Steffi Lemke has put on a white overall and a blue hard hat, the Federal Environment Minister from the Greens examines the nuclear heritage of the GDR. Ropes from the “VEB Förderanlagen und Kranbau Köthen” dangle above her, a few meters further an automatic band saw is in the process of sawing through a steel pump part. It will take six weeks to disassemble. Until here, in the former nuclear power plant in Greifswald, the radioactive legacy has been disposed of, it will probably be another 20 years. “I’m glad we ended the discussion about nuclear power,” says Lemke.
Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that.
While Lemke is in Greifswald getting an idea of the dismantling, the leaders of the FDP parliamentary group put a new old proposal on the table of the closed meeting of their deputies in the Transparent Factory in Dresden: “We need power plants capable of base load and therefore want the nuclear power plants that are still operational to be dismantled stop,” says the draft resolution for the 92 people’s representatives who want to adopt the paper this Friday. “This is the only way we can remain capable of acting in every situation.” The Liberals are a discussion-friendly party, but it is unlikely that MPs will delete this passage.
Group leader Christian Dürr says that the cabinet set the right priorities at its meeting in Meseberg: “Noticeable relief, less bureaucracy – these are the right impetus for our economy.” The group wants to continue this course on their retreat. Among other things, one will talk about “how we bring the energy prices down again” – but this topic is highly controversial in the traffic light.
Dürr is making a bill with which the liberals had already advertised last autumn for an extension of the service life of the three Isar 2 reactors near Landshut, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland in Lingen, which were still in operation at the time. By switching them off, Germany will forego the production of 30 terawatt hours of electricity per year. This is noticeable in the power grid. Dürr says he would have wished that “the nuclear power plants could remain connected to the grid in this tense situation.”
It is easy to see from the bill who the liberals see as responsible in the debate about the high electricity prices. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens must “present the federal power plant strategy 2026 as soon as possible in order to create planning security for energy companies and energy-intensive sectors,” it says. Coping with worst-case scenarios must also be taken into account.
This is an argument that last year probably helped Olaf Scholz to push through a decision in the traffic light coalition without the agreement of the partners for the only time since he took office, citing his policy competence as chancellor. After this word of power, the federal government postponed the already decided final phase-out of nuclear power against strong resistance from the Greens and let the three reactors continue to run until mid-April 2023.
She wanted to prevent feared energy bottlenecks in winter. These were triggered by the fact that Russia had curtailed and ultimately stopped its gas supplies after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine.
The FDP had hoped to win votes with their commitment to the extension of the term. A month before the state elections in Lower Saxony, Dürr visited the Emsland power plant with the top candidate Stefan Birkner. Polls at the time showed that many citizens were able to gain something from the FDP’s proposal – but this was not reflected in the elections. The FDP flew out of the state parliament with 4.7 percent.
Today, another argument is the high price of electricity, which is particularly problematic for energy-intensive industries that face international competition. The SPD parliamentary group and the Greens are calling for an industrial electricity price subsidized by the state, which should benefit certain sectors for a limited period of time. Chancellor Scholz has not ruled that out, but has so far been reluctant to do so. One cannot afford long-term subsidies with the watering can, he argues, like the head of the FDP and Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner.
Instead of an industrial electricity price, the FDP parliamentary group wanted to discuss reducing the electricity tax to the minimum permitted by the EU. “Electricity tax reduction for everyone instead of industrial electricity prices for a few,” says the draft. This alone would reduce the net electricity price by two cents per kilowatt hour. “In contrast, an industrial electricity price is the wrong way, because financing through debt is prohibited and it would be unfair if trade and medium-sized companies would pay the subsidized electricity price for large-scale industry,” it continues.
For counter-financing, the FDP is ready to examine the federal budget together with the coalition partners and to identify savings potential. The liberals consider subsidies for individual settlements of industrial companies from the climate and transformation fund to be questionable, as recently several chip factories. The Greens counter that the hardest hit companies would not benefit; Energy-intensive industries are exempt from the tax, said Chairwoman Ricarda Lang.
In addition, the FDP wants to strengthen so-called electricity partnerships in order to “enable long-term, reliably low prices”. According to this model, direct contracts with energy-intensive companies and supply by producers of renewable energies should guarantee an electricity supply at internationally competitive conditions. This requires a stronger standardization of such arrangements to make them even more attractive.
At the same time, however, the liberals can imagine “entering into modern, particularly low-waste and low-risk nuclear fission technologies”. This apparently means, among other things, so-called small modular reactors (SMR), the development of which is being promoted in the USA, Canada and Great Britain, but also in China and Russia. These could form an interaction with renewable energies “if it should become apparent that this is necessary for a climate-neutral, cheap and secure energy supply”. The FDP also has hopes for the further development of nuclear fusion.
But after Meseberg there was a hint of a new beginning
CDU leader Friedrich Merz recently called for a return to nuclear power. “We would immediately reconnect all decommissioned nuclear power plants,” he said picture on sunday. But there are a number of reasons why it won’t all be that easy: Just making new fuel rods could take a year or more. The German nuclear power plants also no longer have a license to generate electricity – because the license for “power operation” also ended when their operating life came to an end. In order to extend it, all power plants would have to be put through their paces. Retrofits would be necessary because the state of science and technology has changed since the late 1980s.
Incidentally, the Atomic Energy Act would also have to be changed, and this is meanwhile for the 20th time. In the SPD there is no willingness to do so: the decision in the coalition is clear, said annoyed parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich. And then the operators themselves, the energy companies EnBW, RWE and Eon, would also have to be interested in embarking on this adventure. Most recently, EnBW and RWE in particular had first and foremost pushed for clarity. Since April 15, 2023, this clarity means: dismantling and disposal.
But there is a layer behind these facts. When Lemke, in overalls and a hard hat, looks at an example of this dismantling, she already knows about the FDP plans. She just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore, rather she seems stunned. After all, she too was just the day before at the cabinet meeting at Schloss Meseberg. After that, she also raved about a “really harmonious” round. There was, not for the first time after such a retreat, a hint of departure.
But just one day later, the idea of a return to nuclear power seems like a liberal attack on the Green coalition partner. “I don’t want to comment on every idea from the FDP parliamentary group,” she says on the sidelines of the visit to the Greifswald nuclear power plant.
She doesn’t want to say more about it, which says a lot.