AMN/ WEB DESK
Germany has shut down three of its six nuclear power plants, as part of the country’s phase-out of nuclear energy and turned its focus to renewables. The government decided to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power following Japan’s Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the coastal plant in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
The plants in Brokdorf in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, Grohnde in Lower Saxony and Unit C at Gundremmingen in Bavaria in the south shut down late yesterday after three and half decades in operation.
Preussen Elektra, which runs the Brokdorf and Grohnde plants, said in a statement today that the two plants had been shut down shortly before last midnight. The decommissioning process will take two decades and cost 1.25 billion US dollars per plant.
The last three nuclear power plants – Isar-2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim-II – will be turned off by the end of 2022.
The six nuclear power plants contributed to around 12 per cent of electricity production in Germany in 2021. The share of renewable energy was almost 41 per cent, with coal generating just under 28 per cent and gas around 15 per cent.
Germany aims to make renewables meet 80 per cent of power demand by 2030 by expanding wind and solar power infrastructure. The closures take place as Europe faces one of its worst-ever energy crises and as nuclear power is, once again, gaining support as it produces significantly less carbon dioxide.