The nuclear power industry in Germany

Germany - the long phase-out
According to the World Nuclear Association Germany has 17 operating nuclear power reactors which provide 20.6% of the Country’s installed capacity (totalling 20,303 MWe) and which supplied almost one third of the electricity (167 TWh in 2004). Six units are boiling water reactors (BWR), and 11 are pressurised water reactors (PWR).

In June 2000 a "consensus" agreement was reached between the German government and the electric utilities to establish a timetable to phase out nuclear power. The agreement limits nuclear plant lifetime to some degree by putting a cap of 2623 billion kWh on lifetime production by all of the 19 reactors operating at the time - equivalent to an average lifetime of 32 years (less than the 35 years sought by industry).

Two plants, Stade and Obrigheim - were shut down in 2003 and 2005 respectively, and the one non-operational reactor (Muelheim-Kaerlich, 1219 MWe) is being decommissioned from 2003.

Due to the way the electricity industry has developed in Germany with much of it originally controlled by municipally owned utilities, the ownership structure of some of the nuclear reactors is complicated.

Ganging-up against the phase-out
Germany’s nuclear utilities appear to be ganging up against the German nuclear phase-out law. In March 2007 RWE Group was reported to be planning to sue the Government after it was refused permission to transfer the right to generate kilowatt-hours from the closed Muelheim-Kaerlich PWR to extend the lifetime of its Biblis-A PWR beyond 2008. Now Vattenfall has applied for permission to do the same from its share of Muelheim-Kaerlich to the Brunsbuettel BWR. The nuclear regulator has not yet decided on a separate application filed in 2006 by RWE Group to transfer kWh from its Emsland PWR to Biblis-A. But the request is not expected to be approved, because Emsland is RWE's newest reactor and Biblis-A its oldest. EnBW has also applied to transfer kWh from its newest reactors at Philippsburg or Neckarwestheim-2 to extend operation of Neckarwestheim-1. What the utilities are trying to do is to extend the life of reactors due to close soon beyond the anticipated date of the next federal election, expected in late 2009, in the hope that a government willing to scrap the nuclear phase-out is elected.