1 year ago
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The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities will be celebrating with German counterparts when the last German nuclear reactor closes on Saturday (15 April).
The three remaining reactors, Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2, and Emsland will be powered down for the final time tomorrow, after a temporary operational extension granted last Autumn by the coalition government. They were originally scheduled for closure at the end of 2022, but anxieties over national energy supplies, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian gas, led to the granting of a temporary reprieve.
The closures represent the conclusion of the phase-out from nuclear power first initiated by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
Anti-nuclear activists will be holding celebratory events outside the plants and elsewhere across the nation.
Responding to the news, Councillor Lawrence O’Neill, Chair of the UK/Ireland NFLA, said: “The NFLA would like to send our warmest congratulations to anti-nuclear colleagues in Germany, especially amongst our partners in Cities for a Nuclear Free Europe, for their efforts over many years in achieving this milestone. In the UK, we still have some way to go, but we remain optimistic that we shall also get there.”
Commenting Cities for Nuclear Free Europe Chairman and Vienna’s Executive City Councillor Jürgen Czernohorszky said: “We believe Germany has taken an important step. It is based on reason and facts and demonstrates that a mayor industrial country has no need for nuclear energy, with all its costs and hazards. We hope that more countries will follow Germany’s example to achieve the ultimate goal of a nuclear free Europe.”
Councillor O’Neill is clear that the Germany’s future energy needs to be based on renewables: “Nuclear plants are too expensive and too slow to build and rely on uncertain and unreliable reactor technologies. Their legacy is environmental contamination, cancer clusters and toxic radioactive waste. And the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated all too clearly the vulnerability of European nuclear power plants to attack, and their continued dependence on Russian uranium. And we are with Greta Thunberg in arguing that coal or gas is not the answer as it will simply exacerbate and accelerate the climate crisis.
“German Chancellor Scholz has spoken of the need to build four-to-five onshore wind turbines a day by 2030 to meet the country’s renewable energy needs. But this is only one renewable energy technology that can deployed amongst many to generate electricity and heat more cheaply and sustainably, and without the need to resort to going cap-in-hand to despots for uranium or gas.
“We wish our German colleagues well in creating their renewable future. Auf Wiedersehen Atomkraft!”
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For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email on richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk or mobile 07583097793
