Germany Shuts Down Remaining Nuclear Power Plants Despite Threats To Energy Security

Germany will shutter the nation’s three remaining nuclear energy plants on Saturday, marking an end to the economic bellwether’s utilization of the power source despite threats to energy security posed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Following the 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her approval for the gradual closure of the country’s’s nuclear plants. Concerns about energy security caused Germany to delay the closure of Emsland, Neckarwestheim II, and Isar II — the country’s’s remaining three nuclear plants — until this month. This is because Germany imported more than half of its natural gas reserves from Russia prior to the war.

According to a report from European state-funded media outlet Deutsche Welle,” the dangers of nuclear power are really uncontrollable, which is why the nuclear phaseout makes our country safer and avoids more radioactive waste ,” Green Party member and German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said at the end of next month.

In spite of the original 1970s’ skyrocketing energy prices, nuclear energy became more and more popular in Germany. According to a World Nuclear Association evaluation, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986 caused widespread reluctance toward the energy source and sparked decades of politically charged discussion about nuclear energy plan. In the past, nuclear energy provided one-third of Germany’s’s energy needs.

While Belgium is postponing a phaseout that was formerly implemented, the Netherlands and Poland may increase their nuclear programs in the interim. On the other hand, some countries continued with the closure of nuclear services despite the severe rise in energy costs brought on by the conflict in Ukraine. For instance, Switzerland reduced production at one nuclear power plant to prevent raising river temperatures outside and preserving local fish groups.

In the fall and winter, the continent’s’s market was heavily impacted by the rising energy prices as several brands in northern Europe closed their doors as a result of the price changes. In the meantime, a number of countries implemented energy practice regulations that forbade individuals from raising their heaters or lowering their air conditioning past certain thresholds.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, declared last year that she had set standards for member states to lower” general energy consumption” by redistributing oil and gas company profits.

” We are suggesting a cover on the revenue of businesses that produce energy cheaply.” These businesses are generating revenue that they could never have predicted or sometimes imagined, according to von der Leyen. Dividends are great in our social market economy. However, it is incorrect to receive extraordinary record earnings from battle and on the backs of clients in these times. Profits may be distributed and channeled to those who most need them in these times.

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The European Union upholds the objective of becoming” a climate-neutral society” by 2050 in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green Deal. Von der Leyen acknowledged that lower hydropower generation brought on by droughts contributes to Europe’s’s high energy costs, but she asserted that” the weather crisis” is the ultimate cause of the weather conditions and called for the end of all fossil fuel reliance.

Similar claims have been made by American politicians that the need for a switch to solar power must become more urgent as energy prices rise. Last year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm argued that” deploying clean energy” is the” only way out” of” boom-and-bust cycles” in energy prices.