BERLIN – Night agreement in Germany for the definitive calendar of the farewell to nuclear energy. After hours of negotiations with industrialists and producers of energy, the Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced the agreement in Berlin this morning, marking one of his most significant political successes. According to the plan, the first of the 19 reactors currently in service in the Federal Republic could be closed within the next two to three years, but overall the country will end using them after each of them has turned 32, ie in 2021. therefore a more gradual phasing out of what the Greens were asking, and close to the pragmatic ideas of the chancellor. It is the first time that one of the major industrial powers in the world already in possession of many power plants chooses to renounce it. The decision was from the beginning one of the qualifying points of the rossoverde government program, in power since the victory against Helmut Kohl achieved in the parliamentary elections of September 27th 1998. The farewell to nuclear power is announced a few hours after the historical reform of the army: the left in power decided to cut the Bundeswehr (from over 350 to 250 thousand) and its transformation from an army to an army composed mainly of special forces with prolonged stops. “The agreement is total, definitive and precise”, explained Schroeder tired but satisfied, speaking to journalists. “Every detail that counts is defined in the agreement,” the head of government explained. “We have decided how much power the plants will still produce, that is 2500 hours-terawatt, and therefore this will allow us to prepare the table with the closing dates of each plant, and we agree also on the safe storage of nuclear fuel waste”. He immediately added to his side the representative of the energy producer organizations at the negotiation, Ulrich Hartmann: “It was not easy to reach the agreement, and we producers are not completely satisfied with it”. Germany currently has 19 nuclear reactors in service, all of western construction (Siemens-Kwu alone or together with the French of Framatome)
The plants supply around 33.5 percent of the energy needs. Less than 80 percent from the 59 Paris reactors, but still a high percentage. Opposition and strong economic powers were opposed to closure, but the farewell to nuclear power was from the beginning one of the conditions of the government alliance between the social democracy of Schroeder (SPD) and the Greens of the vice-chancellor Joschka Fischer. For the chancellor, the farewell to nuclear power and the reform of the army constitute two decisive political successes in his program of Great Reforms of the German Model. Schroeder emerges decisively strengthened also on the other fronts where he is engaged: the reform of the pensions, which he is negotiating with the Christian Democratic opposition to make them financially long-term, and the fiscal one, on which he also seeks broad consensus.