It will be the first industrial power to dispense altogether, to nuclear power, which currently covers 22% of its energy needs. Of the 17 plants closed after the disaster in Fukushima, eight will no longer be reactivated. The announcement by Environment Minister:-Do not go back-

Germany, the Christian conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel is the first major economic power to say goodbye to the atom. In the early hours of the morning, after a long meeting at the Chancellery and consults with the opposition left-wing trade unions, churches, social partners and the Environment Minister, Norbert Roettgen the Democrat made the announcement: in ten years, in 2022, the last of the 17 German nuclear reactors will be shut off.

Farewell to nuclear will cost 40 billion euro, and will be accompanied by a massive effort even more intense than those already made to date for the conversion to renewable and clean energy. Berlin, in the wake of the terror experienced by the German company and the entire planet for the tragedy in Fukushima, it was therefore decided to burn time and set an example to the world.

There will be a step backwards, you can not because our decision to exclude him, said Roettgen. Here are the main points of the government plan, decided after consulting the bipartisan ethics committee of the Bundestag, after negotiations with the opposition unprecedented intensity.

1. The dates of the shutdown. The last reactor will be shut down by 2021, in just ten years. From 2021 to 2022 three reactors will be kept on standby, ready to use in case of risk of blackouts.

2. After 2022? It will be kept on standby as a reserve only one reactor, but only for energy production in case of emergencies and avoid blackouts.

3. The costs of conversion. The media and experts have calculated them in 40 billion euro. The maintenance of atomic energy tax paid by the energy industry will help fund the expense.

4. The objectives of the conversion. Between 2020 and 2030 the government wants renewable energy to pass to cover at least 70 to 80 percent of total energy needs of the first economic power in Europe.

5. The current situation. For several weeks are on a few of the 17 reactors, many are turned off for security or maintenance. So right now the percentage of energy needs provided by nuclear power stations in Germany, 17 percent of the total, is lower than that (22 percent) that Germany derived from wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energies.

The tragedy of Fukushima, the Greens seem to take off running towards the goal of becoming the first opposition party (and in some polls are the first party tout court) and the electoral defeat of the center in recent months in several regional elections, in principally for the benefit of ecologists, therefore, have convinced Angela Merkel in a radical. The Chancellor had in fact deleted (in 2009) program launched in 1998, goodbye sweet atom by her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD and its Green allies of the then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

The center claimed the reasons for the atom and the atomic lobby, said the critics. But, as she herself has admitted in public, Fukushima has forced a deep reflection: a rejection of the atom in society and a storm of doubt in the same German DC. For years, the German economy is getting ready to live without atom while the dependence on plants, since 1998, declined from 33 percent to 17 percent of the total requirement of electricity, energy efficiency industry made in Germany grew by 48 percent and the country has become much more competitive and global economies such as the French player who had bet everything on nuclear power.

The initial reactions of the economy (such as a hard comment to the CEO of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche) were negative: the critics speak too fast and risk of insufficient energy. Merkel has decided to ignore the reserves and Nyet economic powers, also supported by the right wing of his party and its allies in government liberals (FDP), and to follow the voters choice and the real country. Listening to the opposition, trade unions and churches that are not energy producers and entrepreneurs