The chief supervisor of the federal government accuses the Bavarian authorities of being lax with regard to nuclear safety. This is reported by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Accordingly, the Free State contradicts “the principles of German supervisory practice”.
In the dispute over the continued operation of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant, the federal government accuses the Bavarian authorities of being lax in their handling of nuclear safety regulations. This emerges from a letter from the chief supervisor of the federal government, Gerrit Niehaus, to the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment. It is available from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
In it, Niehaus wrote to his nuclear safety colleagues in Munich that he had to state “that you are making an assessment of safety that I cannot understand and that contradicts the principles of German supervisory practice”. These principles include “relying on thorough testing and evidence”.
The letter dates from June, at the time Bavaria and the federal government were already arguing about whether longer maturities could help to dampen the gas crisis. In an initial analysis, the Federal Ministries for Economic Affairs and the Environment rejected this; among other things, with reference to security concerns. Since 2019, all three remaining nuclear power plants in the country have had to undergo what is known as a “periodic safety review”. The Bavarian Ministry had advocated carrying out such a check during ongoing operations in case of doubt. This would mean “neither restrictions on the availability of the facilities nor concessions in terms of nuclear safety,” wrote the Bavarian ministry to Berlin in May.
Niehaus, who is the highest German nuclear supervisor, also rejects this. “You mean that the exam can be made up for at the same time,” he writes. “Although the systems could then initially run with undetected deficits, you don’t see any concessions to safety in this.”
Read here: During a nuclear power plant visit from Isar 2 – Söder and Merz call for longer nuclear runtimes: “Traffic lights argue back and forth”
The Federal Ministry for the Environment also relies on the “final protocol” of a telephone conference with the heads of the three nuclear power companies E.ON, RWE and EnBW, in which Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) also took part. It is also available to the SZ. In it, the participants state that an extension of the term beyond December 31 raises “renewed questions of security and security clearance”. Therefore, continued operation “only makes sense if either the depth of testing of the basic safety analysis were reduced and/or extensive retrofitting measures (…) were dispensed with”. However, the nuclear power plants would “replace only a small amount of gas in a situation of gas shortage,” the protocol goes on to say.
