German Chancellor urges longer running times for nuclear power plants

German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to urge longer running times for German nuclear power plants, reports the BBC. Nuclear power provides one-third of electricity, and changing this within 12 years is something she considers wrong, Merkel said during the ARD summer interview on the Report From Berlin programme.

Pioneering thinker Erhard Eppler has shown that there are discussions about this issue also in the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany], Merkel added.

The chancellor admitted that uranium as nuclear fuel is available only to a limited extent. That is why we must continue to invest in renewable energies and save energy, she stressed.

With a view to the unsolved issue of final nuclear storage sites, Merkel tossed the ball to the SPD: "It is not so much due to us that we do not solve the issue of the final storage sites," the chancellor said. "We are working on it, but the social democrats keep thinking of ever new things."

(Source: Power Engineering)