暗网福利app

On 14 March 2011 鈥� just three days after the melt-down of Japanese Fukushima Daiichi 鈥� Angela Merkel鈥檚 conservative-liberal coalition government issued a preliminary standstill order (moratorium) on the seven oldest nuclear power stations and l plant. Three months later, the Bundestag (federal parliament) passed a (Atom-Gesetz), cementing the ultimate shutdown of these eight plants and decreeing the end of nuclear power generation in Germany by 2022.

Utilities find fault with both aspects of the phase-out 鈥� the standstill order and the full phase-out by 2022 鈥� and the courts could uphold their complaints.

Fighting the moratorium (standstill order): 875 million euros

The found the 2011 moratorium, issued by the Hessian state government following Merkel鈥檚 instructions, to have been issued without the required hearing and justification. Utility RWE is therefore claiming in compensation for loss of profit and extra costs during the three months that its reactors at Biblis didn鈥檛 run because of the standstill order. E.ON wants for not being able to sell power from two of its plants during the moratorium, and EnBW is suing for for the same reason.

Fighting the new nuclear law of 2011: over 15 billion euros

Aside from these 875 million euros worth of damages, the utilities could claim over in additional compensation if their complaints with the German Constitutional Court are upheld. RWE, E.ON and Vattenfall have told the highest German court in Karlsruhe that the nuclear phase-out legislation passed in summer 2011 which limits their plants鈥� lifetimes to 2022, unduly effects their constitutional rights to property and freedom to choose an occupation. that they lost out on investments made on the basis that their atomic plants would be allowed to run longer, as Merkel鈥檚 government had mandated for in 2010. They further claim extra costs for keeping plants in a post-operational phase, and for having to buy electricity at the exchange to honour long-term contracts.

Lawyer Felix Ekardt, who is head of the in Leipzig doesn鈥檛 think that the utilities鈥� claims are justified. The government would only owe the utilities compensation if it had dispossessed them of their assets, he says. 鈥淏ut this isn鈥檛 an expropriation because the state didn鈥檛 acquire the nuclear power plants, it simply followed a policy of risk-minimisation,鈥� Ekardt says.

Lawyers from Greenpeace and the German Federal Bar () also conclude that the constitutional claims of the utilities will be unsuccessful 鈥� both for technical reasons and because the utilities had not actually been dispossessed of anything. Even if they had, the government鈥檚 reaction , since it is another obligation in the constitution that the state protects citizens from dangers and it is down to the legislator to decide whether or not nuclear power is safe to use. The decision by the Constitutional Court is pending.

Vattenfall, as a Swedish company, is also suing Germany for almost euros at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in New York.

Fighting the process of finding a nuclear waste repository

Further complaints are pending with the Constitutional Court and administrative courts regarding nuclear waste storage facilities. In 2013, to stop using a site at Gorleben, close to Hamburg, as a temporary storage facility during the exploratory process to identify longer-term storage sites (See Factsheet on nuclear waste storage here). But because utilities had already paid for the construction and operation of Gorleben, and that the costs for storing some 26 at new interim storage facilities near their power stations should be covered by the government. However in June 2015, Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks for the distribution of Castor casks coming back from treatment in the UK and France. Herein the four large utilities agreed that they would let their until a procedure based on the new concept is decided on, and would consider withdrawing the law suits once a solution is found.