German Economy Minister Robert Hebeck announced on Tuesday that two German nuclear power plants would remain operational during the winter of 2023 due to the unavailability of several French reactors.

To ensure energy supply in Germany,”The Isar 2 plant (near Munich) and the Neckarwestheim (south-west) plant will be connected in the first quarter of 2023“, cause “The situation in France is worse than expected”, he said at a press conference in Berlin.

This is how the environment minister is going ahead with what he had planned a few weeks ago: On September 5, he announced that he wanted to put these two power stations on standby until spring 2023, and put them to last use. energy emergency.

But, based on the power scenarios for the winter in France presented on 14 September, Mr Hebek estimated that the situation was worse than previously expected. While driving the point home, he claimed that “In the past, statements of the operator EDF have often proved to be very positive.,

The decision to expand these two German power stations confirms the volt-face already made on 5 September by the Minister of the Environment, whose party is historically anti-nuclear.

Mr Hebek returned to its final completion scheduled for the end of 2022, according to the nuclear phase-out schedule set out by Angela Merkel after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.