Germany pulls the plug on nuclear energy
STORY: Germany is pulling the plug on nuclear energy...
...ending a six-decade long program that saw one of Europe's strongest protest movements.
These are its three remaining nuclear power stations.
And this marks one of the last times steam will rise from their cooling towers.
Their shutdown was set for last summer - but was delayed after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine - which sent energy prices soaring and spawned fears of shortages around the world.
Louis Herrmann is a member of Citizens’ Forum Against Nuclear Power.
"It is not simply ideological speculation. There is a very real danger that is posed by this power plant and by all nuclear power plants around the world. And that's why I think it's so particularly important that we in Germany manage to phase out nuclear power. Because if we manage to do that, then maybe the other countries will think about what they could do better."
Germany pledged to quit nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Once responsible for a third of Germany's energy production, it made up just 6% of it last year - compared to 44% from renewables.
But members of pro-nuclear energy groups call the move a “huge disaster.”
They say Germany will have to return to nuclear if the country wants to phase out fossil fuels and become greenhouse gas-neutral by 2045.
Keeping the plants going isn't realistic, though - according to Kasimir Buhr, an energy policy advisor at Munich's Environmental Institute.
“On the one hand, we have the safety review, which has been overdue for three years. It would take several years to do that now, which would have to be done to keep the reactors running, and we would need new fuel elements, which would also take one to two years to order. That means simply letting them continue to run as they are is not possible anyway."
As Germany’s atomic power era comes to an end, the country must now tackle another issue:
where to put 1,900 highly radioactive casks of nuclear waste.
That problem comes with a 2031 deadline.
