Admin l Saturday, March 11, 2023
BERLIN – On the 12th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in Japan, the German Green Party – the second-largest party in the governing coalition – has defended the country’s much-debated phase-out of nuclear power.
The party’s parliamentary leader, Britta Haßelmann, told dpa that the nuclear phase-out was a safety gain which “makes us less vulnerable to attacks on our energy supply.”
“We are implementing the phase-out and building our future on renewable energies,” she said.
Last year, in the face of a split within his three-party coalition, Chancellor Olaf Scholz from the Social Democrats was forced to make an executive decision that the three remaining nuclear power plants would continue to operate beyond the end of the year, until April 15. They had been due to stop completely at the end of 2022.
After mid-April, the use of nuclear power in Germany is to come to an end. The Greens in particular have insisted on this date, although coalition partners the Free Democrats (FDP) are more concerned about security of energy supply in the country as a whole.
“It is up to us to further accelerate the generation of green electricity and to double it by 2030,” Haßelmann said.
On March 11, 2011, a tsunami triggered by a huge earthquake rammed into the Japanese coast, leading to thousands of deaths and a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
