Germany Shuts Seven Nuke Plants
The Guardian reports:
Angela Merkel's U-turn on nuclear energy became even more gear-crunching on Tuesday when she announced the temporary closure of seven of Germany's nuclear power stations.
The chancellor said that reactors built before 1980 would be taken offline while an urgent review of their safety was carried out.
"Safety has the priority in all our deliberations," Merkel declared after she met politicians from affected German states.
This latest announcement came just a day after Germany's coalition government announced a three-month delay in its decision to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 elderly nuclear power stations.
German papers mulled over Merkel's dramatic wavering in policy in response to the unfolding disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan.
Critics claim that the chancellor's real reason for switching the stations off is elections in three German federal states – in particular Baden-Württemberg, where Merkel's Christian Democrats are running neck and neck with the centre-left Social Democrats (though an opinion poll on Tuesday put Merkel's CDU party five points ahead). One of the controversial reactors is in the southern state. Elmer Jehn, a columnist writing in Hamburger Morgenpost, said Merkel was guilty of realpolitik. He linked her "reversal" on nuclear power to the poll in Baden-Württemberg on 27 March, writing: "Since Japan, every sensible person knows that nuclear energy is dead."
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