On Wednesday morning, a touch of resistance wafts through Munich’s Maximilianeum. Hans Schuierer is there, formerly a district administrator in the district of Schwandorf in the Upper Palatinate, now 91 years old. In the 1980s, Schuierer set the state government on fire to prevent the nuclear waste reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf, that monster with the three letters that everyone in Bavaria knows: WAA.
And now? Did Schuierer come to Munich again to heat up the state government a bit. “There are a lot of politically influential people who are now posing as supporters of nuclear energy again,” said Schuierer on Wednesday. “I don’t understand these people.” These people – who is Schuierer talking about?
It is a clever PR move by the SPD to present the Bavarian anti-nuclear powerhouse par excellence in the state parliament. He feels very “reminded of the 1980s in the Upper Palatinate,” says SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn, who is not entirely unfamiliar with the cautious escalation. Then Schuierer says that the CSU “always told him how safe it was” with nuclear power and radiation.
He now apparently feels reminded of this when Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) nonstop calls for the remaining three German nuclear power plants to be extended, including Isar II near Landshut, which is scheduled to go offline at the end of 2022. Heating the home, protecting the economy, everything is important, says Schuierer about the energy crisis. But does that make nuclear power less dangerous? “The price is too high,” says Schuierer. He wanted “children and grandchildren to have healthy energy, to be able to grow up healthy.”
Wackersdorf Reloaded? Hans Schuierer firmly expects protests if the nuclear power plants continue to run as they did then, he says. However, there are polls in which many people are open to a future of nuclear power in order to make themselves less dependent on Russian energy. Should the term be extended, “the wind would change quickly,” predicts SPD parliamentary group leader Brunn. However, it is unlikely that the extension will come and is not in the hands of the CSU. The SPD sends Schuierer into the field anyway. Brunn makes no secret of his motives. He does not want Söder to “get air sovereignty over the regulars’ tables” in nuclear power.