The former Infrastructure and Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) is not only calling for longer operating times for the three remaining nuclear power plants, but also for the reactivation of the three reactors that were shut down last year and the construction of three completely new nuclear power plants.
“Germany has become the world’s supplicant and is getting deliveries for new gas in Qatar, Canada and Norway,” said Scheuer. “Germany is caught in the ideological trap of the Greens.”
Similar to the discussion about the internal combustion engine, the ex-transport minister also called for “technology openness” in the energy supply. “My formula is three plus three plus three: three nuclear power plants have to run longer, three have to be reactivated and three have to be built from scratch,” said Scheuer. “We need a reliable supply of energy to the economy, otherwise the deindustrialization of Germany will progress.”
The mistake was made to get out of the energy sources in the wrong order. “It would have been logical to get out of coal first, not to rely on gas and just keep nuclear power running as long as we still need it,” said Scheuer. The problem was that the Greens were ideologically opposed to nuclear energy and had therefore backed gas under Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin.
However, as a minister, Scheuer was part of the federal government that decided to phase out coal. “I also took part in the nuclear phase-out and the coal phase-out,” he admitted. “But that was only possible because a stable and cheap gas supply with Nord Stream 2 was supposed to go on line at the time, because there was peace and we didn’t have an aggressor like Putin.” Now there is a “dramatic change in the situation”.
The former transport minister sees nuclear power as just one example of technology that was abandoned too soon. “Germany has allowed too much dependency in recent years and given away a lot that was too dirty for us, for example battery technology,” he said. Other countries such as South Korea, Japan and France also continue to rely on nuclear energy. He spoke out in favor of joint research projects on the subject of the need for a “European nuclear energy Airbus”.
Scheuer, in whose Lower Bavarian constituency Isar 2 is one of the three nuclear power plants still in operation, explained that the new power plants should be built at the locations where nuclear power plants already stood. Scheuer spoke out in favor of relying on new, more compact reactors.
The question of final storage of the fuel rods must be clarified. “There are commissions for the search for a repository,” said Scheuer. “This is not a political question, but scientifically and technically depends solely on which region is best suited.”
The running times of the new power plants should not initially be limited, after all the construction would also have to pay off for the potential operators. “We are in a dramatic situation: the gas surcharge is flopping, the gas supply is not secured, the price of electricity is also going through the roof, the traffic light has gone back to coal-fired power generation, and the climate targets are a long way off,” said Scheuer. “If not now, then when, do you have to fundamentally rethink energy supply?”
Scheuer ruled out purchasing Russian gas again under the Putin regime, and he also rejected the commissioning of Nord Stream 2, as proposed by FDP Vice Wolfgang Kubicki. “It’s like opening a new bank account, it doesn’t automatically add new money to the account,” said Scheuer.
However, he spoke out against dismantling the pipeline. “As a former infrastructure minister, I would never dismantle infrastructure,” he said. “There may come a day when the situation in Russia has changed fundamentally.”
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