By Sebastian Kunigkeit, dpa l Sunday, April 9, 2023
BERLIN – Just days before the shutdown of Germany’s last operating nuclear power plants, a survey showed a majority against the move.
According to the survey conducted by the INSA polling institute for the newspaper Bild am Sonntag, 52% of the respondents thought it was wrong for the three remaining plants to be taken off the grid next week, while 37% believed it correct.
Eleven per cent did not specify. Germany’s nuclear power plants were all meant to be offline by the end of 2022 in a policy agreed by former chancellor Angela Merkel in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
But last year the fallout of the Ukraine war and a cut in Russian gas supplies left Europe’s largest economy struggling to guarantee that the lights will stay on, businesses will operate normally and homes will stay warm during the colder months.
So, facing a split within his three-party coalition, Chancellor Olaf Scholz from the Social Democrats (SPD) was forced to make an executive decision that the three plants would continue to operate until April 15.
Critics argue that by totally exiting nuclear energy, Germany is turning its back on an affordable, reliable source of energy. The leader of Germany’s largest opposition party, the centre-right Christian Democrats, was scathing in his criticism.
“You will hardly find anyone abroad who has any understanding for the fact that Germany, in the biggest energy crisis in decades, is shutting down three safe, CO2-free power generation plants and instead reverting to coal and gas,” Friedrich Merz told the news portal Web.de.
Merz attributed the fact that Germany had come through the winter without an economic crisis or gas shortage to mild temperatures and energy savings in industry and households. “The problem remains: We have too little base-load electricity in this country.”
In contrast, deputy SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch told Web.de: “The spectre of blackouts has been painted on the wall by nuclear fans so far before every shutdown of a reactor. There has never been a supply interruption.”
INSA surveyed 1,004 people on April 6 for the Bild am Sonntag.
