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Nuclear power future in Germany very much in doubt

According to a law passed in 2002 by the then-ruling SPD and the Green coalition, all of Germany’s nuclear power plants are to go off line by 2022……

Opposition party pledges to fight nuclear power extension | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 26.07.2010 Richard Connor , German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition has been put on notice that it will face a fight over any change to the law on nuclear energy without approval from the country’s upper house of parliament.

Green Party leader Claudia Roth threatened on Sunday to press for a judicial review at the Germany’s Constitutional Court if the government moved to extend the operational lifetimes of nuclear power plants without consent from the Bundesrat.

Speaking to public broadcaster ARD, Roth said that a number of Germany’s state governments were unhappy about a proposed delay to the closure dates.

The deputy premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Sylvia Loehrmann, also said that the government could expect what she described as “bitter resistance” from that state’s coalition, which is made up of the SPD and her Green Party.

“We will exhaust every legal possibility, right up to the Constitutional Court,”  the Green party’s Loehrmann told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Sunday.

Opinion within Merkel’s CDU is also divided.

The CDU premier of the state of Saarland, Peter Mueller, has questioned the need for an extension.

Opposition party pledges to fight nuclear power extension | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 26.07.2010

July 27, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, politics | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, reactors