The German parliament approved by an overwhelming majority Thursday plans to scrap nuclear power by 2022, a decision set in motion in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The bill on the nuclear exit cleared the Bundestag lower house by 513 votes to 79 but must still pass the Bundesrat upper house, representing Germany’s 16 federal states, next month. Its approval is seen as certain.
“This is a shared national project that is being approved today,” Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said ahead of the vote, which drew the support of all the parties in parliament except for the far-left Die Linke.
The move to pull the plug on the country’s 17 reactors marks a stark about-face by Chancellor Angela Merkel and her centre-right government which last year had approved plans to extend their operation.
The head of the opposition Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, hailed the vote as “historic” even as he slammed Merkel for her zigzagging on the issue. “We support this decision out of conviction, not just opportunism,” he said, noting that a previous administration of his party and the Greens had already in 2000 approved the original plan to ditch nuclear power in Germany.
The Greens, who have campaigned against nuclear power since their founding in 1980 and enjoyed a recent boost in the polls from the issue, called it a long overdue victory. “I am proud and also quite moved to see what the (anti-nuclear) movement achieved during the course of years during which it was discriminated against and treated as criminal,” said parliamentary group leader Renate Kuenast.
European partners, including pro-nuclear France, have expressed concern about the move by the EU’s top economy, fearing it would lead to electricity shortages and drive up prices.
EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who is German, called on his country to “coordinate” with other European nations on the phase-out. Germany’s seven oldest reactors were already switched off after Japan’s massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing reactors to overheat and radiation to leak. A further German reactor has been shut for years because of technical problems.
The nine reactors currently on line are due to be turned off between 2015 and 2022, an even faster pace than envisaged when Merkel announced the decision last month. Germany is the first major industrialised power to agree an end to atomic power since the disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl in 1986, with tens of thousands of people living near Fukushima evacuated.
