Germany will shut down its three remaining nuclear plants on Saturday, betting that it can fulfill its green ambitions without atomic power despite the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine conflict.

The cloud of white steam that has risen since 1989 over the river in Neckarwestheim, near Stuttgart, will soon be a distant memory, as will the Isar 2 complex in Bavaria and the Emsland plant in the north.

At a time when many Western countries are ramping up nuclear power in their transition to greener energy sources, Europe's biggest economy is resolutely sticking to its plans -- though not everyone is in agreement.

Germany has been looking to phase out nuclear power since 2002, but the decision was accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011 after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Fukushima showed that "even in a high-tech country like Japan, the risks of nuclear energy cannot be safely controlled," Merkel said at the time.

The exit decision was popular in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear movement fueled by fears of the Cold War and disasters such as Chernobyl.

Sixteen reactors have been closed in Germany since 2003.

But public opinion turned after cheap Russian gas was no longer an option to Germany. The government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which includes the fiercely anti-nuclear Greens, agreed to extend the life of the plants to April 15.

The three final plants provided six percent of Germany's energy last year, compared with 30.8 percent from all nuclear plants in 1997.

Meanwhile, Germany produced 46 percent of its energy from renewables in 2022, up from less than 25 percent a decade ago.

But the current rate of progress on renewables will not be enough for Germany to meet its own targets, much to the ire of environmental campaigners.

These targets "are already ambitious without the nuclear phase-out -- and every time we deprive ourselves of a technological option, we make things more difficult," said Georg Zachmann, an energy specialist at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.

The equation is even more complex given the goal of shutting down all coal-fired power plants in the country by 2038, with a first wave of closures in 2030.

Coal still accounts for a third of German electricity production, with an eight percent increase last year to compensate for the loss of Russian gas after Moscow cut supplies in response to Western sanctions.