Dusseldorf The penultimate chapter in the emotional history of German nuclear power ends on December 31, 2021: The Brokdorf, Grohnde and Gundremmingen nuclear power plants, Unit C, will go offline around 36 years after they went into operation. After that there will only be three active nuclear power plants in Germany. They will run for another year, and at the end of 2022 Germany will phase out nuclear power entirely.
The three power plants are formally obliged to shutdown: Their authorization to operate power in accordance with the Atomic Energy Act expires on December 31, 2021. This was stipulated in the Atomic Energy Act in August 2011 following votes in the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
Some well-known entrepreneurs and economists are critical of the fact that Germany is sticking to its nuclear phase-out, although the new federal government wants to say goodbye to lignite eight years earlier than previously planned. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for example, is promoting a renaissance of nuclear power, because it hardly releases any greenhouse gases when producing electricity.
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However, nuclear power is by no means environmentally friendly. The mining of the necessary uranium consumes many resources, and there is no solution to the deadly nuclear waste that will accompany thousands of generations. In addition, nuclear power is more expensive than all other forms of energy. The business was only worth it for the corporations because the state would have assumed most of the costs in the event of a catastrophe.
2. How much electricity will be “missing” in the future due to the shutdown of the nuclear power plants?
The three nuclear power plants each generated between 350 and 400 billion kilowatt hours of electricity over their entire lifetime. In 2021 it was around ten billion kilowatt hours each. The operator Preussen-Elektra announces: “With this annual electricity production you can supply a city like Hamburg including industry with electricity.”
According to the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW), around twelve percent of electricity generation in Germany came from nuclear power in 2021 – three out of six power plants responsible for this will now be eliminated and will have to be replaced by other types of energy in the future.
3. How will the power supply be ensured in Germany in the future?
In its coalition agreement, the new federal government announced that it would bring the coal phase out “ideally to 2030”. By then there should be 80 instead of 60 percent renewable energies, through an addition to 200 gigawatts of solar energy and 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power. The BDEW considers this to be “feasible, but also very ambitious”.
In addition to the expansion of renewable energies, one challenge is that, depending on the weather, sometimes more, sometimes less wind and solar power flows into the grid. The easiest way to ensure a controllable power supply is to expand gas-fired power plants. Accordingly, the Energy Economics Institute at the University of Cologne (EWI) has calculated that new gas capacities of 23 gigawatts will have to be built by 2030.
Climate protectors criticize, however, that natural gas consists mainly of methane, which is much more harmful to the climate than CO2. In the long term, other solutions would have to be found: What is needed, for example, is a more intelligent network control so that electricity is consumed especially when it is generated. In addition, there are high hopes for so-called green hydrogen, which can be produced when there is too much electricity in the grid and which can later be converted back into electricity.
4. When will the nuclear power plants finally disappear?
A Germany without visible nuclear reactors is not in sight anytime soon. In the case of the Grohne and Brokdorf power plants, it is not even clear when dismantling can begin – permits must first be issued by the respective responsible environmental ministries in the federal states. “We hope that this will be the case for both systems at the beginning of 2023,” announced the operator Preussen-Elektra. The so-called nuclear dismantling can then drag on until 2037, after which the buildings are to be demolished over a period of about two years.
Three more nuclear power plants will be shut down
At RWE’s Grundremmingen Block C, nuclear dismantling is expected to be completed by the mid-2030s. If it is then free of radioactivity, the building may, however, continue to be used.
The long dismantling phases also mean a grace period for many employees in the nuclear power plants. Preussen-Elektra announced that it had agreed to cover employees until the end of 2029. However, RWE concedes: “In the long term, safe dismantling requires significantly fewer employees than service operations.” By the end of 2022, only 440 of the 540 employees who were there at the beginning of this year should be left.
The task of nuclear power plants will not be cheap for the operators. “For the decommissioning – this includes the post-operational phase, the dismantling of the facility, and the professional packaging of the radioactive waste – we estimate costs on average a good 1.1 billion euros per facility,” Eon told the Reuters news agency. As of the end of 2020, the Group made provisions of 9.4 billion euros for this type of clean-up work.
5. Where is the nuclear waste from the power plants stored?
The energy companies are responsible for the dismantling of the nuclear power plants – but disposal and liability has been taken over by a public nuclear fund. A decision is to be taken by 2031 where a nuclear waste repository will be built in Germany.
Before that, the fuel elements will be stored at the Grohnde and Brokdorf power plants at the on-site interim storage facility, as announced by Preussen-Elektra. A transport provision hall will be built for the low and medium level radioactive waste resulting from the dismantling, in order to bridge the time until the existing Konrad repository is ready for acceptance.
More: Exit in Germany – Revival in France: Who is right in the nuclear debate?