On Saturday, the first Block of the oldest NUCLEAR power plant in Europe from the network. For opponents of nuclear power, a reason for joy, but not the end of the fight.

still on the Rhine, but soon, without electricity: Fessenheim photo: Bernd Lauter/cover spot/imago

FESSENHEIM taz | It is the characteristic dome and the cooling tower, is actually missing the Fessenheim nuclear power plant looks like any industrial plant. Only the river Rhine and is a long wooded island separating the nuclear reactors on the French shore of the German side. But the feared radiation in a possible accident knows no boundaries.

After 43 years of duration, shall be placed in the first Block of the oldest nuclear power plant in Europe on Saturday at a standstill. Fessenheim is the reactor with the lowest safety standards and a variety of interference. Alone between 1989 and 2008, there was over 200 light and more severe cases. In 2010, radio active gases, 2014 it came after research by the süddeutsche Zeitung to an emergency shutdown. "The safety standards of the European Nuclear Safety regulatory Group has observed, Fessenheim before," says Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, Green party member of Parliament and Chairman of the environmental impacts Committee.

Actually, in 2012, the French President, Francois Hollande, had announced to lay the problem of the reactor to a standstill. The promise was broken. The current end of Fessenheim is part of a strategy of Emanuel Macron, to reduce France's dependence on nuclear power.

should this pivot in nuclear policy, the massive problems of the third pressurized-water reactor in Flamanville in Brittany contributed to, whose construction has been dragging on now since 2007. He should now go at the earliest in 2023 to the network, and over 12 billion euros in costs. In the long term, Macron wants to shut down 14 of the 58 reactors in France – however, after Fessenheim no further during his tenure. Thus, the percentage of French electricity generated by Nuclear power is to be reduced from 75 to 50 percent.

The relief at the end of Fessenheim on the German side, almost unanimously. Cities such as Freiburg had to have evacuation plans in the event of an accident. After all, the upper Rhine Region is an earthquake zone. The Feast of the tri-national protest movement made up of German, Swiss and French, who accompanied the reactor since its construction, still takes place until a week later.

"We don't want to celebrate before we are sure that the first Block of the nuclear power plant is decommissioned," says Dora Pfeifer-Suger, spokesperson for the coalition for action "Fessenheim shut down now". With the shutdown, the threat of a meltdown, according to experts, banned. However, the Dismantling of the entire system is likely to last for 20 years. "Also, we will observe more critically," says Axel Meyer, one of the veterans of the resistance. "It may be demolition, not Cheap." to compensate

the economic loss for the Region, is planned in Fessenheim a business Park, where already some of the municipalities on the German side being financially involved. The state of Baden-Württemberg negotiated with France about to reactivate a disused railway line between Colmar and Freiburg, the border region closer together.

Axel Meyer, who was until his Retirement a few months ago, the managing Director of the FEDERAL southern upper Rhine, it is a 43-year-old battle to the end. He was there as a young man at the construction site occupations against the planned nuclear power plant in Whyl with. Whyl was never built. The shutdown of Fessenheim now Meyer sees as a success, but euphoric.

In a press release, recommended Meyer three Flat sections on the end of Fessenheim-to-heads: The first in June, when the NUCLEAR power plant goes permanently from the network, the second is when the fuel elements are transported between the warehouse and the third party, if the nuclear waste of Fessenheim not really – in about a Million years.