Weird circumstances of a nuclear shutdown in Germany. The experts rejected it, the green ministry ignored them

Germany’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection has decided to continue the move away from nuclear power despite the recommendations of its own experts. It is not entirely clear what the resort led by the leader of the German Greens, Robert Habeck, led to this. Likewise, it is not clear whether the minister himself knew about the documents proposing to postpone the planned shutdowns of nuclear power plants at all. On Friday, Habeck will explain the whole case at an extraordinary meeting in front of the Bundestag. Calls for his resignation are mounting.

The accusation was made by Cicero magazine, which bases it on documents drawn up within the ministry at the beginning of March 2022, which are available to the Cicero editors. It follows from them that Habeck’s subordinates, who were responsible for nuclear safety, refused to further shut down the nuclear power plants and instead advocated a thorough examination of the benefits of their continued operation. However, in the final output of the ministry, published on March 8, the verdict is the opposite – there is no change in the planned termination of operation of nuclear power plants.

The question of why the final verdict was not based on the recommendations of the Ministry’s own experts cannot be reliably answered at present. According to Bild, the original message apparently never reached Minister Habeck.

Due to the developing scandal, Habeck has already been criticized by a number of German politicians, including his coalition partners. One of them, Bundestag member Gerald Ulrich from the coalition FDP party, said that the published “documents on nuclear energy show that we, the citizens, and we, the coalition partners, have not learned the whole truth about the decommissioning of nuclear energy”. Thorsten Frei, an MP for the opposition Christian Democrats, wrote on the X social network that “when nuclear power was decommissioned, parliament and the population were lied to”.

Habeck has long supported the gradual closure of German nuclear power plants. According to him, the deviation from the core is “completely defensible” and will not threaten the stability of electricity supplies. His ministry denied the allegations made by Cicero magazine. The final decision was said to be based on a “broad, well-founded, open and critical discussion” in which, in addition to Habeck’s office, other departments and power plant operators also participated.