Bavaria’s Ministry of the Environment has rejected criticism from the Federal Ministry for the Environment of the TÜV assessment of two Bavarian nuclear power plants. “TÜV Süd is one of the most renowned experts and one of the most familiar with nuclear power issues,” said a spokesman in Munich on Saturday. “When evaluating central and decisive questions, the best possible expertise should be used.” That’s why the ministry commissioned “both a safety-related and a legal report”. Security concerns would therefore “not stand in the way of a temporary extension of the term”.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment had previously sharply criticized the methodology used in TÜV Süd’s investigation into the Isar 2 and Gundremmingen nuclear power plants. The statement does not meet “basic requirements for reports and serious expert statements and should therefore not be used for state decision-making,” writes the ministry in an internal memo.
The Bund Naturschutz (Bund Naturschutz) also describes the continued operation of nuclear power plants in Bavaria as an “incalculable risk”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/.”We have 600 nuclear power plants worldwide, six of them are damaged – Harrisburg, Chernobyl and four blocks in Fukushima “, said the chairman of the federal nature conservation in Bavaria, Richard Mergner, the Nuremberg News. “We also don’t have a repository. It’s like getting on a plane and we don’t have a runway.” Every day that the Lower Bavarian nuclear power plant Isar 2 is in operation longer “represents a safety risk,” said Mergner. “The risk of a nuclear accident is there.” It’s “as cheap as it is wrong to stir up fears that people will have to freeze.”
TÜV Süd had in its April paper entitled “Assessment”. wrote that he had no safety concerns about continuing to operate Isar 2 beyond the end of the year. A restart of Block C in Gundremmingen is “possible from a technical point of view”.
The paper remains guilty of evidence for certain statements, so the criticism
The head of the department for nuclear safety and radiation protection in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Gerrit Niehaus, complained in the internal memo that the authors of the statement drew too far-reaching conclusions and failed to provide evidence for certain statements. At one point there is talk of “speculation”.
Another says that the standard of an assessment is not named or “disguised”. The TÜV was not commissioned to “issue a comprehensive safety assessment”, but nevertheless came to the conclusion: “From a safety point of view, there are therefore no concerns about further operation.” The Ministry of the Environment regards this as inadmissible.
In view of rising prices and the threat of energy shortages, a debate has broken out about the further use of the remaining German nuclear power plants. The plan is actually for the remaining Meiler Isar 2 in Lower Bavaria, Emsland in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg to go out of service at the end of the year.