After all reactors have been switched off - Markus Söder wants to stick to nuclear power in Bavaria
The last three nuclear power plants in Germany have gone offline, but the debate is not over. Bavaria's Prime Minister Söder calls for state responsibility for continued operation.
According to the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, he would like to continue operating nuclear power plants such as the shut down Isar 2 reactor under state responsibility. He is asking the federal government to change the Atomic Energy Act.
"Bavaria is therefore demanding that the federal government assume responsibility for the continued operation of nuclear power. As long as the crisis (in the energy supply as a result of the Ukraine war) does not end and the transition to renewables does not succeed, we must use every form of energy by the end of the decade," he told the "Bild am Sonntag". Bavaria is ready for this.
There was support from the Union faction on Sunday morning: Parliamentary Secretary Thorsten Frei (CDU) told the "Rheinische Post" that giving up nuclear energy was a wrong decision. "It is therefore right and an expression of his responsibility as Prime Minister that Markus Söder considers all possibilities to avert this gross mistake after all." According to Frei, "the research capacities for the next reactor generations and nuclear fusion in Germany" should not be given up either .
It can be considered impossible that the traffic light coalition will go into this. Because then, among other things, the question of final storage of the nuclear waste produced in Bavaria would have to be clarified separately. In the nationwide search for a repository for the nuclear waste that has accumulated so far, Bavaria is already on the brakes as soon as a solution is found on the territory of the Free State.
After around six decades, the last Meiler Isar 2 in Bavaria, Emsland in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg went offline on Saturday evening.
The Emsland nuclear power plant in Lingen was the first of the three remaining to go offline. This was announced by the power plant operator RWE on Saturday evening. The nuclear power plant in Lingen had a 1400 megawatt block. The plant was put into operation in 1988. Since then, the power plant has produced around eleven billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, according to the operator RWE. The power was enough for 3.5 million households. About 350 people work in the power plant.
At 11:52 p.m. the connection to the network was also disconnected at the nuclear power plant in Essenbach in the Lower Bavarian district of Landshut, as a spokeswoman for the operator Preussenelektra told the German Press Agency. After the network was disconnected, the reactor was shut down. The Isar 2 kiln was in operation for 35 years without a single incident, according to the operator. Together with the Isar 1 block, which was shut down in 2011, around 600 billion kilowatt hours of nuclear power were fed into the grid at the Essenbach site in 44 years. As the last nuclear power plant still running, Block 2 in Neckarwestheim went offline on Saturday evening.
FDP wants to keep Meiler as a reserve
As Söder's demand shows, the phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany remains controversial. Anti-nuclear power opponents celebrated the historic step during the day with festivals in Berlin and elsewhere. The co-governing FDP, on the other hand, called for the last three miles not to be dismantled, but to be kept as a reserve.
Originally, the three nuclear power plants should have been shut down by the end of 2022. The former federal government of CDU/CSU and FDP had already decided to phase out in 2011 in response to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. However, due to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis, the traffic light coalition decided in 2022 to let the three nuclear power plants continue to run over the winter and not switch them off until mid-April. The kiln in Kahl in Bavaria was the first commercial nuclear power plant to go into operation in November 1960 - it has been feeding electricity into the grid since June 1961.
"Nuclear energy must have a future in Germany"
Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) said that the nuclear phase-out would make Germany safer. "The risks of nuclear power are ultimately unmanageable in the event of an accident." Greens leader Ricarda Lang tweeted that the nuclear phase-out meant the "final entry into the age of renewable energies." The SPD parliamentary group wrote on Twitter: "Nuclear power? And goodbye".
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This should be stopped immediately
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this is impunity of the highest order.
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This is a selfish and self gain act
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The proposal to reactivate nuclear power is misguided and counterproductive.
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This is selfish, leaders should have interest of the people at heart.
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@joseph_githinji Such leaders as this one is only interested in power, to be re-elected and other people with power
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I think we can all agree that time for nuclear energy is past.
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@munene_mugambi Markus Söder is opportunistic and populistic as he now wants to go for a new politic term later this year, he thereby does that at the expense of the nation, as he divides people in pro and contra nuclear energy, although the race is over for this dinosaur technology.