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“The Bundestag’s committee of inquiry into nuclear power [Jan. 15-16] has revealed that the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of the Environment deliberately and consciously spread misinformation in order to block the continued operation of nuclear power plants,” the liberal conservative site Tichys Einblick reported.

In particular, Scholz claimed that he solved the conflict between his Finance minister Lindner, who wanted to keep the last three NPP operational after the Ukrainian crisis, and his Economy minister Habeck, who wanted to decommission them. Scholz decided to keep them on through the 2022-2023 winter. According to TE, this was staged with Habeck, in order to shield him from his radical base.

Secondly, Environment minister Lemke lied when she said that to keep the NPP further operational, a backlog of safety procedures would be necessary, with unsustainable costs and time. Such a statement is contradicted by a report by the Reactors Safety Commission (RKK) of november 2022, which says that “there are no safety concern for the continued operation” of the three reactors.

Thirdly, both Habeck and Lemke had insisted that the companies themselves wanted to decommission the reactors. This is denied by a statement by one of the two companies, PreussenElektra, to Bild last year. “Throughout the debate, we made it clear that we could technically and logistically enable the continued operation of the power plant if the German government so wished,” PreussenElektra told Bild.

Additionally, TE reveals in a “Hot Note” that Habeck’s crony Patrick Graichen, whom Habeck picked from the anti-nuclear “Agorà Energiewende” organization to become his Undersecreatary of State, only to resign in May 2023 to save Habeck’s head, is now in the board of the Ukrainian energy company Ukrenerho, supplying electricity from nuclear plants.

The Bundestag will debate on the results of the inquiry committee on January 30. The allocated time is 30 minutes.