More than 1,000 additional people are dying each year from air pollution due to Germany’s phase out of nuclear power in response to the 2011 Fukushima disaster, according to a new study.
Those deaths are attributable to coal-fired power predominantly replacing shuttered nuclear power plants in Germany, driving around a 12% increase in local air pollution. That rise in pollution alone bears a price tag of $8.7 billion per year, more than 70% of the phaseout’s total annual costs of $12.2 billion, economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University determined in a paper circulated Monday by the National Bureau for Economic Research.
The paper, which has not undergone peer review, follows another recent report finding more people died from the shuttering of nuclear power in Japan after the Fukushima disaster than from the accident itself.
The report examined the shutdown of 10 of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors between 2011 and 2017. The country made the decision to shut down its nuclear power after the Fukushima accident in Japan, and Germany is slated to finish the phase out in 2022. Just Tuesday, the nation took another nuclear power plant, the Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant, offline.
The new report suggests, however, that the benefits of the country’s nuclear phaseout have been few compared to the costs. Overall, the economists found just up to $2 billion per year in benefits, primarily money saved from not having to deal with nuclear waste and from accident avoidance, compared to the $12.2 billion in annual costs.
The nuclear phaseout is also worse for climate change. The economists estimate shutting down the nuclear power plants prompted an increase of 36.3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, costing $1.8 billion. That’s 13% more emissions than if Germany had kept its nuclear plants online, the report says.
Most of those additional emissions come from the rise in coal production. Overall, replacing the 10 nuclear plants led to an increase of 2-to-3 terawatt-hours of fossil fuel production per month, even when accounting for rising renewable power.
The economists also examined a scenario where Germany increased its investment in renewable power, consistent with the country’s target of an extra 30 terawatt-hours per year of renewables by 2020. But even that scenario led to air pollution damages of $7.6 billion and climate damages of $1.3 billion, the report found.
The phaseout is also raising Germany’s power prices. The report estimates shutting down the nuclear plants increased wholesale power prices by nearly 4%.
Nonetheless, the economists noted the German public appears to strongly support the nuclear phaseout, despite the costs. A 2015 survey, for example, found more than 81% of Germans backing the nuclear phaseout.
That is despite Germans also wanting to address climate change, the report says.
“Citizens may also be anti-nuclear because the risks associated with nuclear power are more salient than the air pollution costs associated with fossil-fuel-fired production,” the authors wrote.
Public support for nuclear phaseout presents a tricky trade-off for policymakers around the world, particularly as countries attempt to curb climate change, the economists said.
Many climate change experts and scientists say carbon-free nuclear power is critical to cut emissions at the scale needed to meet global climate goals.
Nuclear power, for example, is the largest source of carbon-free power in the United States. Some Democratic presidential candidates, however, such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have raised significant questions about the role of nuclear power, despite having robust climate change plans. Warren recently walked back her comments somewhat, suggesting she’d keep some existing nuclear plants online in the interim.
Germany isn’t the only country shifting away from nuclear power, though. The report notes Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland are also working to eliminate nuclear from their power mixes.
