The Federal minister for nuclear safety, Jürgen Trittin, has proposed an amendment to the German nuclear law (Atomgesetz) under the heading ‘Law for the Proper Termination of the Use of Nuclear Energy for the Commercial Production of Electricity’. But during a July hearing in Bonn the Federal Association of German Industry (BDI) as well as the German Association for the Environment and Nature Protection (BUND) both severely criticised the amendment. BDI argued that it would endanger Germany’s future energy supply; for economic as well as ecological reasons it made sense to keep the option for nuclear energy open.
At present nuclear electricity production covers over 50 per cent of the base load electricity needed by electricity intensive industries. Neither renewables nor CHP power plants could replace that. It would become impossible to avoid producing the 150 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to that amount of nuclear production. And electricity would become more expensive after the phase out of nuclear energy.
By contrast BUND sees the new law as the opposite of a phasing out law as it would guarantee the use of nuclear power plants up to their technical and economic end of life, thereby continuing the implicit acceptance of what it sees as the intolerable risks of generating nuclear power.
