Anti-nuclear Movement In Germany
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The anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s when large demonstrations prevented the construction of a
nuclear plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power s ...
at
Wyhl Wyhl, officially Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl (; ), is a municipality in the district of Emmendingen in Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. It is known in the 1970s for its role in the anti-nuclear movement. Wyhl was first mentioned in 1971 as a ...
. The Wyhl protests were an example of a local community challenging the nuclear industry through a strategy of direct action and civil disobedience. Police were accused of using unnecessarily violent means.
Anti-nuclear The Anti-nuclear war movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, n ...
success at Wyhl inspired nuclear opposition throughout
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
, in other parts of
Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
, and in
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
. A few years later protests raised against the NATO Double-Track Decision in West Germany and were followed by the foundation of the
Green party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
. In 1986, large parts of Germany were covered with
radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of Radioactive decay, radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is uni ...
from the
Chernobyl disaster On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only ...
and Germans went to great lengths to deal with the contamination. Germany's anti-nuclear stance was strengthened. From the mid-1990s onwards, anti-nuclear protests were primarily directed against transports of
radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...
in "CASTOR" containers. In September 2010, German government policy shifted back toward nuclear energy, and this generated some new anti-nuclear sentiment in Berlin and beyond. On 18 September 2010, tens of thousands of Germans surrounded Chancellor Angela Merkel's office. In October 2010, tens of thousands of people protested in Munich. In November 2010, there were violent protests against a train carrying reprocessed nuclear waste. Within days of the March 2011
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which r ...
, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel promptly "imposed a three-month moratorium on previously announced extensions for Germany's existing nuclear power plants, while shutting seven of the 17 reactors that had been operating since 1981". Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Galvanised by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, first anniversary anti-nuclear demonstrations were held in Germany in March 2012. Organisers say more than 50,000 people in six regions took part. In April 2023, the last of Germany's nuclear power plants ceased operation. Critics have commented that these closures have resulted in Germany becoming largely reliant on fossil fuels for the majority of its energy production, predominantly coal mined within Germany, and imported natural gas mainly from Russia.


Early years

German publications of the 1950s and 1960s contained criticism of some features of nuclear power including its safety. Nuclear waste disposal was widely recognized as a major problem, with concern publicly expressed as early as 1954. In 1964, one author went so far as to state "that the dangers and costs of the necessary final disposal of nuclear waste could possibly make it necessary to forego the development of nuclear energy".Wolfgang Rudig (1990). ''Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy'', Longman, p. 63. In the early 1960s, there was a proposal to build a nuclear power station in West Berlin, but the project was dropped in 1962. Another attempt to site a reactor in a major city was made in 1967, when BASF planned to build a nuclear power station on its ground at Ludwigshafen, to supply process steam. Eventually the project was withdrawn by BASF. The tiny hamlet of Wyhl, located just outside the Kaiserstuhl wine-growing area in the southwestern corner of Germany, was first mentioned in 1971 as a possible site for a
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...
station. In the years that followed, local opposition steadily mounted, but this had little impact on politicians and planners. Official permission for the plant was granted and earthworks began on 17 February 1975.Walter C Patterson (1986)
Nuclear Power
Penguin Books, p. 113.
On 18 February, local people spontaneously occupied the site and police removed them forcibly two days later. Television coverage of police dragging away farmers and their wives through the mud helped to turn nuclear power into a major national issue. The rough treatment was widely condemned and made the wine-growers, clergy, and others all the more determined. Some local police refused to take part in the action. Subsequent support came from the nearby university town of Freiburg. On 23 February about 30,000 people re-occupied the Wyhl site and plans to remove them were abandoned by the state government in view of the large number involved and potential for more adverse publicity. On 21 March 1975, an administrative court withdrew the construction licence for the plant.Mills, Stephen and Williams, Roger (1986)
Public Acceptance of New Technologies
Routledge, pp. 375-376.
Gottlieb, Robert (2005)
Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement
, Revised Edition, Island Press, USA, p. 237.
Wolfgang Rudig (1990). ''Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy'', Longman, pp. 130-135. The plant was never built and the land eventually became a nature reserve. The Wyhl occupation generated extensive national debate. This initially centred on the state government's handling of the affair and associated police behaviour, but interest in nuclear issues was also stimulated. The Wyhl experience encouraged the formation of citizen action groups near other planned nuclear sites. Many other anti-nuclear groups formed elsewhere, in support of these local struggles, and some existing citizens' action groups widened their aims to include the nuclear issue. This is how the German anti-nuclear movement evolved. Anti-nuclear success at Wyhl also inspired nuclear opposition in the rest of Europe and North America.


Other protests

In 1976 and 1977, mass demonstrations took place at
Kalkar Kalkar () is a municipality in the district of Kleve, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the Rhine, approx. 10 km south-east of Cleves. The catholic church St. Nicolai has preserved one of the most significant sacral inv ...
, the site of Germany's first
fast breeder reactor A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be Nuclear fuel, fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and Isotopes of thorium, thorium, such as uranium-238 and t ...
, and at
Brokdorf Brokdorf is a municipality in the district of Steinburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is located on the bank of the Elbe river, approx. 20 km east before the river flows into the North Sea. As of December 2019, the total population of B ...
, north of Hamburg. Some of these demonstrations, which always started peacefully, were organized by the World Union for Protection of Life. The circumstances at Brokdorf were similar to those at Wyhl, in that the behaviour of the police was again crucial:
The authorities had rushed through the licensing process, and police occupied the site hours before the first construction license was granted, in order to prevent a repetition of Wyhl. Demonstrators trying to enter the site a few days later got harsh treatment, and all this helped consolidate the population in opposition.
In February 1977 the
Minister-President of Lower Saxony The Minister-President of Lower Saxony (), also referred to as Premier or Prime Minister, is the head of government of the German state of Lower Saxony. The position was created in 1946, when the states of Brunswick, Oldenburg, Schaumburg-Lipp ...
, Ernst Albrecht of the Christian Democratic Union, announced that the salt mines in Gorleben would be utilised to store
radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...
. New protests by the local population and opponents of nuclear power broke out and approximately 20,000 people attended the first large demonstration in Gorleben on 12 March 1977. Protests about Gorleben continued for several years and, in 1979, the prime minister declared that plans for a nuclear waste plant in Gorleben were "impossible to enforce for political reasons".Lutz Mez,
Mycle Schneider Mycle Schneider (pronounced ''Michael (given name), Michael'', /ˈmaɪkəl/) (born 1959 in Cologne) is a German Nuclear power, nuclear energy consultant and anti-nuclear activist based in Paris. He is the lead author of ''The World Nuclear Indus ...
and Steve Thomas (Eds.) (2009). ''International Perspectives of Energy Policy and the Role of Nuclear Power'', Multi-Science Publishing Co. Ltd, p. 290.
In 1980 an Enquete Commission of the Bundestag proposed "a paradigmatic change in energy policy away from nuclear power". This contributed to a broad shift in German public opinion, the formation of the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
, and its election to the
German Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the lower house of the German federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for ...
in 1983. In the early 1980s plans to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the Bavarian town of Wackersdorf lead to major protests. In 1986, West German police were confronted by demonstrators armed with slingshots, crowbars and
Molotov cocktail A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see '') is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon consisting of a frangible container filled with flammable substances and equipped with a Fuse (explosives), fuse (typically a glass bottle filled wit ...
s at the site of a nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf. The plans for the plant were abandoned in 1988. It still isn't clear whether protests or plant economics led to the decision. In 1981, Germany's largest anti-nuclear demonstration took place to protest against the construction of the
Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant (German: ''Kernkraftwerk Brokdorf'', or KBR) is a nuclear power plant near the municipality of Brokdorf in Steinburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It has a single reactor with a nameplate capacity of 1440MWe. The pla ...
on the North Sea coast west of Hamburg. Some 100,000 people came face to face with 10,000 police officers. Twenty-one policemen were injured by demonstrators armed with gasoline bombs, sticks, stones and high-powered slingshots. The plant began operations in October 1986 and was closed on 31 December 2021.


Chernobyl disaster

The
Chernobyl disaster On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only ...
in 1986 was a pivotal event for Germany's anti-nuclear movement. After the radioactive fallout cloud covered large parts of the country, Germans went to great lengths to deal with the contamination. Contaminated crops were destroyed, firemen dressed in protective gear cleaned cars as they crossed the border from other countries, and sand in playground sandboxes was replaced. Following Chernobyl, the Green Party strived "for the immediate shut-down of all nuclear facilities". The SPD pushed for a nuclear phase-out within ten years. Länder governments, municipalities, parties and trade unions explored the question of "whether the use of nuclear power technology was reasonable and sensible for the future". In May 1986 clashes between anti-nuclear protesters and West German police became common. More than 400 people were injured in mid-May at the site of a nuclear-waste reprocessing plant being built near Wackersdorf. Police "used water cannons and dropped tear-gas grenades from helicopters to subdue protesters armed with slingshots, crowbars and Molotov cocktails".


More recent developments

Several advanced reactor designs in Germany were unsuccessful. Two
fast breeder reactor A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material than it consumes. These reactors can be Nuclear fuel, fueled with more-commonly available isotopes of uranium and Isotopes of thorium, thorium, such as uranium-238 and t ...
s were built, but both were closed in 1991 without the larger ever having achieved criticality. The High Temperature Reactor
THTR-300 The THTR-300 was a thorium cycle high-temperature nuclear reactor rated at 300 MW electric (THTR-300) in Hamm-Uentrop, Germany. It started operating in 1983, synchronized with the grid in 1985, operated at full power in February 1987 and was s ...
at Hamm-Uentrop, under construction since 1970, was started in 1983, but was shut down in September 1989.Lutz Mez, Mycle Schneider and Steve Thomas (Eds.) (2009). ''International Perspectives of Energy Policy and the Role of Nuclear Power'', Multi-Science Publishing Co. Ltd, p. 291. The anti-nuclear protests were also a driving force of the green movement in Germany, from which the party The Greens evolved. When they first came to power in the Schröder administration of 1998 they achieved their major political goal for which they had fought for 20 years: abandoning nuclear energy in Germany. From the mid-1990s onwards, anti-nuclear protests were primarily directed against transports of
radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...
called "castor" containers. In 1996 there were sit-ins against the second castor consignment bringing nuclear waste from La Hague in France to Gorleben. In 1997 the third castor transport reached Gorleben despite the efforts of several thousand protesters. In 2002, the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity" took effect, following a drawn-out political debate and lengthy negotiations with nuclear power plant operators. The act legislated for the shut-down of all German nuclear plants by 2021. The Stade Nuclear Power Plant was the first one to go offline in November 2003, followed by the Obrigheim Nuclear Power Plant in 2005. Block-A of the Biblis Nuclear Power Plant has been shut down in 2008. Block-B had been going back online after a year-long shutdown on 13 or 14 December 2007 and had been scheduled to keep operating until 2009 or 2012. In 2007, amid concerns that Russian energy supplies to western Europe may not be reliable, conservative politicians, including Chancellor
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
and Economics Minister Michael Glos, continued to question the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany. WISE along with other anti-nuclear movement groups contend that the climate problem can only be solved by the use of renewable forms of energy along with efficient and economical energy technologies. In summer 2008, a cover of the German magazine
Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
read ''Atomkraft – Das unheimliche Comeback ''(Nuclear Power – Its eerie comeback). As a consequence, the German anti-nuclear organisation ''.ausgestrahlt'' decided to coordinate the various anti-nuclear movements on their website leading to a more powerful protest. Anti-nuclear Monday evening walks become popular in various German cities. In November 2008, a shipment of radioactive waste from German nuclear plants arrived at a storage site near Gorleben after being delayed by large protests from nuclear activists. More than 15,000 people took part in the protests which involved blocking trucks with sit-down demonstrations and blocking the route with tractors. The demonstrations were partly a response to conservative calls for a rethink of the planned phaseout of nuclear power stations. In April 2009, activists blocked the entrance to controversial Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Plant with an 8-metre wall. Their protest coincided with the annual meeting of the company that runs the plant,
EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, or simply EnBW, is a publicly-traded energy company headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany. History Foundation and development EnBW came into existence on 1 January 1997 as a result of the merger between two ene ...
. Also in April 2009 about 1,000 people demonstrated against nuclear power generation in the north-western city of Münster. Located southwest of Hamburg, Münster is surrounded by a nuclear waste dump at Ahaus, Germany's only uranium enrichment plant at Gronau and another such plant at Almelo in neighbouring The Netherlands. On 24 April 2010, about 120,000 people built a human chain (''KETTENreAKTION!'') between the nuclear plants
Krümmel Krümmel is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a community belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The community belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Selters, a kind of collective municipality. Geo ...
and
Brunsbüttel Brunsbüttel (; Northern Low Saxon: ''Bruunsbüddel'') is a town in the district of Dithmarschen, in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany that lies at the mouth of the Elbe river, near the North Sea. It is the location of the western entrance to t ...
. This way they were demonstrating against the plans of the German government to extend the period of producing nuclear power. Demonstrations were also held in other German cities "where public opinion is mainly opposed to nuclear energy". In September 2010, German government policy shifted back toward nuclear energy, and this generated some new anti-nuclear sentiment in Berlin and beyond. On 18 September 2010, tens of thousands of Germans surrounded Chancellor
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
's office in an anti-nuclear demonstration that organisers said was the biggest of its kind since the
Chernobyl disaster On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only ...
in 1986. In October 2010, tens of thousands of people protested in Munich against the nuclear power policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. Protesters called for a move away from nuclear power towards
renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...
. The action was the biggest anti-nuclear event in
Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
for more than two decades. In November 2010, police wielding batons clashed with protesters who disrupted the passage of a train carrying reprocessed nuclear waste from France to Germany. The train carrying the nuclear waste was heading for Dannenberg where the 123 tonnes of waste was loaded onto trucks and taken to the nearby storage facility of Gorleben, in central Germany. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Dannenberg to signal their opposition to the cargo. Organisers said 50,000 people had turned out but police said the figure was closer to 20,000. Around 16,000 police were mobilised to deal with the protests.


Post Fukushima

In light of the
Fukushima nuclear disaster The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which ...
, public opposition intensified. 60,000 Germans participated in a protest on 12 March 2011, forming a 45-km human chain from
Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...
to the Neckarwestheim power plant. 110,000 people protested in 450 other German towns on 14 March, with opinion polls indicating 80% of Germans opposed the government's extension of nuclear power. On 15 March 2011, Angela Merkel said that seven nuclear power plants which went online before 1980 would be temporarily closed and the time would be used to study speedier
renewable energy commercialization Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include ...
. Merkel had effectively reversed a previous decision to keep older nuclear plants operating beyond their previously designated life span. Former proponents of nuclear energy such as
Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
, Guido Westerwelle, Stefan Mappus have changed their positions, yet 71% of the population believe that to be a tactical manoeuvre related to upcoming
state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...
elections. In the largest anti-nuclear demonstration ever held in Germany, some 250,000 people protested on 26 March under the slogan "Fukushima reminds – shut off all nuclear plants." The 27 March state elections in
Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...
and
Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...
saw the Greens gain their voting share significantly as a result of their long-time anti-nuclear politics, ending up with the second largest share of the vote in the Baden-Württemberg election. In March 2011, more than 200,000 people took part in anti-nuclear protests in four large German cities, on the eve of state elections. Organisers called it the biggest anti-nuclear demonstration the country has seen, with police estimating that 100,000 people turned out in Berlin alone. Hamburg, Munich and Cologne also saw big demonstrations. ''The New York Times'' reported that "most Germans have a deep-seated aversion to nuclear power, and the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan has galvanized opposition". Thousands of Germans demanding an end to the use of nuclear power took part in nationwide demonstrations on 2 April 2011. About 7,000 people took part in anti-nuclear protests in Bremen. About 3,000 people protested outside of RWE's headquarters in Essen. Other smaller rallies were held elsewhere. Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition announced on 30 May 2011, that Germany's 17 nuclear power stations will be shut down by 2022, in a policy reversal following Japan's
Fukushima I nuclear accidents The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which ...
. Seven of the German power stations were closed temporarily in March, and they will remain off-line and be permanently decommissioned. An eighth was already off line, and will stay so. Between 2011 and 2014 Germany burned more coal, an additional 9.5 million tonnes of oil equivalent.http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/Energy-economics/statistical-review-2015/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2015-coal-section.pdf pg5 In November 2011, thousands of anti-nuclear protesters delayed a train carrying radioactive waste from France to Germany. Many clashes and obstructions made the journey the slowest one since the annual shipments of radioactive waste began in 1995. The shipment, the first since Japan's Fukishima nuclear disaster, faced large protests in France where activists damaged the train tracks. Thousands of people in Germany also interrupted the train's journey, forcing it to proceed at a snail's pace, covering 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) in 109 hours. More than 200 people were reported injured in the protests and several arrests were made. Galvanised by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, first anniversary anti-nuclear demonstrations were held in Germany in March 2012. Organisers say more than 50,000 people in six regions took part.


Timeline

Spiegel Online ' () is a German news website. It was established in 1994 as ''Spiegel Online'' as a content mirror of the magazine ''Der Spiegel''. In 1995, the site began producing original stories and it introduced ''Spiegel Online International'' for artic ...
has presented this timeline of events associated with the anti-nuclear power movement in Germany: A Timeline of the Anti-nuclear Power Movement in Germany
''Spiegel Online'', November 6, 2010.
*1975: Fight about a proposed new nuclear power plant for Whyl. *1976: Clashes between police and protesters at the Brokdorf construction site. *1977: Clashes between anti-nuclear activists and security forces at Brokdorf. *1977: 50,000 people protested against the construction of a fast-breeder reactor at Kalkar in the lower Rhine region. *1979: Following the
Three Mile Island accident The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, located on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Londonderry T ...
, 100,000 people demonstrated against plans for a reprocessing plant at Gorleben *1979: The anti-nuclear movement grows and 150,000 people demonstrated in Bonn, demanding the closure of all nuclear facilities. *1980: 5,000 people occupy the site of the proposed nuclear repository at Gorleben. *1981: Riots in Brokdorf between 10,000 police and 100,000 anti-nuclear protesters. *1984: 4,000 anti-nuclear protesters blocked all access roads to Gorleben for 12 hours. *1986: 100,000 people demonstrated in the Bavarian village of Wackersdorf against a planned reprocessing plant. *1986: After the
Chernobyl disaster On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only ...
, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against nuclear power in various locations. *1995: From the mid-1990s onwards, anti-nuclear protests were primarily directed against transports of radioactive waste called "castor" containers. *1996: Sit-ins against the second castor consignment bringing nuclear waste from La Hague in France to Gorleben. *1997: The third castor transport reached Gorleben despite the efforts of several thousand protesters. *2004: A 21-year-old man was killed during protests against the castor transport after a train severed his leg. *2008: 15,000 people protested against the eleventh castor transport. *2009: Tens of thousands demonstrated in Berlin under the motto "Turn Them Off", and called for the decommissioning of all nuclear facilities worldwide. *2010: 120,000 people formed a 120-kilometre long human chain between the nuclear power plants at Krummel and Brunsbuttel, to protest against the federal government's nuclear policy. *2011: Following the
Fukushima nuclear disaster The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which ...
in March, regular quiet demonstrations ''(Mahnwachen)'' are held on each Monday in hundreds of places in Germany attracting each time more than 100,000 people. On 26 March, 250,000 people protest against nuclear energy in four cities (
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
,
Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
,
Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
and
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
). On 31 May, Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government announces a phase-out of Germany's nuclear industry by 2022. *2017: Germany demands that Tihange Nuclear Power Plant, in Belgium, be shut down. * 2023: On 15 April 2023, last three nuclear power plants in Germany shut down.


See also


Topics

* Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival *
Black bloc A black bloc (sometimes black block) is a tactic used by protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding or other face-concealing and face-protecting items.
*
Brokdorf Brokdorf is a municipality in the district of Steinburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is located on the bank of the Elbe river, approx. 20 km east before the river flows into the North Sea. As of December 2019, the total population of B ...
*
Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (; 'BUND'', ) is a German non-governmental organisation A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it ...
* Free Republic of Wendland *
Nuclear power in Germany Nuclear power was used in Germany from the 1960s until it was fully 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 powe ...
*
Nuclear power phase-out A nuclear power phase-out is the discontinuation of usage of nuclear power for energy production. Often initiated because of Politics of nuclear power, concerns about nuclear power, phase-outs usually include shutting down nuclear power plants ...
* Nuclear reprocessing plant Wackersdorf *
Renewable energy commercialization Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include ...
* Renewable energy in Germany


Lists

* List of anti-nuclear advocates in Germany * List of Nuclear-Free Future Award recipients *
List of anti-nuclear power groups A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
*
List of books about nuclear issues A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, bu ...
* List of Chernobyl-related articles * List of nuclear whistleblowers *
Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents These are lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents. Main lists * List of nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents * List of nuclear and radiation accidents by death toll * List of civilian nuclear accidents * List o ...


References


Further reading

* Joppke, Christian (1993)
''Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy: A Comparison of Germany and the United States''
*Nelkin, Dorothy and Michael Pollak (1982).
The Atom Besieged: Antinuclear Movements in France and Germany
' ASIN: B0011LXE0A


External links



* ttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1247676.stm Germany's anti-nuclear protestersbr>German Police Hold 250 In Anti-Nuclear Protest
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080924123156/http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/119616.php After the almost-meltdown in Sweden the German anti-nuclear movement remains passivebr>Anti-nuclear activists needle German power giant's annual general meeting
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anti-Nuclear Movement in Germany Environmentalism in Germany Protests in Germany Technology in society Social movements in Germany Alliance 90/The Greens