Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks firmly expects that the French nuclear power plant Fessenheim will be taken offline by 2017 as previously announced. In a letter to Hendricks, French Environment Minister Ségolène Royal confirmed that President Hollande was committed to closing Fessenheim by the end of his term.
Hendricks had repeatedly informed her French counterpart that the population in the border area was very concerned about the safety of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant. She had asked Royal to take these concerns into account in her considerations and decisions and "to schedule the decommissioning of the power plant for as early as possible". Hendricks said she was of course aware that the decision on the matter was exclusively the sovereign responsibility of France.
In her letter to Hendricks, Royal explained that she expected the legal basis for the closure of Fessenheim to be adopted in the first half of 2015. The law will stipulate that France's nuclear power capacity will be limited to its current level. When the new nuclear power plant currently under construction at Flamanville goes online, a system with the same capacity, i.e. two reactors, would have to be shut down. Royal said that it is up to EDF, the operator, to determine which reactors are to be removed from the grid. Her letter concluded with the statement that "at present, no alternative to the closure of Fessenheim is being considered".