Söder told the newspaper that Bavaria is demanding “a separate state responsibility for the continued operation of nuclear power” from the federal government. As long as the crisis does not end and the transition to renewable energies does not succeed, “we must use every form of energy by the end of the decade”.
The Union faction in the Bundestag supported Söder’s demand. Her parliamentary manager Thorsten Frei (CDU) told the Rheinische Post, which appears in Düsseldorf, that giving up nuclear energy was a wrong decision. “It is therefore right and an expression of his responsibility as Prime Minister that Markus Söder considers all possibilities to avert this gross mistake after all.”
On the other hand, the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast, said Söder had threatened to resign after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, if the coalition stuck to nuclear power. “Now he’s demanding the opposite. With such a zigzag course you lose credibility,” she criticized the newspaper.
The Greens politician and former Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin rejected Söder’s call for state responsibility in the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. “Söder throws himself behind a crazy train with a big gesture.” Söder follows the motto of demanding something because rejection is assured. “Since yesterday, the authorization for power operation has irrevocably expired.”
The last three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany went offline as required on Saturday evening. As the respective operators announced, the Isar 2 plants in Bavaria, Neckarwestheim in Baden-Württemberg and Emsland in Lower Saxony stopped supplying electricity.
RWE was the first to shut down the Emsland power plant. With the separation of the generator from the power grid, the system was shut down at 10:37 p.m. According to PreussenElektra, Isar 2 was disconnected from the grid at 11:52 p.m., according to the utility EnBW, the Neckarwestheim power plant was the last to go off the grid at 11:59 p.m. – just one minute before the legally required date.
Originally, the nuclear phase-out should have taken place at the turn of the year. Due to feared bottlenecks in the energy supply against the background of the Ukraine conflict, the federal government decided to postpone the shutdown by three and a half months.
RWE explained that after the end of nuclear power, it was now important “to use all our strength to push ahead with the construction of hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plants as quickly as possible in addition to renewable energies”. This is necessary to ensure security of supply “if Germany ideally wants to exit coal in 2030”.
PreussenElektra announced that the company is now preparing “for the safe dismantling of Isar 2”. This should “begin next year after receipt of the necessary approval”.
In Neckarwestheim, too, “the focus will now be on dismantling,” explained EnBW. The company wants to “start with the first preparatory activities for the dismantling of the plant” in the next few weeks. Approval for this has already been granted. EnBW expects that the dismantling of the power plant “will take about ten to 15 years”.
Shortly before the shutdown, FDP boss Lindner reiterated his demand on the television station Welt-TV to leave the three nuclear power plants in reserve. However, Lindner had already said on Friday that he did not consider a comeback of nuclear power in Germany to be a realistic prospect.
The anti-nuclear movement celebrated the upcoming shutdown on Saturday. According to the environmental organization BUND, more than 2,300 people came together at the Odeonsplatz in Munich, at the nuclear power station in Neckarwestheim and at the fuel element factory in Lingen.
According to Greenpeace, 200 to 300 opponents of nuclear power gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. There the organization set up a symbolically hunted down “Atomdino”.
