“Fessenheim – a risk for German taxpayers”

At first, the government of the German state of Baden-Württemberg bristled at French energy company EDF’s decision to postpone the decommissioning of the Fessenheim nuclear plant until at least 2019 – but it has now emerged that there could be “a veritable conflict of interests for the state government,” Markus Balser and Leo Klimm write in Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 1972, a predecessor of Baden-Württemberg’s state-owned energy company EnBW took over 17.5 percent of construction costs for the plant near the German border in exchange for a guaranteed energy supply, they explain. According to EDF, EnBW – and with it, the state’s taxpayers – “contribute to the costs resulting from decommissioning,” the authors say. According to EnBW, however, financial responsibility for Fessenheim ended in 2015, they add.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet Securing utility payments for the nuclear clean-up for background.