German opposition MPs propose checking feasibility of restarting nuclear plants

Lawmakers of Germany’s largest opposition party alliance have called for an expert assessment of whether recently decommissioned nuclear power plants could be reactivated. In the “Energy Agenda” policy paper, conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) politicians outline their energy policy priorities for the country's future, ahead of the next federal election, which is currently scheduled for autumn 2025. In the position paper, the politicians call the completion of Germany’s nuclear exit during the energy crisis “an ideologically motivated and wrong decision” by chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government coalition.

Germany shuttered its last three nuclear plants in April 2023, three months later than the December-2022 date originally decided by the coalition government of CDU and the Free Democrats (FDP) in 2011. Scholz’s government kept the three plants running longer than initially planned after months of debate about whether to have additional backup capacity amid the energy crisis fuelled by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

CDU nuclear power advocates said they want to quickly commission an expert assessment to determine whether the last plant closures can be reversed and the reactors put back on the grid and “whether this is possible at reasonable technical and financial costs.” Moreover, the conservative politicians said that Germany should no longer “terminally” shutter any coal-fired power plants on its path towards a full coal exit by 2038 if there is no sufficient gas-fired power plant capacity to replace them.

The lawmakers said that the energy transition in Germany could only work “with a cost-turn towards greater efficiency.” They argued that the current government’s “regulation frenzy,” for example in the controversial heating transition law, would not be accepted by citizens. The leading instrument for climate policy in Germany should be a CO2 price, of which proceeds are redistributed to citizens instead of financing transformation support programmes, they added.

In contrast to the ideas outlined in the paper, CDU leader Friedrich Merz at an energy industry conference earlier this year said that he regarded the nuclear phase-out as settled for Germany.

Ingrid Nestle, energy and climate spokeswoman for the coalition government member Green Party, said the CDU’s proposals would glorify “a museum of German industry” instead of supporting future-oriented technologies. “If the CDU is interested in [energy] security, then renewables are the key,” Nestle told news agency dpa in an article published by Zeit Online.

After years of stagnation during consecutive CDU governments, a boom in renewables under the current government “makes a decisive contribution to a secure energy supply,” she argued. Reactivating decommissioned nuclear reactors would be an expensive approach and disregard the substantial follow-up costs of nuclear power, Nestle added.