Deputies of the German Bundestag on Thursday, June 30, overwhelmingly approved the bill proposed by Angela Merkel's government to completely phase out nuclear energy by 2022. This was reported by the DPA agency.

513 parliamentarians voted for the law, 79 voted against it, and 8 more abstained. In addition to the parties of the ruling conservative-liberal coalition CDU/CSU and FDP, the program for a gradual phase-out of nuclear energy was supported by deputies of the opposition SPD and the Greens.

According to the government's plans, 8 of the 17 operating nuclear power plants will be decommissioned immediately. We are talking about the seven oldest nuclear power plants, built before 1980, as well as the Krümmel nuclear power plant, which was closed for repairs back in 2009.

The remaining 9 nuclear power plants will be shut down in stages: one station each in 2015, 2017 and 2019, and three each in 2021 and 2022. In return, the authorities intend to rely on renewable “green” sources of electricity, the share of which in electricity production is planned to increase from today’s 17 to 35 percent by 2020.

In addition, 9 new gas power plants will appear in Germany. Abandoning nuclear power plants will also require a radical reorganization of the energy infrastructure. The authorities have already announced that they are going to carry out a large-scale restructuring of energy networks in four years, instead of the previously planned ten years.

Let us recall that back in 2010, the Merkel government adopted the exact opposite law, which did not shorten, but rather extended the operating life of German nuclear power plants by an average of 14 years. However, after the accident at the Japanese Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in March of this year, the ruling conservative-liberal coalition completely changed its energy policy and set a course towards abandoning nuclear energy.

The Bundestag approved Germany's phasing out of nuclear energy