Two top German government ministers have defended last year's closure of the country's last nuclear power plants before parliament, rejecting new allegations levelled in a magazine piece that they'd suppressed internal concerns about the plan.
In a piece published over the weekend, the magazine Cicero alleged that key government ministries sought to block the public release of internal reports raising concerns about the final shut-down of reactors and suggested that operations could be extended at some nuclear power plants.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke, both members of the Green Party, denied the allegations raised by the magazine and defended the handling of the nuclear phase-out at their ministries on Friday.
Opposition lawmakers from the conservative CDU/CSU bloc criticized the ministers on Friday, with lawmaker Andreas Jung arguing that there remains "a well-founded suspicion" that Habeck may have distorted facts during the ministry's review of potentially extending the life of the plants.
The planned closure of Germany's final nuclear plants became a major political debate in 2022, since it came amid an energy crisis in Germany after Russia cut off shipments of natural gas.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered a brief temporary extension for the nuclear plants, which were eventually shut in April 2023.
In a draft memo dated March 3, 2022, employees of Habeck's Economy Ministry argued that, under certain circumstances, a limited lifetime extension of the remaining German nuclear power plants until the following spring could make sense.
They advised that this possibility should be examined further. According to the ministry, the paper was not widely circulated at management levels.
At the time, senior Greens including Habeck were arguing against extending operations at the plants. The current controversy revolves around whether the ministers accurately conveyed the feasibility of doing so.
Habeck said it's not surprising that there were dissenting voices among the 2,400 ministry employees. He said that internal technical discussions were important, but that talks with the utility firms that operated the plants proved key for his decision.
The utility companies - RWE, ENBW and EON - initially said that the available nuclear fuel elements would be used up by the end of the year, Habeck said on Friday, but later updated that information to say "they could run for two, three, four, five months longer - and the service life was then extended accordingly."
His ministry also noted that the paper was included in a later review, which ultimately argued against extending nuclear plant operating life due to the "very high economic costs, legal and safety risks."
Although the Greens have long campaigned against atomic energy, it was former centre-right chancellor Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat (CDU), who made the decision to phase out nuclear power plants following the 2011 nuclear disaster in the Japanese city of Fukushima.
