26 Apr. 35 years after Chernobyl: Cattenom must be shut down

Posted at 17:31h in General by

Brussels, April 26, 2021 - 35 years after the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear power is still part of Europe's energy supply. Despite the devastating dangers and the still unresolved issue of the final disposal of nuclear waste, the EU is also discussing extending the lifetimes of nuclear power plants. Manuela Ripa, MEP for the ÖDP, criticizes this: "The disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima have dramatically brought home to us the incredible risks associated with nuclear power.

An incident at a nuclear power plant - whether due to human error, technical failure or a natural disaster - has deadly, irreversible consequences for people and the environment. And this goes far beyond national borders and continents. Despite this, the French government wants to renovate the outdated Cattenom nuclear power plant at great financial expense and extend its service life by 10 years. The 200 million euros that are to be spent on modernizing Cattenom should flow directly into the expansion of renewable energies. That would be a truly sustainable long-term solution, which is what we need now. I join Luxembourg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland in calling for the operating life of the French nuclear power plant at Cattenom not to be extended until 2036.

The 200 million euros that are to be spent on modernizing Cattenom should flow directly into the expansion of renewable energies. That would be a truly sustainable long-term solution, which is what we need now.

 We must not rely on backward-looking and highly dangerous technologies in the fight for our climate goals. We still do not know what to do with the radioactive waste and the massive dangers of operating a nuclear reactor cannot be denied. Even without Cattenom, Europe does not have to fear any bottlenecks in its energy supply and we can increasingly compensate for the loss of generation capacity with renewable energies. Back in December, I sent a letter to the EU Commission to prevent further extensions to the lifetimes of French nuclear reactors."

Japan's plans for Fukushima and the new EU taxonomy for sustainable finance, which increasingly includes nuclear energy, are also a cause for concern in this respect: "The new EU taxonomy is intended to distinguish effective investments for a sustainable, climate-friendly system change from pure greenwashing. An important criterion here is the "do no significant harm" principle, i.e. that new technologies in certain areas such as climate protection or biodiversity conservation must not cause significant harm. In my view, this principle is violated in all respects with nuclear power: Nuclear power hinders the transition to a circular economy, creates serious pollution through nuclear waste, has the potential to further destroy biodiversity and contributes to the worsening of the climate crisis through its immense water consumption. In addition, nuclear power is a bulky, slow source of energy and therefore completely unsuitable as a transitional solution.

Elsewhere, the Japanese government recently announced its intention to discharge 1 million cubic meters of radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific. The damage to the environment, animals and ultimately us humans can only be imagined. So far, there is hardly any reliable data to make a statement about the extent of the damage. That is why I am also calling for sign a petition to overturn the Japanese government's decision."