Germany confident of keeping lights on as it prepares to ditch nuclear for good

Germany is confident it can keep the lights on even after it closes the door for good on nuclear energy on Saturday.

After abolishing nuclear energy twice already – in 2001 and 2010 – Berlin granted its three remaining plants a four-month winter reprieve last year to help the country overcome its post-Russian energy squeeze.

But now Germany’s Green-led energy and environmental ministries insist Saturday’s shift is not “auf Wiedersehen” to atomic energy – but a firm goodbye.

“The exit from nuclear makes our country safer,” said Ms Steffi Lemke, federal environment minister. “The risks of nuclear power are ultimately unmanageable.”

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The move delivers a key policy goal of the Green Party but, even after 20 years of public debate on nuclear energy, not all Germans are convinced.

A YouGov poll this week found two thirds of Germans in favour of allowing the three remaining plants remain on the grid – with just one quarter backing the shutdown.

Energy companies say their nuclear plants – producing around 4.3 gigawatts of energy in total, or six per cent of Germany’s energy mix – could help fill any energy gaps in the months ahead, or longer if they were allowed order new fuel rods.

In Berlin, the Greens’ pro-business Free Democrat (FDP) coalition partner is furious, insisting the move is irresponsible given high German energy costs and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

“Emergency situations like this cannot be reliably predicted,” said Bijan Djir-Sarai, FDP secretary general. “We have to get away from an energy policy with no wriggle room.”

Brushing off attacks from the FDP – and opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – federal energy minister Robert Habeck insists Germany’s post-nuclear energy supply is secure.

“We have good capacity levels in gas storage facilities, new liquefied gas terminals on the northern German coast,” he said, “and, of course, more renewable energy.”

After a two-decade transition away from nuclear energy, Germany is stepping up its pivot towards renewables. Already making up 40 per cent of Germany’s energy mix, the Berlin coalition aims to double that by 2030.

For now, though, moving away from nuclear energy – with no Russian gas imports to bridge the gap – has forced Germany to revive energy production from coal. After years in decline, hard coal and lignite – among the most polluting fuel sources – provide more 30 per cent of the total.

Even after the final nuclear plants are taken off-grid on Saturday, Germany has yet to find a permanent home for decades of radioactive waste the plants have generated.

It has been stored for decades in provisional above-ground facilities, and the controversial hunt for a suitable underground site – suitable for one million years – began in the 1970s but was restarted, with new criteria, in 2013.

Last year the body responsible for the search said it was unlikely to meet its goal of presenting its final storage site by 2031.

“Germany generated nuclear energy for 60 years,” said Wolfram König, head of the federal office responsible for nuclear safety. “And it will take at least that long again until all the waste generated is stored permanently and safely.”