Wind Turbines Alone’: Bipartisan Lawmakers Advocate For Increased Nuclear Energy)
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“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” Rory McCarthy, a senior analyst at the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters last week.
Wind produced about 23% of Germany’s electricity and solar produced about 9% in 2020, according to the IEA.
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“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” Rory McCarthy told Reuters last week.
Blame the weather! More brilliance by the rulers, more telling the peasants to eat cake while their power bills skyrocket.
as someone who has a wind generator i can say anecdotally that all wind generators underperform expectations .
nuclear is un disposable??
We take it from mother earth but not allowed to return it to mother earth. That sounds to me to be stupid. But perhaps I am the stupid one..
re: “But perhaps I am the stupid one..”
Tis the story you have been ‘told’. Likewise me, likewise all of us (so is the impression I get when I occasionally view the national nooze.)
Came across this video about recycling wind turbine blades (and burning them in cement kilns). Interesting comment that the blades are typically 8 to 12 years old! That’s about 1/2 the life expectancy most claim. What a boondoggle.
https://www.businessinsider.com/wind-tubine-blades-landfill-recycle-world-wide-waste-2021-12
“Interesting comment that the blades are typically 8 to 12 years old! That’s about 1/2 the life expectancy most claim.”
That *is* interesting.
a whole 8GW going in total…
They already went without the power from these a few years back, when they shut most of them down for their final maintenance cycle – shouldn’t be any issues around this…
Why didn’t the Germans just leave them closed and declare early victory?
That’s an outright lie, griffter. All 6 of Germany’s remaining nuclear plants were never shut down at the same time. Refueling of nuclear plants is staggered to assure continuity of baseload power and because some plants share contract labor. Besides, reactor shutdowns are always scheduled during periods away from peak electricity demand.
You lie so much we wouldn’t believe you if you stumbled onto the truth.
Amen. Still, it’s good that Griff still comes here. It’s necessary to know what kind of people we’re up against.
And right on que the lie spewing liar shows up to spew lies.
Hey – do y’all really have to be so mean to Griff? Sure he/she/it’s delusional but I kinda admire their willingness to come on this site and try to convert all of us climate apostates. So it stretches the truth all to heck, give it a break. /s/#pronoun-safe
“I kinda admire their willingness to come on this site and try to convert all of us climate apostates”
So you admire the propagandists who come on here, ignore all of the facts we provide, provide no documented links, and continually spew the same old discredited lies. I strongly suspect Griff is being paid to do this. Paid propagandist, or dedicated true believer, I find it hard to feel any admiration.
Griff:
I know you can do better than that. Take a look at the capacity figures I listed; those plants have been providing a lot of power over their lifetimes. Maintenance/refueling shutdowns are relatively brief and performed at times when there is adequate reserve capacity. Permanent shutdown means Germany needs to replace that 8.4 GW with something giving equivalent output 90% of the time over the next 35 years that isn’t nuclear and doesn’t produce CO2. And they have until December 2022.
Griff fact check: Statement false and misleading or just an outright lie.
“If we had high winds….”
If frogs had wings, they would not bump their asses so hard
Those people who are freezing in the dark should just be patient and wait for the wind to start blowing harder.
It’s sad.
One of the most technologically advanced and educated nations on the planet, turning its back on what needs to be used. German Engineers, so often the world’s finest. And all done for foolish political reasons.
Sadness from England.
Oh, how the practical have fallen!
Stupid is as Stupid does.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” …
… and if frogs had wings, they wouldn’t have to bounce around on their butts.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany – really intelligent people – specifically the professional engineers I worked with at Krupp, O&K, etc. The Germans make great heavy equipment, cars, etc. and have well-run cities, at least in the West. The East was a shambles when I was there in the early 1990’s, but a big improvement over my first visit through Checkpoint Charlie in July 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Not so their leadership – Merkel and successors are energy-imbeciles, intent on destroying German prosperity with their destructive anti-nuclear and pro-wind power fantasies.
We haven’t seen this kind of destructive leadership in Germany since the 1930’s. There are other similarities…
The current German energy policy is already causing great harm, and it will get worse, probably in January and February. Who lives and who dies depends on where the polar vortex dips down.
My strong advice – don’t shut down any German nuclear power plants at this time – that is lunacy. Keep your coal power plants running at peak power. If you have excess power, cut back on wind. Be intelligent and save lives.
Don’t forget Merkels political roots.
Ostie.
The DDR was the Comecon main industrial source during the Cold War. Dismantled after the Wall, not allowed to develop. Even Germany could not buck the orders from the great economic shock therapists which at the time destroyed Russia under Yeltsin. Putin reversed all that.
Now Germany must reverse this disastrous policy.
I thought the Germans were more intelligent than this – but then of course Merkel was in charge when this brilliant decision was put into motion. At least the new guy in charge could have put a stop to the madness – but then again, I hear he has built a “coalition” government that includes (ironically) the Climate Nazis, er, “Greens.” So there’s that.
Just how terrified are Germans of a tsunami-induced nuclear disaster in Germany?! That’s sort of like worrying about the wildfire risk in Antarctica.
Doesn’t bother me any. I hope they get rid of all their fossil fuel plants, as well. A powerless Germany makes for a safer world.
Who’s the fossil now?
“There are currently 30 coal-fired power stations in Germany, including RWE’s lignite-fired Niederaussem plant, accounting for around a third of its electricity generation.” What happened to “clean” coal? No investors!
I guess they’re okay with Russia invading Ukraine because you know Russia will hold the gas supply over Germany’s head if they make any more than token protests when that happens.
one thing is sure, WAR is coming in 2022.
All the obvious signs are there.
The greatest danger to Ukraine is its President.
Germany has so far vetoed arming these jokers.
And make no mistake Germany knows what an Ostfront means – been there done that.
Some goons in London and D.C. froth for war. Why? Simple, they are utterly and irredeemably bankrupt. That means since the financial implosion in 2007 they have tried every trick in the book to stay afloat, and taken on too much water from that iceberg. Of course that makes them quite possibly insane enough to go thermonuclear. Russia and China should never make the mistake of underestimating the irrationality of their tormentors!
Russia and China should simply say put your banks under Chapter 11, reorganize and get on with massive development, and pandemic measures!
“Russia and China should never make the mistake of underestimating the irrationality of their tormentors!”
We must not torment the dictators of the world?
How would a thermonuclear war be profitable for anyone?
I would be very surprised if Joe Biden did anything about Ukraine other than harsh language and sanctions.
Joe Biden isn’t going to war with anyone. Did you see his performance in Afghanistan? That’s the real Joe Biden, a clueless appeaser of dictators. A cut-and-run, guy.
On top of his mental misunderstanding of reality, he is also compromised by these dictators. Biden took their money. Biden wouldn’t want that to become public knowledge. So what’s Biden going to do? Not much of anything. Biden won’t be starting any wars.
All that expense and effort to prevent warming when the Earth is headed for an Ice Age.
A great country committing civilization size suicide, pushed without the consent of the people. Bon Bon remarked about Einstein and the next war, Einstein was right except the decline will be not by a shock but by slow torture. Dictatorships smiling.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,”
My dad used to say that if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it jumped. It took me a long time to understand the meaning. Quotes like this bring it into focus.
Safe. Clean. Reliable. Powers the submarines and aircraft carriers that are key parts of our national defense. What’s next? Replacing antibiotics with incantations and dances?
The German rationale for doing away with nuclear power is beyond bizarre. Every point German political leaders and ideologues make against it is exactly the opposite of reality. They say it’s extremely dangers, but in reality its track record makes it by far and away the safest energy technology humanity has ever devised. They say it’s bad for the environment, but in reality it easily has the smallest environmental footprint of any energy technology. They claim it’s too expensive, but in reality, it’s far cheaper than any of the renewables they want to replace it with, and when nuclear isn’t being kneecapped by a regulatory framework deliberately created to drive up its costs, it’s cheaper than coal too. They claim it can’t be scaled up quickly, but the French example shows that it can be scaled up quickly – and certainly far more quickly than the Germans have been able to scale up renewables (despite the much greater sums of wealth they’ve plowed into renewables deployment). Literally every point nuclear opponents make against nuclear power gets reality upside down and backwards.
Sadly, it looks like Germany’s political leaders are determined to make Germany a case study yet again in exactly what not to do.
” They say it’s bad for the environment, but in reality it easily has the smallest environmental footprint of any energy technology. ”
You are a bit dense, aren’t you?
People like you should be sent to the Fukushima area for the next five years to do social service for the people who have been displaced from their homes since 2011.
What about all the dead and displaced by the earthquake BIN?
duh?
deaths 19,747
March 11, 2011
magnitude 9.0–9.1
damage $360 billion USD
AFTERSHOCKS
More than 400 aftershocks were registered in the month after March 11, the highest ever recorded in Japan
aftershocks 13,386 (as of 6 March 2018)
You, in your hurry to write crap have to appeal to emotion of course! The people from, Fukushima area didn’t die drowned, they are still alive and well.
The real victims are NOT
“The central government pledged to rebuild the region and has spent around 31 trillion yen ($286 billion) on reconstruction. In the span of a few years, Japan built new neighborhoods, parks and schools. But the scale of loss here is beyond any policy response.
Thousands of residents have moved away from the hardest-hit cities, with many of those who remain haunted by all that was lost.”
“In Ishinomaki, a coastal city in neighboring Miyagi prefecture, nearly 3,200 people died in the disaster.”
You should rather think about the fact that the nuclear catastrophe was very well due to nuclear energy used at the wrong place.
If the nuclear industry was made responsible for such events, no insurance would accept it as a client, and no nuclear plants would be built at such places, Harrisburg of course included.
Is “Bindidon” code for “Biden” by any chance?
Your “stories”, your recounting of historical events is just as contorted, lacking basis and ‘made up’ as his is …
Putin and Xi The Pooh got to be laughing themselves sick, they hardly had to do anything to get dumbasses to commit suicide.
Intermittent wind and solar gives the game away for where this is heading.
Dummkopfs!
Bring it on. The sooner we get to the end game on the renewables debate, the sooner the truth will out. If Germany can do what its policies and propaganda proclaim then the debate, at the very least, will be reframed. If not, then there should be an accounting that moves energy policy out of the green political arena and returns it to bulk power system operations reality. In the meantime, buy sweaters.
re: “In the meantime, buy sweaters.”
And if not in Germany, maybe sweater futures … (/s if needed)
Well that should increase their footprint massively.
Unless the whole country shuts down.
Popcorn?
Germans have a history of thoughtlessly following loud and strident leaders with grandiose ideas. I say, close down those reactors asap: go full bore wind and solar. Let Germany freeze in the dark while the rest of us still have the electricity to watch it happen on TV. Maybe, just maybe, their sacrifice will wake up the rest of the world to the true costs to ordinary non-elite citizens.
Imagine the chagrin :
Reuters : Draft EU proposal to list nuclear as green :
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/eu-plans-finish-green-investment-rules-gas-nuclear-next-year-2021-12-20/
Had to happen, and the timing is a howler!
Have they heard of the phrase “shooting yourself in the foot” I think it fits these ideas, it’s not like they’re going to just shut the gate and walk away. These plants are going to have to be decommissioned or mothballed both expensive and time consuming. But what the hey it’s for the good of the planet?
As for blaming Fukushima, I wasn’t aware that Germany had suffered any Tsunami’s please correct me if I’m wrong.
James Bull