BERLIN, April 16, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Germany switched off its last three
nuclear reactors on Saturday, exiting atomic power even as it seeks to wean
itself off fossil fuels and manage an energy crisis caused by the war in
Ukraine.

While many Western countries are upping their investments in atomic energy to
reduce their emissions, Germany brought an early end to its nuclear age.

It's "the end of an era," the RWE energy firm said in a statement shortly
after midnight confirming the three reactors had been disconnected from the
electricity grid.

Europe's largest economy has been looking to leave behind nuclear power since
2002, but the phase-out was accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel in
2011 after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

The exit decision was popular in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear
movement, stoked by lingering fears of a Cold War conflict and atomic
disasters such as Chernobyl in Ukraine.

"The risks of nuclear power are ultimately unmanageable," said Environment
Minister Steffi Lemke, who this week made a pilgrimage to the ill-fated
Japanese plant ahead of a G7 meeting in the country.

Anti-nuclear demonstrators took to the streets in several German cities to
mark the closures.

Greenpeace, at the heart of the anti-nuclear movement, organised a
celebratory party at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

"We are putting an end to a dangerous, unsustainable and costly technology,"
said Green MP Juergen Trittin.

In front of the Brandenburg Gate, activists symbolically slayed a model
dinosaur.

- 'A mistake' -

Initially planned for the end of 2022, Germany's nuclear exit was delayed as
Russian gas supplies dwindled.

Germany, the largest emitter in the European Union, also powered up some of
its mothballed coal-fuelled plants to cover the potential gap left by gas.

The challenging energy situation had increased calls domestically for the
exit from nuclear to be delayed.

Germany had to "expand the supply of energy and not restrict it any further"
in light of potential shortages and high prices, the president of the German
chamber of commerce Peter Adrian told the Rheinische Post daily.

Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition CDU party, said the abandonment of
nuclear power was the result of an "almost fanatical bias".

Meanwhile the conservative daily FAZ headlined its Saturday edition "Thanks,
nuclear energy," as it listed benefits it said nuclear had brought the
country over the years.

Outside observers have been similarly irked by Germany's insistence on
exiting nuclear while ramping up its coal usage, with climate activist Greta
Thunberg in October slamming the move as "a mistake".

- 'Sooner or later' -

As expected, the Isar 2 reactor in the southeast of the country, the
Neckarwestheim facility in the southwest and Emsland in the northwest were
disconnected from the electricity network before midnight.

Earlier, Guido Knott, CEO of PreussenElektra, which operates Isar 2, said it
would be "a very moving moment" to power down the reactor.

The three final plants provided just six percent of Germany's energy last
year, compared with 30.8 percent from all nuclear plants in 1997.

"Sooner or later" the reactors will start being dismantled, Economy Minister
Robert Habeck told the Funke group ahead of the scheduled decommissioning,
brushing aside the idea of an extension.

The government has the energy situation "under control", Habeck assured,
having filled gas stores and built new infrastructure for the import of
liquefied natural gas to bridge the gap left by Russian supplies.

Instead, the minister is focused on getting Germany to produce 80 percent of
its energy from renewables by 2030.

To this end, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for the installation of "four
to five wind turbines a day" over the next few years -- a tall order given
that just 551 were installed last year.

But the current rate of progress on renewables could well be too slow for
Germany to meet its climate protection goals.

Despite planning to exit nuclear, Germany has not "pushed ahead enough with
the expansion of renewables in the last 10 years", Simon Mueller from the
Agora Energiewende think tank told AFP.

To build enough onshore wind capacity, according to Mueller, Germany now has
to "pull out all the stops".