Representatives from four of Germany's biggest energy companies - Eon, RWE, Vattenfall and ENBW - are meeting with members of the German economics ministry, the environment ministry and the chancellor's office to discuss the fate of Germany's seventeen nuclear power plants.

The current government has made it clear that it wants to phase out nuclear power plants in favor of renewable energy sources, and some are already slated for closure this year. The question that remains on the negotiating table between the government and the energy companies has to do with balancing security issues, timelines for shutting down the plants, and dividing up the profits that would come from leaving the plants open.

Energy companies are interested in extending the life of the nuclear power plants - the longer they run, the more money the companies will make. According to a study conducted by the Bremen Energy Institute, the sum could be hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on how much longer the plants remain open and the price charged for the energy produced.

Economics minister Rainer Bruederle is calling for part of the profits to be reinvested into government efforts to convert Germany to renewable energy.

"We all want to enter the age of renewable energy," Bruederle told the German parliament on Thursday. He said it was therefore necessary to continue using nuclear plants to "generate additional funds that will facilitate a quicker switch to renewable energy. That's money that should go into research and development."

A tough sell

On the surface, it seems like a win-win for the German government. Either they agree to stick to a coalition agreement and begin to shut down the nuclear plants - to the delight of most Germans, who are against the plants in the first place - or they let them run a little longer, and gain the ability to invest billions in renewable energy. It may not be as politically appealing as shutting the plants down entirely, but at least it's a step in the right direction towards fulfilling an important political goal.

However, not everyone is convinced that allowing the plants to remain open should even be up for debate. Ahead of the meeting, protesters gathered in front of the chancellery to voice their opposition to any plan that would involve keeping the nuclear plants open. Some have voiced suspicions about where the extra cash generated from the power companies would actually end up.

In a press release on the anti-atomic energy website of Greenpeace in Germany, Greenpeace nuclear physicist Heinz Smital said German Chancellor Angela Merkel was threatening the safety of the population by keeping the plants open and that the move was only aimed at financing tax cuts currently being negotiated by her coalition government.

Former environment minister and current party leader of the opposition Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, suggested that leaving the plants open would only exacerbate Germany's problem of storing nuclear waste. On Thursday he rejected a plan that would, he said, "produce more atomic waste in order to generate new money to deal with the waste we already have."

Gabriel also warned against changing plans that have already been signed into law to close two of Germany's oldest nuclear plants.

Closure in "less than 10 years"

Another issue on the table deals with the safety and security of the plants. In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, Josef Goeppel, energy expert in the ruling coalition party Christian Social Union (CSU), called for a thorough inspection of all the plants. He said that decisions on plant closures can only be made on a case by case basis. Some plants are likely candidates for shut down because they are not adequately built to sustain damage from a plane crash, for example.

In addition, Goeppel said there should be a limit on how much longer the plants should remain open.

"It should be less than 10 years," he told the Frankfurter Rundschau. "The extension also depends on how much time we'll need to replace nuclear energy with renewable energy, and we don't need ten years for that."

Should some of the plants be deemed unfit to remain open for safety or security reasons, Goeppel said that Germany is currently operating with an energy surplus, meaning that plant closures would simply reduce the amount of energy that Germany exports.

Energy companies ready to pay

Thursday's meeting between the government and the energy companies is being billed as 'routine,' and no concrete decisions are likely to be made. But the meeting will set the tone for future negotiations, and the energy companies have very few bargaining chips. The fate of certain plants already scheduled to be closed should be put on hold until a decision has been reached regarding a general extension of the plants' operation, Wulf Bernotat, head of the energy company Eon, told news magazine Spiegel.

He also said that the energy companies realized that allowing the plants to remain open would come at a cost for the companies.

"In the industry it is clear, that there is a political price we have to pay for these plants to remain open," Bernotat was quoted by Spiegel.

It seems the companies don't have a choice, at least according to CSU energy expert Goeppel.

He told the Frankfurter Rundschau that if the companies aren't willing to pay to keep the plants open, "then there can't be an extension. The coalition government has to keep its credibility" and stand by its coalition agreement to shut down the aging power plants.

mz/afp/dpa
Editor: Susan Houlton