With the shutdown of its last three nuclear power plants, Germany has completed its phase-out of nuclear power. As the minister responsible for nuclear safety in Germany, I believe that this was an excellent — indeed, visionary — move. There are many important justifications, but five are especially compelling.
First, phasing out nuclear power makes Germany safer. No nuclear power plant in the world is so secure that a catastrophic accident can be ruled out. Such an accident could be caused by human error (as in Chernobyl in 1986) or a natural disaster (as in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011). It could be caused by a terrorist attack, plane crash, or simply an overlooked weakness in our safety strategies. Or, in the worst case, it could arise from a military attack, like those Russia has carried out in Ukraine.
Whatever the cause, an accident in a nuclear power plant can be catastrophic, causing devastation on a scale that no other form of energy generation could match. No insurance policy covers this risk, in Germany or anywhere else.
The Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the nation’s highest nuclear-safety authority, has spent decades ensuring that power plants adhere to the highest standards. However, no matter how hard we work, there is no absolute safety with nuclear power, which is why the phase-out is a relief for me.
RADIOACTIVE WASTE
A second reason to welcome Germany’s nuclear-power phase-out is that we will no longer be producing highly radioactive nuclear waste. Nuclear power has provided electricity for three generations, but its legacy of radioactive waste will be a burden for the next 30,000.
How a technology with such long-lasting consequences could be classified as sustainable is a mystery to me.
Despite the phase-out, the legacy of waste means that Germany still has a long road ahead on ensuring nuclear safety. There is currently no final repository to store spent fuel rods safely in operation anywhere in the world, and finding a site for one is hugely difficult and costly.
Third, despite what advocates claim, nuclear power is neither climate-friendly nor particularly reliable. Even if it contributes less to the climate crisis than coal or gas, it is clearly bad for the climate, not least because reactors must be cooled with large amounts of water.
This puts significant pressure on local rivers, which are already under stress from climate change. France had to import considerable amounts of electricity from Germany last year, owing to technical problems with its reactors and a lack of sufficient water to cool them. In some cases, rivers became so overheated that water for cooling reactors could be neither withdrawn nor discharged.
A COSTLY OPTION
As temperatures rise and droughts proliferate, limitations on the use of river water for cooling nuclear reactors will intensify. We need a resilient energy supply that not only avoids contributing to climate change, but can also withstand the unavoidable effects of higher temperatures. In this sense, nuclear power is not fit for the future.
The fourth point worth highlighting is that nuclear power is not cheap, especially when one accounts for the costs of uranium extraction, waste management and insurance.
In the US, 12 nuclear power plants were taken off the grid between 2009 and 2021, because they were not economically viable.
New nuclear projects are not worthwhile without significant government subsidies. The Flamanville-3 project in northern France is running 12 years behind schedule and would cost more than 10 billion euros (US$11 billion) over its originally plan.
The costs of nuclear power are also exploding in the UK and Finland, and if Europe wants to end its dependence on Russian energy imports, it will have to end imports of uranium and nuclear-fuel elements.
The final reason to welcome the shutdown of Germany’s remaining nuclear plants is that we simply do not need nuclear power. There are better alternatives. Solar and wind power are now much cheaper to generate. They are also safer, more sustainable and more climate-friendly. With the right standards in place, they are also compatible with nature conservation.
This helps to explain why nuclear power’s share of total global primary energy consumption has been falling since 2000, accounting for only 5 percent in 2019. In contrast, renewable energy has been on the rise for years. Production costs are falling, and installed capacity is growing — including in Germany since the current government took office.
SOCIETAL CONSENSUS
Recognizing the critical importance of a safe and affordable energy supply, particularly for a country whose prosperity is also based on energy-intensive industries, from mechanical engineering to automobile manufacturing, German policymakers are making large-scale investments in renewable energy. We are also investing in green hydrogen, storage technologies, energy efficiency and energy savings.
The expansion of renewable energy is undoubtedly challenging, and we must admit that we are not yet as far along as we would like. At the same time, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has forced us to return temporarily to coal and liquefied natural gas. However, none of this amounts to a convincing argument in favor of keeping, let alone expanding, nuclear power.
Successive German governments, all of our country’s democratic parties, and even the operators of the nuclear power plants agreed to phase out nuclear power, persuaded by the same compelling logic that drove countless citizens, farmers, winegrowers and mayors to spend decades advocating for a phase-out.
It would be truly irresponsible to turn our backs on this broad societal consensus.
Steffi Lemke is the German federal minister for the environment and nuclear safety.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry