“Too ambitious”

The German constitutional court’s judgement on the country’s accelerated nuclear exit in 2011 has dashed hopes of the affected nuclear plant operators to cash in on an assumed violation of the constitution, Varinia Bernau writes in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The country’s highest court ruled that the utilities’ property rights had been violated by cutting short the service life of their reactors, but the compensation payments by the state are likely to be far lower than the companies’ billion-euro claims, according to Bernau. She argues that the utilities ignored seminal changes in the electricity market and now face more independent consumers, a looming nuclear exit including clean-up costs, and a restructuring of their business at the same time.

Read the article in German here.   

Read the CLEW article on the court’s nuclear exit ruling here.

For background on juridical aspects of nuclear exit, read the CLEW factsheet Legal disputes over the nuclear phase-out.