DECOMMISSIONING DECISIONS | SPECIAL REPORT
Germany committed to phasing out nuclear by 2022 – and did so – while the UK has an ambitious nuclear construction programme. The paper asked why they had such divergent strategies and the authors found that considering ‘internal’ aspects – industrial base, need due to demand growth and the like – tended to predict that the UK would be more likely to phase out nuclear; only what they called ‘external’ aspects – politics and consensus building – reflected the actual final outcome. Germany confirmed plans for a complex shift towards a
decentralised low-carbon energy system with no nuclear power in 2011. They found that ‘internal’ issues (economic conditions, strength of respective nuclear industries and resource potentials for rival technologies) would suggest that the UK would be more likely to phase out nuclear than Germany, but “this is the opposite of the actual picture”. Germany’s nuclear programme was bigger than that of the UK. It had 17 large reactors producing a quarter of domestic electricity, and although the UK also had 17 reactors, they provided only 18% of electricity (and to a smaller national system). Germany was also more successful at maintaining high load factors across its fleet. As well as providing lower output, the UK nuclear industry had a smaller onshore supply chain, had received less government investment and had not been able to build an export industry (except for two early units). At the same time, the UK had an enormous renewable energy resource, especially wind, and in previous decades it invested in a wind supply chain. The authors concluded that it is in fact ‘external’ issues
like political culture, non-energy policy-related interests and the general qualities of ‘democracy’ that made nuclear phaseout more likely in Germany. The authors describe Germany as “a paradigmatic
example of a ‘coordinated economy’ with relatively strong state intervention in policy“ and close alignment and planning between publicly-owned financial institutions and industry (which again might favour retaining a nuclear industry). The UK, by contrast, is a ‘liberal-market economy’ displaying generally less state intervention and coordination, which privatised its energy industry early. The authors do suggest that Germany’s position at the
centre of Europe with many interconnections may make it more confident about a nuclear phaseout than the UK, which has fears over security of supply (although UK interconnections are increasing). Nor was there initially overwhelming public support in Germany for a phaseout. The authors say that for a long time patterns of public opinion “give little basis for considering Germany to be markedly more anti-nuclear than the UK”. But “although public attitudes in the two countries… were not very different, a significantly larger and more active grassroots opposition movement formed in Germany than in the UK.” The authors say that “Germany displays a generally more
deliberative style of politics than the UK,” with ‘negotiation’ to produce a shared vision. The 2002 German Nuclear Exit Law was based around four years of negotiations between diverse interest groups. In contrast, the UK has an ‘adversarial’ political system. The UK’s centralised political system “contrasts
strongly with the decentralised German system”, where there is substantial political power at the regional level.
www.neimagazine.com | October 2024 | 17
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