Bloomberg Analysis of German news of Shutdown of Nuclear plants

Germans to shut down Nuclear Plants by 2022

Germany's coalition government has announced a reversal of policy that will see all the country's nuclear power plants phased out by 2022.

The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to announce plans to give up nuclear energy.

Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement following late-night talks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.

There have been mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of March's Fukushima crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.

'Sustainable energy'

Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors - which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis - would never be used again. An eighth plant - the Kruemmel facility in northern Germany, which was already offline and has been plagued by technical problems, would also be shut down for good.

Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022, he said.

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Analysis

Stephen Evans

BBC News, Berlin

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Nearly a quarter of German's electricity comes from nuclear power so the question becomes: How do you make up the short-fall?

The official commission which has studied the issue reckons that electricity use can be cut by 10% in the next decade through more efficient machinery and buildings.

The intention is also to increase the share of wind energy. This, though, would mean re-jigging the electricity distribution system because much of the extra wind power would come from farms on the North Sea to replace atomic power stations in the south.

Protest groups are already vocal in the beautiful, forested centre of the country which, they fear, will become a north-south "energie autobahn" of pylons and high-voltage cables.

Some independent analysts believe that coal power will benefit if the wind plans don't deliver what is needed.

And on either side of Germany is France, with its big nuclear industry, and Poland, which has announced an intention to build two nuclear power stations.
Mr Rottgen said: "It's definite. The latest end for the last three nuclear power plants is 2022. There will be no clause for revision."

Mr Rottgen said a tax on spent fuel rods, expected to raise 2.3bn euros (£1.9bn) a year from this year, would remain despite the shutdown.

Mrs Merkel's centre-right Christian Democrats met their junior partners on Sunday after the ethics panel had delivered its conclusions.

Before the meeting she said: "I think we're on a good path but very, very many questions have to be considered.

"If you want to exit something, you also have to prove how the change will work and how we can enter into a durable and sustainable energy provision."

The previous German government - a coalition of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens - decided to shut down Germany's nuclear power stations by 2021.

However, last September Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition scrapped those plans - announcing it would extend the life of the country's nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years.

Ministers said they needed to keep nuclear energy as a "bridging technology" to a greener future.

The decision to extend was unpopular in Germany even before the radioactive leaks at the Fukushima plant.

But following Fukushima, Mrs Merkel promptly scrapped her extension plan, and announced a review.

Greens boosted

Germany's nuclear industry has argued that an early shutdown would be hugely damaging to the country's industrial base.

Before March's moratorium on the older power plants, Germany relied on nuclear power for 23% of its energy.

The anti-nuclear drive boosted Germany's Green party, which took control of the Christian Democrat stronghold of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in late March.

Shaun Burnie, nuclear adviser for environmental campaign group Greenpeace International, told the BBC World Service that Germany had already invested heavily in renewable energy.

"The various studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that renewables could deliver, basically, global electricity by 2050," he said.

"Germany is going to be ahead of the game on that and it is going to make a lot of money, so the message to Germany's industrial competitors is that you can base your energy policy not on nuclear, not on coal, but on renewables."

Shares in German nuclear utilities RWE and E.On fell on the news, though it had been widely expected.

But it was good news for manufacturers of renewable energy infrustructure.

German solar manufacturer, Solarworld, was up 7.6% whilst Danish wind turbine maker Vestas gained more than 3%.

Germany shuts Nuclear Plants amid safety fears

Solas Power has learned from The Irish Times www.irishtimes.com that German CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel has announced a three-month shutdown of Germany’s oldest nuclear reactors pending a security review.


The explosions in the Japanese nuclear power plant, triggered by last week’s earthquake, have prompted 100,000 Germans to take to the street in protest at Dr Merkel’s government support for the nuclear energy sector.

After taking office, Dr Merkel’s administration set aside a proposal to make Germany nuclear-free by 2020, extending the life of ageing nuclear plants into the mid-2030s.

Dr Merkel reacted yesterday to the growing pressure with a temporary moratorium, during which she has called for a discussion about safety standards and Germany’s continued lack of a storage facility for nuclear waste.

“We are launching a safety review of all nuclear reactors . . . and all reactors in operation since the end of 1980 are to be idled a three-month moratorium,” said Dr Merkel.

“This moratorium will run until June 15th, after which we will know how to proceed.”

Energy companies criticised the move as “rash and expensive”, while the political opposition suggested it was a stunt ahead of state elections this month.

The seven reactors to be shut down have all been operational since before 1980; two are in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg where Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) are fighting for re-election on March 27th.

“This is election trickery,” said Sigmar Gabriel, head of the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), saying Dr Merkel would return after the election “and say that everything is okay and that German nuclear plants are safe”.

Dr Merkel’s government reversed the SPD-Green Party nuclear shutdown in 2009, claiming the renewable energy sector could not yet fill the quarter of Germany’s energy needs currently generated by its 17 nuclear energy plants.

The government denied the move marked a nuclear energy renaissance in Germany, pointing out that it would permit no new nuclear energy plants to be built and that it viewed atomic energy as a “bridging technology” until the renewables sector had matured.

The 2009 reversal met with little widespread protests, but the Japanese disaster has reawakened fears of the Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island incidents in Germany.

On Saturday, anti-nuclear protesters formed a 45km human chain from a nuclear plant to Stuttgart.

Recent polls show that 60 per cent of Germans want to shutter all 17 nuclear plants in the country, with 70 per cent fearful that a Japanese-style disaster could happen in Germany.