Court rejects EOn's compensation claim
A regional court in Hannover has ruled that EOn is not entitled to €382 million ($426 million) in compensation it sought for the forced shut down of its Isar 1 and Unterweser nuclear power units in 2011.
In the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, the German government ordered the three-month shutdown of the country's oldest reactors. A few months later the government changed the temporary moratorium into a permanent shutdown for the reactors.
In 2014, three years after the moratorium, EOn filed a lawsuit seeking damages for the loss of power production, plus interest. This amounted to €153.8 million from the state of Bavaria and the federal government and €228.4 million from the state of Lower Saxony and the federal government.
Martin Schulz, the presiding judge at the Hannover Regional Court, yesterday dismissed EOn's claim, saying the company had failed to seek immediate legal action against the moratorium. In April, the court issued a preliminary statement indicating that it would most likely take this stand.
The court's ruling echoes that of a decision in April by a regional court in Bonn to throw out a similar compensation claim by EnBW for the shutdown of its Neckarwestheim 1 and Phillipsburg 1 units in the state of Baden-Würtemberg. That court ruled the utility, which also filed its lawsuit in 2014, had not used immediately "all legal means available" to avert the consequences of the forced shut down of its nuclear power units.
EnBW had sought compensation of €261 million, citing German court decisions in 2013 and 2014 in favour of rival utility RWE, which had sued for damages of €235 million against the forced closure of its Biblis reactor immediately after the moratorium.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
