The 235-Million Euro Question

By the end of yesterday (Friday, the 26th of June).....a fair amount of talk had occurred between the Hessen head of government (Bouffier, CDU) and the German federal government out of Berlin.  The subject?  The Biblis nuclear plant and it's directed closure.

In 2011, after the Fukushimi episode.....after a quick review....the Berlin federal government came to a quick conclusion to shut down various nuclear plants (the older ones got to the top of this list real quick).  Biblis was among the plants told to shut down.

Well...because of a business angle to nuclear power....there are assumed values and costs.  If they build a plant to last twenty years and then get some renovation to last another twenty years.....they have a forty-year cycle built into the returned value of the plant.  They've all done the numbers and will tell you how they handled the cost of building and running the plant.  By exercising this early closure.....Biblis lost money (RWE is the company involved).  So, it's going to court.  Someone has to pay RWE for the early closure.

Naturally, there's some arguments brewing.  Who will pay RWE?

If it was a national decision.....then it's the German federal government out of Berlin that will pay the suggested 235-million Euro.  If it's the Hessen state government, it'll come from them. If it's a split deal.....it's fifty-fifty.  You can imagine the state guys standing there and grumbling because it's NOT their decision as to what happened.  They were told by Berlin to shut down the plants.

What is generally said over this whole thing is that the order that came down to Hessen to issue to RWE....was handled in a fairly rough way, with no thought process or thinking toward financial consequences of the plants involved.  The word 'amateur' is brought up a good bit, hinting that it was not a professional fashion of execution.

Does the Hessen CDU government get slammed by the local Greens, SPD and Linke Party?  Yes.  Have the opposition parties grasped that if Hessen gets forced to pay fifty-percent of the cost....it'll have to come out of the budget and some groups or cities within Hessen will lose out on approximately 116-million Euro?  Well....the news media hasn't brought up that topic.  If you take money from one pocket to pay for a unplanned bill.....the money will be missing from the other pocket for normal use.

For the national government, it becomes a more interesting question.  If Bouffier is right and wins the court episode.....the whole 235-million Euro must come from Berlin.  Where do they make the cuts to come up with the 235-million Euro?  Unknown.

The word 'consequences' ought to come up now.  To meet most of these grand goals of the 1990s over carbon and climate change.....Germany was way ahead of the game and had these nifty nuke plants which covered them and helped show positive numbers.  Every political player with a climate change agenda.....got some type of benefit from the nuke power plants.  Closing early because of Fukushima?  Well.....consequences fit into this as well.

It's an interesting topic, which barely gets mentioned in German national news and will simply get one 40-line text deal with the Hessen state news and then disappear.  Someone is going to lose 235-million Euro, and it'll be curious who loses it.