Making good on a pledge made after the Fukushima disaster, the German government shut its last remaining nuclear power plants on Saturday. Emsland, Neckarwesthelm II and Isar II were the last operating plants to close after decades of anti-nuclear protests. Unforntunately the end of nuclear power in Germany has seen an increase in the use of fossil fuels and importation of electricity from abroad. Barvaria's conservative governor criticised the move by socialist Chancellor Olaf Schultz. Schultz extended the deadline for closure once after fuel prices spiked when Putin invaded Ukraine. James Hansen, a US climate scientist urged in a letter to Schultz to keep the plants running.
Closing the plants will make the search for alternative fuels more intense as Germany plans to be carbon neutral by 2045.
New nuclear power plants have continued to run into schedule delays and cost overruns. Hinkley Point C in Sommerset, United Kingdom is an example. That facility, if it is completed, will provide 7%s of the UKs electrical generation. The country intends to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Despite the confidence the UK places in nuclear power, many countries have stopped building them due to high costs. Hinkley C is projected to cost $30 billion, but is already $8 billion over budget and has suffered delays due to labor shortages and supply chain issues. France's Flamanville 3, similar to Hinkley Point C, is several times over its original budget and has experienced several schedule setbacks. Georgia's Vogtle facility began operations this year in Reactor 3, but only after its original builder, Westinghouse, went bankrupt. Reactor 3 was expected to begin comercial production by 2016. Reactor 4 is expected to come on-line in 2024. The original cost estimate for 3 and 4 was $14 billion; the estimate is now more than $30 billion.
[photo credit AP: Neckarwesthelm II]
Faced with such daunting intial capital investments, private companies have turned away from large scale nuclear plants, and there is little public support for governments to become involved. In contrast, renewable sources that cost much less doubled in capacity worldwide between 2020 and 2021. The share of worldwide nuclear powered electricity production has dropped to 9.8%, down from its peak of 40% in 1996.
Germany now faces expensive decommissioning and the unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal accumulated during 62 years of operations, as does the United States, Japan and others. NIMBY problems abound, but the German government says the energy once provided by fission can be replaced with sustainable forms of energy production.
