Nuclear energy in Germany

Nuclear power plants in Germany

Currently (as of January 2020) 6 reactor units with a total installed net capacity of around 8 GW are operated in Germany at 6 locations ; 29 reactor blocks have already been permanently shut down.

In 2018, gross electricity generation in Germany was 647 TWh, with nuclear energy contributing 11.8%.

List of nuclear reactors in Germany

history

Between 1957 and 2004 around 110 nuclear facilities were put into operation in Germany . The successful struggle and broad-based resistance against the construction of a Wyhl nuclear power plant at the Kaiserstuhl between 1975 and 1982 was a fundamental impetus for the modern anti-nuclear , citizens' initiatives and environmental movement in Germany, including the development and establishment of a " green “ party .

An “ exit from nuclear energy ” was regulated for the first time in 2000 in a treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany called “ atomic consensus ” and the various operating companies. In 2002 the German Atomic Energy Act was amended on the basis of this contract.

On October 28, 2010, the Bundestag decided with a black and yellow majority under the Merkel II cabinet a further amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, now extending the term , according to which:

the operating times of the seven plants that went into operation before 1980 were extended by eight years each and
those of the ten other nuclear power plants will be extended by 14 years each.

This extension was revised in 2011 - after the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster .

In the nuclear consensus, based on a standard running time of around 32 years, it was determined what “residual electricity” a nuclear power plant may still produce before it is decommissioned. If the electricity production of the individual power plants from the past were taken as a basis, the remaining electricity volumes allocated at the time would indicate that the last of 19 German nuclear power plants would be shut down around 2021. Since residual amounts of electricity could be transferred between power plants as part of the nuclear consensus, the nuclear power plants in Stade (on November 14, 2003) and Obrigheim (on May 11, 2005) were shut down.

Starting in 1979, a salt dome near Gorleben was examined for its suitability as a final storage site for fuel elements and highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The goal was to build the Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility . Since 2000, the exploration of the salt dome has been interrupted due to political pressure. The three to ten year moratorium was put into effect on the basis of the agreement made by the federal government with the energy supply companies (as of 2010).

Some opponents of nuclear power criticized the nuclear consensus . They see it as a guarantee of existence for nuclear power plants, not an exit. Their criticisms were:

The agreed residual amounts of electricity are generally too high and only correspond to 32 years of operation through computer tricks, in fact there are more.
The nuclear consensus only takes into account nuclear power plants themselves, no other nuclear facilities . The uranium enrichment plant in Gronau and the research neutron source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz were expanded or put into operation after the atomic consensus.
In many cases, the government supported the use of nuclear energy abroad, for example through Hermes guarantees .
The so-called “regulated exit” had been bought with concessions on security issues. A quick end to nuclear power could have been enforced by tightening the safety and tax regulations.

They also criticized the fact that the reprocessing of nuclear waste was not banned as early as 2002, but that the delivery of spent fuel elements (mainly to the La Hague reprocessing plant ) was still permitted until mid-2005.

Supporters of nuclear power in particular criticize the phase-out. Since the treaty was signed in 2002, parts of politics have been calling for the so-called "exit from exit". Nuclear energy provides security of supply , reduces CO ₂ emissions and uses the inexpensive primary energy source ( uranium ). They pointed to rising prices for fossil fuels (see oil price , coal , gas price ). The price of uranium increased fivefold between 2001 and 2006, which only slightly increases the operating costs of a nuclear power plant. In contrast, power plants using fossil fuels have a high share of fuel costs. Nuclear power proponents argue that German nuclear power plants are "the safest in the world ". Risks from the operation of the nuclear power plants are smaller than the risks that would increase with an exit from nuclear power. The nuclear power plants of the so-called Konvoi series are also designed for an operating life of around 65 years. In the debate about longer running times, the next nuclear power plants to be shut down Biblis A and B , Brunsbüttel and Neckarwestheim 1 were often in the foreground.

The grand coalition ( ruling from 2005 to 2009) ( CDU / CSU and SPD ) could not agree on a unified position on nuclear energy. In the coalition agreement of 2005 , the continuation of the regulation made by the red-green government in 2002 was agreed.

In the coalition agreement , the CDU and FDP decided to "extend the service life of German nuclear power plants [...]". For the first time after the change of government in 2009, talks between the federal government and energy suppliers took place on January 21, 2010 .

An agreement to extend the service life of German nuclear power plants was presented to the public on September 6, 2010. The lifetime of nuclear power plants built before 1980 has been extended by eight years. Newer reactors were allowed to run fourteen years longer. In return, the energy companies undertake to make an annual payment of 300 million euros each in 2011 and 2012 and of 200 million euros each until 2016. The plan was to use these funds to finance the energy and climate fund . In addition, the federal government introduced (as announced on September 6) a fuel element tax of 2.3 billion euros annually for six years - from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2016 . After the moratorium announced on March 14, 2011 , the operators stopped their payments to the energy and climate fund.

Nuclear phase-out

After the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011 on March 11, 2011 in Japan and the core meltdown caused by it , the federal government initially decided on a nuclear moratorium and soon thereafter an nuclear phase-out. According to the currently applicable law ( Section 7 (1) No. 6 Atomic Energy Act), the last nuclear power plants (Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2) must be shut down by December 31, 2022 at the latest. Since no new nuclear power plants are planned in Germany, the nuclear phase-out would be completed by this time at the latest.

Web links

Commons : Nuclear Energy in Germany - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Bernhard Ludewig : The nuclear dream. The history of German nuclear power. Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-86922-088-8 .

Individual evidence

^ Nuclear Power in Germany. World Nuclear Association (WNA), accessed January 13, 2018 .

↑ Germany. IAEA - Power Reactor Information System (PRIS), accessed on January 13, 2018 .

↑ Agreement between the Federal Government and the energy supply companies of June 14, 2000. ( PDF ) bmwi.de, archived from the original on September 15, 2011 ; accessed on October 28, 2016 (approx. 1.31 MB).

↑ Law on the orderly termination of the use of nuclear energy for commercial generation of electricity ( memento of the original from October 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 707 kB) @1@ 2

↑ bundestag.de Agreement to extend the service life of nuclear power plants. There links to the two amendments to the Atomic Energy Act (17/3051, 17/3052), the establishment of an energy and climate fund (17/3053) and the Nuclear Fuel Tax Act (17/3054)