Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) has again clearly rejected an extension of the service life of the three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany.
The federal government is sticking to the decision to phase out nuclear power, Lemke confirmed on Tuesday evening during the deliberations on the 2023 environmental budget in the Bundestag.
With the decision to phase out the use of nuclear energy in Germany, a "decades-long major social conflict" came to an end, said Lemke.
"Anyone who now enters into a discussion about lifetime extensions - and thus in truth about returning to the use of nuclear power - is announcing this consensus," explained the minister.
Especially at a time when the world is looking with concern at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, which is under fire, this is "irresponsible".
Your party colleague and Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck had proposed the day before, based on an investigation into the stability of the power supply (stress test), that the two southern German nuclear power plants should be kept operational until mid-April in the event of bottlenecks: Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim in Baden-Württemberg .
The third remaining Emsland nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony should therefore not be part of the reserve and, as planned, be switched off at the end of the year.
Members of the Union, AfD and FDP criticized the decision on nuclear power on Tuesday.
The CSU deputy Anja Weisgerber campaigned for the term of the three remaining nuclear power plants to be extended for a limited period of time instead of keeping two of the power plants in reserve operation.
"Your ideologically shaped policies are damaging our country and burdening the people," Weisgerber called out to the Environment Minister.
The left-wing politician Victor Perli, on the other hand, spoke out clearly against the continued use of nuclear power and pointed to the already existing burdens from nuclear waste.
Perli criticized the fact that in 2023 almost half of the environmental budget was earmarked for the interim and final storage of nuclear waste in Germany (1.16 billion euros).
In total, expenditures of 2.44 billion euros are planned for the coming year in the individual budget of the Ministry of the Environment - and thus 270 million euros more than this year.