The Decission was made long before Fukushima on the 14. 06. 2000. Th plan was to push for renewables and gas (because Schröder and Putin are friends probably). Then the conservatives under Merkel slowed down the transition and extended the runningtime for reactors for 10 to 14 years. Then Fukushima hit and a state elacion was up where the antinuclear greens now polled high. So Merkel axed nuclear energy (as it was planed from the beginning) in hope to get some votes.
Continuning nuclear was never really an optin for the last 20 years. Germany should have build new nuclear powerplants in the last 20 years but now all closed reactors should be closed due to their age anyway and new ones would be to expencive and would take 10 years so the wouldn’t help with the transition.
You could go even further back, the decision to not build any new reactors was made in 1986 by the conservatives. Not building new reactors means phasing them out in the long term.
While not written into law back then, 1986 was the actual year where the end of nuclear energy was decided in Germany.
It’s so irritating so see people argue in favour of nuclear energy with arguments that are based on events from 2011 (Fukushima) or from last two years. Thinking it was a recent decision related to some recent events. The recent events even caused the opposite - the nuclear reactors ran longer. Due to French reactor issues and the war in Ukraine, Germany agreed to not shut them off last year.
The Decission was made long before Fukushima on the 14. 06. 2000. Th plan was to push for renewables and gas (because Schröder and Putin are friends probably). Then the conservatives under Merkel slowed down the transition and extended the runningtime for reactors for 10 to 14 years. Then Fukushima hit and a state elacion was up where the antinuclear greens now polled high. So Merkel axed nuclear energy (as it was planed from the beginning) in hope to get some votes.
Continuning nuclear was never really an optin for the last 20 years. Germany should have build new nuclear powerplants in the last 20 years but now all closed reactors should be closed due to their age anyway and new ones would be to expencive and would take 10 years so the wouldn’t help with the transition.
You could go even further back, the decision to not build any new reactors was made in 1986 by the conservatives. Not building new reactors means phasing them out in the long term.
While not written into law back then, 1986 was the actual year where the end of nuclear energy was decided in Germany.
It’s so irritating so see people argue in favour of nuclear energy with arguments that are based on events from 2011 (Fukushima) or from last two years. Thinking it was a recent decision related to some recent events. The recent events even caused the opposite - the nuclear reactors ran longer. Due to French reactor issues and the war in Ukraine, Germany agreed to not shut them off last year.