In Germany, the Fukushima disaster led to the shutdown of nuclear power plants. In Japan, however, the country's largest reactor is now being started up again.
Tokyo/Berlin – Almost exactly a year ago, Germany took its last nuclear power plants offline. The decision to phase out nuclear power plants was made in this country after the Fukushima nuclear disaster shocked the entire world in 2011. Large parts of the region around the Fukushima plant are still uninhabitable.
But while there is still a heated debate in this country about whether shutting down the power plants was the right decision, in Japan people are already making a fuss about it. The country's largest nuclear power plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, is now being started up again.
Japan continues to rely on nuclear power despite Fukushima
The operator of the nuclear power plant, Tepco, received the green light at the end of last year after extensive safety checks. On Monday (April 15), TEPCO said it began putting the fuel elements back into the reactors. There are seven of these in total.
However, it is not yet clear whether operations will actually start up again. As
AsiaNews
reports, Niigata Region Governor Hideyo Hanazumi still needs to give his approval. So far he has spoken out in favor of further discussions about security. As the Japanese news agency
Kyodo News
writes, he is particularly worried about the lack of evacuation plans for the region should another disaster occur.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is not only the largest in Japan, but also one of the largest in the world. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, all nuclear power plants in the country were shut down. By summer of last year, ten reactors in the country were back online. By 2030, electricity from nuclear power is expected to make up a significantly larger share - 22 percent is planned - of the Japanese energy mix, as the energy agency reports.
Habeck defends nuclear power plant shutdown: electricity prices are falling
Meanwhile, the debate about the role of nuclear power in Germany continues unhindered. On the anniversary of the shutdown of the last nuclear power plants in Germany, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) defended his position. All the horror scenarios painted on the wall did not come to pass, the Green politician told the newspapers of the
Funke media group
. “We see today that the electricity supply remains secure, electricity prices have fallen even after the nuclear phase-out and CO₂ emissions are also falling.”
Of course, the situation was tense after the Russian war of aggression broke out, said Habeck. “We had to implement a lot of measures in a very short time in order to stabilize the energy supply and reduce the enormous one-sided dependencies that Germany had. We succeeded: we got through two winters safely.” In the electricity sector, we can see that the reforms are having an impact. “The expansion of renewable energies is really picking up speed, we are simplifying and accelerating approval procedures, and prices on the electricity exchanges have fallen sharply. By 40 percent since the nuclear phase-out a year ago.” At the same time, coal-fired power plants were running less than they had in decades.
Germany has sufficient capacity of its own to cover domestic electricity needs, said Habeck. “Nevertheless, we participate in the European internal electricity market.” Two percent of gross electricity consumption was covered by imports last year, but only around a quarter of this was nuclear power from France.