According to Federal Minister of Economics Habeck, the supply situation in France is significantly worse than forecast. This increases the stress factors on the German electricity system. The two southern German nuclear power plants Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim would therefore have to continue to be operated until April 2023.
According to Economics Minister Robert Habeck, the two southern German nuclear power plants Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim should continue to operate beyond the end of the year. It is likely that the nuclear power plant will continue to operate until mid-April 2023. Mainly because of the lack of French nuclear power, it would then be necessary to use it as a reserve, said Economics Minister Robert Habeck in Berlin.
According to circles in the Ministry of Economics, the operators of the nuclear power plants Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim in Baden-Württemberg have agreed with the ministry on key points for the implementation of the planned operational reserve. Accordingly, the two nuclear power plants are to be transferred to an operational reserve after the end of their regular service life on December 31, 2022. They are ready to prevent an impending power grid bottleneck in southern Germany.
At the beginning of September, Habeck announced the plan for a possible continued operation (reserve operation) of the two nuclear power plants. The third active nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony in Emsland should not be part of this emergency reserve and should be shut down by the end of the year. A final decision on the continued operation of the nuclear power plant has not yet been made, it said. It should fall this year. For this final decision, the ministry is based on the results of the network stress test that Habeck presented a few weeks ago.
Above all, the supply situation in France is “viewed with concern”. More than half of the nuclear power plants there are currently not connected to the grid, so there is a lack of electricity, which Germany compensates for in part with electricity from gas-fired power plants. France is heading towards the two worse scenarios in the stress test for the winter, it said. This would also intensify the stress factors for the German electricity system.
“The data from France have continued to trend downwards in recent weeks. The originally specified 50 GW of output from the nuclear power plants there in winter can no longer be assumed,” said Habeck. These are also the assumptions of the French government. “As the minister responsible for energy security, I must therefore say: If this development is not reversed, we will leave Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim on the grid in the first quarter of 2023.” As of today, he considers this to be “necessary”. The talks with the operators have been completed and a key issues paper has been agreed.
In order to make the reserve possible, the operators would “start everything that is necessary immediately” so that the systems could continue to be operated beyond December 31st and up to April 15th, 2023 at the latest. The cornerstones agreed between Habeck and the operators are the basis for the next steps in implementing the operational reserve. To this end, the federal government wants to draw up legal proposals for regulation. The legislative process should be completed by the end of October.
