Nuclear waste from Germany to Russia
A shipment of 600 tonnes of depleted uranium has left a nuclear fuel plant in Germany bound for Russia, a Russian environmentalist group says.
Twelve rail cars left the Urenco plant in the town of Gronau, close to the Dutch border, on Monday 22 June, according to the Ecodefense group.
The waste will reportedly be moved by sea and rail to a plant in the Urals.
Urenco told the BBC its uranium would be further enriched in Russia and the process met environmental standards.
Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom, insisted it was “inaccurate and misleading” to refer to the depleted uranium as waste.
But environmental activists have long been concerned that Russia may become a “dumping ground” for radioactive material from power plants.
Greenpeace protested last year after German media reports that Urenco had resumed shipping depleted uranium from Germany to Russia after a gap of 10 years. Russia had halted the practice in 2009 under pressure from environmentalists.
On Monday activists in Germany posted video on social media of what appeared to be the train en route from Gronau, as well as photos of anti-nuclear protesters.
Why is the shipment being sent to Russia?
According to the report (in Russian) by Ecodefense, some of it will be shipped by sea to Russia via the port of Amsterdam.
It will, the group says, eventually arrive at the Ural Electrochemical Combine in Novouralsk, 3,400km (2,500 miles) away in Russia’s Ural Mountains.
The group believes that nearly 3,000 tonnes of depleted uranium have already been shipped from Germany to Russia this year.
The Urenco spokesperson contacted by the BBC said they could not give details of shipments for “safety and security reasons”.
But Urenco did confirm that it had a contract with a firm called Tradewill, a subsidiary of Tenex which is the overseas trade company of Rosatom.
Under the contract, it said, depleted uranium “tails” are sent to Russia for further processing. The enriched uranium product then returns to Urenco while the “depleted fraction” remains with Tenex.
“This is common and legal practice,” Urenco says. “We also retain depleted uranium at Urenco in Europe.”
Urenco, which is a partnership between German, British and Dutch companies, said its representatives had inspected the facilities involved in the process and had found that they complied with “all internationally recognised logistics standards, which includes handling, storage, safeguarding and processing of nuclear material, as well as appropriate environmental standards”.
Why are environmentalists so concerned?
One of the big questions is how much of the waste is eventually returned to Germany, with activists arguing that most of it stays in Russia.
There are also fears of toxic pollution in the event of any spill.
On 15 June, a petition to stop the shipments was sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It was signed by environmental groups and activists from Russia, Germany and the Netherlands.
The petition calls for an end to the “colonial policy of moving hazardous cargoes from Europe to Russia’s Siberian and Ural regions”.
It argues that Germany has the technology to deal with its own nuclear waste and ends with the words: “Russia is not a dumping ground!”
Greenpeace argued last year that Russia lacked a plan to utilise depleted uranium on a large scale. Continue reading
German Parliament in debate on basing of nuclear weapons
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German Politicians Renew Nuclear Basing Debate Arms Control June 2020
By Oliver Meier A senior member of the German Parliament has revitalized the debate over whether the nation should host U.S. nuclear weapons on German soil. “It is about time that Germany in the future excludes the deployment” of nuclear weapons on its territory, said Rolf Mützenich, the leader of the Social Democrat (SPD) group in the Bundestag, in a May 2 interview with Der Tagesspiegel. The German Social Democrats are coalition partners of the conservative Christian Democrat Union (CDU). The SPD leadership backed Mützenich’s comments. The discussion followed a mid-April decision by the Defense Ministry to replace Germany’s current fleet of Tornado aircraft, some of which are dual-capable with 90 Eurofighter Typhoon and 45 U.S. F-18 fighter aircraft. Thirty of the F-18s would be certified to carry U.S. nuclear weapons. Under nuclear sharing arrangements, NATO allies jointly discuss, plan, and train nuclear missions. According to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey host up to 150 U.S. B-61 nuclear gravity bombs on their territory. These countries, except Turkey, provide their own aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons in times of war. Details of the arrangements remain shrouded in secrecy, but 20 U.S. nuclear weapons are estimated to be deployed at Büchel air base in western Germany.
The Tornado replacement has been controversial for years. Washington has been lobbying Berlin to follow the example of other host nations and buy U.S. F-35 aircraft as the future nuclear weapons carrier.
France prefers a European approach, and it is jointly developing with Germany and Spain the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a sixth-generation fighter aircraft that will have a nuclear capability in the French Air Force. Germany’s selection of the F-18 was thus a political compromise which Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer presented as a “bridge solution” until the FCAS becomes operational after 2040. Germany plans to retire the Tornado between 2025 and 2030.
Kramp-Karrenbauer may have mishandled the process by not sufficiently consulting with SPD members in the parliament. She has conceded that the Bundestag would not need to make a decision until 2022 at the earliest and said that there would thus be “space for a debate” on the dual-capable aircraft decision in the campaign for the September 2021 parliamentary elections and negotiations on a new coalition government thereafter. In a May 7 article in Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, Mützenich took up that invitation, saying that he would like “an open and honest debate about the rationale for nuclear sharing.” Social Democrats “are not calling for the immediate denuclearization of NATO,” but want to discuss the need “to spend billions on the procurement and maintenance of U.S. aircraft whose sole purpose is to drop American nuclear bombs,” he wrote.
Katja Keul, spokeswoman on disarmament policy for the Green party, told Arms Control Today in a May 14 interview that the Greens “do not want to put Germany on a path of continued involvement in technical sharing arrangements by committing to the procurement of a new nuclear-capable aircraft now.” Based on current polls, many expect the Greens to be part of Germany’s next government. Keul, like other proponents of change, separated Germany’s role as a host nation from the continued participation in NATO political bodies associated with nuclear sharing, such as the Nuclear Planning Group. By contrast, those who have argued in favor of preserving the nuclear status quo have often conflated technical and political dimensions of sharing arrangements, equating the end of forward deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons with a denuclearization of the alliance or even the end of deterrence……..
Keul said the Greens want “Germany to push for a new consensus in NATO that would pave the way for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. That would be our plan A.” She cautioned that “because such a consensus will be difficult to achieve, our plan B would be to ask for understanding that Germany will end the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory once the Tornado reaches the end of its lifetime.”……
Like others, Keul believes that “the future of nuclear sharing should certainly be on the agenda of the NATO experts group” established by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at end of March. Kiesewetter agrees that “we need an informed debate, including by experts, on the future of nuclear sharing arrangements.” The group, co-chaired by former U.S. diplomat A. Wess Mitchell and former German Defense Minister Lothar de Maizière, is to discuss NATO’s political role. Heinrich suggested that it would also be “useful if the experts include civil society in their deliberations.”…….https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-06/news/german-politicians-renew-nuclear-basing-debate
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Britain, France, Germany not happy that USA will end waivers for Iran civilian nuclear projects
“We deeply regret the decision by the United States to end the three exemptions for key nuclear projects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including the Arak reactor modernization project,” the statement said.
“These projects, including the Arak reactor modernization project, endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, have served the non-proliferation interests of all and provide the international community with assurances of the exclusively peaceful and safe nature of Iranian nuclear activities,” the three counties said.
Wednesday the United States announced the end of the waivers, which had allowed the continuation of projects related to Iran’s civil nuclear program, even though the Trump administration abandoned the 2015 international plan of action in 2018.
Under the waivers Russian, Chinese and European companies worked on the conversion of Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to civilian purposes and on the transfer of nuclear fuel abroad.
Radiation leak at nuclear research reactor
Germany: Radiation leak detected at research reactor, DW, 17 May 20,
A research reactor near Munich has emitted excess C-14 radiation, says the Bavarian city’s technical university. The “slight” leak late March had shown up Thursday when monthly readings were collated.
Munich’s technical university (TUM) said Saturday a neutron reactor located at Garchingjust north of the metropole was found to have leaked nuclides into the atmosphere “slightly” above the level permitted annually in its license.
Neither human beings nor the surrounding environment had been endangered, said the TUM and Bavaria’s environmental ministry — responsible for oversight.
Monthly figures collated on Thursday had shown an excess in C-14 particles 15% above the permitted yearly level, with the potential to cause “theoretically” a load for the public of 3 Mikrosieverts at the maximum…….
The facility was put on hold on March 17 because of the current pandemic, leaving many scientists unable to glean results for industry and medicine, said Görg.
The FRMII reactor, inaugurated in 2005, remains controversial among organizations like Germany’s branch of Friends of the Earth (BUND) and opposition Greens in Bavaria’s state assembly……. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-radiation-leak-detected-at-research-reactor/a-53467330
As Germany transitions to renewables, massive nuclear cooling towers are demolished
WATCH GERMANY BLOW UP TWO NUCLEAR COOLING TOWERS AS MINISTER SAYS ‘THE FUTURE LIES IN RENEWABLE ENERGIES‘ NEWSWEEK, BY JASON MURDOCK ON 5/15/20 Drone footage shows the moment when two massive cooling towers at a former nuclear power plant in Germany were demolished in a controlled explosion.
Operator EnBW confirmed a demolition at the Philippsburg site, in southwest Germany, was initiated by targeted blasts in lower area of the towers and took place shortly after 6 a.m. yesterday, a scene which lacked spectators due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Officials described the change as being an “important milestone” in the nation’s energy transition, moving it one step closer to a greater reliance on renewables. Germany aims to see all nuclear plant reactors taken offline by the end of 2022.
The Philippsburg power plants’ reactors were previously shuttered in 2011 and 2019 as part of those plans, the Associated Press reported.
According to EnBW, the land will soon be used by TransnetBW, a subsidiary managing the state’s electricity grid, to house a converter that will bring power generated from renewable energies from the north to the south.
“Two relics of the nuclear power era are gone: a visible sign that the nuclear phase-out is progressing in Germany,” tweeted environment minister Svenja Schulze. “The last nuclear power plant will also be switched off by 2022. The future lies in renewable energies that are safer, cheaper and more sustainable.”……..
The Baden-Württemberg ministry explains on its website the move posed challenges for its industrial region, as its energy supply was once 50 percent from nuclear. Officials are now investing in renewable sources, including wind, solar and hydro. ……. https://www.newsweek.com/europe-germany-philippsburg-nuclear-power-cooling-towers-demolition-explosion-video-1504280
South Korea, Germany to bolster ties in transition towards renewable energy
S. Korea, Germany to bolster ties in transition towards renewable energy
The cooperation came as a follow-up to an agreement reached by Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo and German counterpart Peter Altmaier in Berlin last year, in which they vowed to bolster cooperation in the energy segment.
Seoul and Berlin will especially focus efforts on cooperating deeper on their shift towards renewable energy, while phasing out nuclear energy…….
The two countries are both making efforts to reduce their coal-based power generation as well, with Germany planning to break away from the resource by 2038. South Korea also vowed to “significantly reduce” its consumption of coal. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200512003700320?fbclid=IwAR1RpCGPA8_id6MKRdp3q4xHlK6-BjaQOf5lbJL5TIhbKP6kHqekyrZmMagcolin@yna.co.kr
SPD, junior partner in Germany’s coalition government, calls to withdraw US nuclear arms
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Germany: SPD call to withdraw US nuclear arms stokes debate, DW, 4 May 20, The parliamentary leader of the SPD, the junior partner in Germany’s coalition government, has called for US atomic weapons to be withdrawn from the country. But other parties remain opposed to such a move.The presence of US nuclear weapons on German soil is a danger to Germany’s security and should be terminated, according to the parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Rolf Mützenich.
Read more: US military in Germany: What you need to know Mützenich, whose party is junior partner to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc in Germany’s coalition government, told the paper Tagesspiegel am Sonntag that “atomic weapons on German territory do not heighten our security, on the contrary.” “It is time that Germany ruled out their deployment in future,” he added, stressing that such a move would not call Germany’s membership in NATO into question. Read more: US set to upgrade controversial nukes stationed in Germany Changed US nuclear strategy He justified his call largely by referring to the change in US nuclear strategy under President Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s administration saw atomic weapons not solely as deterrents but as weapons of aggression, making the risk of escalation “incalculable.”……. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-spd-call-to-withdraw-us-nuclear-arms-stokes-debate/a-53314883 |
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Bavaria’s renewable capacity growing as nuclear plant shutdown boosts power imports
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Bavaria’s renewable capacity growing as nuclear plant shutdown boosts power imports, 21 Feb 2020, Benjamin Wehrmann, Clean Energy Wire
Power generation with solar panels and bioenergy plants has reached a new record level in Bavaria, the German state’s economy ministry has said. Final data for 2018 showed that solar power production grew by 4.5 percent that year to reach nearly 12 terawatt hours (TWh), while production with bioenergy reached 9.2 TWh, 0.2 percent more than in 2017. “The energy transition is right on our doorstep,” said Bavaria’s economy minister Hubert Aiwanger, adding that the looming solar power support cap had to be removed and new land designated for solar panel installation to ensure that renewables could continue to grow in the state. However, the shutdown of nuclear power plant Gundremmingen B and a particularly dry year in 2018, which substantially reduced hydropower production, meant that Bavaria had to import large volumes of electricity for the first time ever in that year. Gross power production dropped from nearly 85 TWh to just under 74 TWh between 2017 and 2018, meaning that the economic powerhouse state had to import 10 TWh to cover its demand, a situation “that has never existed before,” the ministry says. Aiwanger said the “power generation gap” would grow further once Bavaria’s two remaining nuclear plants go offline at the end of 2021 and 2022, respectively. “The figures show that we all need to pull together to ensure a sustainable energy supply,” Aiwanger said…….. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/bavarias-renewable-capacity-growing-nuclear-plant-shutdown-boosts-power-imports |
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In Germany, gridlock over nuclear-capable fighter jet
“That’s pretty tight,” according to one pilot.
He spoke to DW on condition of anonymity. For the air base, tucked away amid the picturesque plateaus of the Eifel region in western Germany, has a special, secret mission: It is here that American nuclear bombs are stored in what is officially termed a “nuclear sharing agreement.”
In the case of a nuclear strike, German Tornado fighter jets and their crews would deliver the American bombs.
American bombs on German soil
Their location is a state secret. The German government has never officially confirmed the existence of the nuclear bombs in Büchel. The precise number of bombs stored in the underground vaults in the air base is thus unclear; estimates range between 10 to 20.
On the record, the Germany government only admits to being part of the sharing agreement, which dates back to the Cold War and NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy aimed at keeping Soviet influence at bay.
In essence, it provides for member states of the military alliance without nuclear weapons to partake in planning and training for the use of nuclear weapons by NATO and, officials argue, for their views to be taken into account by nuclear-capable countries, including the US. Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy are all part of the sharing agreement.
Upkeep of Tornado fleet skyrocketing
But as Germany’s Tornado fleet is swiftly nearing the end of its shelf life, the cost of maintaining a fleet for the nuclear mission is skyrocketing.
“The increase each year is brutally high,” as one parliamentarian put it.
DW has obtained a copy of an official document from the Ministry of Defense, which puts the expenditure for the Tornado fleet, including maintenance, procurement and development, at €502 million ($562 million) in 2018. This year, the figure is estimated to reach €629 million…………https://www.dw.com/en/in-germany-gridlock-over-nuclear-capable-fighter-jet/a-51897327
Germany To Close All Nuclear Plants By 2022
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, Germany ordered the immediate shutdown of eight of its 17 reactors, and plans to phase out nuclear power plants entirely by 2022.
The Philippsburg 2 reactor near the city of Karlsruhe in southwestern Germany has provided energy for 35 years. The Philippsburg 1 reactor—opened in 1979—was taken offline in 2011.
Over the past few years, nuclear power generation in Germany has been declining with the shutdown of its nuclear plants, while electricity production from renewable sources has been rising.
A government-appointed special commission at Europe’s largest economy announced the conclusions of its months-long review and proposed that Germany shut all its 84 coal-fired power plants by 2038.
Germany, where coal, hard coal, and lignite combined currently provide around 35 percent of power generation, has a longer timetable for phasing out coal than the UK and Italy, for example—who plan their coal exit by 2025—not only because of its vast coal industry, but also because Germany will shut down all its nuclear power plants within the next three years.
The closure of all nuclear reactors in Germany by 2022 means that Germany might need to retain half of its coal-fired power generation until 2030 to offset the nuclear phase-out, German Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier said earlier this year.
Germany’s nuclear phase-out enters final stretch
The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan led to widespread anti-atomic-power protests across Germany. Two months after the accident, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that all plants would be closed over the next decade, making Germany the second country after Italy to shut down all of its atomic energy stations.
The German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) welcomed the news. A BUND spokesman said the group hoped to see the end of nuclear power being “conjured up again and again as a supposed healing charm and climate savior.”
However, Wolfram König, who heads the German government’s office for the nuclear phase-out, warned that the country still faced the great “challenge” of trying to phase out both coal and atomic energy at the same time.https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shuts-down-atomic-plant-as-nuclear-phase-out-enters-final-stretch/a-51845616
Germany’s next nuclear reactor closure on December 31st
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German nuclear exit continues as planned with next reactor to close Dec 31, https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/podcasts/crude/122319-capitol-crude-oil-market-top-geopolitical-risks-2020. Andreas Franke Editor. Dan Lalor — Germany’s planned phasing out of nuclear power will continue with the closure next Tuesday of the 1.5 GW Philippsburg 2, leaving six reactors with a combined 8 GW online for the next 2-3 years. Federal environment minister, Svenja Schulze, said in a statement that the consensus in Germany behind the nuclear phase-out was “rock solid”. The last reactor will close by the end of 2022. “The nuclear exit makes our country safer [as it avoids radioactive waste]…It is important to emphasize in times when some propagate nuclear power as supposed climate savior that it solves no single problem, but creates new problems for a million years,” Schulze said. Germany decided in 2011 amid the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan to immediately close reactors built before 1980 and reverse a planned run-time extension for modern nuclear plants by setting final closure dates. Nuclear operators still had to pay a combined Eur23 billion ($25.6 billion) into a state-run fund for the financing of mid- and long-term nuclear storage in Germany. So far, two modern reactors were shut in 2015 and 2017, with Philippsburg 2 the third reactor to close. The final shutdowns are more concentrated with three reactors set to close in December 2021 and the final three by the end of 2022. |
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Germany must now face up to its nuclear waste problem
Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place 
to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years
By Sheena McKenzie, [excellent diagrams]. CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/30/europe/germany-nuclear-waste-grm-intl/index.html When it comes to the big questions plaguing the world’s scientists, they don’t get much larger than this.
Ben clock towers — of deadly radioactive waste for the next million years?Searching for a nuclear graveyard
Between a rock and a hard place
People power
Former salt mines at Asse and Morsleben, eastern Germany, that were used for low- and medium-level nuclear waste in the 1960s and 1970s, must now be closed in multibillion-dollar operations after failing to meet today’s safety standards.France wants to label nuclear as “green”. Germany will have none of it
Paris, Berlin divided over nuclear’s recognition as green energy https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/france-and-germany-divided-over-nuclears-inclusion-in-eus-green-investment-label/ By Cécile Barbière | EURACTIV.fr | translated by Daniel Eck 27 Nov 19, Disagreement on the inclusion of nuclear power in the EU’s upcoming green finance taxonomy has revived long-standing divisions between France and Germany over the energy transition. EURACTIV France reports.
Franco-German relations have already been strained by French President Emmanuel Macron’s radical comments on NATO’s “brain death,” which attracted strong rebukes in Berlin.
Now, the European Commission’s proposed taxonomy for sustainable finance has emerged as a new bone of contention.
Tabled in 2018, the EU taxonomy aims to determine which economic activities can benefit from a sustainable finance label at European level. The objective is to give clear indications to investors so they can redirect their financing towards environmentally-friendly sectors.
Six pre-defined environmental objectives must be met in order to obtain the label. If any technology seriously undermines one of those goals, it is automatically disqualified.
It is because of this double level of control that nuclear energy failed to win the green label in the European Parliament, until the Council representing EU member states voted to reinstate it in September.
Although nuclear energy largely meets the low-carbon emissions objective, “it was not possible to include nuclear power because there is no scientific evidence for waste treatment. This means that the sector does not meet both requirements,” explained Jochen Krimphoff, WWF’s deputy director for green finance.
Since the beginning of the negotiations on the EU’s taxonomy, France has been pushing to reintroduce nuclear power, much to Germany’s dismay.
“France will advocate that nuclear energy should be part of this eco-label,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire at the conference to replenish the Green Fund at the end of October.
“We cannot succeed in the ecological transition, and we cannot achieve our goal in terms of combating global warming without nuclear energy,” the French minister said.
Although nuclear energy largely meets the low-carbon emissions objective, “it was not possible to include nuclear power because there is no scientific evidence for waste treatment. This means that the sector does not meet both requirements,” explained Jochen Krimphoff, WWF’s deputy director for green finance.
Since the beginning of the negotiations on the EU’s taxonomy, France has been pushing to reintroduce nuclear power, much to Germany’s dismay.
“France will advocate that nuclear energy should be part of this eco-label,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire at the conference to replenish the Green Fund at the end of October.
“We cannot succeed in the ecological transition, and we cannot achieve our goal in terms of combating global warming without nuclear energy,” the French minister said.
The move is all the more surprising given France’s rather progressive positions on the taxonomy. For example, Paris has, like the Commission and Parliament, been calling for the taxonomy to enter into force as early as 2020, while the Council has advocated for implementation in 2023.
For its part, Germany would not be opposed to labeling gas as green. This could be at the risk of a deal that would see both gas and nuclear power re-entering the scheme.
In Germany , renewables replace nuclear and lower emissions simultaneously
Renewables replace nuclear and lower emissions simultaneously Energy Transmission, by Craig Morris, 20 Nov 2019
A myth is haunting the English-speaking world: Germany allegedly shows that emissions rise because renewables can’t replace nuclear – and that France is right to stick with nuclear. What do the data show? Craig Morris reports
It’s not just trolls: Cambridge professors are saying it, and top US journalists are saying it, and a US presidential candidate told it to the New York Times:
“Germany initially set out to close all of its nuclear reactors by 2022, but as a result, they are now likely to miss their emissions reduction targets. And France is now considering options to extend the life of many of its older nuclear power plants.”
— US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson in the New York Times
What’s worse, US policymakers are saying it. Five US states now subsidize nuclear to keep reactors from closing, and it’s possible that all of them have done so based on this incorrect assumption. It happened years ago in New York State with explicit reference to German emissions allegedly rising because of the phase-out, it then happened in Illinois, and as one press report from Ohio put it this year when the new nuclear subsidy was announced:
The experience of Germany was repeatedly used as an example of what might happen in Ohio. Germany decommissioned its nuclear plants in favor of an all-renewable strategy. Electricity prices spiked and carbon pollution spiked, in part because of the ramping up of fossil-fuel plants to compensate for when wind and solar faltered.
“If the studies are correct, the Germans must not know how to do this,” Mr. Randazzo [chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio] said.
“If the studies are correct” indeed: So do Germany and France show that climate change requires nuclear, as Williamson says? Let’s start with France………..
France’s concern is theoretical: they didn’t actually close any reactors and try to replace the power with renewables. Rather, the French left nuclear on, and renewables hardly grew; solar (1.9%) and wind (5.1%) made up a mere 7.5% of French power supply in 2018. (In Germany, solar alone covered 7.7% of demand in 2018, with wind adding another 18.7% for a total of 26.4%). But in Germany, replacing nuclear with renewables isn’t just a postponed political ambition; it’s happening. So what do we know?
Germany emissions during the nuclear phaseout
In 2011, eight of Germany’s 17 reactors were closed. From 2010-2017, emissions in the power sector fell by more than 15%. For 2018, the power sector numbers are not yet in, but emissions from the energy sector fell by nearly two percentage points. And to date in 2019, renewables have nearly reached 50% of power supply. Germany now has some 210 TWh of non-hydro renewable power, far more than the record level of 171 TWh in 2001 for nuclear. Since 2010, renewable power has grown nearly twice as fast as nuclear shrank. Some nine tenths of it is wind and solar alone. Clearly, Germany shows that renewables can reduce emissions during a nuclear phaseout.
At this point, I hear objections. The first: “but Germany is going to miss its 2020 climate target!” Yes, it is expected to reach a 32% emissions reduction, not 40% relative to 1990 (French emissions fell by 15% from 1990-2017 in comparison, albeit from a much lower level thanks to nuclear). But the Germans don’t see the power sector as the main problem. As Deutsche Bank recently put it, “So far, Germany’s efforts… have focused on the electricity sector. However, attention is increasingly shifting towards the transport sector and its steadily rising carbon emissions.” Former Environmental Minister and Christian Democrat Klaus Töpfer recently worded the German consensus well: “We have the highest taxes on electricity although we have reduced emissions there the most.” That’s right: Germany has performed best in the sector where it has removed nuclear and worse in sectors where nuclear plays little or no role: mobility, agriculture, and heat.
The second objection is generally: “Germany would have lowered emissions even more if it had phased out coal, not nuclear.” That’s a fine thing to discuss, but it only moves us from a falsehood (“German phaseout raised emissions”) to revisionist history – not to facts. The revisionist historians act as though renewables would have been built anyway if nuclear remained online. As I wrote in my 50-page paper entitled Can reactors react (2018), the Germans argued a decade ago that renewables were unlikely to be built if nuclear stayed online.
What do the French and German cases show about how much renewable energy gets added when nuclear stays online? The French are also failing to add new nuclear as quickly as its own power company closes old reactors it wishes to keep on. From 2010-2018, wind and solar grew by 27.4 TWh in France, while nuclear shrank by 14.7 TWh (and demand stayed flat). During the same timeframe in Germany, nuclear shrank by 64.6 TWh – but solar and wind alone grew by 91.8 TWh.
The current French situation suggests that, if you remain committed to nuclear, nuclear power nonetheless shrinks; to make matters worse, the growth of renewables struggles to close the gap. Germany suggests that, if you stick with renewables and phase out nuclear, renewables growth outstrips the drop in nuclear nearly twofold, and you reduce emissions by 2 percentage points annually in the power sector. https://energytransition.org/2019/11/renewables-replace-nuclear-and-lower-emissions-simultaneously/
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