Atomic 'angst' over? Germany closes last nuclear plants to cheers and groans

Proponents of the nuclear energy shutdown assembled in Neckarwestheim, where one of the affected power stations are set to be taken off the grid.

"For us, it is a good result that after 42 years it is being shut down," Dieter Kaiser, an anti-nuclear protestor, said moments before organisers pulled a symbolic plug out of nuclear power and inserted it into a solar power source.

"I never dreamed that it would come to this," Kaiser added.

The planned shutdown did not solely spark positive reactions, with pro-nuclear energy demonstrators arguing against the end of nuclear power in Germany, stating the supply volatility and higher costs of renewables as a possible danger to the output of Europe's largest economy.

"We do not have wind and the sun available 24/7," a female protester said.

Others worried nuclear would be replaced by more fossil fuels to fill the energy gap.

The government says supply is guaranteed after the nuclear phase-out and that Germany will still export electricity, citing high gas storage levels, new liquid gas terminals on the north coast and renewable energies expansion.

Following years of prevaricating, Germany pledged to quit nuclear power definitively after Japan's 2011 Fukushima disaster sent radiation spewing into the air and terrifying the world.

But the final wind-down was delayed from last summer to this year after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine prompted Germany to halt Russian fossil fuel imports.

Prices soared and there were fears of energy shortages around the world.

The last three plants contributed only around 5% of electricity production in Germany in the first three months of the year, according to the economy ministry.

And nuclear power made up just 6% of Germany's energy production last year, compared to 44% from renewables, data by the federal statistics office showed.

Still, two-thirds of Germans favour extending the lifespan of reactors or connecting old plants back to the grid, with only 28% backing the phase-out, a survey by the Forsa Institute showed earlier this week.

With the end of the atomic power era, Germany has to find a permanent repository for around 1,900 highly radioactive casks of nuclear waste by 2031.

The government also acknowledges that safety issues remain given that neighbours France and Switzerland still depend heavily on nuclear power.

One man's long battle to end nuclear power in Germany as the last plants shut down

Germany pulled the plug on its last three nuclear power stations on Saturday, ending a six-decade program that spawned one of Europe's strongest protest movements but saw a brief reprieve due to the Ukraine war.

The smoking towers of Isar II, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II reactors were to shut forever by midnight on Saturday as Berlin enacts its plan for fully-renewable electricity generation by 2035.

Heinz Smital was a 24 years-old nuclear physics researcher at the Radium Research and Nuclear Physics Institute at the University of Vienna when he first saw how far nuclear contamination could spread after a reactor accident.

A few days after the Chornobyl disaster in 1986, he took a damp cloth out of a window to sample Vienna's air and was shocked by how many radionuclides could be seen under a microscope.

Smital, now 61, said the shut-down in Germany was a 'great joy' after his lifelong activism for Germany to phase out nuclear power, a goal that was finally achieved almost 40 years later this Saturday.

"In the future people will still have to study physics, nuclear physics, and then retire and the nuclear waste problem will still not be solved. And they will gain nothing at all in terms of electricity production. And there are also many other problems caused by nuclear energy. I will continue to monitor things. But today is a day to celebrate," a beaming Smital said at a celebration at Brandenburg Gate.

Germany ended a six-decade programme that spawned one of Europe's strongest protest movements and gave birth to Germany's third biggest party that is governing Berlin today, the Greens.

"If Germany powers down today, it can be seen as a very important step. Germany was massively involved in nuclear energy and built many different nuclear reactors. Heavy water reactors, fast breeder reactors, high-temperature reactors, and many light water reactors, of which are now going off the grid. This is a good, good day for Germany and also a good day for climate protection."

In 2011 Germany closed the Unterweser reactor, after Japan's Fukushima disaster.

"The radiation tests I did in Fukushima were a very difficult time for me. For example, I spent a lot of time at children's playgrounds and saw that water runs down in hollows where there are swings, for example, and that there is a particularly high level of exposure at those particular spots. The playgrounds were not closed. Children were grabbing the soil with their hands and putting it in their mouths. You felt very, very helpless. I was always very burdened, whenever I was driving back from there, emotionally burdened," Smital said.

Former Chancellor Merkel responded with uncharacteristic speed to the Japan crisis and did what no other leader of a Western power had done, passing a final nuclear exit law by 2022. 

Images of about 50,000 anti-nuclear protesters forming a 45-km (27-mile) human chain in a pre-planned protest between the state capital Stuttgart and Neckarwestheim power plant just a day after Japan's disaster made an impression on the chancellor and partially pushed her to suspend her nuclear policy.

Smital who attended at least 50 protests was also part of that chain.

The movement which crystallised in the 1970s with protests against Wyhl nuclear power plant in western Germany also benefited from the history of a country that was divided during the Cold War, with constant concerns among Germans that their land could become a battlefield between the two camps, experts say.

Moving from street protests to organised political work with the establishment of the Greens party in 1980 the movement gained more power. The first nuclear phase-out law was introduced by a Greens-coalition government in 2002.

On Saturday afternoon Smital stood at Berlin's Brandenburger Tor, celebrating the closure of a six decades chapter of disputed power.

For Smital, the nuclear power exit does not mean the end of his anti-nuclear activism.

"We have a uranium fuel element factory in Germany ... We have uranium enrichment So there is still a lot that needs to be discussed here and I will be on the street a lot ... Very gladly," he said.

On what the next generation needs to do, Smital said he was sorry young climate activists were being vilified.

"So we are in an emergency crisis and I don't think society is paying enough attention to that. When people go on strike for their gain and everything gets cancelled people say: that's okay. Do you want 500 euros more? Yes, of course. When young people fight to preserve the basis of life on the planet, they are quickly put in an extremist corner. I think that is very unfair. I think they should be allowed to act freely and go down their path," Smital said.

"There certainly will be mistakes, but in essence, the path is the right one."

Reuters