Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has criticized the federal government’s plan to shut down its still-active nuclear power plants if it means reopening some coal plants to offset cuts in Russian gas supplies. In an interview with German television broadcaster ARD, Thunberg said shutting down nuclear power plants is “a bad idea” if doing so uses coal, the fuel that causes the largest emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas responsible for climate change.
The interview will air on Wednesday, but TV journalist Sandra Maischberger teased an excerpt in a Twitter post. When Maischberger Thunberg asked whether nuclear power plants are better for the climate, she replies:
“It depends. If they’re already active, I think it’s a mistake to shut them down and go to coal […] Personally, I think it’s a very bad idea to focus on charcoal when it already exists [l’energia nucleare]”
were #AKW the better choice for the climate – at least for the moment? @GretaThunberg: “If they’re already running, I think it would be a mistake to turn them off and turn to coal.”
📺 The whole interview with Greta #Thunberg on Wednesday evening #maischberger! pic.twitter.com/P5n4pJrdUF
– Maischberger (@maischberger) October 11, 2022
In the last ten years Germany has drawn up a plan to become independent from nuclear energy. The plan was decided primarily because of the security debates in the country after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. Before this event, there were 17 nuclear reactors in Germany, from which the country gets about a quarter of its electricity. The plan stipulated that the last three remaining active nuclear power plants would have to be shut down by the end of 2022.
But in early September, the federal government, supported by a coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), announced that it would keep two of the last three nuclear power plants open to ensure an emergency reserve in winter: a decision given the severe energy crisis caused in European countries by Russia’s cuts in gas supplies, on which Germany was very dependent until a few months ago. At the same time, the federal government had also passed emergency regulations for restarting some closed coal-fired power plants.
Thunberg’s comments were immediately taken up by some parliamentarians from the opposition parties and also by some government officials, who would push for further expansion of the use of nuclear power plants, which are expected to cease operations in April 2023. Including the Finance Minister Christian Lindner from the FDP, the he said that “in this energy war everything that generates electricity has to work. The reasons speak for themselves, both economically and practically ». However, the federal government has worked to ensure that the country’s climate targets, which aim to phase out coal by 2030, are met.
– Also read: Germany’s plan to counter rising energy prices