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Christian Lindner thinks it makes sense for nuclear power plants to run longer
Photo: IMAGO/Emmanuele Contini
If Federal Minister Christian Lindner has his way, Germany should no longer produce electricity using gas in the future.
"We have to work to ensure that the gas crisis is not accompanied by an electricity crisis," said the FDP chairman of the "Bild am Sonntag".
"That's why gas can no longer be used to produce electricity, as is still happening."
In the direction of the Federal Minister of Economics, Lindner said: "Robert Habeck would have the legal authority to prevent this." Lindner again spoke out in favor of a longer service life for nuclear power plants: "There are many arguments in favor of not shutting down the safe and climate-friendly nuclear power plants, but if necessary until 2024 to use."
Natural gas accounts for 10.1 percent of electricity for private households.
There are also gas-fired power plants for purely industrial power generation.
If these are included, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) assumes a total share of 15.4 percent.
There are currently three nuclear power plants still connected to the grid in Germany: Emsland in Lower Saxony, Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg.
According to the law, however, they should be switched off at the end of 2022.
Among other things, they are discussing letting them run a few months longer in a so-called stretching operation.
FDP politicians, for example, are calling for this, and Green politicians are not ruling it out either.
However, the latter refer to a new stress test for the power supply, which Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) ordered.
At the weekend, CSU regional group head Alexander Dobrindt considered extended terms by several years to be possible.
However, there has long been a debate about restarting nuclear power plants that have already been shut down.
General Metal President calls for the construction of new nuclear power plants
The president of the employers' association Gesamtmetall, Stefan Wolf, has not only spoken out in favor of extending the service life, but can also imagine new nuclear power plants.
"But we also have to have a debate about the construction of new nuclear power plants," Wolf told the newspapers of the Funke media group.
“There are currently 50 new nuclear power plants being built worldwide, and the technology has advanced.
The EU has only just labeled nuclear energy as green energy.«
Wolf refers to the so-called taxonomy.
At the beginning of July, the EU launched a kind of catalog for climate-friendly investments.
In this context, from January 2023 it will also be considered climate-friendly to invest money in certain gas and nuclear power plants.
Environmentalists, among others, find this wrong (read a comment here).
The chairwoman of the Green Youth, Sarah-Lee Heinrich, told the editorial network Germany about the current debate: “An extension of the term is not possible with us.
And an extension of the running time is what goes beyond the stretching operation.« It is not necessary and expensive.
“And nuclear power is a high-risk technology.
What we need is the expansion of renewable energies.«
kko/dpa
