Bavaria wants to keep nuclear plants running despite federal phase-out plans

by Julia Dahm 

Nuclear power plants in Bavaria must be kept running despite the country’s phase-out plans, according to the region’s government, which will need an unlikely green light from the federal government.

Bavaria’s conservative Prime Minister Marcus Soder (CSU, EPP) has been a fierce critic of the federal government’s decision to shut down the country’s remaining nuclear power plants as of Saturday.

Despite the nationwide exit, Munich will seek to keep Bavarian power plants such as Isar 2, one of the last active plants that shut down during the weekend, up and running, Soder told Bild am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday.

“As long as the crisis is not over and the transition to renewables is not successfully concluded, we need to use any type of energy available until the end of the decade,” he added.

However, the step would require the federal government in Berlin to change the relevant legislation to give all 16 federal states (Lander) the power to run their plants.

According to Soder, Berlin should “create a Lander competence for the continued operation of nuclear power.”

However, since the governing federal coalition of Socialists, Greens, and Liberals decided to have mid-April as the exit date, it seems unlikely that Berlin would agree to Munich’s request.

Given such slim chances of success, Green politicians slammed Soder’s advance as a pure charade ahead of the Bavarian upcoming regional elections in October.

“Soder’s remarks are clearly an election manoeuvre,” the Green federal party whip, Britta Ha?elmann, told dpa.

*first published in: www.euractiv.com