Berlin, March 8 (UNI/Xinhua) Two German ministries led by Green Party politicians, Robert Habeck and Steffi Lemke, on Tuesday spoke out against extending the operating times of the country’s remaining nuclear power plants, despite possible energy supply bottlenecks due to the Ukraine crisis. “As a result of weighing up the benefits and risks, an extension of the operating lives of the three remaining nuclear power plants is not to be recommended, also in view of the current gas crisis,” according to a joint report by the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) and the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection (BMUV) seen by German media. Extending the operating life-span of nuclear power plants would not generate any additional electricity in the coming winter, but only from fall 2023 after filling with newly manufactured fuel rods, the report said. In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel started a nuclear moratorium including a safety inspection of all nuclear power plants that lead to Germany accelerating its phase-out of nuclear energy. After the operating license for three nuclear power plants in Germany expired at the end of 2021, the country’s last three plants are scheduled to be shut down permanently by the end of 2022 at the latest. Ahead of a meeting of federal and state energy ministers on Tuesday, a spokesperson of the German utility RWE told Rheinische Post newspaper that “the licensing and technical hurdles for an extension would be very high.”
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