Germany's oldest nuclear power plant goes offline, part of move to shut reactors by 2022

Germany's oldest remaining nuclear reactor has been shut down, part of a move initiated four years ago to switch off all its nuclear plants by 2022.

Bavaria's environment ministry said Sunday that the Grafenrheinfeld reactor in the southern German state was taken offline as scheduled overnight, the news agency dpa reported.

Grafenrheinfeld went into service in 1981. It's the first reactor to closer since Germany switched off the oldest eight of its 17 nuclear reactors in 2011, just after Japan's Fukushima disaster.

The next to close will be one of two reactors at the Gundremmingen plant in Bavaria, which is set to shut in late 2017. The rest will be closed by the end of 2022.

Germany aims to generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.