After a 3-month moratorium on
nuclear plant operation was enacted in Germany, RWE has appealed to the courts
in an attempt to keep its Biblis plant running.
In a statement quoted by Bloomberg Friday, the company said
that “since German nuclear power plants comply with all relevant safety
requirements, there are no legal grounds for decommissioning them.”
The suit in the top administrative court in Germany’s Hesse
region follows an earlier reversal on nuclear policy by Chancellor Angela
Merkel subsequent to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan. Where earlier
her administration granted license extensions to many German nuclear plants,
the government more recently has called for the moratorium during a safety
review, and it forced seven of the oldest reactors to close. Reactors owned by
RWE, Energie Baden- Wuerttemberg AG and E.ON AG were among them, with the later
company stating Thursday that it would not file suit, according to Bloomberg.
While the RWE suit is pending, the company could
restart the reactor, but that move would likely be met by a separate legal
challenge from local regulators.