A return to operating the most recently shut-down plants would be “extremely difficult,” Andreas Lenz, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s energy-policy spokesperson, wrote to me. Like Scheer, he pointed to the advanced state of decommissioning, the loss of personnel and the lack of licenses.
Above all, however, he pointed to the SPD.
“It has to be said plainly — the coalition partner lacks the political will,” he said.
Nuclear endgame
Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency in Paris, is among the sharpest critics of Germany’s energy policy. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Berlin, the 68-year-old also rejected the doctrine of finality. Restarting the most recently shut-down reactors would be “very challenging,” he acknowledged. Still, he argues for “a sober second look.” If even a single nuclear plant could return to the grid, he says, that would be “an important gain for Germany.”
One country that has taken the right path, in Birol’s view, is Poland. While Germany tears down its nuclear plants, Poland’s state-owned company Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe, or PEJ, is building its first one. For now, the site is little more than a cleared strip through a coastal forest, a few hundred meters from the Baltic Sea. The first concrete is to be poured at the end of 2028, and the first of three reactor units are scheduled to begin operating in 2036.
In conversation, PEJ chief Marek Woszczyk explains Poland’s turn to nuclear power with a single word: sovereignty. For decades, coal carried the country’s power system, but Poland also learned how risky dependence on Russian gas could be. Therefore, as coal declines, nuclear energy has become the obvious answer. It offers electricity that is reliably available, affordable over the long term and largely emissions-free. Poland, he says, is betting on proven and modern Generation III+ reactors that can run for 60 to 80 years, perhaps longer, and that become highly competitive once the steep upfront investment has been made.