The end of nuclear power

The German government decides to phase-out nuclear power by 2022

No sooner had West Germany put its first nuclear power plant on-line in 1961 than a protest movement was formed to force the abandonment of nuclear energy as a source of civil power generation. Despite opposition, nuclear reactors came to account for up to a third of West German electricity production. Although West German nuclear power plants were built and run in accordance with international standards and thus considered to be safe, popular opinion turned against them in 1986 following the news of an explosion in the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union. The conservative–liberal government at the time however rejected a phase-out, preferring instead to create a new Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

A new government consisting of the SPD and Greens began negotiations with the operators of nuclear power plants in 2002 to develop a timetable to phase out the use of nuclear reactors in Germany. A change of government in 2009 saw a new conservative-liberal coalition decide to extend this timetable, but then perform a U-turn following the nuclear disaster in Fukushima (Japan) and a radical sea change in public opinion. On 30 May 2011, the government agreed to decommission eight older nuclear plants and reduce the run-times of the ten remaining nuclear power plants. The last German nuclear power station was taken offline in 2023. Germany thus became the only major industrialized country to abandon the use of nuclear power for civil energy generation.