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Wind turbines at Germany’s Grohnde nuclear power plant, which was taken off the grid on Dec. 31, 2021.  

Wind turbines at Germany’s Grohnde nuclear power plant, which was taken off the grid on Dec. 31, 2021.  

Photographer: Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance/Getty Images

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Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Really Needs Energy

Countries are plunging deeper into an energy crisis, but some governments are still shutting down reactors.

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As the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan in 2011, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a dramatic decision that delighted her country’s anti-nuclear movement: all reactors would be ditched.

What couldn’t have been predicted was that Europe would find itself mired in one of the worst energy crises in its history. A decade later, the continent’s biggest economy has shut down almost all its capacity already. The rest will be switched off at the end of 2022 — at the worst possible time.