On Sunday morning, in Germany, nuclear power will be a thing of the past. At midnight at the latest, this Saturday, April 15, the Isar 2, Neckarwestheim and Emsland power stations will be disconnected from the national electricity grid. Europe’s leading economic power thus closes an important chapter in its energy history. But before opening the next one, let’s go back to the big dates for the atom in Germany, from the opening of the first plant to the forced extension of the last three still in operation because of the war in Ukraine.
January 1, 1960: the Atomic Energy Act comes into force
After the end of the occupation regime, enacted in 1955, the Federal Republic of Germany regained the right to use nuclear energy in a peaceful framework, that is to say as an energy serving its population. In October of that same year, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer created a federal ministry specially dedicated to the Atom. The following year, research centers opened in several cities of the country and, in 1957, the first nuclear reactor was commissioned at the University of Munich. Four years later, the Atomic Energy Act comes into force. The first operational nuclear power plant will be that of Rheinsberg, in the Land of Brandenburg, opened in 1966.
April 27, 2002: vote of a first law to phase out nuclear power
The law on the planned abandonment of nuclear energy for industrial electricity production entered into force on April 27, 2001, on the decision of a coalition government between the Social Democrats of the SPD and the Greens. But the debate dated back several years. After the Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, the SPD opted for a gradual exit from nuclear power within ten years. Having come to power two years later, the left-wing party signed a gradual exit agreement with electricity producers. It is the latter which came into force in 2002, within the Atomic Law, with the following terms: “The continued use of nuclear energy for the industrial production of electricity will only be authorized for a period limited because of the high risks associated with the use of this energy.”
June 6, 2011: after Fukushima, the government accelerates the release schedule
In 2005, the Christian Democrats and Liberals of the CDU-CSU are much less enthusiastic about the idea of phasing out nuclear power. Chancellor Angela Merkel chose, in September 2010, to extend the commissioning period of nuclear power plants by twelve years. But a dramatic event will change the situation. On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan suffered a major accident. A wave of concern runs through the world, and this is materialized, in Germany, by the victory of the Greens in the Land of Baden-Württemberg.
On May 30, Angela Merkel announced that she was backtracking and an accelerated schedule for the closure of the power stations was even adopted. In the form of an amendment to the Atomic Act of 2002, it is decided that eight of the seventeen nuclear power plants in Germany will be shut down in 2011. As for the other nine, they will have to be by the end of the year 2022. For each reactor, the law even sets a deadline for operation.
March 5, 2021: agreement reached to compensate nuclear operators
The government’s decision to accelerate the phase-out of nuclear power was taken unilaterally, which triggered the anger of nuclear operators: not only were they not consulted, but no financial compensation was offered to them. The sector therefore sued the German government, on the argument that the new Atomic Law of 2011 made it impossible to produce the quotas decided in the Atomic Law of 2002. They won their case before the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe.
In response, the German government in 2018 set compensation terms calculated on the electricity quotas granted in 2002, which was criticized by the Constitutional Court, which demanded that they be established on the 2011 law. It took until March 2021 for financial compensation of up to 2.4 billion euros to be proposed by Berlin, and accepted by energy companies.
November 11, 2022: the war in Ukraine postpones the release date
At the end of December 2021, three of the last six plants still in service are, as planned, shut down. The last three must follow the same path a year later, but the invasion of Ukraine by Russia forces Berlin to amend the Atomic law of 2011. Very dependent on Russian gas, now prohibited from purchase within the European Union, Germany must momentarily rethink its model. After long discussions within the coalition, Parliament votes in favor of extending the last reactors, in order to provide the country with 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity by April 15. Once the date has been reached, the power stations can be shut down.