GERMANY:German criminal police raided a nuclear power plant near Hamburg yesterday amid growing fears of a cover-up surrounding an accident there two weeks ago.
The Krümmel nuclear power plant, co-owned by Swedish utility Vattenfall and Germany's Eon, was shut down on June 28th after a fire at an electricity substation.
Vattenfall said the incident did not affect the nuclear reactor. It later emerged, however, that the fire caused water pumps to fail, causing a dramatic fall in pressure in the water reactor cooler.
The accident has reignited Germany's long-running ideological battle over the planned phasing out of nuclear energy by 2020 - a row that divides the ruling grand coalition government.
Police armed with a search warrant marched into the Krümmel plant's administration offices yesterday threatening to search the plant unless they were given the names of all employees on duty at the time of the accident.
Germany's nuclear regulator says that key employees have yet to present themselves for interview, hampering its investigation into why standard emergency procedures were not followed after the incident.
"We are not trying to put any of these people under pressure or blame them," said the federal environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel. "What we need to know is how the flow of information worked."
The fire started when a short-circuit caused coolant in an electrical transformer substation to ignite, releasing black smoke over the area.
Vatenfall management has denied it is obstructing the investigation and suggested its critics were motivated by the company's application to extend the life of the Krümmel plant to 2011.
"No radiation was released and no one was put in danger," said a company spokesman.
The plant witnessed a second incident on July 1st, when the plant was being powered up after the June 28th shutdown. Operators reacted too late to a surge of hot water, causing the plant's water filtration system to cut out for eight minutes.
Vattenfall has said that the plant will not go back online until the end of August.
The Krümmel plant was built in 1984 and is one of the oldest of its type.
Some 15 incidents have been registered at the plant in the last 12 months, reviving safety concerns about Germany's 17 nuclear power stations.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) have called for Germany to follow the example of Finland and Britain and invest in a new generation of nuclear power plants as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reach climate goals.
But their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners stand by their 2002 law forcing energy companies to run down their last nuclear plants by 2020.
That agreement, calling for a development of renewable energy, stands in the current coalition agreement.
Dr Merkel has hinted she will revoke that agreement as soon as politically possible, though recent incidents could make this difficult.
She said she was "very angry" at energy companies' attitude to accidents at their nuclear plants, recalling similar behaviour during her time as environment minister in the Kohl government.