Germany has closed the last of its nuclear reactors,
ending the country’s use of nuclear energy.
Just weeks before, the UK government announced the launch of its Great British Nuclear
plan, which aims to increase the share of nuclear energy as part of its total energy mix.
So why are the two countries moving in different directions?
German politicians were not always opposed to nuclear energy. In the 70s,
the global economy experienced an energy price shock after major oil producers
imposed an embargo against the West for supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
As the price of oil increased, energy independence
became a priority, and Germany started commissioning more nuclear reactors.
By the end of the 1980s, around one-third of Germany’s energy supply came from nuclear.
Initially, opposition to nuclear was concentrated among student and lobbying groups,
who believed it was at odds with Germany’s post-war pacifist stance. The Green Party,
which was founded in West Germany in 1980, grew,
in part, out of the anti-nuclear ideology and subsequent movements that followed.
Rainer Baake is the former Germany Energy State Secretary.
There was a small group of people who were opposing it, and they had some good arguments,
but the majority was on the other side. And then came the 26th of April, 1986.
The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl – a city that was then part of the Soviet Union – was,
according to the World Health Organization, the worst-ever civil nuclear accident.
A poorly designed experiment went catastrophically wrong – resulting
in a large explosion that released waves of radioactive waste into the atmosphere.
According to the official count, 31 direct deaths were associated with the disaster,
but thousands are estimated to have suffered from the hazardous long-term effects of radioactivity.
It also shifted Germany’s anti-nuclear stance from the fringes to the mainstream.
Public opinion changed completely. We had huge majorities for a nuclear phase-out,
but that did not translate into majorities in our parliament.
That came only in 1998, with a change of government to social
democratic and green coalition. And at that point, we decided on the nuclear phase-out.
The German government reached an agreement with the electric utility companies.
Nuclear power stations were allowed to continue operating, but with a cap on their output,
and a gradual phase-out of nuclear power stations over the next two decades.
In December 2011, the German government’s position on nuclear hardened further, this time after a
nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan. The incident soured the public’s opinion toward nuclear energy.
A few weeks after the Fukushima disaster,
then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a major U-turn on the country’s nuclear policy
and decided to press ahead to close all its atomic power plants by 2022
But following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the start of 2022,
Germany considered whether to keep the last remaining reactors open longer.
German public opinion has shifted notably since the start of the war. In April that year, a survey
showed that 38% of German citizens supported the nuclear phase-out by the end of 2022.
Support by the end of the year had plummeted to 15% as the country was
forced to lean more on highly polluting coal-powered energy.
So, a compromise was reached to extend the timeline,
but only by a few months, until April 2023.
Arguably, coal plants are a lot more environmentally damaging than, say,
using or continue to rely on nuclear energy as a power source. Why was that
a more palatable option for German policymakers?
Well, it was an emergency situation that we had here in Germany after
the attack of Russia on Ukraine and after Mr. Putin used natural gas as a weapon.
Indeed, we had to bring additional capacity to the market.
And there was a very good compromise actually
to move the end of the coal generation in Germany from 2038 up to 2030.
So, eight years faster. And now for the next, for the next one or two years,
some coal generators are gonna run a little bit longer.
This is a huge cut of emissions if you look at the whole picture.
So short-term pain for long-term gain, that's the view.
Exactly.
Germany wasn’t the only country debating its use of nuclear during the energy crisis.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced all European countries to rethink their energy security.
As key gas pipelines from Russia got cut off and sanctions kicked in,
it became crucial to find alternative energy sources.
This meant finding new sources of natural gas as well as pouring more
money into renewables like wind and solar energy.
For the UK, the energy crisis reinforced its increasing embrace of nuclear to
achieve its climate goals and ensure greater energy security.
The UK’s first nuclear power station was built in the 1950s,
but it was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who, in the 1980s, proposed constructing a
nuclear power station every year for a decade as part of the country’s industrial strategy.
While this was not achieved, public opinion, to this day, remains favorable.
A study in 2022 showed that almost half of Britons — 48% —
back the use of nuclear energy compared to 31% who are opposed.
In March 2023, the Conservative British government announced that up to a quarter
of the country’s electricity could be generated from nuclear sources by 2050, up from 15% in 2023.
Supporters of nuclear within the UK say that it produces low amounts of
carbon as a power source, but it is more reliable than renewables as
it can provide a steady output 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It is also less affected by extreme weather
conditions and requires less land to operate compared to renewables.
But the disposal of nuclear waste remains a key risk as radioactive
waste has a long lifespan and needs to be stored safely.
Creshia Jones is the nuclear safety case and licensing lead for Rolls-Royce SMR.
I think the public's perception of nuclear waste, nuclear, the nuclear industry —
We're the only industry that actually accounts for every single gram of our nuclear waste.
It's all about how we manage it.
The UK has recognized that the safest way to manage higher-level waste is
by building a geological disposal facility.
And this is recognized internationally as the
safest way to look after our higher-level generating waste.
But as I say, that's only 1% of it.
What about the risks of a catastrophic incident?
Obviously, Chernobyl is the one that comes to mind and weighs on people's sentiment.
Every single nuclear accident that has happened in the past,
we take all that learning and that feeds into our safety case.
So, we collaborate internationally with the industry. We're open, transparent,
and we attend forums and conferences where we all learn and use what's our best practice.
Detractors of nuclear power also point to its huge operational and maintenance costs, often meaning
that projects cannot go ahead without significant backing or subsidies from the government.
Here is Simon James, senior advisor at Kreab.
Nuclear has a very high capital requirement for construction. And that can be difficult
for the private sector to bear, which is why many of them have been built by governments.
Nuclear plants — they're fairly cheap to run. The expense is in construction and decommissioning.
Decommissioning costs for older reactors are quite high.
That's largely cause they were never designed to be taken apart.
Reactors are being designed and built now,
actually have a decommissioning plan already set out when they're constructed.
Therefore, the decommissioning costs are much lower for that reason.
Advocates of nuclear energy say that’s where Small, Modular Reactors — SMRS — come in. These are
nuclear reactors that can be constructed easily. Crucially, decommissioning costs are paid upfront.
It's a low-cost nuclear solution. We're not building massive power
plants and using a large area to do it, which takes years.
As we move towards an increasingly decarbonized world, the debate
about nuclear continues to rage within Europe.
The European Commission aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by
at least 55% by 2030 and to be ‘climate neutral’ by 2050.
So, a big debate emerged within European nations about whether to
lean more on nuclear power as an energy source.
In July 2022, the European Parliament decided to classify nuclear energy
as a sustainable activity under certain conditions.
About 12% of the continent’s total energy supply comes from nuclear,
but the approach varies immensely from country to country.
In France, for example, about 70% of the country’s power is generated from nuclear
energy, although many of these reactors were built in the 50s and are starting to age.
Italy closed all its plants by 1990 despite producing nuclear
energy in the 60s. And Spain plans to complete its nuclear phase-out by 2035.
By the time we get to 2050, right across Europe, the electricity will certainly be
nuclear renewables. Some countries will go for a hundred percent renewables.
Some will go through a mix of renewables and nuclear, and perhaps some fossil fuels with
carbon capture and storage, if that technology comes along, which it probably will on some scale.
That is the energy mix we're looking at by 2050.