nuclear-news

Germany’s top four utilities E.ON, RWE, EnBW, Vattenfall have set aside €38bn ($41.4bn) to pay for the decommissioning of the country’s remaining nuclear power stations and the final storage of highly radioactive waste.But preliminary estimates assume the costs for the nuclear decommissioning and waste storage to cost at least €50-70bn, the DIW says.

Also, the provisions aren’t protected from insolvencies, and the utilities could also try to escape their responsibility by restructuring their businesses, claim the authors of the DIW study – energy experts Claudia Kemfert, Christian von Hirschhausen and Cornelia Ziehm.

It is also questionable what value the provisions will have in a couple of years given the declining profitability of large utilities.”Seen these great risks, the provisions of the nuclear corporations should be transferred into a publicly administered fund as soon as possible,” von Hirschhausen proposes.

German utilities have always said their provisions for the nuclear exit are sufficient. But Germany’s largest utility, E.ON, late last year announced its split into a company for renewables, grids and customer solutions that will keep its current brand name, and another one to be named Uniper that will bundle its current nuclear and fossil activities.

Although debt-free at its onset next year, there are doubts whether Uniper can stay profitable over the long run, while the remaining E.ON may be exempt from the nuclear responsibility.

The DIW study also said that Germany’s electricity supply will be safe also after the last nuclear plant has been switched off in 2022 as the country currently is producing far more power than it needs, a situation that isn’t expected to change even with the nuclear phase-out.

E.ON will switch off its 1.3GW Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant in Bavaria state in the second half of next month. The 10 terawatt hours it produces per year can be compensated by coal and gas-fired energy, the DIW says. Separately, Vattenfall and E.ON today said they have closed a cooperation agreement for the decommissioning and dismantling process of joint nuclear plants.