According to Economics Minister Robert Habeck, the Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 nuclear power plants must run beyond the end of the year. This is mainly due to the supply situation in France.
According to Economics Minister Robert Habeck, the two nuclear power plants Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 will have to run beyond the end of the year. Habeck said on Tuesday evening in Berlin. Habeck justified this with the supply situation in France, where more than half of the nuclear power plants are not connected to the grid. As a result, there was a lack of electricity, which Germany compensates for in part with electricity from gas-fired power plants. “If this development is not reversed, we will leave Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim online in the first quarter of 2023,” said Habeck.
Habeck said he had agreed on a concept for reserve operation with the operators of the two nuclear power plants on Tuesday. According to the key points, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim are to be transferred to an operational reserve after the end of their regular service life on December 31, in order to prevent an impending power grid bottleneck in southern Germany. The operators would “start doing everything necessary immediately” so that the systems can continue to be operated on the market beyond the end of the year until April 15, 2023 at the latest.
Habeck: Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim will probably have to remain online beyond the end of the year
Meanwhile, the energy supplier EnBW is already preparing its Neckarwestheim 2 nuclear power plant for possible operation by April 15 next year. The company announced on Tuesday in Karlsruhe that the kiln should definitely be shut down on December 31.
Should the federal government decide that further electricity production is required, the plant’s reactor core will be reassembled with existing partially spent fuel elements and restarted. This should ensure the production of up to 1.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, it said. The decision should be made by early December of this year at the latest.
Actually, the three remaining nuclear power plants Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Lingen in Emsland should be shut down as part of the nuclear phase-out at the end of the year. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, this should continue to apply in any case to the Lingen reactor in Emsland. Recently, however, it had also become public that repair work would be necessary on the Meiler Isar 2 if it ran for a longer period of time. (fmü with dpa/AFP)
