German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/9, pp. 423-424.
Right
honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Due to the
world’s dumbest energy policy, we are meanwhile at five to twelve. The energy
suppliers sound the alarm. EON chief Birnbaum prognosticates that an electricity
shortfall can lead to shutting down entire cities and that, with the high
energy prices, industry will be hunted out of our country. And Amprion, the
transmission network operator, to name only one, expresses itself similarly.
They all speak of considerable danger for our electricity supply due to the
present situation. The electricity grid has now already reached its limit of
performance, there are no more reserves.
Timon Gremmels (SPD): It is rather the AfD which has reached its limit of performance!
Please now
put an end, ladies and gentlemen, to the lie of a lifetime, that we would in
the mid-term get along without coal and nuclear power. Since your answer to the
electricity gap – gas power plants and electricity imports – is a fata morgana. Additional gas power
plants are not in sight; no one will build them. Where then shall the gas
actually come from if the Federal government wants to prevent Nord Stream 2,
if our naïve Foreign Minister, with her clumsiness and with her childish megalomania
Timon Gremmels (SPD): For God’s sake!
shoots and acts
against Russia and our gas supply?
Timon Gremmels (SPD): Have you something of substance to offer or only insults?
She thereby
calls to mind the greats, like perhaps Kaiser Wilhelm II, rather than a modern
diplomat, ladies and gentlemen.
Germany needs
an energy foreign policy and not an energy prevention policy.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): And reasonable parliamentarians!
On another
point: There will plainly not be able to be electricity imports in times of
peak load because precisely then foreign countries themselves also need the
electricity. The answer is therefore at hand: Further operation of remunerative
nuclear power plants.
Ever more
voices express themselves for this; for example, the chief of Volkswagen or the
ex-chief of BASF, to name here only a few. The entire world is setting up
nearly CO2-free nuclear energy. The Netherlands have certainly perceived their
failures and again take up nuclear energy. A great number of nuclear power
plants are in planning and in construction worldwide. Even the so-called World
Climate Council proceeds thereon that climate goals without nuclear energy are
just not to be attained.
Yes, many
people have reservations in regards nuclear energy, fear of a total meltdown;
yet this fear is unfounded. Modern reactor concepts exclude such catastrophes,
ladies and gentlemen.
Harald Ebner (Greens): Reality is just not your strong point!
In part, a
self-sustained chain reaction is generally no longer necessary. Research
reactors of this kind are long since under construction, yet unfortunately not
in allegedly technology-oriented Germany.
The waste
storage problem will be solved with transmutation, remaining material will be
re-utilized. Present day radioactive times of 100,000 years diminish: Tomorrow
300 years, the day after perhaps indeed no longer. That is scientific,
technological progress, ladies and gentlemen, which you want to prevent.
The left-greens
want to diminish the CO2 emission. We want a good value, secure supply of
electricity. Na, dann, let us
nevertheless come together.
Julia Verlinden (Greens): Nö, we do not want to work together with you!
With modern,
nearly CO2-free nuclear energy both are plainly possible. That would be an
intelligent, a reconciling and a fully responsible policy, ladies and gentlemen.
Yet you,
those of you who want to prevent nuclear energy – so to say, as an eternal
strife – will not be able to prevent the renaissance of safe nuclear energy. What
you clearly hinder is our prosperity. You are the world champions in destroying
it. We will thus need to subsequently purchase technology in the area of
nuclear energy later and again more expensively.
Yet let it be
clear to you: We will not be able to do without nuclear energy. You can turn
upside down. It is no longer to be stopped.
Harald Ebner (Greens): You have nothing to do with reality!
[trans: tem]
