At a nuclear summit near Paris earlier this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the transition from nuclear energy undertaken by some EU countries as a “strategic mistake.” Nuclear power, she said, is a “reliable, affordable source of low-emission electricity.” She announced new financial assistance for nuclear power plants.
Von der Leyen’s words reverberated in Germany, which switched off its last nuclear reactor in 2023.
Von der Leyen’s father, Ernst Albrecht, like his daughter a member of Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was the head of government of the state of Lower Saxony in the 1970s and a staunch supporter of nuclear energy.
However, he failed in his attempt to establish a final repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste in the east of his state. The village of Gorleben, which had been pinpointed as the place where that repository was to be built, became a symbol of the struggle of hundreds of thousands of people against nuclear energy. The repository was never built.
Is Germany’s nuclear exit a mistake?
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No German nuclear power plants since 2023
Even now, von der Leyen’s appeal for a return to nuclear energy is meeting with mixed to negative reactions in Berlin.
From 1961 onward, a total of 37 German reactors supplied up to 30% of the country’s electricity. Germany began phasing out nuclear power 15 years ago, following the disaster in Fukushima, Japan. The last German nuclear power plant was taken offline in 2023.
Since then, there has been a recurring debate in Germany about whether a return to nuclear power would be sensible, given the fluctuation in the production of renewables like solar and wind energy and especially given the scarcity of oil and gas imports due to international crises such as the war in Ukraine or the current escalation in the Middle East.
However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) said on Tuesday that previous federal governments had decided to phase out nuclear energy, and that rolling back this decision was not possible. He added, however: “I regret this, but it is the way it is, and we are now concentrating on the energy policy we have.”
While the conservative bloc supports nuclear energy, Merz also knows that a rollback would need to find a majority in the current Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. And and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s votes would be needed to make up the numbers. Merz himself, however, has consistently ruled out any cooperation with the right-wing populists.
The SPD’s clear rejection of new nuclear power plants
The conservatives’ junior coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), have rejected von der Leyen’s proposal to return to nuclear energy: Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) pointed out that nuclear energy had already cost taxpayers billions: “If a risky technology is still dependent on state support after three-quarters of a century, and better alternatives have long existed, then consequences should be drawn,” Schneider said.
Schneider also rejected the suggestion to focus primarily on small, mobile reactors, the so-called “Small Modular Reactors” (SMRs): “These small nuclear power plants have been in the works for decades, but there still has not been a breakthrough and there is still a struggle to secure subsidies,” he said.
Indeed, Markus Krebber, CEO of Germany’s largest electricity provider RWE, recently rejected the idea of small reactors: “As things stand, an investment in SMRs is not feasible for a private company,” Krebber told the news portal Político. He added that there is currently no supplier worldwide that could commit to construction times at fixed, agreed-upon costs. The RWE CEO thus made it clear: Companies will not provide funding for these small reactors.
Nuclear plants: Billion-dollar graves?
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Paris forges nuclear alliance with 15 EU states
Unlike in Germany, other EU countries are indeed considering expanding nuclear power. This is especially true for France, which still operates 57 reactors. The French have formed a group of 15 EU states advocating for new nuclear power plants. This group includes countries such as Sweden and Italy. Other countries, like Germany, Spain, and Austria, have permanently abandoned nuclear energy.
In Germany, the disaster in Chernobyl in 1986 prompted a rethink of nuclear energy. Fukushima, Japan, on March 11, 2011, prompted the gradual phase-out of nuclear power plants. The Green Party, founded in West Germany in 1980 campaigned heavily against nuclear power. After they entered in a government with the Social Democrats, they successfully pushed for the gradual exit in 2000.
That was rolled back when the conservatives returned to power in a coalition with the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and in 2010 decided to extend the operating lives of German reactors.
But the tides turned again: Following an earthquake and tsunami, a meltdown occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, a so-called “super-meltdown” and Angela Merkel herself oversaw the return to the exit strategy. And that decision stands to this day.
This article was originally written in German.
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