A decade ago, Japan faced the biggest catastrophe in its history, after the explosion of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A tsunami caused by an 8.9 scale earthquake killed 18,000 people and hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant, 260 kilometers from Tokyo, forcing the evacuation of 160,000 people who lived in the vicinity.
The tragedy shocked the world and led leaders to rethink the use of nuclear energy, even though the Fukushima case involved peculiarities that do not necessarily apply to the rest of the planet (starting with Japan’s known vulnerability to this type of natural disaster). Under then Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany decreed it would close all its nuclear plants – a radical transformation in a country that, months before the disaster, had pledged to keep the plants running. This was followed by the decision to shut down eight reactors, while the remaining nine would be shut down in the next decade.
The turn of 2021 to 2022 marked the end of three of the six plants in operation: Gundremmingen, Brokdorf and Grohnde. At the time of closure, even though it had already been partially deactivated, the Gundremmingen plant was still producing around 10 billion kilowatts of energy a year, enough to supply the entire Munich metropolitan area. In an interview with the international press, the owner of an inn in the region said that the plant is “as much part of the village as the church”, while the mayor warned that it will take at least 50 years to remove all radioactive waste from the site after deactivation. from the plant. The German government does not yet know where the nuclear waste will be stored in the long term.
According to the German research institute Fraunhofer, renewable energies accounted for more than 50% of Germany’s energy supply in 2020 – twice as much as ten years ago. It so happens that, in parallel with the plan to close the nuclear plants, there is also the intention to close the coal plants by 2038, announced in 2019 by the country, which is the world’s largest producer of lignite. And, for Germany to completely free itself from this product, it is necessary that renewable energies – such as wind, solar, hydro, among others – constitute at least 65% of its energy matrix.
Although some experts point out that the role of nuclear energy has been offset by the expansion of these sources, the truth is that the country installed only 1.65 gigawatts of wind farms last year, and to meet the government’s goal, “only” is missing. 9.8 gigawatts a year – which is far from an easy-to-execute plan. Due to the risks of damage to the landscape, the construction of wind farms faces resistance from local residents. It is also worth remembering that wind-powered plants cannot be built anywhere and that the last six nuclear plants will have to be replaced by more than 8,000 wind turbines or 4 million solar panels to handle the supply.
On the occasion of the closing of Gundremmingen, Brokdorf and Grohnde at the end of last year, a editorial from The Wall Street Journal gave the scale of the problem when recalling that, at the time of the Fukushima disaster, “more enlightened minds warned that the decision of the then Chancellor Angela Merkel was a mistake that would force Europe’s largest economy to depend on of fossil fuels like lignite, an especially dirty form of coal. Which is exactly what happened”. More than that: according to the German think tank Agora Energiewende, gas emissions from electricity generation in the country increased in the first half of 2021 by a quarter, or 21 million tons.
There were those who said that the reason for the increase would be the country’s growth in post-pandemic recovery, but environmentalist Michael Shellenberger questions this hypothesis. “Wind generation produced just 46.8 terawatt hours in the first six months of 2021, more than a quarter less than the 59.4 TWh produced in the first half of 2020,” he wrote The specialist. The consequences were felt not only by the environment, but by the pockets of the Germans.
“Meanwhile, Germany is shutting down nuclear plants this year and next, which will result in more use of coal and natural gas and therefore increase carbon emissions. Of the 56% of German electricity that came from carbon-free sources in 2020, 24% overall came from nuclear, hydro and biomass power plants, which are much more reliable than solar and wind power. Analysts say the closure of nuclear power plants is directly responsible for rising electricity prices. Germany has the most expensive electricity in Europe and strong wind power Denmark has the second most. In the first half of 2020, electricity prices in Germany were 43% higher than the European average,” Shellenberger wrote in June 2020. 2021. “Germany’s rising emissions and electricity costs dramatically illustrate that modern nations cannot rely on climate-dependent sources to fuel their economies,” argues the expert.
Between Russian gas and the war with Ukraine
In addition to the environmental and economic issue, the WSJ editorial also warned of the second problem that emerges from the hasty energy transformation: “Without nuclear energy, Germany is also more dependent on Russian natural gas, a deep geopolitical vulnerability that gives strength to the authoritarian government of Russia”.
Cutting through the Baltic Sea, the prime example of this complex relationship is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which transports natural gas between western Russia and northeastern Germany. Together with Nord Stream 1, it is responsible for shipping 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Germany every year. Completed in September 2021, Nord Stream 2 cost 9.5 billion euros and is the world’s largest subsea gas pipeline, which has not yet been operational due to bureaucratic issues between the two countries. With the closure of nuclear plants and the failure of wind power, Germany is almost completely dependent on gas imports – and it is Russia that provides half of this demand.
There were not few warnings: the United States and other Western countries warned Merkel of the excessive dependence that the country would have on Putin’s nation, which could use construction as a bargaining tool in its expansionist disputes. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the entities involved in the project, which have already been withdrawn by the government of Joe Biden, which does not want to harm relations with Berlin. In recent weeks, the German government has surprised by indicating that it would consider sanctions on the pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine.
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