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Holger Nehring, 3 June 2011
Germany's decision to decommission its nuclear power stations is the outcome of a half century of anxiety about technocratic modernity.
In the wake of an earthquake and following a massive tsunami, a series of major accidents occurred in the Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear plant from 11 March 2011 onwards. Soon after, German papers carried maps of radioactive clouds pushing from eastern Japan across Siberia closer and closer towards Germany. When Germans looked to the suffering in Japan, many also recognised themselves as potential victims. On Monday, 30 May 2011, chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian-Democratic/Liberal coalition government announced that it would pass a law that would mean the decommissioning of all of Germany’s nuclear reactors by 2022. Ironically, this may mean that it will import nuclear energy from other European countries, mainly France, in order to satisfy demand during peak periods.
Merkel’s move was an astonishing U-turn. She had previously agreed to renew the lease of life for Germany’s nuclear industry, effectively overruling her own minister for the environment. Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, however, she decreed an immediate halt to the generation of nuclear power in the oldest German plants until safety tests had been carried out. She also put in place an ‘ethics commission’ consisting of high-ranking experts from politics, the humanities as well as the social and natural sciences in order to explore the moral issues involved. The decision to decommission nuclear power plants by 2022 follows directly in the wake of this commission’s recommendations
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