Successfully foiled withdrawal from nuclear energy
Germany’s red-green Federal Government has not decided on a period of time for withdrawing from nuclear energy. According to the elastic agreement between the Government and nuclear power plant operators, the last nuclear power stations may as well be switched off in 2020 as sometime in the 22nd century. The only thing that counts is the amount of energy produced. If there should be a slump in nuclear energy sales (for example because the Greens might be successful in promoting Green Electricity contracts) it would indeed lead to single nuclear power stations being switched off. But the amount of electricity not produced for that reason would be divided among the remaining plants, which would prolong their hours of operation and the duration of the risk. “As a countermove” the Federal Government ensures “undisturbed operation” and commits itself “not to take any initiative to change this security standard and its underlying philosophy of security”. That applies of course also to a - consequently excluded - new assessment of dangers, such as the deliberate crash of a passenger airplane into a nuclear power plant.
The nuclear power consensus not only limits the capacity to act for the current, but also for future governments, which might be willing to stop the use of nuclear power. It was neither the dominance of the Social Democrat Party or the nuclear industry nor the currently valid laws that led to this defeating result, but in the first place a front of green demagogues who later even tried to discredit the protests against the return of German nuclear waste from French reprocessing plants. They simply branded the demonstrations and blockades as hostilities against France. There is no truth at all in this. Quite the contrary: These Greens themselves want to send much more nuclear waste to France. Yet, for this to be possible, the French storage capacities need to be cleared, which is exactly what the demonstrators tried to prevent.
From a pragmatical point of view, the Federal Government would have had plenty of possibilities to withdraw from nuclear energy quickly, but all of these can now be ruled out. Future governments more hostile to nuclear energy cannot simply withdraw the assurances that have been given, while nuclear-friendly majorities will be able to give further permissions to the nuclear industry in one more consensus. A big chance was negligently bargained away: If the nuclear power plants had already been closed down for two or three years on the day of the elections in 2002, it would have been difficult even for a nuclear-friendly new government to reopen them. It takes quite some denial of reality on the side of the Greens to declare the existing nuclear compromise a historical success. Even they should become suspicious when the Chairman of Bayernwerke, one of Germany’s biggest nuclear power plant operators, tells DER SPIEGEL magazine (June 19th, 2000) that he had asked “important representatives of the Christian-Democrat Party” to please stop criticising the nuclear consensus. The reasons are obvious: If the operators had backed out, the green minister for the environment Juergen Trittin would have been able to use existing levers against nuclear power that would have been much more effective (e.g. the strategy of stopping up nuclear transports etc.) again.
More:
ilka.org sicher lesen? dann: https://www.ilka.org