Germany's environment minister Norbert Röttgen said that the decision is final and that there is no risk of power failure. The agreement was reached at a meeting between the leaders of coalition parties on Monday night at the office of Prime Minister Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Norwegian Daily, Aftenposten wrote that the shutdown of seven old nuclear power plants have already provided substantial price fluctuations. Tor Arnt Johnsen told to the newspaper that electricity price in Germany in the third and fourth quarter increased from 43 to 51 percent when closure was proposed a few weeks ago.
– All capacity taken out of the market tends to give higher prices. And even if Germany were to replace nuclear power with renewable energy, it will still give an increase in power prices, because renewable power is more expensive than nuclear power. This price increase will result in more expensive power for both Norwegians and other Europeans, because Germany is a large market, and price increases will spill into the integrated European electricity market, “said Johnson.
Germany has 17 nuclear power plants on its territory. Eight of them are currently out of service. Seven of them were closed after the accident in Fukushima, while Krümmel power plant has been closed a long time ago because of technical problems.
