Germany’s Exit from Nuclear Energy: A Cautionary Tale

(Unsplash)

A month ago, Germany pulled the plug on its three remaining nuclear power plants, putting an end to nuclear power in the country after more than half a century of supplying the country with clean energy. At its peak in 2011, roughly a quarter of Germany’s energy was supplied via nuclear power, helping the country offset its rather large reliance on coal and natural gas. Originally, its nuclear power plants were expected to go offline in 2022; however, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent shutoff of natural gas supplies from Russia, the German government decided to keep the remaining three plants operational until April of 2023 to offset the energy shock. The German government stated that the decision to denuclearize will have little to no effect in terms of the country’s energy supply and will help Germany become “safer” and allow for expanded investments into sustainable energy sources.

The decision to denuclearize has been met with a lot of criticism from both experts and the public as polls demonstrated in 2022 that a majority of Germans were against the immediate shutdown of nuclear power as energy security became increasingly uncertain. Additionally, many experts have called this decision hypocritical as Germany will continue to import nuclear energy from neighbouring countries like France and Belgium, calling the decision to denuclearize an “absolutely political decision”. In light of the controversy, Germany has doubled down on its commitment to ensure that the country will meet its energy transition goals of becoming greenhouse gas neutral by 2045 and cutting its emission levels by at least 65% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels by boosting investment and financial support into energy transition technologies. However, given that Russia is no longer supplying gas to Germany, this decision will likely result in the increased use of fossil fuels within the country.

Denuclearization has become an increasingly popular debate amongst many countries in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that occurred in 2011. The primary concern that has been vocalized is regarding the safety of nuclear power and how such accidents will be catastrophic to the environment and cause mass human suffering. However, I think these concerns are largely blown out of proportion and there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to nuclear power.

When people discuss the dangers of nuclear energy, three main events are brought up: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. These disasters have undoubtedly caused mass environmental damage along with human suffering; however, if we look a little closer into what caused these accidents, none of them were caused by nuclear energy itself but due to human error and natural disasters. Investigations into the Chernobyl accident revealed that the main cause of the accident was a combination of flawed reactor design along with inadequate personnel training. A similar result can be drawn from the Three Mile Island accident as a combination of equipment malfunction and the lack of adequate training caused a meltdown of one of the reactors. Despite the severity of the accident, the meltdown resulted in zero deaths and the little radiation released into the atmosphere had little to no direct health effects on those living near the plant. Research and studies have been conducted for decades to determine the lasting effects of the accident; however, no evidence was found of lasting health impact on humans or the surrounding environment. Ever since these two accidents, training and safeguards for nuclear power plants have been drastically improved and no human error-related accidents have happened since, making nuclear power one of the safest energy generation sources to date.

Another discussion point against nuclear power is waste generated from power plants. It is true that nuclear waste is hazardous to human health and often remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years; however, that being said nuclear disposal and recycling have advanced significantly in the past years where it poses very little risk to humans. For context, in 2021 more than 50 million tons of hazardous waste was discarded around the world, of that, nuclear waste consisted of only 400 thousand tons, which a third has been reprocessed and used for nuclear fuel. Additionally, of that 400 thousand tons, 97% of it is classified as low or intermediate level waste, which can be disposed of safely at near-surface repositories with proper isolation. In countries like France where spent fuel is reprocessed, only 0.2% of all nuclear fuel is considered high-level waste that requires long term storage. Additionally, with technological developments of breeder reactors reaching maturity, this will further help reduce nuclear waste as these reactors use nuclear waste to generate power. Furthermore, long term nuclear waste storage sites have become increasingly common in countries like Finland, Sweden, and the United States where nuclear waste can be stored hundreds of meters underground far removed from civilization and poses little to no harm to the environment.

(Statista)

Lastly, I want to present this graph to show just how safe nuclear power is compared to conventional fuel sources. This graph shows the mortality rate from accidents and air pollution per unit of electricity generated worldwide. For every terawatt-hour produced by coal, 33 people perish, while oil is responsible for 18 deaths per terawatt-hour. In 2021 a groundbreaking study revealed that fossil fuels were responsible for one in every five deaths worldwide, resulting in over eight million deaths every year due to fossil fuel emissions. Additionally, the deaths have been disproportionately allocated to countries where coal and oil-powered power plants are the dominant source of energy such as India and China. Overall, 30% of adult deaths in Eastern Asia are attributed to pollution from fossil fuels. Not only do fossil fuels have an immense toll on human health, it is becoming extremely expensive to deal with. It is estimated that pollution from fossil fuels have cost the average American $2,500 a year in extra medical bills. On a global scale, fossil fuel-related health damages have amassed to $8.1 trillion or 6.1% of global GDP. Nuclear power on the other hand produces zero carbon emissions and there have been no reported deaths or health complications due to pollution caused by nuclear power generation.

The excuse that nuclear power is unsafe and is far more dangerous than conventional fuel sources is simply a false statement. In the 70 years that nuclear power plants have been operational, with a total of 667 nuclear power plants across the world, the combined loss of life directly due to nuclear accidents sits below a hundred people.

(Statista)

As nuclear technologies have proliferated and evolved in recent years, nuclear power has become even safer than ever before. While it is impossible to reverse Germany’s decision to denuclearize, it should be noted that nuclear power is not some gamble we take for the sake of producing energy; it demonstrates the feat of scientific advancement and engineering prowess that humans are capable of. I truly believe that decisions to denuclearize are often misrepresented and that nuclear power has an important role to play in our pursuit to a carbon-neutral future.