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Politico (11 April 2026)

Marc FELIX SERRAO

The entrance to Germany’s former Emsland nuclear power plant leads straight back in time. Visitors step into an elevator that displays not floors but altitude. The corridors are lined with telephone booths and phone books, as if the internet was never invented.

Everything that belongs to ordinary life has to stay outside, tucked in a locker: clothes, watches, phones, wedding rings… In return, visitors are issued clean but used underwear, socks, rubber slippers, a yellow hard hat and a pair of orange coveralls with yellow zippers.

Once this garish uniform is donned, the journey continues through a passageway with meter-thick doorframes into the heart of the complex, the controlled area. Above the entrance flutters a small plastic strip. Even the air, for safety reasons, is drawn inward.

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