Germany And Switzerland to Shut Down Their Nuclear Power Plants

Some months ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a decision to try to extend the working life of Germany’s oldest nuclear power plants. Yesterday, Chancellor Merkel flip-flopped on that unpopular decision and — announced that Germany’s ruling coalition has decided to shut down its nuclear power plants by 2022.

As expected, the coalition wants to keep the eight oldest of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors permanently shut. Seven were closed temporarily in March, just after the earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima. One has been off the grid for years.

Another six would be taken offline by 2021, environment minister Norbert Roettgen said early on Monday after late-night talks in the chancellor’s office between leaders of the centre-right coalition.

The remaining three reactors, Germany’s newest, would stay open until 2022 as a safety buffer to ensure no disruption to power supply, he said.

This is an amazing development — a country that gets almost 25% of its energy from nuclear power is seriously discussing shutting that down for other alternatives. Nuclear power isn’t especially popular in Germany, especially after Nukashima. Merkel’s decision to extend the life of older plants in conjunction with the Nukashima tragedy is credited with her party’s loss in recent state elections (and with boosting the Green Party). This is nowhere near a done deal — there is lots of corporate opposition, opposition within her own party and not that much yet on what energy sources would replace these plants (have read in one place that the Greens are supporting some new coal-fired plants coming on line now and talking about supporting gas-fired ones. Ugh.)

Add to that, that the Swiss are also planning to phase out its nuclear plants, letting the existing plants run for their planned operational lives. The Swiss get almost 40% of their power from nuclear plants. Nuclear is also pretty unpopular here as well.

I hope that this means that these countries are looking very hard at renewable technologies that can replace this much power. If they can do it, they’ll be right at the technological edge of the market — meaning that people looking to replace nuclear sources and fossil fuel sources will be buying their technology from the Germans or Swiss. What I expect this means for us is a spanking new PR campaign from the nuclear industry hell-bent to on selling the US on this technology that can’t seem to survive without spectacular government subsidies.