In 2000, the German government, consisting of a coalition including the Green party Alliance '90/The Greens officially announced its intention to phase out nuclear power in Germany. Jürgen Trittin, the Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, reached an agreement with energy companies on the gradual shut down of the country's nineteen nuclear power plants and a cessation of civil usage of nuclear power by 2020. Legislation was enacted in the Nuclear Exit Law. The power plants in Stade and Obrigheim were turned off on November 14, 2003, and May 11, 2005, respectively. Dismantling of the plants is scheduled to begin in 2007. But the Nuclear Exit Law did not ban enrichment stations - one in Gronau has received permission to extend operations. There have been concerns over the safety of the phase-out, particularly in terms of the transport of nuclear waste. In 2005 Angela Merkel won the German federal election in 2005 with the CDU party. She has subsequently announced to re-negotiate with energy companies the time limit for a shut down of nuclear power stations. But as part of her pact with the SPD, with whom the CDU form a coalition, the phase-out policy has for now been retained.
In November 2008, a shipment of radioactive waste from German nuclear plants arrived at a storage site near Gorleben after being delayed by large protests from nuclear activists. More than 15,000 people took part in the protests which involved blocking trucks with sit-down demonstrations and blocking the route with tractors. The demonstrations were partly a response to conservative calls for a rethink of the planned phaseout of nuclear power stations.
Japan has 55 reactors of total capacity 47,577 MWe (49,580 MWe gross) on line, with 2 reactors (2,285 MWe) under construction and 12 reactors (16,045 MWe) planned. Nuclear energy accounts for about 30% of Japan's total electricity production, from 47.5 GWe of capacity (net). There are plans to increase this to 37% in 2009 and 41% in 2014.
On 16 July 2007 a severe earthquake hit the region where Tokyo Electric's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant is located. The plant with seven units is the largest single nuclear power station in the world. All of the reactors were shut down and are expected to remain closed for damage verification and repairs for at least one year.
During the Fukushima nuclear disaster there was a failure of cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan on March 11, 2011, and a nuclear emergency was declared. This was the first time a nuclear emergency had been declared in Japan, and 140,000 residents within 20 km of the plant were moved out. Explosions and a fire resulted in dangerous levels of radiation, resulting in a stock market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets.
Shippingport power plant was the first commercial nuclear power plant built in the United States in 1958. After the growth of nuclear power in the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission anticipated that more than 1,000 reactors would be operating in the United States by 2000. But by the end of the 1970s, it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly so dramatically, and more than 120 reactor orders were ultimately cancelled.
As of 2007 in the United States, there are 104 (69 pressurized water reactors and 35 boiling water reactors) commercial nuclear generating units licensed to operate, producing a total of 97,400 megawatts (electric), which is approximately 20% of the nation's total electric energy consumption. The United States is the world's largest supplier of commercial nuclear power.
The Three Mile Island accident has been the most serious accident experienced by the U.S. nuclear industry. Other accidents include those at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant, which has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Several US nuclear power plants closed well before their design lifetimes, including Rancho Seco in 1989 in California, San Onofre Unit 1 in 1992 in California (units 2 and 3 are still operating), Zion Nuclear Power Station in 1998 in Illinois and Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in 1992 in Oregon. Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant in California closed in 1976, 13 years after geologists discovered it was built on a fault (the Little Salmon Fault). Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant never operated commercially as an authorized Emergency Evacuation Plan could not be agreed on due to the political climate after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents.
Many plants have recently received 20-year extensions to their licensed lifetimes.
Nuclear accident
The most serious nuclear accident has been the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Other serious nuclear accidents include Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, Three Mile Island accident, the Windscale fire, Mayak accident, and the SL-1 accident. In the period to 2007, 63 major nuclear accidents have occurred at nuclear power plants. Twenty-nine of these have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and 71 percent of all nuclear accidents (45 out of 63) occurred in the United States.
On 11 March 2011, the Magnitude 9.0 devastating Sendai earthquake and tsunami took place in Japan. As a result, "Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant", "Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant", "Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant" and "Tōkai Nuclear Power Plant stations" consisting of eleven (11) reactors were automatically shut down following the earthquake.
At Fukushima Daiichi and Daini tsunami waves went over seawalls and destroyed diesel backup power systems. This loss of power caused severe problems including two large explosions at Fukushima Daiichi and leakage of radiation. Over 200,000 people have been evacuated. Seismic recordings at six assessed nuclear power plant facilities indicated the plants had been exposed to "peak ground accelerations" of 0.037–0.383 "g" and "peak ground velocities" of 6.18–52.62 cm/sec.
One year after the accident, the official death toll related to the Fukushima accident has been five: one caused by the earthquake, another one had a heart attack, two people drowned, and a last person died in October for unreported causes. None of the deaths have been caused by radiation.
The Chernobyl disaster was a major accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986, with an explosion at the plant and later radioactive contamination of the surrounding area. It is so far the worst nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power. A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly damaged, forcing the people in charge to have to evacuate and resettle more than 336,000 people. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus, according to official post-Soviet data.
The accident made many people worried about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry. As a result, plans for more nuclear plants were put on hold and the Soviet government, who were not very open with its data, had to make public more of its data. The now-independent countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have had to spend a lot of money and time on decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. Nobody knows how many people died because of this accident. This is because the Soviets covered up information, did not fully complete lists, and did not let doctors list "radiation" as the reason why some people died. Most of the expected long-term deaths, such as that from cancer, have not yet happened and it is hard to say that Chernobyl was the full reason for their deaths.