2024-09-07 05:27:34
After the operator of the nuclear power plant in Hamm-Uentrop filed for bankruptcy, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has to pay for the demolition of the decommissioned reactor. It now wants to pass the costs on to the federal government.
The nuclear power plant in Hamm-Uentrop, North Rhine-Westphalia, which has been shut down since 1989, is becoming a financial burden for the public sector. According to North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy, Mona Neubaur (Greens), the company operating the power plant, Hochtemperatur-Kernkraftwerk GmbH (HKG), is facing insolvency. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia must now step in and commission companies to dismantle the plant. The cost of this is estimated at one billion euros.
But Neubaur explained on Thursday that the bills should be passed on to the federal government, because that is where the financial responsibility lies. “Since the state is implementing the nuclear law on behalf of the federal government, we will claim the costs from the federal government,” she said.
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is relying on Article 104a Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law, which states: “If the states act on behalf of the federal government, the federal government shall bear the resulting expenses.” According to insiders, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has a good chance of asserting this right.
The operating company HKG, in which the energy group RWE and the Aachen municipal utilities, among others, have a stake, had initially declared that it would have to cover the dismantling costs. However, Neubaur now told the state parliament’s economic committee that the operating company’s financial situation was in acute danger and that it intended to file for insolvency in the coming weeks.
With the threat of insolvency, the obligation to pay for the demolition costs becomes obsolete. At the end of last week, the Düsseldorf Regional Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the operating company, which wanted to clarify that the federal government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia were responsible for the demolition costs.
The reactor in Hamm-Uentrop, a so-called pebble bed high-temperature reactor, was the only one of its kind in Germany and was developed by researchers from North Rhine-Westphalia. After only three years of test operation, the plant was shut down in 1989.