GERMANY
Will Germany return to nuclear power?
As Germany moves to wean itself off Russian energy,
politicians are debating a pause to the country's planned nuclear phaseout.
Experts warn, however, that it may not be so easy.
https://www.dw.com/en/will-germany-return-to-nuclear-power/a-62223935
Germany
still has three nuclear power plants in operation, including one near Landshut
in Bavaria
Germany is
heading into an energy crisis as Russia cuts gas supplies in retaliation for
sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
Finance
Minister Christian Lindner warned this week that the country was on the brink
of a "very serious economic crisis," and the government needed to
explore all avenues to plug the gaps in the nation's energy supply.
To that
end, Linder's business-focused Free Democrats (FDP), the smallest party in
Berlin's governing coalition alongside the Green Party and the center-left
Social Democrats (SPD), have called to postpone Germany's nuclear energy
phaseout. After several shutdowns in 2021, Germany currently still has three
nuclear power stations running to provide 11% of the country's electricity.
They are all set to be switched off by the end of the year.
Germany's
opposition to nuclear power
The use of
nuclear energy as a "green" alternative to fossil fuels is
controversial in Germany. The Green Party has argued for decades that the environmental
hazards of disposing of nuclear waste vastly outnumbered the benefits.
When they
came to power in a coalition government under SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
in 1998, they pushed successfully for the phaseout of nuclear energy. The
subsequent conservative government under the center-right Christian Democrat
Chancellor Angela Merkel first rolled back the timeline, but the 2011 Fukushima
nuclear disaster in Japan turned the tide again and Merkel pushed her party
toward the phaseout after all.
The CDU is
now Germany's largest opposition party, and has been demanding that the nuclear
phaseout be called off. "It is technically and legally possible" for
the three remaining reactors to keep on operating beyond the end of this year,
said CDU chairman Friedrich Merz on Tuesday.
He was
contradicting Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SPD, who had argued it would be too
hard to source the necessary nuclear fuel rods in time. Scholz said that
"no one has provided me with a feasible plan" to quickly increase the
output of Germany's three remaining nuclear plants — which as of now provide
only 11% of the country's electricity.
The
Branchenverband Kernenergie, an umbrella organization for nuclear energy
businesses in Germany, told the Münchner Merkur newspaper that an extension was
indeed possible, but called for quick decision-making. "The power plants
are in the process of shutting down. The longer you wait, the more difficult it
will be to start them up again," it said.
According
to Christian von Hirschhausen, an expert in energy and infrastructure at the
German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Scholz has the most
scientifically sound grasp of the situation.
Bringing
nuclear energy back online was technically and legally "impossible,"
von Hirschhausen told DW. There was no way to revert the decommissioning
process over the next 18 months, he said, due to the time it takes to order,
deliver and install equipment as well as enrich uranium.
"They
would also need to implement a new set of safety standards and checks,"
von Hirschhausen added, to replace those that have not been carried out in
years due to the phaseout, and new laws to govern the power plants' use.
Gas crunch
As it was
winding down its use of nuclear power over the past decade, Germany's reliance
on Russian energy sources was ratcheted up. Almost all of the country's heavy
industry is reliant on natural gas, as are about half of German homes for their
source of heating.
Early this
year, around 65% of natural gas in Germany came from Russia. Now, that has
dropped to below 40%. In 2021, about 53% of Germany's coal needed for power and
industrial production was imported from Russia, which is to be reduced to zero
after an EU-wide ban takes effect in August.
In order to
head off an energy crisis, Berlin is looking to fill up its gas reserves from
the current 60% to at least 80% by October, and to total capacity before the
winter.
This plan
has left politicians scrambling to secure new import partners for oil and gas
and speed up the expansion of solar and wind energy. They have also reluctantly
extended the lifespan of the country's coal plants, despite promises to phase
out coal entirely by 2030.
Many worry,
however, that all this may not be enough, and they have been looking even
further afield for new sources of energy. FDP lawmaker Torsten Herbst and
Bavaria's center-right state premier, Markus Söder, were among the first to
suggest Berlin lift its ban on fracking, a method of extracting shale gas that
is popular in the United States but highly controversial for the amount of methane
it leaks into the groundwater.
Economy and
Climate Minister Robert Habeck, of the Green Party, remains opposed to nuclear
energy and fracking, and finds it hard to advocate for something as destructive
to the climate as coal.
But
increasing the use of coal, von Hirschhausen said, "is just a temporary
measure. It makes sense if we want to build up reserves...so that there aren't
major shortages in the energy supply."
In an
interview with public broadcaster ZDF on Tuesday, Habeck vowed that the
government's ambitious plan to completely exit coal in the next eight years was
still on track.
The
coalition is set to debate ways to avert a potentially disastrous lack of
energy supply in the next two weeks, with an eye to presenting a new plan at
the beginning of July.
Edited by: Rina Goldenberg
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