(516.5067) BI Lüchow-Dannenberg - If you compare talks with what actually happened one can see that after eight months of the Red-Green government, not much in the direction of a nuclear phaseout, which is essential in Green politics, has happened. The PR campaign was not much more than hot air.
In their coalition agreement the new government formulated their ambitious goal to settle the
nuclear phaseout "comprehensive and irreversible by law". Especially, the "100 days program" caused
disruption: the subsidies for nuclear power should have been cancelled and the liabilities of the
utilities in case of accidents should have been increased. In the center of the public discussion
was the Trittins plan of banning reprocessing by law by the year 2000.
The nuclear lobby protested and soon the proposal vanished. The operators of the nuclear power
plants feared two things: difficulties with discharge of the nuclear waste and the taxation,
respectively the cancellation of the reserved billions for reprocessing. The chancellor protected
the demands of the industry and the young energetic Green minister was victimized in front of the
ruin of his new law.
Then it became silent around the attempts of implementing new bills into the Atomic Law.
For the problem of final storage a new solution should be found. According to the coalition agreement, the kali-pit in Morsleben, a heritage from former East-Germany, should not be used any longer as a waste storage facility. The search for one single underground waste site for all sorts of nuclear waste should have to start over again. The ore-pit "Schacht Konrad" near Salzgitter is useless as a general storage site, because it is not suitable for waste developing heat. The salt-pit Gorleben which suitability was continiously questioned anyway, would no longer be researched. Earlier this year, during a visit in the Gorleben region Wendland, Trittin announced a moratorium for the Gorleben final disposal plans. A commission for the problem of final storage was set up, which developed criteria for site-specific research. But the planning process for "Schacht Konrad" had not been stopped and in Gorleben salt-pits are still expanded: construction works have not been suspended. In this case too, economics won over -hesitative- politics. And even Trittin did not want to end the construction works without compensation-payments, he still wanted to halt them. Possible financial consequences froze the political engagement.
Left are some show-cases. Shortly before the government changed in Hessen after Easter, Trittin repealed all the directives given by his Christian Democrat predecessor Merkel to prevent a final shut-down of the reactor Biblis A. The Hessian collegue and also Green Party member of Trittin Priska Hinz submittted a 49-pages long directive for the shutdown of Biblis A: but it was just nonsense; this directive had no practical political consequences. Despite all safety deficiencies and after years of struggle with the operator RWE the reactor remained connected to the grid. The reactor was constructed inadequately for earthquakes as well as for leakage and fracturing of pipelines. Biblis A is also the only German nuclear reactor without an external safety warning system. And of course this reactor, like all the other nuclear power plants, has no perspective for the safe disposal of the waste it produces. This fact alone would have been a cause for a shut-down.
Besides, the Biblis A reactor was seen as an alibi for the new Red-Green government. With the immediate closure of the reactor, a quick success, the government would have gained plus points in the public opinion. Many anti-nuclear activists, assumed that by closing Biblis A the government also would have acquired arguments against the critics of the green phaseout bill, which in fact is an aversion of the immediate phaseout. The discussion about directives and shutdown orders concerning Biblis A is an excellent example for the failure of the red-green phaseout-policy. The coalition agreement forsees consensus talks with the electricity utilities in which they have to agree within one year to deadlines for closure of their plants. The Greens retreated with this possible phaseout objective in the Atomic Law in mind. In the end Biblis A was left connected to the power grid.
Shortly before the general elections last year the Greens argued more logically: the nuclear phaseout needs to have a legal basis and has to be constitutionally unquestionable. Thus the Greens, led by the current undersecretary of environment Rainer Baake, started to work out a phaseout-law. The second pillar in the struggle with the nuclear industry was a bureaucratic one, aimed at stronger safety measures. But it was and is clear the debate about nuclear power in and outside the parliament should not be paralyzed by this. A phaseout needs a lobby!
Rainer Baake wrote exactly one year ago: "I imagine it is autumn 2002, the end of the first legislative period of a Red-Green federal government nears. For our own assessment and those of our voters about being a succes or a failure, it will be of enourmous importance if we realize the nuclear phase out. Or if we lost in the political, social and legal disputes." Further he added: "The cancellation of a phaseout law by federal court, lost court cases about compensation-payments concerning billions, or thousands of unemployed workers in the nuclear industry, or a combination of all would be an ernor mous blow to the coalition and would seriously endanger its reelection."
Baake favors to subsequently fix deadlines for the operations of reactors and to limit the legal property rights of the owners. This should undermine the expected legal measures by the reactor operators in case of an immediate closure. As a deadline, the Greens thought about 25-year time limit for reactor operation. This also would have resulted in an immediate closure of the old Biblis A reactor. But in any case, no powerplant should be in operation longer than five years after the new law had been implemented. In the justification for a phaseout law, and as explanation for the five year limit, many basic arguments against nuclear power had been included.
Now Germany has a Red-Green government but it is still far away from the phaseout of nuclear power. Biblis A could have been the symbol for the will of the Red-Green government for such phaseout.
The worst notion was the much discussed premiss of the phase-out law: the phaseout should happen
without any compensation payments. In the phaseout discussion enormous sums were mentioned. It was
estimated that an early closure would cost between 70 and 100 billion DM of capital-loss for the
utilities. But if the current value of the reactors is taken, calculated ly taking in account the
depreciation of 18 years, only DM16.6 billion could be charged.
This is still an awfull lot of money, and hardly grudged to an industry which gained billions of
subsidies and research money over years by demanding nuclear energy.
By judging the (Red-) Green politics critically and analytically one has to conclude: the first real blow was the coalition agreement itself. Instead of a new comprehensive Atomic Law renewal, merely a quick decision was made: the ban on reprocessing nuclear waste. The important theme, the nuclear phaseout, which should mean limiting life-time operations, was said to be discussed "in consensus" with the nuclear industry. Neither the one nor the other was realized. Instead of a legal ban on reprocessing there was a discussion about capital reserves for nuclear waste diposal. As a consequence, the prohibition of reprocessing, was soon out of the question. DM74 billion are in the funds of the utilities, tax free, but with the liberty to buy shares in the telecommunication market and to take over local public services. Nearly DM30 billion were reserved for the unnecessary reprocessing.
The nuclear industry has the additional problem that because the waste-transports to the
reprocessing plants are still banned, the disposal problem is made visible by every trans port to
Ahaus or Gorleben. But there is no safe "back-end" concept, just the illusion of such a thing. And
the fiction of a disposal solution is sabotaged by antinuclear activists by every Tag X (Day X, the
day of waste transports) with their actions. The loss of acceptance in the nineties has a name:
Castor. That is the trump of the non-parlimentary protest. Antinuclear activists in the Wendland,
Ahaus and elsewhere are pretty aware of this fact. They are ready for the next Castor-round and
have an additional demand: if the PKA (a pilot plant for the conditioning of spent fuel) will be
put into operation, or if it proceeds with nuclear transports into the Wend land, the EXPO 2000
exhibition in Hannover will be used as a forum to demand attention for their interest.
The Red-Green government may think it will be possible to moderate this conflict, as it succeeded with the German participation in the offensive NATO war in Jugoslavia. They will be proven wrong. The discussion about nuclear energy has no split morals. Politicians will be judged for their acts, not for their justifications or telephone-sessions. So, this anti-democratic consensus-skirmish, which ignores the will of the majority, has to end at once. A renewal of the Atomic Law is superfluous, the phaseout has to start immediately with Biblis A!
Source and Contact: Wolfgang Ehmke, BI (Citizen's Initiative) Umweltschutz
Lüchow-Dannenberg,
Drawehnerstr. 3, 29439 Lüchow, Germany.
Tel: +49-5841-4684;
Fax: +49-5841-3197
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