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Chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz has concluded a nuclear energy revival in Germany is unrealistic, despite his party’s long-standing criticism of the timing of the country’s nuclear phase-out.
The front-runner to become Germany’s next leader after the February 23 elections, Merz has pulled back from a previous goal of restoring Germany’s nuclear reactors.
“They are being dismantled, they are being decontaminated. There is no way to fix this, most likely”, the centre-right CDU leader said this week at a meeting with a conservative workers’ union.
Chances of reactivation were “lower by the week”, Merz added.
Germany decommissioned its last three operating nuclear power plants in April 2023, following a 2011 decision by then-chancellor and fellow CDU member Angela Merkel.
Despite accepting that the country’s nuclear phaseout is now a done deal, Merz this week called the original decision to exit the technology a “grave strategic mistake”.
Merz’s concession that nuclear is likely dead in Germany comes despite a promise in his party’s election manifesto to examine “the possibility of restarting operations at the nuclear power plants that were recently shut down.”
The manifesto also alludes to “research into fourth and fifth generation nuclear energy, small modular reactors and fusion power plants.” While this would appear to leave a glimmer of hope for Germany’s nuclear advocates, the probability of such technologies ever becoming viable for energy generation is unclear.
The party has not commented on whether it has shifted its position following Merz’s remarks.
Germany’s exit from nuclear has been politically fraught, especially as a planned closure of the country’s last remaining plants coincided with the 2022 energy crisis. Chancellor Olaf Scholz ultimately ordered the remaining three nuclear power stations to keep running for four more months during the 2022/23 winter.
Since then, politicians have traded accusations on who should have done what.
In 2024 a conservative-established parliamentary committee investigated accusations that Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a member of the Green party, pressed ahead with the final shut down based on green “ideology”, and with disregard for the country’s energy security.
Scientists and plant operators weighed in during those deliberations, stating that it would be “unrealistic” to put existing power stations back into operation, and arguing that the construction of new plants would take more than a decade and come at great expense.
While internal written exchanges from the ministry’s internal communication proved controversial, scientists and operators concluded the plants’ decommissioning had never put Germany’s energy security in danger.
Habeck told the committee that his ministry had worked “without a pre-determining outcome based on ideology”.
[Edited by DC/OM]
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The post Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting backtracks on nuclear appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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