Germany is one of the biggest importers of gas, coal and oil worldwide, and has few domestic resources apart from lignite and renewables see later section. Generating capacity at the end of was GWe, comprising Official projections are for TWh in Many of the units were large the 17 totalled over 20 GWe , and the last came into commercial operation in All units were built by Siemens-KWU. A further PWR had not operated since because of a licensing dispute.
This picture changed following the March Fukushima Daiichi accident, with the operating fleet being reduced to nine reactors with 12 GWe capacity by the end of , and to just three reactors with 4 GWe capacity by January see later sections.
The country's final three reactors shut down in April When Germany was reunited in , all the Soviet-designed reactors in the east were shut down for safety reasons and are being decommissioned. ON, which owned or had a stake in 12 of the country's 19 nuclear reactors which were operating then. In E. ON spun off Uniper, which was to take over all its nuclear assets in , but in the event left German nuclear plants with E. German support for nuclear energy was very strong in the s following the oil price shock of , and as in France, there was a perception of vulnerability regarding energy supplies.
However, this policy faltered after the Chernobyl accident in , and the last new nuclear power plant was commissioned in Whereas the Social Democratic Party SPD had affirmed nuclear power in , in August it passed a resolution to abandon nuclear power within ten years. A Christian Democrat CDU federal government then maintained support for existing nuclear power generation nationally until defeated in As a result, these two parties agreed to change the law to phase out of nuclear power.
Long drawn-out "consensus talks" with the electric utilities were intended to establish a timetable for phase out, with the Greens threatening unilateral curtailment of licences without compensation if agreement was not reached. All operating nuclear plants then had unlimited licences with strong legal guarantees.
