2009-07-09 11:34:05 -
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's commitment to nuclear power has become a point of contention in an otherwise sleepy national election campaign, after a reactor breakdown gave the opposition grounds to criticize Chancellor Angela Merkel's support for atomic power.
The Kruemmel reactor, near Hamburg, shut down automatically Saturday when a transformer short-circuited. It had reopened just last month after a two-year closure prompted by a fire in another transformer.
The timing was ideal for the Social Democrats, trounced in recent European Parliament elections and scrounging for an issue to make them competitive before the Sept. 27 vote.
On Monday, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, said Germany's eight oldest nuclear plants should be closed as soon as possible.
«Accident cases have become normal cases,» Gabriel told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. «That's why I'm in favor of accelerating the nuclear phase-out.
Germany's previous government set a deadline to decommission all 17 nuclear plants by 2021.
As recently as last month, Merkel has said she wants to do away with that target, and extend the lives of some reactors. But she has made no public statement on the matter since the Kruemmel plant was closed on Saturday.
Merkel's desire to keep nuclear power is a practical complement to her advocacy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which she has pushed harder than most any other issue. In Dec. 2007 her cabinet passed a raft of measures designed to cut Germany's greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
With some 20 percent of Germany's power currently coming from its nuclear plants, a drastic increase in renewable energy production and greater reliance on natural gas would be necessary to meet that goal, said Hermann Ott, director of the Berlin office of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. It's possible, Ott believes, even in conjunction with a complete nuclear phase out.
«If one really wants to move into a cleaner future, then we need to do both,» Ott told The Associated Press this week.
Power company Vattenfall, which operates the Kruemmel reactor, had another setback Wednesday when Sweden's nuclear watchdog said it would put a plant at Ringhals that it operates jointly with E.ON AG under special supervision after years of safety procedure neglect.
Another nuclear plant run by Sweden-based Vattenfall, the Brunsbruettel reactor in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, is also off-line and under repair.
Juergen Grossmann, CEO of RWE AG, defended the safety of his company's reactors and those owned by other companies.
«The nuclear power plants in Germany all operate at the highest international standards,» Grossman said. «There is not a single plant in service that is unsafe.
