Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck commented today on the margins of the press conference for the Skills Summit (3 p.m. in the Federal Labour Ministry) in response to a question about the current reports about PreussenElektra.

Minister Habeck said:

“I was rather surprised to read the letter from PreussenElektra.

There were three reasons for my surprise:

Firstly, the concept has clearly not been understood, because – as has been explained several times – the deployment reserve is not about switching the nuclear power stations on and off, rather it is about judging how the actual supply situation is developing in Germany and Europe and then taking the decision on the basis of the stress test scenarios as to whether the nuclear facilities are needed or not. This decision can come in December with regard to January; it can also happen in January or February. That is how it has always been presented, but apparently it hasn’t been understood in the same way.

Secondly, it is correct that we have of course been repeatedly in contact with all the nuclear power plant operators about this issue. And there was a letter from PreussenElektra – I think it was dated 25 August – in which they said that, should they be asked to keep operating for longer – i.e. continuing to generate electricity rather than becoming part of the deployment reserve – they would need to briefly shut down the facility, in other words it would have to stop producing power for a while. And now they are saying that they can’t do that if they are part of the deployment reserve. I can’t understand what the difference is in technical terms, so we will talk to them again and find out what the actual situation is.

But we were told in previous meetings that the plant will need to be briefly switched off if it is asked to keep generating power for longer than planned, and surely the same would be the case if it were to become part of the deployment reserve, because the technical issue should be the same.

Thirdly, I think the last overall maintenance inspection of Isar 2 took place in October 2021. These inspections take place annually. This annual check-up would normally take place in October 2022, but it was suspended: because the law says that the plant is to be taken off the grid on 31 December 2022, there was no need to carry out this inspection just for the last two months of operations. But of course an overall maintenance inspection would be necessary if the nuclear phase-out were delayed – as apparently desired by Isar 2 and PreussenElektra or eon. We have always made it clear that the safety standards need to be fully complied with if the plants do or might continue to operate. Should the letter be interpreted to mean that the nuclear power plants can only continue in operation if there is no maintenance inspection because technical problems may then crop up, then this leads to entirely different questions, and we will talk this through with the operators – hopefully away from the public gaze – but the letter is surprising for these three reasons.”

You can find the recording of the statement here.