Date of nuclear shutdown not set yet, Merkel says

Apr 15, 2011, 14:20 GMT

Berlin - Germany will speed up its planned closures of all nuclear power stations, Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed in Berlin Friday after talks with Germany's 16 state premiers or their deputies, but the timetable has not been set yet.

'The overall direction has been agreed and I am glad about that,' she said in her office after the talks. 'We all want to get out of nuclear power as soon as possible.'

Germany was rattled by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and is expected to close its 17 reactors within a little over a decade.

It is to speed up construction of wind turbines and high-voltage transmission lines to replace the lost nuclear electricity.

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said Germany's KfW federal bank would soon offer 5 billion euros (7.25 billion dollars) in soft loans to help investors build wind turbines in the North Sea and Baltic Sea.

'It's difficult to get loans from normal banks for this,' he said.

Merkel's government last year allowed the nuclear industry a time extension until about 2036, but will now be revoking this.

Opposition parties are demanding a previous closure timetable ending in about 2022 be restored, or even that a faster closedown be adopted.

Erwin Sellering, premier of Mecklenburg West Pomerania state, from the opposition Social Democratic Party, said, 'We've heard suggestions of 2035. That's not acceptable. It must come back at least to the time we set before, 2022.'

'There was no final decision on this, but we do want a significant reduction,' Merkel responded.

Merkel said her cabinet planned to adopt a new closure timetable on June 3, once it had been settled, and legislation would be rushed through the two chambers of the German parliament in the two weeks after that.

'It'll be done in this short time because of its importance and urgency,' Merkel said.

In an interview on public radio, Rainer Bruederle, the economics minister, estimated the annual bill for the conversion from nuclear to renewable energy at 1 billion to 2 billion euros, depending on the pace.

He rejected a suggestion by the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung of an annual top-up of 3 billion euros to electricity bills as 'speculative.'

'It wasn't discussed here today,' he said after the meeting with the premiers.

The closure timetable dates are approximate because the utilities have been granted output quotas rather than timespans. They can decide themselves how long it will take to generate the set amount of power.

The quotas can also be redistributed between different power stations.

Polls show a majority of Germans are eager to close the nuclear power plants, which currently provide a quarter of Germany's electricity. Even before the Fukushima disaster, the country's anti-nuclear movement was politically powerful.

After the disaster, Merkel ordered Germany's seven oldest plants idled for three months.

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