German ministers under pressure: the new nuclear dispute
Published: Friday, Apr 26th 2024, 15:30
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A report on the nuclear phase-out is currently causing a stir in Germany and putting two members of the government under pressure.
In special sessions of parliamentary committees in Berlin, however, Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke defended their decisions on the German nuclear phase-out.
This is not enough for representatives of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. "There is still a well-founded assumption that Habeck's ministry has done the opposite of what the minister had publicly announced. A distortion of facts instead of an open-ended examination," said Andreas Jung, spokesperson for climate protection and energy for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, to the German Press Agency in Berlin.
The "Cicero" article
The current controversy was triggered by a report in the magazine "Cicero", according to which internal concerns about the nuclear phase-out planned for the following year were allegedly suppressed in both the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of the Environment in spring 2022 - which both ministries deny.
Ministry of Economic Affairs did not want to hand over documents
A "Cicero" journalist fought for the release of the files in court and, according to the magazine, ended up with "two well-filled folders". Until then, Habeck's Federal Ministry of Economics had only handed over some of the requested documents and justified this with the confidentiality of the deliberations, as can be read in the ruling of the Berlin Administrative Court from January of this year.
"A retrospective disclosure of information that was transmitted confidentially would have the consequence that an unbiased exchange of opinions would no longer be possible in future," the court writes about the Ministry's reasoning. In addition, the role of nuclear power is being discussed in the media and politically.
The judges were not convinced. In their view, the ministry was unable to justify why the publication would impair future opinion-forming within the German government.
The controversial paper
In a draft memo dated March 3, 2022, employees of Habeck's ministry argued that, under certain circumstances, a limited lifetime extension of the remaining German nuclear power plants until the following spring could make sense. They advised that this possibility should be examined further. One aspect that was not discussed in the draft in question was the question of the safety of continued operation. This was primarily a question of energy supply. The paper is also available to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Berlin. According to the ministry, only State Secretary Patrick Graichen, a party colleague of Habeck's who later had to resign after accusations of nepotism, was aware of the document at management level - it would not have reached the minister.
According to Habeck, however, this is not a problem. "My company has 2,400 employees," said the minister on Friday. The technical discussion was important. For him, however, the talks with the nuclear power plant operators were decisive. "The decisive factor is that I was always able to ask the right questions in the really relevant rounds, and these are the rounds with the supply operators, i.e. RWE, ENBW and Eon. And I am sure that they were asked." At the time, the operators had said that the available fuel elements would be used up by the end of the year. This information was later corrected: "Then they said they could run for two, three, four, five months longer. And the operating time was then extended accordingly."
The Ministry of Economic Affairs also says that the paper was included in a later published review report by the Ministries of Economic Affairs and the Environment, in which they spoke out against an extension of the operating life - with reference to the "very high economic costs, constitutional and safety risks", as stated in a press release.
Why the nuclear phase-out was discussed again in 2022
The trigger for the renewed debate at the time was the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which led to a dramatic deterioration in relations between Germany and Russia. Russia was Germany's most important gas supplier at the time. The question of what this would mean for energy security in this country was therefore on the table. From September onwards, practically no more Russian gas flowed to Germany.
In the summer, the Ministry of Economic Affairs argued that in the event of a gas shortage, Germany would have a problem with the provision of heat - and not electricity, which would be supplied by nuclear power plants. FDP leader Christian Lindner and his party colleagues countered that even a small contribution to energy security was relevant.
The nuclear phase-out was not popular in spring 2022: in a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Civey in March on behalf of the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, 70% of respondents were in favor of extending the lifespan of nuclear power plants. In the ARD Deutschlandtrend from April 2023, 59% rated the decision to phase out nuclear power as wrong.
Traffic light dispute over nuclear power
The Greens, for whom the anti-nuclear protests of earlier years were practically part of their founding myth, long opposed any further operation. In October, a party conference finally backed Habeck's proposals to keep two of the last three German nuclear power plants in reserve beyond the turn of the year and to use them to generate electricity again at short notice if necessary. However, it was not until Chancellor Olaf Scholz put his foot down two days later in favor of temporary continued operation until mid-April 2023 that the dispute came to an end.
The prehistory
As much as the nuclear phase-out is close to the hearts of the Greens, the decision to do so was taken by a black-yellow government under the leadership of Angela Merkel after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in 2011. In 2022, three nuclear power plants were still on the grid: Isar 2 in Bavaria, Neckarwestheim in Baden-Württemberg and the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony. They were originally due to be taken off the grid at the turn of the year 2022/23 - but this only happened a few months later, around a year ago on April 15.
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