GEAB Summer 2024

In Europe, nuclear power, as a viable energy source for the future, divides opinion sharply in a political and societal battle over whether it should be maintained, developed or dismantled.  States such as Germany and France (both major European players) have completely opposing positions.

• Two behemoths to form an Energy Union in Europe. Extracts from GEAB 132, 02/2019 :

(…) In a statement on 22 January, the German Minister of Energy, Peter Altmaier, associated his country’s phasing out of the coal era with an accompanying exit from the nuclear era (‘both nuclear and coal power in parallel’)… In our opinion, this was the issue behind that strange French warning shot of 7 February.

Since last year, we have been anticipating a come-back of nuclear energy into favour – de facto compatible with the climate agenda. And there is obviously no question of France allowing Germany to position itself as a European gas hub, if gas becomes the only source of energy on the continent (apart from renewable energies). What the French have in mind, then, is a Franco-German engine for the Energy Union where Germany distributes gas and France distributes nuclear energy. Let’s bet that we will no longer read any German minister’s utterance putting together coal and nuclear power!

The small revenge of nuclear power in Europe

In 2002, the German Nuclear Energy Act (Atomgesetz) was amended to state that Germany would phase out nuclear power by 2050, a process that was accelerated after the Fukushima accident in March 2011[1], with the last three power stations definitively shut down in April 2023[2]. The coalition government has firmly rejected any idea of keeping the last three plants active[3] (which would be tantamount to reopening them), even though the current German Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for the Economy and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, is the subject of a parliamentary debate into the falsification of documents to hasten the nuclear phase-out[4].