“Pure stubbornness”, “technical nonsense”: On Monday, CSU leader Markus Söder became rhetorically a bit aggressive when an interviewer remarked that the Greens and SPD in the federal government no longer wanted to run the last three German nuclear power plants despite the looming energy crisis. On Thursday, the Prime Minister was more statesmanlike: All forms of energy must now be used, including nuclear energy. At the very least, the Lower Bavarian Isar 2 kiln near Landshut must be in operation for as long as the fuel rods allow, until the middle of next year. “That means all of these arguments put forward by the federal government are not effective,” Söder complained again – i.e. safety concerns or the argument that new fuel rods could not be obtained quickly. “In the end, it’s not a technical, but a purely political decision.”
As far as technology is concerned, the Bavarian state government has had a seven-page paper in its files for two months, which Söder relies on. On behalf of the Ministry of the Environment, TÜV Süd wrote an assessment of whether and how it would be possible to leave Isar 2 on the grid longer than December 31, 2022, when the previous approval for the last Bavarian nuclear power plant expires. The TÜV certificate is the Süddeutsche Zeitung before. “From a safety point of view” there are “no concerns,” it says at the very end.
The system is continuously monitored, there are no indications that something could be wrong. And the fact that the major “periodic safety check”, which is due about every ten years, is actually overdue is also not a problem – the TÜV experts write that it can be done during ongoing operations. Their verdict comes as no surprise, after all they are regularly entrusted by the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment with checking the nuclear reactor. If they saw major deficiencies, its operation would already be in question.
A good 5000 gigawatt hours of reserve
More surprising, however, are the passages in which they outline how further operation could look like, even if the power plant does not yet have the uranium fuel rods actually required for this. In any case, at the end of the year there will be a “reactivity reserve,” according to the analysis. If you use it, the system can continue to run for about 80 days. After that, the old fuel elements could be reassembled into a reactor core, which could then run for another three months. The TÜV calculates that more than 5,000 gigawatt hours of electricity could be produced by August 2023 – that’s not quite half the average annual production of Isar 2, Germany’s most powerful nuclear power plant.
August 2023 is also an interesting target date because you can get fresh fuel elements by then if the TÜV has its way: That is possible “within 12 months”. In other words: If Germany soon decides to extend the service life and the operators order accordingly, then Isar 2 could remain in operation with almost no restrictions. That’s what Söder says. And for “at least five more operating cycles”, as the TÜV writes, roughly speaking until the year 2028, because then the interim storage facility will be full of the spent rods. But Söder does not say that. He speaks of 2025 as the target date.
The basin for the fuel elements in the Isar 2 power plant. According to the TÜV, the reserves will last until August 2023.
(Photo: Sebastian Beck)
However, not every expert is as optimistic as TÜV Süd: It is far too late to order fuel, it should have been “started long before,” said Johannes Kemper from the Federal Network Agency in May. He spoke of an order period of 18 to 24 months, which Söder obviously falls under the heading “nonsense”.
In addition to the debates about safety and fuel rods, however, there is another aspect that at least makes it more difficult to extend the service life and does not play a real role in the TÜV report: the personnel situation in the nuclear power plants that are still in operation. Here, too, planning has been geared solely to December 31, 2022, the day on which the nuclear age in Germany is scheduled to come to an end for eleven years now. There is “a great willingness on the part of the workforce to continue,” said Carsten Müller, site manager of Isar 2, at an expert hearing in Munich in May. After the decommissioning, dismantling will also begin, which is why some of the staff will remain employed in Lower Bavaria well beyond 2022. However, Müller also spoke about the fact that additional specialists would be needed to extend the service life, who would have to be brought in from the decommissioned power plants in Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein or in Grohnde in Lower Saxony. However, this staff must first be convinced, which is why the Isar-2 boss warned to hurry.
“Irreversible”
The deadline that Müller gave to the panel of experts in the state parliament, also with a view to the procurement of uranium for new fuel rods and for safety tests that would have to be made up for: the end of May. After that, one could “no longer change course,” then the nuclear phase-out would be “irreversible,” said Müller. In the meantime? It’s the end of June, Müller’s deadline has long passed. But Markus Söder continues to demand that Isar 2 be allowed to run – and stubbornly refers to the TÜV report from the Ministry of the Environment, which SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn calls “politically colored”. So far, the TÜV has not attracted attention with a particularly critical attitude towards the state government, as some in the opposition see it.
The TÜV experts are even proposing a completely different possibility for generating nuclear power in Bavaria: They also see no technical problem in reactivating Block C of the Gundremmingen power plant, which has been switched off since New Year’s Eve 2021. The preparatory work for this should take about six months, they write, and then it could be operated for another six months with a reactor core assembled from existing fuel elements. Another year would have passed in which new fuel rods could then be brought to the Swabian reactor. And it could also be operated with these for another five years. Of course, this is a rather hypothetical option: At the moment, no one is politically calling for Gundremmigen to be connected to the network again. Not even Soder.