Nuclear power continues to pose a high safety risk. Tomorrow’s anniversary of the disaster in Fukushima, Japan, reminds us that contamination and thus damage to health and the environment can never be ruled out. And the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant show that nuclear facilities can also be used as geopolitical weapons.
On April 15, 2023, Germany’s last nuclear reactors, Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland, will have to shut down. On that day, Germany’s nuclear phase-out, which began with an agreement by the red-green government in 2000, will end. This is right and consistent.
The legacy of nuclear power will burden us and the generations that follow us, because it will take decades to dismantle the nuclear power plants and the search is still on for a suitable site for a final repository for Germany’s nuclear waste.
Nuclear power is no longer important for the supply situation in Germany, and the three remaining reactors could not contribute to the gas crisis in recent months because they do not generate heat and cannot be used flexibly.
Nuclear power is not reliable. This has recently been proven by the immense outages of French nuclear power plants. The EU’s high dependence on Russian uranium imports is also more than questionable and should be ended as soon as possible. We therefore want the phase-out of nuclear power, which has already been completed in some European countries, to become a model for others. The future belongs to renewable energies!