Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor, Europe’s largest, will resume regular production on Sunday, its operator said on Saturday, boosting energy security in a region where Russia has cut off gas and electricity supplies, Reuters reported.

Nuclear power remains controversial in Europe, mainly due to safety concerns, and news of the OL3 launch comes after Germany shuts down its last three remaining reactors on Saturday.

OL3 operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish company Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, said the unit would meet about 14 percent of Finland’s electricity needs, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway.

Construction of the 1.6 gigawatt (GW) reactor, Finland’s first new nuclear power plant in more than four decades and Europe’s first in 16 years, began in 2005. The station was originally supposed to open four years later, but was delayed due to technical problems.

OL3 first supplied electricity as part of a trial to Finland’s national grid last March, and was then expected to start regular production after four months, but instead suffered a series of breakdowns and outages that required months of repairs.

Olkiluoto 3 opens in Finland, and Germany closes the last three plants

Germany announced on Saturday that it would shut down its last three nuclear power plants by the end of the day, ending a sixty-year program that had sparked one of Europe’s strongest protest movements.

On January 6, 1939, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann successfully performed the world’s first nuclear fission (splitting atoms to obtain energy).

On June 17, 1961, the first German nuclear power plant in Kali (Bavaria) produced electricity for the first time.

And now, by midnight on Saturday, the last three nuclear power plants at Isar II (Bavaria), Neckarwestheim (Baden-Württemberg) and Emsland (Lower Saxony) will be shut down as Berlin follows through on its plan for full production. of renewable electricity by 2035.

After years of delay, Germany pledged to phase out nuclear power for good after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant sent radiation into the air and horrified the world, making it the second-worst civilian nuclear disaster in history after the Chernobyl accident. nuclear power plant

The final phase-out of nuclear power in Germany was delayed from last summer until this year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced Germany to stop importing fossil fuels from Russia.