German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/220, pp. 27857-27858.
Right
honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Dear
colleague Müller, you have just designated yourself as friend of a
technologically open approach. So, if what you have put forward here shall be a
technologically open approach and the CDU is for this, then it really becomes
time for this party to be dissolved at once and for the government to be
assumed by another party which really is technologically open.
Ladies and
gentlemen, consider for once that there may be a technological procedure to
deal with the legacy of the usual nuclear energy facilities, or even of
disarmed nuclear weapons, so that it radiates less and for less time and
thereby the problem of final storage would be largely solved. Let us further
consider that the required facility would be so built that the risk of a
nuclear meltdown would be technologically excluded. Let us further consider
that, with this facility, economic electrical power could be produced. We in
Germany in the interim still have the highest prices for electricity worldwide.
Consider finally, in case the contribution of people to climate change presents
a problem to you, that this technology might have a positive CO2
balance similar to that of wind energy. – Ladies and gentlemen, when all of
this appears possible, at a minimum, research into a technology should be
promoted.
Numerous
highly developed industrial countries are doing this. It is plainly not so,
Herr colleague Müller, as you have presented it, that only the – in quotation
marks – “Spinners from the AfD” might be for something like it. I name for you
the countries which are researching this technology: Among which is the U.S.A.,
China is, Japan and South Korea are – all of our friends, all AfD countries
apparently – Great Britain and France are at it in Europe, naturally in
addition to Euratom. What you here are doing of course does not suffice by far.
They all support research and development of fourth generation nuclear reactors
and have gathered themselves together into an international research union, the
GIF.
Only Germany,
ladies and gentlemen, is not at it. Why? Because this Bundestag, following the
Fukushima earthquake catastrophe in the year 2011, which resulted in a nuclear
catastrophe, reached a decision driven by angst, panic and populism and indeed
for the complete withdrawal from nuclear energy and research. The former
Hamburg environment senator Fritz Vahrenholt, SPD, has lately written very
perceptively in the newspaper “Cicero”
– just you laugh! – that at that time, ladies and gentlemen, you had thrown out
the baby with the bath water; since this decision was directed and is directed
not only against all reactors, but also against further research in this area.
In 2019, we had directed a minor inquiry to the Federal government. They answered us – I cite with your permission, Frau President – :
Research for development of new reactor concepts will not be supported on the part of the Federal government.
Thereby, ladies and gentlemen, threatens the complete loss of Germany’s inclusion in an important future technology. At the same time to have withdrawn from all conventional processes of energy generation, that, ladies and gentlemen, is in fact a political and economic harakiri, as correctly formulated by Fritz Vahrenholt.
Too often, ladies and gentlemen, have we Germans held ourselves to be smarter than all others and set about on a special way [Sonderweg]. It was certainly not rational decisions – I said it already – which, besides in 2015 with the opening of the borders
Timon Gremmels (SPD): Bingo!
Marianne Schieder (SPD): that needs to come earlier, Herr colleague!
and in 2011, following the catastrophe in Fukushima, had been reached. Today, ladies and gentlemen, to acknowledge these decisions as historically wrong decisions requires an informed intelligence – to admit the mistakes, a greatness and a boldness of character. You can demonstrate both today.
It is just not so, ladies and gentlemen, that we fail to recognize the risks in the usage of nuclear energy.
Franciska Brantner (Greens): A daring greatness is to be sure not to be found with you!
I myself many
years ago as a young man had demonstrated against dying forests and nuclear
death. Some mature, to perhaps become more reasonable in the course of life,
others remain standing still.
There are also risks with reactors of the new type. They are however calculable and capable of being mastered. All other technologies of energy generation also have risks. When we think of what you are doing to our landscape with the gigantic wind industry arrays which you want to build
Sylvia Kotting-Uhl (Greens): Much worse than an atomic super center?
on the peaks of the Taunus, now in the Black Forest, in the North Sea, in the Baltic, when we see how you haul gigantic electrical lines through our country for your mad ideas, when we see Alpine valleys put under water, when we see how you destroy nature and Heimat, then we say as a party of nature and Heimat defenders: We would prefer to have modern gas and coal power plants, combined with safe, modern nuclear energy facilities of the fourth generation, ladies and gentlemen.
Carsten Müller (CDU/CSU-Braunschweig): Of which there are simply none!
Our motto as
the AfD delegation is: Research instead of retreat. You are in retreat; you
retreat from the future. Other countries are going the right way. We should
close ranks with them. Turn back from this German Sonderweg; it leads astray.
I thank you.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): “Here hops and malt are lost”, as is said in der Heimat.
