On Monday morning March 28, I appeared at the opening panel discussion at the 2011 Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference, to discuss “Implications of Japan’s Nuclear Disaster,” together with two colleagues, Eli Levite, ex of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, and former NRC Chairman Dick Meserve; Vallumpadugai Arunachalam of the Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy in India; Irv Rotter, a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin in New York; and NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis.

Near the end of our discussion, I made reference to the snap decision, announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel just a couple of days after the LOCA began unfolding at Fukushima, to immediately shut down seven German reactors, and to shelve and possibly reverse a prior commitment to extend the lifetimes of these units beyond their politically agreed-upon lifetimes of just over 30 years.

I expressed the view that, depending on how the accident in Japan played out, there may be forthcoming political responses worldwide which, viewed through the lens of the agencies which to nuclear safety heavy lifting for national government regulators—in this business they are called Technical Support Organizations or TSOs— could be termed irrational and therefore fraught with political risk.

I did indeed intend my remarks to be understood with reference to what had happened in Germany during the last three weeks.

My comment provoked a friend and colleague at the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, Bernd Kubbig, to spontaneously interject from the upper tier of the auditorium at the Reagan International Trade Center. “I am German and I agree with the decision which was not irrational.” (I’m recalling the remark from memory since on the recorded video of the panel discussion Bernd’s comments are inaudible).

Quite unexpectedly, I was seated at the ensuing Monday lunch together with Bernd at the same table. We discussed this, and I think we quickly reached an understanding. In ordering those seven reactors shut down I question that there were technical grounds for it prompted by the accident in Japan. I think Bernd agreed with me that, from the point of the TSO in Germany’s nuclear regulatory process, Merkel’s decision to shut the reactors down immediately on the basis of an external event—a tsunami—which could be excluded from happening in Germany, must have seemed irrational indeed.

But Bernd may be right that, measured using the calculus of politics, Merkel’s decision to shut those reactors right away was rational. In any event, her decision to shelve the life extensions was certainly political in extremis.

The LOCA at Fukushima began on March 11. The next day, 60,000 people formed a human chain extending from the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant (GKN-1 being one of the oldest German reactors and subject to life extension politics) to Stuttgart forty miles away.

Stuttgart wasn’t chosen as the Endziel of this demonstration by chance. (Endziel means terminus, BTW, and if you ever learned any German in a prior lifetime, you’ll get a refresher course by clicking on to some of the links on this post) Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. A pivotal state parliamentary election was scheduled for March 27, sixteen days after the Fukushima LOCA began. The outcome of that election would be critical to Merkel’s efforts to assure that she has a majority in the upper house of the federal parliament (states’ chamber, where voting is population-weighted) for the rest of her term as Chancellor through late 2013—by no means a certainty. A lot was on the line. Everything she did in the realm of nuclear policy between March 11 and March 27 was informed by that forthcoming election.

In fact, Merkel’s political calculation didn’t pay off.

As a result, for the first time in history, a German state will be ruled by a coalition of left-of-center Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens following an election in which the Greens outpolled the SPD and will therefore appoint a Green politician as state premier who will rule for four years. Did Fukushima figure in the result? You bet. Before the election, Merkel’s candidate, Stefan Mappus (bookmark this name—he will be mentioned again below), from her right-of-center Christian Democratic Union (CDU), had unabashedly gone to bat for the state’s powerful utility company, ENBW, in favor of extending the lifetimes of GKN-1 and another reactor, Philippsburg-1. For the Green/SPD bloc that vowed to rule as partners if elected, the accident in Japan couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

I have closely followed the political fortunes of Germany’s nuclear energy program for over two decades. There is a repeated pattern of intense spikes of antinuclear agitation and public fear whenever something goes wrong, followed by a slow recovery of public opinion settling in to a kind of 50-50 standoff before something goes wrong again. If for a long period of time the industry and its conservative political supporters are lulled into concluding that things have stabilized, during election campaigns you will hear harrumphing pronouncements from utility company captains, lobbyists, and opinion researchers on their behalf whistling in the dark that “nuclear will not be an issue” in a forthcoming (municipal, state, or federal) contest.

When something goes wrong—and in Japan something went very, very wrong—then the CDU and its sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which is even more pronuclear, can get into deep, deep trouble. That happened in Baden-Wuerttemberg last month.

But let’s go back to what I said about Merkel’s reaction being irrational.

Again, I couldn’t find a solid reason to support a decision by the German government to respond to the Japanese events by ordering a lot of reactors in Germany to shut down for safety reasons. If someone has such a safety-technical justification, may he or she come forth.

What about the issue of whether these seven reactors should be permitted to operate for a longer period of time?

To begin with, in Germany that matter is handled differently than it does in some countries—including Japan and the US—because German power reactors don’t have a fixed license term. (In the US and Japan that term is 40 calendar years, and if owners want them to operate longer than that, they have to be re-licensed).

Instead—I’m simplifying here somewhat—a German power reactor can continue to operate indefinitely provided it meets a bunch of technical safety criteria. Back in 2000, when the SPD and the Greens formed a federal coalition government, over the next three years they legislated a phase-out of all 17 German reactors. That implied that, separately from the issue as to whether the German reactors would on a day-by-day basis meet the German safety criteria to retain their operating licenses, a political decision was taken to shut them down according to a timetable.

So far, so good: there are technical yardsticks applied in Germany, but the decision making on whether the reactors will be pulled from the grid—today, in 2 years, in 25 years, or not at all—is political.

Merkel ordered seven reactors shut on March 15—four days after the Fukushima LOCA began.  In announcing it she said that step was taken for “safety reasons.”  In tandem, Stefan Mappus (see above)—who had vowed to keep GKN-1 operating if re-elected as premier in Baden-Wuerttemberg—astounded voters by announcing that as a result of Fukushima GKN-1 would be “permanently shut down.”

Intervening in a hurry and flip-flopping like this after the accident in Japan may, to follow Bernd’s argument, be politically rational, but I would argue it doesn’t make for very credible nuclear politics. Why? Because Germany’s nuclear debate is at a certain level just a stage for a larger debate over the German nation’s confidence in its political and economic elites. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, Merkel’s party has ruled for five decades without interruption. Fukushima fanned the flames of a bonfire of opposition to permanent CDU rule there which had been touched off late last year when Mappus (yes, him again) had pressed to build a super-express passenger train line through downtown Stuttgart, necessitating a re-build of the city’s main rail terminal. The protests against that project looked very much like German antinuclear demonstrations from years past.

So Merkel has her moratorium. For three months, all seven reactors will be shut down. What happens in the meantime?

As I said, there is a list of technical criteria in place which are the yardsticks against which German reactors must demonstrate their safety.  This will now be revised, Merkel’s nuclear regulator said last week.

For a decade and until Merkel was re-elected in 2009 to form a government without the SPD, there was an internal food fight going on between the country’s nuclear industry, and federal safety regulators, about amending those safety yardsticks. (Now that was a wonky interaction if there ever was one). In my previous incarnation, I wrote at length about this, much to the consternation of most of the participants who wanted to keep it all secret  in the interest of discreetly leaking bits of it to reporters unfamiliar with the technical issues who wouldn’t know what questions to ask (I’m still very grateful to the handful of those individuals who implicitly understood that transparency in this issue would do the country’s nuclear program a world of good). The War of the Roses couldn’t have been more bitter than this. German industry representative muttered that the country’s regulators were politically-motivated numbskulls without engineering degrees (We’re also hearing that today from certain people who are seeing their nuclear renaissance melting down in Japan). SPD political appointees in the regulatory agency blew hot air about a conspiracy by industry which was meant to sabotage a justified upgrade in safety standards in the interest of profit. And so forth ad infinitum without resolution.

And now?  A week or so after Fukushima, Merkel’s (CDU) nuclear regulator announced that the technical guidelines which were a battleground for so many years will be revised. The last draft revision was made known back in mid-February. Here’s the catalogue of issues the new, forthcoming guidelines will have to address afresh after Fukushima:

http://www.rskonline.de/downloads/rskanforderungskatalog_hp.pdf

Wow. This is an astounding list. It suggests there will be a brand new reassessment at all 17 German reactors for earthquakes, floods, terrorist attacks, plane crashes, and on-site impacts on a reactor from an accident at an adjacent unit.

A day or two after Merkel announced she would shut the German reactors down, I was briefly interviewed on BBC-TV to explain this. The Beeb being TV, I didn’t have a lot of time. At the end of the interview, an insightful producer cut to the quick: “Wait a minute. In other words, what you are telling us is that, in a nutshell, either the German authorities have already looked into these safety issues as they should have, implying that what they’re going to do now is just political theatre, or, if they didn’t investigate this stuff before, if they now find the reactors aren’t safe, they should be sued for negligence.”

Mrs Merkel’s seven reactors will be shut for three months.

We will see how this plays out. Stay tuned.