Over and out: Germany switches off its last nuclear plants

BERLIN — “Nuclear power, no thanks!”

Decades of anti-nuclear protests in Germany, stoked by disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, had put pressure on successive governments to end the use of a technology that critics argue is unsafe and unsustainable. As energy prices spiked last year due to the war in Ukraine, some members of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government got cold feet about closing the nuclear plants as planned on Dec. 31, 2022. In a compromise, Scholz agreed to a one-time extension of the deadline, but insisted that the final countdown would happen on April 15.

Advocates of nuclear power worldwide have slammed the German shutdown, aware that the move by Europe’s biggest economy could deal a blow to a technology they tout as a clean and reliable alternative to fossil fuels. On Friday, dozens of scientists including James Hansen, a former NASA climate expert credited with drawing public attention to global warming in 1988, sent a letter to Scholz urging him to keep the nuclear plants running.

At a recent news conference in Berlin, Lemke noted that new nuclear plants in Europe, such as Hinkley Point C in Britain, have faced significant delays and cost overruns. Funds used to maintain ageing reactors or build new ones would be better spent on installing cheap renewables, she said. The power plant’s operator, RWE, made clear that it is committed to the shutdown. The company still runs some of Europe’s dirtiest coal-fired power plants. It recently pushed through the destruction of a village for a mine expansion as part of a plan to increase short-term production before ending coal use by 2030.

Germany prefers to pollute with its COAL

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