“Fessenheim – a risk for German taxpayers”
At first, the government of the German state of Baden-Württemberg bristled at French energy company EDF’s decision to postpone the decommissioning of the Fessenheim nuclear plant until at least 2019 – but it has now emerged that there could be “a veritable conflict of interests for the state government,” Markus Balser and Leo Klimm write in Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 1972, a predecessor of Baden-Württemberg’s state-owned energy company EnBW took over 17.5 percent of construction costs for the plant near the German border in exchange for a guaranteed energy supply, they explain. According to EDF, EnBW – and with it, the state’s taxpayers – “contribute to the costs resulting from decommissioning,” the authors say. According to EnBW, however, financial responsibility for Fessenheim ended in 2015, they add.
Read the article in German .
See the Â鶹ÎŢÂë°ć factsheet Securing utility payments for the nuclear clean-up for background.