A good six months after the Isar 2 nuclear power plant near Landshut was shut down, one thing is clear: the plant can no longer be started up. Guido Knott, managing director of the operator PreussenElektra, said this on Wednesday evening in Essenbach. “Preparations for the dismantling are in full swing and the colleagues we need to operate the facility are simply no longer available to us. The topic of recommissioning is definitely off the table for us,” says Knott.
In doing so, he rejected speculation about restarting the system. Shortly before midnight on April 15th, Germany’s nuclear phase-out was completed with the shutdown of the last three reactors still running. In addition to Isar 2, these were the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg.
The official dismantling permit for Isar 2 is still pending; the responsible authority is the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment. Preparations for dismantling the power plant have been underway since April.
Just one day after Isar 2 was taken off the grid, Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) said that he wanted to continue operating the plant under state responsibility and called on the federal government to change the Atomic Energy Act.
There was immediate criticism for this. The President of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), Wolfram König, said at the time: “The Bundestag and all federal states, including Bavaria, have not only agreed to phase out nuclear energy, but have also initiated the search for a final storage facility based on scientific criteria. ” The special route required by Bavaria contradicts applicable law and endangers the search for a final repository.