Around 1,100 people are dying each year as a result of Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power, according to a new study.

Since Germany began reducing capacity from nuclear energy after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima in Japan, the gap has largely been filled by coal and other fossil fuels as well as energy imports.

This led to a 12 percent spike in local air pollution, according to economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University.

The cost of pollution

In order to assess the impact on society from the changes, the economists put a monetary value on the different consequences - from the benefits of no longer having to dispose of nuclear material to the costs of having dirtier air.

Their findings, in a non-peer-reviewed discussion paper circulated by the National Bureau for Economic Research, pointed out that between 2010 and 2017, emissions from fossil-fuel plants were responsible for around $65 billion in mortality costs each year.

It added that $8.7 billion of the annual mortality cost can be attributed to the nuclear phase-out, 15 percent more than would have been expected without it.

Germany decided to pull the plug on nuclear power, shutting down 10 of 17 nuclear reactors between 2011 and 2017, following an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station in Japan in March 2011.

The plant was struck by a tsunami, triggering a triple meltdown and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Nuclear power was considered a clean alternative to fossil fuels for power generation and building a carbon-free economy until Fukushima happened. Apart from the risk of catastrophic accidents, storing nuclear waste is a hazardous and costly exercise.

Germany is expected to decommission all nuclear power stations by 2022. The most recent plant to be taken offline was the facility in Philippsburg in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg.

The researchers said the benefits of doing away with nuclear have been minimal with just $2 billion in savings compared with the $12.2 billion in yearly costs. Most of it has been from not having to manage nuclear waste and avoid accidents.

Switching off nuclear energy has also had consequences for the climate, leading to the release of 36.3 million tons of carbon dioxide each year  –  13 percent more than if the country had kept nuclear power going. The economists put that cost at $1.8 billion.

Higher bills

Discontinuing the 10 nuclear power units resulted in an increase of two-to-three terawatt-hours of fossil fuel production every month, noted the report.

The economists examined the argument that phasing out nuclear power could accelerate investment in renewable energy. But they said that even if Germany aimed for an extra 30 terawatt hours per year of clean energy by 2020, climate damage costs would still be $1.3 billion and air pollution would cost $7.6 billion.

The rollback has raised electricity prices, too. It is estimated that wholesale power prices jumped by nearly four percent since the shuttering of nuclear power stations.

Despite the rising cost of using dirty fuel for power generation, the researchers said public perception in Germany is strongly anti-nuclear.

"Citizens may also be anti-nuclear because the risks associated with nuclear power are more salient than the air pollution costs associated with fossil-fuel-fired production," they wrote.

"Regardless of the underlying causes, it is clear that the German citizenry cares deeply about climate change, yet is distinctly anti-nuclear. Policymakers around the world thus face a difficult trade-off," the authors added.