Nuclear power in Germany
[9] By some estimates, Germany could have achieved a 73% reduction in its carbon emissions by retaining nuclear power during the period 2002–2022 and could have saved €696 billion on its energy transition.
[9] Prior to the takeover of Nazi Germany, German universities were the employers of some of the world's most renowned nuclear physicists, including Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Leo Szilard, and others.
In 1938, Hahn and his colleague Fritz Straßmann conducted an experiment designed by Lise Meitner (who had already been driven into exile due to her Jewish ancestry), which led to the discovery of nuclear fission.
Another attempt to site a reactor in a major city was made in 1967, when BASF planned to build a nuclear power station on its grounds at Ludwigshafen to supply process steam.
Despite the fact that fuel feed and discharge system showed excellent availability, the AVR was shut down for political reasons in 1988.
The Wyhl protests were an example of a local community challenging the nuclear industry through a strategy of direct action and civil disobedience.
During the chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder, the social democratic-green government decreed Germany's final retreat from using nuclear power by 2022.
[23] In the largest anti-nuclear demonstration ever held in Germany, some 250,000 people protested on 26 March 2011, under the slogan "heed Fukushima – shut off all nuclear plants".
[26] After the Fukushima disaster, the following eight German nuclear power reactors were declared permanently shut down on 6 August 2011: Biblis A and B, Brunsbuettel, Isar 1, Kruemmel, Neckarwestheim 1, Philippsburg 1, and Unterweser.
The court found that the nuclear exit was essentially constitutional but that the utilities are entitled to damages for the "good faith" investments they made in 2010.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, German energy policy – which had up to that point relied on Russian imports (particularly natural gas) to a large degree[37] – was re-evaluated, including a temporary suspension of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
[38] The German minister of economy and climate, Robert Habeck, answered in an interview that he would be "open" to extending the life of the remaining three nuclear power plants but expressed skepticism as to the feasibility of and sense of such a move.
[48] Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the Free Democrats, said in an interview with the Funke Media Group that "Germany has the safest nuclear power plants worldwide and switching them off would be 'a dramatic mistake' with painful economic and ecological consequences."
[52] By early 2025 the journalists had used court orders to gain access to internal documents, which allowed them, in conjunction with the findings of an investigative committee, to reconstruct how the highest officials in Habeck´s ministry, Patrick Graichen and Stefan Tidow, had supressed experts who advocated for keeping the nuclear power plants and only forwarded statements which argued against nuclear power.
[57] Germany is preparing the former iron ore mine Schacht Konrad in Salzgitter as a national facility for the permanent disposal of low- to medium-grade radioactive waste materials.
In return, the operators will pay a total of €17.4 billion into a state-administered fund to finance the interim and final storage of nuclear waste.
They will also pay an additional "risk surcharge" of €6.2 billion (35.5%) to cover the eventuality that costs exceed current projections and that the interest accrued by the fund is lower than expected.
The operators will be responsible for decommissioning and deconstructing their own nuclear power plants, as well as preparing their radioactive waste for final storage.
Critics, including the German Renewable Energy Federation and BUND, claim the total of €23.6 billion would prove insufficient and that future taxpayers will carry the risk.
The country has combined the phase-out with an initiative for renewable energy and wants to increase the efficiency of fossil power plants in an effort to reduce its reliance on coal.
In 2012, member firms of the Verband der Industriellen Energie- und Kraftwirtschaft (VIK) reported power failures of several seconds duration, combined with a rise in frequency fluctuations.
The cost of replacing Germany's nuclear power generation with renewable energy has been officially estimated by the German Ministry of Economics at about €0.01/kWh (about €55 billion for the next decade[when?
The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately €3 to €8 billion annually, mostly from the eleven hundred additional deaths associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.
[71] Swedish energy company Vattenfall went in front of the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to seek compensation from the German government for the premature shut-down of its nuclear plants.
[72][73] In March 2013, the administrative court for the German state of Hesse ruled that a three-month closure imposed by the government on RWE's Biblis A and B reactors as an immediate response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident was illegal.
In 2022, Vox commented that "Germany’s decision to restart old coal plants rather than extend the life of its nuclear power facilities reflects a failure of environmental priorities",[75] and NPR wrote, "Facing an energy crisis, Germans stock up on candles.
