Inside a former nuclear power plant in Lubmin on the Baltic coast, workers are cutting open an old pump. The band saw slowly cuts through and divides it into small parts. The parts must then be sandblasted to remove a dangerous radioactive layer. What is blown away must go into safe containers and be stored away for thousands of years. The nuclear power plant in Lubmin was closed in 1990. But there are still several decades of work left before it is cleaned up. A worker at the nuclear power plant in Lubmin shoots pressurized water at radioactive material to decontaminate it. Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP – These power plants were built to last forever, says Hartmut Schindel, from the company leading the clean-up, to AFP. When the facility was built, no one was given responsibility for a possible shutdown. They expect to finish the work in the 2060s. It is then 70 years since the nuclear power plant was closed. One of four cooling towers is demolished at the Biblis nuclear power plant in Germany. Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / AP 6 percent of the electricity On Saturday, the work to clean up Germany’s last three nuclear power plants will begin. The white cloud that has risen from the power plant in Neckarwestheim near Stuttgart since 1989 will disappear. The other two power plants that are disappearing are in Bavaria and in northern Germany. With the power plants, the 6 percent of the electricity they supplied in 2022 will also disappear. The other sources of power for the Germans are coal power, lignite and gas power. So how will Germany replace the electricity from the nuclear power plants? – The ambition is for everything to be replaced with renewable energy in the long run. In the short term, it will often have to be replaced with gas and coal power, which will have negative consequences for the climate. That’s what Tor Reier Lilleholt says to news. He is a power analyst at Volue insight. Tor Reier Lilleholt says that Germany’s phasing out of nuclear power has been planned for several years. Photo: Asbjørn Odd Berge / news Carefully planned Let there be no doubt: Germany is an important pillar in the European power market, explains Lilleholt. – What happens in Germany is important for the whole of Europe, says Lilleholt. After the Fukushima accident in 2011, Germany shut down half of its nuclear power in a day. The remaining half was to be phased out over the next ten years. – This phasing out of nuclear power has thus not come as a big surprise. A good plan was laid over many years for how this was to be done. The nuclear power plant in Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Photo: HO / Afp But then Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Germany, which got 40-50 percent of its energy from Russia, stopped getting energy from Russia. They had to change their energy policy almost overnight. – The last year has been an enormous journey for Germany. They have gone from being a very large exporter to becoming an importer, says Lilleholt. But prices will rise initially. “No way back” is the government’s answer to the critics who believe that the nuclear power plants should not be shut down. Photo: Jan Woitas / AP Great disagreement So can they really afford to scrap nuclear power in the middle of an energy crisis in Europe? No, say critics. Within the government, there is contention. The governing party FDP calls the phasing out a “dramatic mistake, with painful economic and ecological consequences”. But this is a matter of struggle for the Greens and part of the government platform that was negotiated before the war. At the same time, the opposition wants to wait to shut down these power plants. Markus Söde, Minister President of Bavaria, has spoken in favor of having three operational nuclear power plants plus three on standby. German opinion polls show that 30 percent of the people want to keep nuclear power plants temporarily. Another 30 percent want to keep it permanently. Today, Germany produces energy from both coal and wind. From 2030, the authorities want to start phasing out coal as well. Photo: Michael Probst / AP The government replies that they have many other alternative sources, ready to fill the void left by the nuclear power plants. There is a lot of talk about hydrogen and Norwegian gas pipelines that can transport both gas and hydrogen at the same time. The critics still believe that it will only lead to the import of nuclear power from other EU countries such as France and the Czech Republic. But: “there is no going back”, replies the government, which has ambitions for 80 per cent of Germany’s energy to be green by 2030. 12 countries left There are now 12 countries left in the European Union with nuclear power. Several other countries have cut their nuclear power programs after the Fukushima accident. Both Switzerland and Italy decided to decommission their nuclear reactors. On the other hand, France and Great Britain have decided to invest more in nuclear power. Britain is to build eight new power plants by 2050. France is to build 14 new reactors from 2035. The French president is going the opposite way to Germany and betting on more nuclear power. Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN At the same time, it became known this week that France will obtain more electricity from the 56 nuclear power plants it already has. The French nuclear power plants produced 279 terawatt-hours (TWh) last year. The authorities hope to be able to increase production to between 350 and 380 TWh a year. But first several of the works must be upgraded.
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On Saturday, Germany will close its last nuclear power plants – news – Klima
