“Vanished into thin air”

With Germany’s constitutional court backing the country’s speedy nuclear phase-out, the “inflated” compensation claims of nuclear plant operators have “vanished into thin air”, says Green Party politician Jürgen Trittin in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau. Trittin, who as Minister for the Environment played a central role in brokering Germany’s initial decision to exit nuclear power production in 2002, says Chancellor Angela Merkel is to blame for the utilities even having had a chance to sue the government. “I’m outraged by the technical mistakes the Merkel government made as well as by the political tactics surrounding the nuclear exit,” Trittin says. If Merkel’s conservative-liberal coalition had not extended the plants’ lifespan in 2010 and “if it had not botched up revoking this decision” a few months later, there would have been no case for the utilities to ask for compensation in the first place, Trittin argues.

Read more on the Green Party’s stance on the future of energy transition in this CLEW article.