Power lobby nukes Merkel

"Let there be light," headlines the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, summarising the debate raging on electricity generation in Germany. While Angela Merkel is away on holiday, the big four companies of the energy sector — E.on, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall — have gone on the warpath against her government's plan to tax nuclear fuel from next year. Claiming that the tax, which could bring in an estimated at 2.3 billion euros per year, will decimate their power plants, they have threatened to simply stop production. They also want the closure of all 17 German nuclear power plants to be pushed back beyond the 2021 shutdown date. Politically trapped by the country's "big lobbies", the chancellor must now go on an "energy tour" throughout the country in order to resell her strategy to voters, it says.