One year of nuclear power plant shutdown – why horror scenarios didn’t materialize

A year ago, the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were taken offline. The energy market has coped with this without any noticeable disruption – despite some warnings. How did that succeed?

Some celebrated, others spoke of a wrong decision. On April 15 last year, the last three German nuclear power plants were taken offline. Even now, a year later, the reviews are quite different.

Julia Verlinden, deputy leader of the Green Party parliamentary group, calls it a right step that the last German nuclear power plants have been shut down. “Many people have worked for decades to ensure that we finally have a safe and clean energy supply.”

The expert for energy and climate protection in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Andreas Jung, sees it completely differently: “The decision to shut down the last three nuclear power plants in the middle of the energy crisis was wrong. Because it was and is important to mobilize all possibilities for energy production .”

Less consumption, more renewables

In 2022, the last three German nuclear power plants still accounted for around six percent of local electricity production. Comparatively cheap and stable. This amount of electricity has no longer been available since the shutdown. But there have been no disruptions in the electricity market.

Lion Hirth, an energy policy expert at the Hertie School Berlin, sees several reasons for this: “On the one hand, the nuclear phase-out happened gradually. We have taken more and more blocks off the grid since 2011. And last year there were only the three remaining. “

As a result, the gap was no longer as big, says Hirth. “And this gap has been filled, on the one hand, because electricity consumption has decreased, and on the other hand, because we have produced more electricity from renewable energy sources. In particular, wind energy.”

A few things are particularly noticeable in the 2023 electricity market: On the one hand, electricity consumption fell by around five percent due to the recession. That alone would have almost filled the nuclear gap. On the other hand, there were price-related shifts in the German and European power plant mix.

Gas-fired power plants replaced coal-fired plants as gas prices were again significantly lower than in 2022 – after the Russian attack on Ukraine. In addition, due to favorable weather conditions, wind power plants in Germany were running at full speed and the expansion of solar systems made significant progress. That also meant fewer greenhouse gases overall.

Last year, for the first time in a long time, Germany purchased more electricity from abroad than it sold abroad. A good half of this came from renewables, the other part mainly from nuclear, coal and gas power plants.

“No longer necessary for system reasons”

Hans-Jürgen Brick, head of the transmission system operator Amprion, expects the need for electricity imports in Germany to increase in the medium term due to the energy transition. However, the networks are not at risk because of the nuclear power plant shutdown.

The energy industry environment has now relaxed again after the energy crisis in 2022. “Especially because of the greater availability of nuclear power plants in France but also because of the LNG issue, we are now at the point where we can say: These nuclear power plants were no longer necessary for system reasons,” said Brick. It was therefore possible to switch them off without affecting system stability.

The relaxation on the energy markets has also ensured that electricity prices have now fallen again. According to energy expert Lion Hirth, continuing to operate the nuclear power plants would have had only minor effects: “The nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build new, but incredibly cheap once they are up and running. It costs practically nothing to produce electricity from nuclear power plants.” If you switch off such systems, you tend to have a price effect, says Hirth. “However, this effect is so small that I don’t think it can really be measured.”

A word of power was necessary

Within the traffic light coalition, the FDP in particular had pushed for the nuclear power plants to continue running, which caused heated arguments within the coalition. Chancellor Scholz ended this with reference to his directive authority: The nuclear power plants should run a little longer than originally planned in order to be able to use them in the winter of 2022/23. But it should end by April 15, 2023 at the latest, said Scholz in a letter to the FDP and Greens ministers involved.

FDP parliamentary group vice-president Lukas Köhler assesses the phase-out today as follows: “The old nuclear power plants could have been allowed to continue running with the aim of first getting out of coal and then getting out of nuclear power plants. Germany has decided on a different path.”

challenges remain huge

After the end of nuclear power plants, the federal government is now pursuing the goal of gradually phasing out the use of coal-fired power plants – “ideally” this should be achieved by 2030, as the coalition agreement states.

However, this requires renewables to be expanded much more quickly than before. And the Ministry of Economic Affairs wants to put the construction of new, hydrogen-capable gas power plants out to tender in order to compensate for gaps and weather-related fluctuations in the electricity supply.

The federal government wants to provide up to 16 billion euros in funding for this. However, many in the energy industry already consider the schedule for the new gas power plants to be very ambitious. The nuclear power plants have been offline for a year – the challenges for the energy transition remain huge.