Holding to its Fukushima-inspired policy of nuclear phaseout and ignoring pleas from a wide variety of clean energy advocates to reconsider, Germany closed three of its remaining six operating nuclear power plants on New Year's Eve-Brokdorf's Unit 1 (a 1,410-MWe pressurized water reactor), Grohnde's Unit 1 (a 1,360-MWe PWR), and Gundremmingen's Unit C (a 1,288-MWe boiling water reactor). The action removed over 4 GWe from the German grid, reducing by half the country's nuclear power capacity. Most of that power deficit, in the short term, at least, is likely to be made up by burning natural gas, which at this writing is at record high prices. The three nuclear facilities with units still in operation in Germany-Emsland, Isar, and Neckar-westheim-are to be closed by December 31 of this year, at the latest.
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