Germany’s decision to shut down all its nuclear power plants was a “huge mistake” and has come at a high cost to the economy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Dessau. “It was a serious strategic mistake to phase out nuclear energy … we simply don’t have enough energy generation capacity,” he said.
“To have acceptable market prices for energy production again, we would have to permanently subsidise energy prices from the federal budget,” he noted, adding: “We can’t do this in the long run.”
Germany’s nuclear phaseout plan was adopted in 2000 but was accelerated following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 by the government then led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. The policy aimed sought to speed up Energiewende (energy turnaround) by focusing on renewables.
Germany progressively shut down its nuclear fleet and concluded in April 2023 with closure of the final three reactors – Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2 – ending some 60 years of nuclear electricity generation.
Merz said Germany should at least have retained its last remaining nuclear capacity during that period. “If you are going to do it, you should at least have left the last remaining nuclear power plant in Germany on the grid three years ago, so that you at least have the electricity generation capacity that we had up until then,” he said. “So we are now undertaking the most expensive energy transition in the entire world,” he said. “I know of no other country that makes things so expensive and difficult as Germany.”
“We inherited something that we now have to correct,” he said, adding: “But we simply don’t have enough energy generation capacity.”
Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has proposed examining whether the most recently shut reactors could be technically reactivated and has expressed support for advanced nuclear technologies, without presenting a concrete plan to restart plants. the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is growing in strength, has been among the strongest advocates for restarting nuclear capacity. However, the Greens remain firmly opposed and consider the phase-out irreversible.
Merz announced that “power plants are to be built,” and “all the necessary documents have been exchanged” to begin construction of new NPPs, most likely on the old sites.
