BY JOCHEN STAY
BERLIN Looking back now at the promises made by the German Green Party and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the 1998 election campaign, it is clear that the record of the SPD-Green coalition government on nuclear power differs from the promises.
The record also differs from the 'consensus agreement' with the nuclear electricity utilities, which was concluded in June 2000, and also from the 1998 SPD-Greens coalition agreement, which the anti-nuclear movement criticised for good reasons at the time.
The Greens changed their demands on the closure of the last nuclear power station from "immediate closure" (before 1998) to "eight years" (just before the elections in 1998), then "15 years" (during the consensus agreement talks), and then 25 years (minimum) as the final consensus agreement.
The Greens often argue that they are only a small party (winning less than 7% of the vote in the 1998 election) and that the chancellor (the SPD's Gerhard Schroeder) is not true to his principles on nuclear issues. So, the Greens could not achieve everything that was included in the party's manifesto in 1998. But even when one considers this argument, the outcome after four years has been devastating and raises the question of what has been achieved at all.
In the discussions on the consensus talks at the Greens' party conference it was often said, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" (i.e., better to have an agreed phaseout plan than no agreement). The question remains: what kind of bird is the agreement?
Germany's 19 operating reactors are still all in operation. None have been closed. In recent years the production of nuclear electricity has reached record levels.
In the next four years, only one reactor (Stade) is expected to close, and that's not because of the consensus agreement but due to its relatively small capacity and uneconomic prospects in the liberalised electricity market. The operators of Stade have clearly explained that the decision to close the reactor has not been based on political but purely economic grounds.
According to the consensus agreement, the next reactor to close would be Obrigheim. But in this case, a secret agreement between operator EnBW and the chancellor has been made, which allows its operation until 2007 at least.
In the consensus agreement, the electricity utilities obtained a government guarantee of unhindered operation for their nuclear power stations and a solution for the waste they produce. That will continue for the technical lifetime of about 35 years of each reactor. This allows as much nuclear electricity and nuclear waste to be produced as in the past 35 years, since the first power reactor was put into operation in the 1960s.
The temporary closure of Philippsburg and Brunsbuettel due to serious incidents will not result in shorter operating lifetimes. The lifetime of the reactors is not laid down as a certain amount of years but in terms of the amount of electricity to be produced. Thus, temporary closure following problems with a reactor will eventually result in a later closure date. If a reactor is closed indefinitely due to technical shortcomings, its "credits" can be transferred to other reactors, which can then operate for a longer period.
In the 15 years between the completion of the Gorleben interim waste storage facility in Lower-Saxony until the 1998 election of the SPD-Greens government, a total of eight Castors with high-level waste were transported to Gorleben. During the four years of the SPD-Greens government, a further 12 Castors went to Gorleben. This resulted in even more restrictions on democratic rights in the region than during the previous government.
Radioactive waste
When the SPD-Greens first formed government, the closure of several reactors was feared by the nuclear industry because of a ban on waste transports since May 1998 and because of a lack of on-site storage capacity for spent fuel. Presently, licences are being prepared for on-site interim storage facilities at all nuclear power station sites.
When these facilities have been completed, the storage capacity will be sufficient for decades of spent fuel production. Until the facilities have been completed, many reactor operators are allowed to store loaded Castors in on-site "parking lots". Those temporary "solutions" are being called "interim storage". Under a conservative Christian Democrat government, this would have resulted in a public outcry and massive protest from the SPD and the Greens.
The transports of spent fuel to reprocessing plants in the UK and France resumed during the SPD-Greens government. This year, 150 casks are to travel across Europe, which is another disappointing record. The reprocessing of German spent fuel has not been halted. From 2005, the transport of further spent fuel to reprocessing plants will be forbidden, but the consensus agreement allows the reprocessing of the waste already delivered. That will continue for many years.
The setting up of a working group on final disposal of radioactive waste gives the public the impression that a solution for the waste problem could be found and that finding a disposal site would be no problem. The working group has the mission to develop a plan for finding a suitable final disposal site and to consider how to win public acceptance for that site. The proposals remind us of the dark days when large amounts of federal government "Gorleben money" were pumped into public relations campaigns.
Before the 1998 elections, the Social Democrats and Greens declared unanimously that the salt dome of Gorleben would not be suitable for final disposal of high-level waste. In the consensus agreement, it was suddenly called a suitable location. A moratorium on research at Gorleben is likely to be lifted in the coming years, and does not preclude its future use as a waste dump. It seems obvious that the large amounts of money spent on Gorleben will play a significant role in the site selection process.
Stoiber 'horror scenario'
In the present election campaign, nuclear energy is not a prominent theme. The SPD and Greens state that the issue has been dealt with and that the goal of an acceptable energy policy has been realised with the completion of the consensus agreement.
And when the issue of nuclear energy arises, the SPD and the Greens emphasise the "horrors" of Edmund Stoiber's (Christian Democrats) possible victory. In particular, the Green environment minister Jurgen Trittin warns of a horrible "nuclear age" if Stoiber becomes chancellor of Germany.
These arguments are largely based on statements by Stoiber shortly after his candidacy for chancellor for the Christian Democrats, when he announced that he would get rid of the consensus agreement as soon as he became chancellor. But just two weeks later he changed his mind and started saying that he would examine the agreement in detail. Presently, it is clear that the new Atomic Law will remain largely unchanged if he becomes chancellor. The chief of the Christian Democrat parliamentary fraction, Friedrich Merz, has confirmed this.
The electricity utility bosses have made it clear to Stoiber that they want to stick to the consensus agreement. Quoted in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, they thank their "environmental friends" for an agreement that guarantees lifetimes of about 35 years for their reactors. The newspaper continues: "The industry leaders are convinced that without the agreement the terror attacks of September 11 would have resulted in a heated debate about a quicker closure of Germany's nuclear power stations."
Therefore the utilities will do anything to prevent Stoiber reconsidering the consensus agreement. Only some smaller "cosmetic changes" would be negotiable, such as lifting the ban on building new nuclear power reactors. Notably, the Christian Democrats have written in their manifesto that there are no current plans for building new power reactors.
Why do Trittin and his cronies present such absurd horror scenarios? The answer is easy if one looks at the results of the past four years. A zero outcome can only be sold as a success story if people are led to think that it could be much worse.
But Trittin never tires of selling this all as a success story. The environment ministry in the meantime has started a campaign claiming that Germany is the world champion of nuclear phaseout. Neglected in this campaign is the fact that most countries do not operate nuclear power reactors, including half of the European Union countries. For example, after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, Italy closed down all of its reactors within a few months.
[Jochen Stay is an anti-nuclear campaigner in Germany. Abridged from Anti-Atom Aktuell, August 2002. Translation from World Information Service on Energy, Amsterdam.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 25, 2002.
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