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Phase-out of coal and nuclear: RWE shuts down several plants

As of: 12/30/2021 4:03 p.m.

As part of the legal schedule, RWE will close three lignite plants at the end of the year. Several German nuclear power plants have also been closed. This is not enough for Pound.

The phase-out of coal and nuclear in Germany is making progress. At the end of the year, RWE is also shutting down Unit C of the Grundremmingen nuclear power plant, as well as three lignite plants in the Rheinische Revier. The Essen-based electric company announced today that the 300 MW Neurath B, Niederaußem C and Weisweiler E units will be shut down.

“We therefore continue to implement the legal phase-out of nuclear power and coal,” said Frank Wigan, CEO of RWE Power. According to the company, the four affected power plant blocks have produced more than 400 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since they began operating. This corresponds to the electricity needs of Berlin for more than 90 years.

Huge job cuts in Rhineland

Nuclear and coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 2,200 MW are shutting down within the legal timetable. The power supplier said the Federal Network Agency has been notified. In January 2020, the Federal Government approved a path to decommissioning all lignite power plants in Germany by 2038 at the latest with the affected lignite mining countries (Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg).

In February of this year, RWE finally signed a common law contract with the federal government, through which legal regulations for exit were also contractually outlined. The following shutdowns will follow in 2022: According to the group, another 300 megawatt block at Neurath will be decommissioned on April 1. At the end of the year, the two 600MW units and molds at the Frechen plant on the same site will be closed. In addition, the company will close the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lingen. According to its own information, RWE will shut down power plants with a total production of more than 7,000 MW in the period from 2020 to 2022.

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The company emphasized that this had a significant impact on the workforce. By the end of 2023, RWE Power will eliminate about 3,000 jobs in the entire chain of operations in the Rhineland, from open-pit mining to maintenance and management to power generation. At the Bavarian site of Grundremmingen, the nuclear power plant’s last facility, the boiling water C reactor with a capacity of about 1,300 megawatts will be shut down, according to RWE. The workforce will drop from about 600 at the beginning of 2017 to about 440 at the end of 2022. The remaining employees will be busy after the operation and site dismantling until the 2030s.

Disagreement within the European Union

Germany wants to phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022. There are currently six nuclear power plants. On New Year’s Eve, in addition to Grundremmingen C with Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein and Grohnde in Lower Saxony, two more nuclear reactors in Germany will be decommissioned. The remaining three will follow next year: the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lingen, the Isar nuclear power plant in Essenbach in Bavaria and the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant between Heilbronn and Ludwigsburg.

At the same time as the lockdown in Germany, the European Union Commission is preparing to take a decision on whether nuclear power should be classified as an environmentally friendly technology. However, this is currently a hotly debated topic within the European Union. As Germany moves forward with the phase-out of nuclear weapons and firmly rejects the classification of nuclear energy as a sustainable form of energy, France in particular is a proponent of such an assessment. Belgium has also relaxed the shutdown of nuclear power plants planned for 2025 and wants to invest €100 million in researching new technologies. If the power supply cannot be secured by other methods, the reactors must continue to produce electricity.

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Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (the Greens) has warned of the renaissance of nuclear energy in Europe. “It is ridiculous how many unfulfilled promises are currently circulating about potential new reactor types,” Lemke told Funk Media Group newspapers today. The Minister stressed that, in fact, there are more and more aging nuclear power plants in Europe whose continued operation is becoming more and more dangerous and which can only be modified selectively. “This problem drives and belongs at the heart of the debate, and it’s not the fairy tales and myths about nuclear power plant concepts that solve neither safety problems nor the repository problem.”

BUND calls phase-out of nuclear weapons ‘incomplete’

The Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) has also criticized the phase-out of German nuclear weapons as “incomplete” due to the continued operation of two nuclear plants after 2022. “What is We still haven’t achieved the complete phase-out of nuclear weapons in Germany.” Even after the planned nuclear phase-out at the end of 2022, the uranium enrichment plant in Gronau in North Rhine-Westphalia will continue to operate. The same applies to the fuel element plant in Lingen, Lower Saxony, Bandt said.

The BUND chief demanded: “This means that Germany is part of the nuclear chain and supplies fuel to scrap nuclear power plants in other European countries. The new federal government should stop this and shut down the two nuclear facilities.” The plant in Lingen focuses its production on the export of fuel elements – for example to Belgium. Enriched uranium is also exported in Gronau. Former Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulz (SPD) has already warned that the phase-out of German nuclear weapons can only be completed if these two plants are also closed. “The phase-out of our nuclear weapons is incompatible with the production of fuel and fuel components for nuclear facilities overseas,” Schulz said at the beginning of the year.

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In response to a request from the German News Agency (dpa), Environment Minister Lemke announced that she shares the opinion of her predecessor. “The solution preferred by BMUV – the legal closure of the two stations – did not find a majority within the government in the last legislative period,” she added. The ministry is now studying how to proceed based on the coalition agreement. In the coalition agreement, the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, and the Democratic Peace Party are all explicitly committed to adhering to the phase-out of nuclear weapons. The contract does not include details of how to deal with the mentioned nuclear plants.