Nuclear power in Germany
overview of nuclear power in Germany
Nuclear power was used in Germany from the 1960s until it was fully phased out in April 2023.
German nuclear power began with research reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, with the first commercial plant coming online in 1969. By 1990, nuclear power accounted for about a quarter of the electricity produced in the country. Nuclear power accounted for 13.3% of German electricity supply in 2021, supplied by six power plants. Three of these were switched off at the end of 2021, and the other three ceased operations by April 2023.
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s and intensified following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. After the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and subsequent anti-nuclear protests, the government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Eight of the 17 operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima.
While nuclear power was gradually phased out of the German power mix, Germany increased its use of fossil fuel energy by 7% over the period 2002–2022, with a massive increase in usage of natural gas and only modest reductions of coal power and oil power. By some estimates, Germany could have achieved a 73% reduction in its carbon emissions by retaining nuclear power during the period 2002–2022 and could have saved €696 billion on its energy transition.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nuclear power in Germany” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.