Hundreds of Germans made the pilgrimage to Grafenrheinfeld in central Germany on Friday to witness something remarkable, to say the least.
Two 143 meter high cooling towers belonging to the small town’s nuclear power plant were leveled to the ground in a powerful explosion.
The event marks another milestone in the dismantling of German nuclear power. The nuclear power plant, which is the oldest still standing in Germany, was commissioned in 1982 and was in operation until 2015.
Fukushima was the nail in the coffin
The decision that German nuclear power would go to the grave was already made twelve years ago. The energy battle had then been about to be “phased out” for a long time, but it was the disaster in Japan’s Fukushima in 2011 that became the nail in the coffin.
The following year, Angela Merkel’s government decided on a strict timetable that said all nuclear power plants would be decommissioned by 2022. The war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis would later lead to the deadline being pushed forward, but on April 15 last year they finally disconnected the last the reactors from the power grid.
However, the German line is not entirely without resistance. In the wake of the war, the country has been criticized, among other things, for having made itself dependent on Russian gas with the shutdown.
Big differences in Europe
Germany is not alone in Europe in phasing out nuclear power, but there are also countries that invest heavily in the area instead.
SVT has previously reported on the widely differing approaches different European countries have to the energy sector. Sweden is one of the countries that is going in the opposite direction from Germany after Ulf Kristersson’s (M) government promised a massive expansion.
Even in Germany there are those who advocate a complete reversal – and believe that Friday’s explosion in Grafenrheinfeld was completely unnecessary.
– Germany will sooner or later start using nuclear power again and then you could use these towers, says Rainer Klute, chairman of the German nuclear power-promoting organization Nuklearia, to Sweden’s Radio Echo.