Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday ordered all three of Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants to remain operational until mid-April, breaking an impasse that had caused a rift among his coalition partners as an energy crisis loomed.
Germany originally planned to phase out nuclear power by the end of the year, but Russia’s war in Ukraine and the exploding electricity prices since then are forcing it to rethink.
“The legal basis is being created to enable the operation of the Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland nuclear power plants beyond December 31, 2022 until April 15, 2023,” said Scholz in a letter to the cabinet ministers, which is available to AFP.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck, from the traditionally anti-nuclear Green Party, recently said two of the three plants would be kept “on standby” until next spring to secure energy supplies should the need arise, which represented a major about-face for the Green Party.
But that didn’t go far enough for the coalition partner, the liberal FDP, which insisted that the third plant in northern Germany’s Emsland should also remain online.
Repeated rounds of talks over the past few days have failed to resolve the dispute, and Scholz’s statement on Monday night suggests he’s backed down.
In the letter, Scholz of the centre-left Social Democrats said he was invoking his authority as chancellor to issue a directive.
The job “is a slap in the face for Habeck,” wrote the best-selling Bild daily newspaper.
The order comes even more embarrassing after the Greens supported Habeck’s position on closing the Emsland plant at a congress this weekend.
The FDP, meanwhile, celebrated Scholz’s decision to keep all three nuclear power plants online, despite failing to meet their demand for a lifetime extension until 2024.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the FDP, who argues Germany must use all available energy sources to bring prices down and keep the lights on, said Scholz he had “created clarity”.
“It is in the vital interest of our country and its economy that we maintain all power generation capacities this winter,” Lindner tweeted.
“We can immediately create the legal basis together. We will also work out viable solutions together for the winter of 2023/2024. People can rely on that,” he wrote.
– Thunberg weighs himself in –
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann from the FDP also welcomed the announcement.
“Common sense prevails,” he wrote.
There was no immediate reaction from the Greens.
After the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, former Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed through Germany’s nuclear phase-out.
But Germany, which was heavily dependent on Russian gas and oil prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was hit hard by the aftermath of the war.
The conflict has pushed up energy prices and Russia halted gas flow through the vital Nord Stream 1 pipeline in late August, prompting Germany to diversify its energy supply and build up reserves.
The country is even restarting mothballed coal-fired power plants.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg said last week that it was “a mistake” for Germany to press ahead with the nuclear phase-out and at the same time increase coal consumption.
