Germany will rethink its energy mix, including a possible revival of its
nuclear programme which the previous government decided to phase out, a
senior government official said on Thursday.
"We have to talk again of the use of nuclear," said Joachim Wuermeling,
Secretary of State at the German Economy and Technology Ministry.
Germany s previous government aimed to end nuclear power production by
around 2020 but Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week it was a mistake
for the country to turn off nuclear power plants, even though her
coalition government was committed to the plan.
Nuclear currently supplies a third of German power.
Wuermeling said the government was working on a new energy programme
which it would decide on in the autumn of next year.
"We need to have a balanced energy mix because having one anchor is not
enough during stormy weather," he told a Franco-German energy conference.
"In Germany, the debate has never stopped but had not been led by the
government," Wuermeling told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.
He added that the debate over nuclear had resumed as a direct
consequence of a rise in energy demand, an increased dependency on
energy resource imports, global warming and also in the light of
technological progress in the nuclear sector.
Opinion polls regularly show the vast majority of the public is opposed
to any further extension of nuclear power.
But Wuermeling said it would be wrong to scrap nuclear until it was
clear that renewable sources could replace it.
"We have to think before we cut off the tree branch and before we know
whether renewables can fill in the gap," he said.
The previous Social Democrat (SPD) and Greens government passed laws
gradually decommissioning nuclear power stations. Merkel s Christian
Democrats narrowly beat the SPD in a 2005 election but were forced into
a coalition with the SPD.
The SPD said the nuclear phase-out was not negotiable. Merkel agreed to
that last year even though other conservatives, especially Economy
Minister Michael Glos, had called for the phase-out to be scrapped due
to rising oil prices.
(Por Muriel Boselli,
Planet Ark, 27/10/2006)