Stress-free stress test

The verdict of the commission of experts tasked with a detailed analysis of the safety of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima has been made public: "Einstürzende Altbauten [i.e. Crumbling old buildings],” headlines alternative left-wingTageszeitung, in a pun on celebrated industrial punk group Einstürzende Neubauten [Crumbling new buildings]. In other words, none of the power plants satisfied the highest safety standards. Although they remain vulnerable to the threat of plane crashes, the power stations are nonetheless "solidly constructed.” The Berlin daily argues that the safety review – which failed to drawn any new conclusions – should be put in perspective. The experts who examined "the rational and technical basis“ which determines the duration of the working life of existing power plants had to make do with data sourced solely from the nuclear industry and an extremely short schedule of just six weeks in which to complete their work. It is still not known how many German power plants will have to close. For the fiercely anti-nuclearTAZ, the sole aim of these commissions "was to provide Angela Merkel with a scientific and moral justification for a series of retreats on the nuclear issue." The newspaper argues that the report will be especially useful to "to nuclear lobbyists who won’t miss out on the chance of quickly exploiting it for their own benefit."