“Most expensive panic decision by a German government”

Pulling out of nuclear power production in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster has been “the most expensive panic decision a German government has ever taken,” statistics professor Walter Krämer said in an interview with manager magazin online. “In Germany, the government allows itself to be driven by fear among the populace more than in other countries,” the statistician explained. After the nuclear accident in Japan, Germany shut down modern nuclear plants and kept old coal plants running – “although German nuclear plants had not become less safe due to Fukushima,” Krämer said. With 25 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), people in Germany now pay roughly twice as much for power as people in France, he said. “About ten cents of the power price are pure panic, caused by the crazy nuclear exit and by an economically and ethically inefficient fight for renewables.”

Read the interview in German here.

For background, see the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out and the CLEW factsheet What German households pay for power.