Germany's oldest remaining nuclear reactor has been shut down, part of a move initiated four years ago to switch off all its nuclear plants by 2022.
Bavaria's environment ministry said Sunday that the Grafenrheinfeld reactor in the southern German state was taken offline as scheduled overnight, the news agency dpa reported. Grafenrheinfeld went into service in 1981. It's the first reactor to close since Germany switched off the oldest eight of its 17 nuclear reactors in 2011, just after Japan's Fukushima disaster. The next to close will be one of two reactors at the Gundremmingen plant in Bavaria, which is set to shut in late 2017. The rest will be closed by the end of 2022.
Germany aims to generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday June 29 2015, @09:43PM
Any tiny incident concerning nuclear power becomes high profile news around the world, giving a disproportionate view of the actual safety record and tiny amount of damage and death caused compared with fossil fuel burners. I was going to make a point about the coal power industry fiddling while the world burns, but that would require me to mention a particular solidly-proven environment effect that guarantees a backlash from morons who've been listening to other morons who are paid to spread bullshit, so I won't.
Oh... wait...