German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said a June 28 incident at a nuclear reactor in northern Germany deserves close scrutiny by state regulators, heating up a debate about the future of nuclear power.
There is reason for the state regulator to inspect the operator's reliability,'' Gabriel said today at a press conference in Berlin. “I can't say what their conclusion is going to be.''
Vattenfall Europe AG's Kruemmel nuclear plant in the state of Schleswig-Holstein was shut down June 28 after a fire broke out in a transformer. Authorities in the state are looking into Vattenfall's “reliability,'' a condition of its license to operate the 1,260-megawatt reactor.
Gabriel, while in charge of reactor safety, has no authority to revoke Vattenfall's license. Chancellor Angela Merkel told RTL television on July 10 the incident hasn't changed her opinion that nuclear reactors should be allowed to operate longer than agreed by the ruling coalition of her own party, the Christian Democrats, and the Social Democrats, to whom Gabriel belongs.
The debate over nuclear power has divided the ruling coalition, with Gabriel wanting to stick to plans to close all 17 plants by 2021 while many Christian Democrats favor extending the lifespan of the stations to meet commitments on curbing climate change. A decision on the future of the plants has been postponed until after the next national election, in 2009.
Carbon Emissions
The plants, due to close under an agreement made by the last administration in 2000 and ratified by Merkel's government, generate about 26 percent of German electricity and emit smaller amounts of carbon-dioxide than gas- or coal-fired plants.
Reactor owners E.ON AG, Vattenfall, RWE AG and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG each want to run their nuclear plants longer, while environmental groups say the latest incident proves nuclear power is unsafe.
Gabriel said in an interview in today's edition of the Hanover-based Neue Presse newspaper that regulators have good reason'' to investigate whether Vattenfall's license to operate nuclear plants should be revoked. Merkel has said she finds it irritating'' that rules on safety procedures aren't being followed.
Authorities in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein's state capital, said they're checking Vattenfall's “reliability'' and the “technical qualifications'' of its staff. The Environment Ministry is in close contact with state authorities, Gabriel's spokesman Michael Schroeren told reporters yesterday.
`Serious' Errors
State and federal authorities will discuss with the plant's senior operating staff on July 16 what went wrong after the transformer station caught fire, Gabriel said.
Vattenfall employees made “serious'' errors in responding to problems connected with the fire at the Kruemmel plant, Gabriel told the Neue Presse. To avoid continued plant shutdowns, operators in the past replaced staff after safety incidents, Schroeren said.
“Outside the reactor building, problems develop at a transformer, which starts to burn, and then there are repercussions beyond the reactor building, including smoke entering the control room and difficulties in communication,'' Gabriel said. “Given the inherent damage risk at nuclear plants, this is something that has to be clarified precisely.''
As many as 25 staff were present at times in the control room, a sign that standard operating procedures weren't adhered to and evidence of “communication problems,'' he said.
