Germany’s citizenry now no longer lives with the threat of a nuclear accident happening within its own borders. But five of the nine states – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Czech Republic – along its periphery host nuclear power plants. And Germans, many of whom still remember the radioactive cloud from the Chernobyl meltdown wafting over central Europe in the spring of 1986, know that a mishap at one of these aging stations would imperil them as well. Paul Hockenos reports.
The safety of nuclear power has long been a thorny topic for post-war allies (and EU leaders) France and Germany. Even though its complete withdrawal from nuclear power happened, finally, on 15 April 2023, a majority of the German population in the late 1980s agreed that its product was not worth the danger that nuclear reactions posed. As of 2000, Germany began a gradual climb down from the 17 nuclear plants on its territory, and in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel expedited the process in light of the meltdowns at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma.
France, on the other hand, underwent no such anti-nuclear epiphany and maintained its position as one of the world’s leading nuclear nations. Since the mid-1980s, France’s foremost source of electricity is nuclear power, and in 2022, its electricity system’s proportion of nuclear-generated power was still the highest in the world: 63%, despite a clear drop from a 72% share in 2018. The issue has harried French–German relations for years; the Germans (and Swiss) worried, above all, about the 42-year-old Fessenheim site on the French border with Germany and Switzerland, near Freiburg in southwestern Germany. While France finally shut down the Fessenheim plant in 2020, it today still has 56 nuclear reactors, distributed on 18 sites. Moreover, France’s president Emanuel Macron has underscored that he envisions nuclear power being a pillar of the French energy system for decades to come.
One of the issues that sets Germans on edge is that the French fleet is a particularly old one – and thus more likely to breakdown. The average age of the French reactors is 38.6 years as of January 2024, which is the twilight of a reactor’s lifespan. France had intended to shut down each reactor by its fortieth birthday, but since no new French plants have come online in decades, Macron now says that the government intends to extend their operating life – as long as possible. ‘It will be done in ten-year stages. We are going to work on the stage which will allow us to go first from 50 to 60 years, then beyond 60 years,’ Agnès Pannier-Runacher, France’s energy transition minister, explained. That U-turn makes 38.6-year-old reactors middle aged rather than retirement ready.
The perils of the aging French fleet raced into focus when corrosion and cracks prompted the shutdown of up to 32 reactors in 2022 – more than half of all French reactors. In addition, the state-owned utility Électricité de France (EDF) was forced, in the summer, to cut production at several more nuclear power plants as the Rhône and Garonne rivers became too warm to cool the reactors sufficiently.
A second front of France’s nuclear strategy is six full-sized new nuclear reactors, with an option for another eight in the future, and a small advanced reactor, which should be built, supposedly, by 2030.
Beyond France
But France isn’t the only borderland splitting atoms for the purpose of energy generation. Belgium now has five geriatric reactors, after shutting down two in Wallonia this year. The plan had been a full nuclear exit by 2025, which the German government greeted with applause. Now, however, those plans are on ice; like France, the Belgian federal government has agreed with French operator Engie on a ten years lifetime extension of two remaining reactors until 2035.
Proceeding clockwise, the Netherlands has one reactor (and no plans to shut it down), and the Czech Republic boasts six reactors – and intends to construct more. Poland is not a nuclear power – but wants to be one. And Hungary and Slovakia, while not directly bordering Germany, lie close by, and both have nuclear power and want to expand their current programmes.
Brawl
The showdown, led by France and Germany on opposing sides, has now engulfed the entire EU – with Member States lining up behind one or the other. France has cobbled together an alliance of 11 pro-nuclear countries within the EU that wanted to include nuclear in the new green industry support plan. Germany, Austria and Italy are foremost among the other non-nuclear countries who oppose it: the finance, they agree, would be much better spent on renewables, smart grid, electric vehicles infrastructure, heat pumps and storage.
The irony is that, most probably, none of the planned new reactors will ever be built. ‘The construction of new nuclear plants has always turned into an economic fiasco — whether in France, Great Britain or Finland,’ noted Germany’s energy and climate protection minister Robert Habeck. Since the late 1990s, only one new reactor has come online in the EU: in Finland. Others, like Slovakia’s two reactors at Mochovce, have been under construction since 1987.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union.