The reactors will run until April 15, then it will be over. It’s a triumph for the Greens. They managed to put their stamp on Germany. There is a bet behind it. She is risky.
It’s over and done with – on April 15, 2023, the last three nuclear power plants will be shut down and the forefather of the nuclear phase-out has irrevocably won. His triumph was so great that he no longer had to fight for it in the Bundestag. “No country is phasing out nuclear power faster than the Federal Republic of Germany.” Jürgen Trittin said this sentence. It was in June – 21 years ago.
He should be right. Because not the brief continued operation, but the final exit: That is the most important, because it is the most lasting result of today’s vote in the Bundestag. It takes place on November 11th. – at the start of the carnival season of fools. That must be a coincidence.
And – for the history books: It is also the nuclear phase-out of the Union and the FDP. The Union wanted to buy new fuel rods to keep the remaining three nuclear power plants running – until December 31, 2024. But then the CDU and CSU would also be over. As CDU/CSU parliamentary group deputy Steffen Bilger from Baden-Württemberg puts it, where the CDU is a junior partner of the Greens in the coalition:
“We stand by the nuclear phase-out.” And the goal for the Union is also: “100 percent renewables.” That would be the end of it now. The Union is not a nuclear party, it just hangs its flag to the wind – and prepares for election campaigns.
Because people are worried and there is now a majority in favor of continuing nuclear power, the Union demanded a moratorium. Their goal is not a new energy mix including nuclear power in the long term, their goal is to present the traffic light coalition as a divided bunch.
That is legitimate, a form of struggle in party democracy. But it’s tactical, not strategic. The Greens, founded as an anti-nuclear party, have prevailed across the board. First, they won over the SPD – a party that was once Germany’s quintessential nuclear party. They then convinced the Left Party, closely followed by the CDU and CSU (Markus Söder threatened to resign in 2011 if the nuclear phase-out didn’t happen.) Finally, they won the Liberals over to their side, who preferred the coalition’s raison d’être in the traffic lights to theirs Principle of “technology openness”.
Julia Klöckner from the CDU is right, the Greens followed a myth, that of their founding. But they turned an idea into real politics, more persistent than any other party, and the conclusion is: The Greens have put their stamp on Germany as a country of green energy transition. In memory of:
On June 17, 1961, the first nuclear power plant goes online in Germany, in Kahl. The Greens were founded in 1980, three years later 29 Green MPs moved into the Bundestag, and 18 years later the first red-green coalition was launched. She decides to do without nuclear power in the long term. This is the starting shot of “nuclear power – no thanks!” as government policy.
On June 30, 2011, after the tsunami and the subsequent reactor accident in Fukushima, the Bundestag – with members of the CDU, CSU and FDP, the SPD and the Greens – voted to phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022. This has now only been postponed by three and a half months will – and only for three reactors.
In the Bundestag, the SPD member of the Bundestag, Carsten Träger, rejoices: “We’ll wake up 155 times, then our country will be a lot safer.” is built to be war and crisis-proof.” Over the years, social democracy has turned green.
The Union has also gone green. This is not even the result of black-green alliances at the state level; rather, the greening of the Union was its prerequisite.
In the Bundestag debate on the climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, also this Friday in the Bundestag, the Union does not accuse the traffic light coalition of acting too quickly or possibly too hastily on climate protection, but on the contrary: too hesitant and not consistent enough. The Union has long wanted to be a climate party.
The Union is therefore not pursuing a fundamental alternative to the government’s energy policy. Your alternative is tactical – it is to blame the government for small-scale failures. This is astonishing, given the government’s policy and its open contradiction:
The Greens and SPD prove the supposedly fundamentally unreliable nature of nuclear power plants with the current failure of half of the French reactors. The Liberal Lukas Köhler, Doctor of Philosophy, hopes that they will soon be back on the grid – to secure the German energy transition.
Anyone who knows which devices at home consume how much electricity can make targeted savings. Our e-paper shows which devices consume how much electricity for all common household appliances, from ovens and hobs to refrigerators and washing machines to TVs and WLAN routers. There are also a number of instant power-saving tips.
When the Union justifies its desire for a term extended by a year and a half with the risk of the winter after next, her FDP man Köhler explains why next year will be different, i.e. safer: Germany has filled its energy stores. And it has built LNG terminals. Where liquefied gas from the USA is unloaded, which comes from the fracking that Germany has banned. To the honor of the FDP, one has to say that they are in favor of fracking in Germany again. What the Greens will prevent, however, they announced today in the Bundestag.
The Greens have managed to get Germany to either get out or not get in: from hard coal, brown coal, nuclear power, gas, fracking, CCS storage technology for CO2.
Other countries, almost all of them, are also relying on renewable energies, but none as quickly and consistently as Germany. 60 new nuclear power plants are being built worldwide. Poland has just declared that it wants to replace coal with nuclear power. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, soon Poland: Germany is surrounded by what the Greens call “high-risk technology”.
Behind the German solo effort is a bet. She is risky.
It’s a green bet. One that Jürgen Trittin likes.
