Power Companies Dismiss Calls For Nuclear Reactor Restarts - Bulletin

Wedoany.com Report-Nov 16, German nuclear power plants operators EON and RWE have dismissed calls by politicians to restart their decommissioned reactors.

“We see no economically viable way to return the nuclear power plants in Germany,” EON’s chief financial officer Nadia Jakobi said in a call with analysts.

RWE’s chief executive officer Markus Krebber said it was “very, very unlikely that we’re going to bring them back”, citing missing permits, qualified personnel and economic viability as hurdles.

In a recent energy policy paper (German only), CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU) politicians outlined their energy policy priorities for the country’s future, ahead of the next federal election, scheduled for autumn 2025.

In the paper, they called the completion of Germany’s nuclear exit during the energy crisis “an ideologically motivated and wrong decision” by chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government coalition.

Germany permanently shut down its final three commercial nuclear power reactors in April 2023, making good on the country’s delayed nuclear phaseout even amid an energy crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine and last-minute appeals for reactor lifetimes to be extended.

The Isar-2, Neckarwestheim-2 and Emsland plants made up some 6% of the country’s total energy mix, down from almost 12% in 2021 when more units were operating.

Until March 2011, when Germany’s older reactors were shut down immediately after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, Germany generated one-quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy with 17 reactors.

Shutdown plans began in 2002 under the Social Democrats and Green party government, led by then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who enacted a law to phase out nuclear energy.

Former chancellor Angela Merkel’s government announced plans to reverse the law in 2010, but the March 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan resulted a major shift in Germany’s attitude towards nuclear power and Merkel did a complete U-turn.

In June 2011, Berlin ordered the immediate shutdown of eight of the country's 17 commercial reactors. The decision also outlined a timeline for taking the rest of the nuclear plants offline by 2022.

However, Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition is now questioning the move, as Europe’s biggest economy also phases out coal and a plan to build new gas-fired power plants is delayed.