Nuclear power in Germany

Nuclear power was used in Germany from the 1960s until being phased out in April 2023. German nuclear power began with research reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, with the first commercial plant coming online in 1969. By 1990, nuclear power accounted for about a fourth of the electricity produced in the country. The anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s and intensified following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. After the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and subsequent anti-nuclear protests, the government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Eight of the seventeen operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima. Nearly all nuclear electricity production was replaced with coal electricity production and other fossil fuel electricity imports from other countries, mainly Russia. Nuclear power accounted for 13.3% of German electricity supply in 2021, supplied by six power plants. Three of these were switched off at the end of 2021 and the other three ceased operations by April 2023. Prior to the takeover of Nazi Germany, German universities were the employers of some of the world's most renowned nuclear physicists, including Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Leo Szilard and others. In 1938 Hahn and his colleague Fritz Straßmann conducted an experiment designed by Lise Meitner (who had already been driven into exile due to her Jewish ancestry) which led to the discovery of nuclear fission. Soon thereafter a "race" began between the soon to be belligerents of World War II to find - military or civilian - applications of the new technology. Hampered by infighting, lack of resources, mistakes and the suspicion of Nazi authorities against "Jewish physics", the Uranverein ("uranium club") led by Werner Heisenberg never got close to building a Uranmaschine ("uranium machine" - what the Americans called a "pile") that achieved criticality, let alone building a nuclear weapon.