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Nuclear power plant Neckarwestheim: Should be one of the last reactors to go offline
Photo: Norbert Försterling / dpa
The industry association for nuclear energy is in favor of a temporary extension of the lifetime of the last German nuclear power plants.
"We advocate using all available sources to get through the energy crisis better," said an association spokesman for the "Münchner Merkur".
In order to enable continued operation, hurry is needed.
“The power plants are in the process of being shut down.
The longer you wait, the harder it is to get them back up.”
In the governing coalition, FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai recently called for the lifespans of the three remaining German nuclear power plants to be extended in view of the threat of gas supply bottlenecks from Russia.
According to previous plans, they will be switched off at the end of the year as part of the nuclear phase-out.
Fuel rods could possibly be delivered by the end of the year
In March, the German nuclear companies still assessed the situation in such a way that the bottlenecks in gas and coal imports could hardly be compensated for quickly by longer operating times of the nuclear power plants.
A spokeswoman for PreussenElektra, an Eon subsidiary, had pointed out that the delivery of new fuel rods could take a year and a half.
The Nuclear Energy Association now considers the procurement to be feasible in good time before the end of the year.
Although Russia is a traditional supplier for this, uranium is also available in Australia and Canada.
But hurry is also required here: "If we want more uranium, we have to order it soon because it's not available that quickly." New contracts with trained personnel to operate the power plants are also needed.
Nuclear lobbyists wrote a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in March.
In it, they appealed for the federal government to reconsider its negative position regarding the extension of the service life of German nuclear power plants and to prepare for an emergency situation "in our country's energy supply".
ptz/AFP