Sending the Best Away

The expected uproar over the likely export of a plutonium plant to China has now been raised - not by the three Green party ministers in Germany's coalition government, but among second and third-level politicians. And the arguments of parliamentarians, who years ago found strong words to condemn the "nuclear mafia," sound strangely feeble.

"This has to be examined," they say, adding that "everything needs to be done" to prevent the export. Those are the words of people who know they have already lost the fight. The cabinet has already made its decision, and what follows now is nothing but a futile rearguard action.

The callousness with which Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is now supporting the sale of the plutonium plant, sitting unused near Frankfurt, mocks the propaganda with which the constructors of the facility were once forced to capitulate in Germany. In fact, Germany is one of the few countries in which the hazardous business of dealing with plutonium can be carried out safely; the necessary precondition is an open society with reliable watchdogs and high technical standards, but China, as a single-party state, does not entirely fulfill these preconditions. Therefore, selling the technology to the Chinese is less responsible than operating it in Germany.

Indeed, the use of nuclear energy in Germany is being wound down not because the risks cannot be controlled, but because of political resistance to the technology. To this day, Social Democrats and Greens are proud to have spoilt this business for industry through "exit-oriented legislation" that is nothing more than bureaucratic bullying.

The world noticed, with both bafflement and amusement, that Germany voluntarily relinquished its leading position in this technology and instead concentrated on the production of wind mills. Meanwhile, the high-temperature reactor, which is immune to the much-feared core meltdown and was also invented in Germany, is being readied for serial production in South Africa and China.

It might return to Germany from there one day.