The green economics minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Mona Neubaur, is on a collision course with anti-nuclear activists. By doing so, she puts base support at risk.
Open, transparent and close to the people: this is not just how the Greens wanted to manage nuclear phase-out. In North Rhine-Westphalia you can see how little remains of these demands: employees of Green Economy Minister Mona Neubaur, who is also responsible for nuclear oversight, were initially muzzled there and allowed to work on critical initiatives. antinuclear. and that the committed citizens of the environmental association BUND do not speak.
The argument with which the Green Deputy Prime Minister's ministry withdrew the invitation to environmentalists, who for months have been demanding a politically clear line from Neubaur in the dispute over the threatened transportation of nuclear waste, is frankly adventurous: antinuclear activists could After the meeting, inform the press and therefore the public about the results.
Although Neubaur's ministers promise clarifications, for now the main Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia seem to fear transparency. Neubaur apparently believes that he will be able to put aside the question of what will happen to the highly radioactive remains of the reactor at the former Jülich Nuclear Research Center and pass it on to lower-level authorities.
The anti-nuclear movement, on the other hand, demands coherence from the Greens. Ultimately, the justification for transporting highly radioactive nuclear waste by truck in up to 152 individual trips through the center of the metropolitan areas of the most populous federal state is no longer valid: by October 2022 at the latest it is clear that the earthquake The risk assumed at the former Jülich nuclear waste landfill does not exist at all.
Neubaur must prevent the threat of nuclear waste tourism. As head of the responsible nuclear regulator, she would have the means to do so. If she doesn't, she may not scare away voters. At stake is also the support of her party's oldest and most loyal support scene: the anti-nuclear movement.