Does this look like a cut Gordian knot or a broken coalition?

In the nuclear dispute between the Greens and the FDP, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) decided that all three remaining nuclear power plants would remain online until April 15, 2023 at the latest.

Of course, all traffic lights are now trying to make the best of it, but in the end they are all damaged and the coalition is only patched up.

The cracks are likely to reopen next year unless conditions – and prices – improve fundamentally in the energy market.

There are already the first liberal demands that the reactors may be operated for a longer period of time after a further reassessment.

This egg dance is anything but a well thought-out energy policy.

The use of the reactors needs to be well planned, the entire industry, including power plant and grid operators, commercial and private consumers, needs predictability.

Residual energy can still be squeezed out of the core, nor can it be reconfigured.

Scholz' emergency concept is poorly thought out

In the longer term, however, there is no way around ordering new elements.

It takes months, so the idea of ​​starting now and then moving on won't work.

How little Scholz's emergency concept has been thought through is shown by the fact that operators such as Preussen-Elektra still believe in the key issues paper on the replacement reserve and the contract for the assumption of costs, but the government believes that these agreements are no longer valid with the regular service operation that has now been decided.

A lot of money is involved, because Isar 2 has to be offline for a week in preparation for continued operation without earning anything.

A little more extra power in the system is better than none.

However, a real extension of the service life with new fuel rods would have been far more foresighted.

That would have lowered prices and CO2 emissions and, at a time when no new gas-fired power plants would be imaginable in the near future, represented a cheap and climate-friendly safeguard for the uncertain wind and solar power.

But as it is, Germany will continue to rely on coal and soon again on nuclear power from France.

This is hilarious.