The German Nuclear Hostility

shipments and it was not until 2010 and 2011 that a double-policy reversal took place. In 2010, the Christian Democrats – Free Democratic Party coalition under Chancellor Merkel took a step back in the nuclear phase-out and approved the extension of the reactors by 12 years, with the last one to shut down in 2036. This questioned the decisions of the 2002 nuclear Act. However, with the 2011 nuclear disaster of Fukushima Daichi II, the German government was left no other choice than to reverse back its 2010 policy reversal and close the country’s 8 oldest reactors in the same year and commit to the decision to shut all of the German reactors by 2022 (ibid).

What the historical overview of the policy developments on nuclear energy in Germany shows, is that the path to the current anti-nuclear energy governance was not linear. The policy decisions taken by the government were exposed to pressure from different directions – internal political pressure, the pressure from below by the anti-nuclear movements and the demands of the RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall energy companies. A partial explanation of the nuclear energy back and forth is offered by the research on the history of nuclear energy and its relation to the society which shows, that timing of the first introduction of nuclear technologies matters. Particularly, countries that have adopted nuclear energy later than 1950s were likely to face more challenges, as the 1970s were marked as the hayday of anti-nuclear movements (HoNESt 2020). In order to unravel this complex net of state-society interactions that lead to the nuclear hostile policies, the Social Acceptance Theory is used.

Firstly, the socio-political acceptance is exemplified through the most general levels of acceptance in society.

In Germany, the socio-political acceptance, which related to the main political parties and their parliamentary debates, showed a consensus on the development of nuclear energy among the major parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP) until the mid-1970s (Thurner 2017: 159). However, during the 1980s, when for instance, the fast-breeder reactor (FBR) was refused the connection to the grid and any new commercial operations were frozen post-1989, showed a U-turn with successive reductions (idem: 160). Therefore, Chancellor Schroeder, a member of the SPD which heavily supported nuclear energy, was eventually through the coalition of SPD-Greens pushed to adopt the phase-out plans in 2002 (Breitenbach 2011). The Green Party was thus the main party demanding nuclear phase-out. In fact, the anti-nuclear stance was embedded in their 1998 electoral manifesto and over time, the Greens gained issue ownership over the nuclear energy question (Thurner 2017:

180). This issue ownership may point to their relentless anti-nuclear position because the ‘winning’ of a

pro-nuclear policy could suggest not only the failure of the pro-nuclear issue on the agenda but also the failure of the party as a whole. In this way, the most general federal level showed low to no-acceptance of nuclear energy in the German society. However, the general socio-political acceptance (or rather rejection) cannot be isolated from the local level and the community and market acceptance, which could ultimately sway the policy in another direction.

The community acceptance, classifies the anti-nuclear sentiments on the local – Länder level in comparison to the federal level. What is important to note in the German case, is the distinction between the federal-policy-deciding government and the länd-policy-implementing governments. This task-division and separation of competencies between the federal and länd level was visible in the federal decisions on the building of nuclear power plants and their developments, and the subsequent responsibility of the Länders to approve and monitor the actual construction and operation of these nuclear power plants (idem: 170). The specific competencies were at first spread out more equally between the federal and Länd level, however following the increased involvement of the Green parties in the 1980s, the Federalism Reform I aimed to centralize the nuclear policy to the Federation (ibid). It was the Green parties’ involvement in Länders like Hamburg, Hesse and others, that politicized the nuclear question, which was previously apolitical.

Since Green Party was the center and the organizer of the German anti-nuclear movements at the Länd level, the anti-nuclear stance ended up being institutionalized in this party and ultimately allowed the community non-acceptance to influence the socio-political levels of acceptance. Moreso, the presence, competencies, and the closeness of the Green party to the local level, helped block the nuclear energy implementation, devote public resources to elaborate on new policy options (like the increase of renewable energies), and gave a way for the anti-nuclear sentiments to reach the political agenda. This was ultimately the reason for the politicization of the nuclear question (idem: 173). In comparison to the French case where nuclear energy remained apolitical, the political dialogue on nuclear energy in Germany enabled the space for reviewing the original pro-nuclear policy direction and reversed the path-dependency of using nuclear energy in the energy transition process. Finally, as the History of Nuclear Energy and Society (HoNESt) group found, national dialogue, deliberation, and engagement, with eye-level discussion ensure a societal consensus on the energy decisions (HoNESt 2020). In German case, it is clear, that the opportunity for discussion between the state and the society led to a societal consensus wholly rejecting nuclear energy. While there have been marginal

disagreements in the FDP and lobby groups on the end of nuclear energy in Germany, the 2011 Fukushima disaster was the final blow to nuclear power plants. The section 3.3 of this chapter will review the risk assessments, and shifts in opinion on nuclear energy in the Christian Democratic politicians that ultimately marked the nuclear end for 2022 (Thurner 2017: 176).

Finally, we turn to the examination of the levels of market acceptance, understood as the communication between the market, the state, and the adopters. The market acceptance concept shows how the state nuclear energy policies impacted the profits of the RWE, E.ON, EnBW, and Vattenfall energy providers, which responded with numerous legal claims and lawsuits against the German government. After years of high profit, the main operating companies have reported billions of losses in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs (idem:

167). The RWE, E.ON, and EnBW lost 56% or €56 billion in combined market value (World Nuclear 2022) after their originally approved operating lives were cut short in 2011. The original operating lives, that were negotiated during the ‘consensus talks’ led by Chancellor Schroeder, were a positive example of focusing on market acceptance during energy decisions. Nonetheless, while the companies’ profits and disagreement with the nuclear-phase out clearly show their pro-nuclear stance and thus positive market acceptance, the German case also shows that market acceptance levels had a smaller effect on the government than the local level community non-acceptance. One of the reasons for the heightened effect of community acceptance was the politicization of the nuclear question and the connected electoral success of the main parties. Therefore, regardless of the lawsuits and economic grievances the main companies have expressed to the German government, the nuclear phase-out decision pushed by the local Länder level proved more powerful.

Lastly, in order to connect the socio-economic and political factors that played a defining role in the rejection of nuclear energy in the German energy policies, this section employs the Energy Transition Governance Theory. In the pre-development stage, where a societal problem is brought to the foreground, the current status quo is challenged, and new thinking paradigms are introduced. In both France and Germany, the energy transition was incentivized by climate change that posed serious societal problems for the coming decades.

Evidently, the existing energy governance was not climate-friendly, and therefore, as the theoretical framework in Chapter 1 presents, a shift away from the production and consumption of fossil fuels was needed. In Germany, the global warming and energy transition debate was marked by the nuclear controversy highlighted above, particularly with the engagement of the Green Party. Not only was nuclear energy seen as undesirable

to the German energy policy, but its usefulness for the energy transition process was questioned. Since the Green Party and the anti-nuclear advocates pushed for the removal of nuclear energy from the energy mix, a replacement congruent with these views and the energy transition was needed. Eventually, aggressive promotion of renewable energy sources (RES) was taken up by the Green Party (Laes et al 2014: 1136).

Governments slowly started accepting RES as an alternative to nuclear through the socio-political acceptance versus community acceptance interactions as shown above.

The take-off and acceleration stages, where the transition impulses were absorbed by the German socio-political institutions were portrayed by the adoption of the 2002 Act on definitive nuclear energy phase-out, supported largely by the public and by the commitment to RES through the Renewable Energy Sources (EEG) Act of 2000. The Stabilization stage is still underway as the last three nuclear power plants are left to be decommissioned. Even, as chapter 4 will show, the Russia-Ukraine war has questioned the anti-nuclear direction of Germany in light of energy security. Hence, reflecting on the energy transition stages of Germany, it was the government that saw that an energy transition toward RES is crucial – however, it was the society that decided how to get there.

Therefore, to conclude this section and answer the first research question of this chapter – ‘which socio-economic and political factors contribute to the incorporation and exclusion of nuclear energy in the French and German transition processes?’

it is clear that the public sentiments regarding nuclear energy are key. Nonetheless, for the ‘community acceptance’ levels and the anti/pro-nuclear sentiments to have an effect on the energy policy, it is crucial that the question of nuclear energy is salient on the political agenda. Furthermore, whether nuclear energy is incorporated or excluded from the transition process also depends on whether the nuclear issue has been politicized in a country – if it has not, as the French case has shown, the transition process and the nuclear involvement will be path-dependent and based on the pragmatic decision of the executive. Next, what the politicization of nuclear energy has also shown, is that the inclusion/exclusion of nuclear energy may not be a reliable indicator of the objective value-added of nuclear energy in the transition process. It is up to the powerful societal groups, like the anti-nuclear movements or pro-nuclear advocacy groups, to determine the value nuclear carries for them – regardless of the actual utility that nuclear energy may provide during the energy transition. The following sections aim to find out the objective value-added of nuclear energy for the energy transition process.