From CBC.ca – May 30, 2011

by Associated Press

Germany’s coalition government decided early Monday to shut down all of
the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022, a policy change prompted by
Japan’s nuclear disaster, the environment minister said.

Meanwhile, the country’s seven oldest reactors taken off the grid
pending safety inspections following the catastrophe at Japan’s
Fukushima nuclear power plant in March will remain offline permanently,
Norbert Roettgen said. The country has 17 reactors in total.

Roettgen praised the coalition agreement after negotiations through the night between the governing parties.

“This is coherent. It is clear. That’s why it is a good result,” he said in Berlin.

Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010 had pushed through measures to
extend the lifespan of the country’s 17 reactors with the last one
scheduled to go offline in 2036, but she reversed her policy in the wake
of the disaster.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, stands alone among the world’s
major industrialized nations in its determination to gradually replace
nuclear power with renewable energy sources.

Through March — before the seven reactors were taken offline — just
under a quarter of Germany’s electricity was produced by nuclear power,
about the same share as in the U.S.

Energy from wind, solar and hydroelectric power currently produces
about 17 per cent of the country’s electricity, but the government aims
to boost its share to around 50 per cent in the coming decades.

Many Germans have been vehemently opposed to nuclear power since the
1986 Chornobyl disaster sent radioactive fallout over the country. Tens
of thousands repeatedly took to the street in the wake of Fukushima to
urge the government to shut all reactors.

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