Citizens' Dialogue on Nuclear Energy

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The Citizens' Dialogue on Nuclear Energy was a series of events from 1975 to 1978 in which the German government attempted to enter into a dialogue with the growing number of opponents of nuclear power . On the part of the opponents of nuclear power, the citizens' dialogue was judged to be not open-ended. The public dialogue was intended to supplement the legally required public participation within the framework of the land-use planning and, in contrast to this, was non-binding.

background

In the conflict over the Wyhl nuclear power plant , the federal government tried since 1975 to actively intervene in the public discussion. The Federal Minister for Research and Technology, Hans Matthöfer , was commissioned to organize discussion and seminar events in which opponents and supporters of nuclear energy could talk to one another and to the federal government.

After the Federal Minister for Research and Technology Hans Matthöfer had made the offer of a "trusting dialogue with the responsible citizen" on March 6, 1975, the environmentalist Hartmut Gründler from Tübingen, who was going on a hunger strike on the occupied building site for the Wyhl nuclear power plant , initially requested from him rather the establishment of a traveling exhibition, which should bring "the full truth about nuclear power plants" to the people.

The strategy of the federal government

Matthöfer did not go into this because, on the one hand, the federal government was convinced of the correctness of its nuclear policy and initially believed that the resistance to nuclear energy was based only on a lack of knowledge. On the other hand, in the eyes of opponents of nuclear power, it intended to split the environmental movement in the dialogue that had become necessary, on the one hand into those who were ready to respond and, if necessary, hoped to be involved as counter-experts in procedures of parallel assessment and expert discussions, and on the other in those who, predictably, in their fundamental mistrust and in fundamental rejection of the “capitalist structures” behind nuclear technology, tried to avoid any closer contact with authorities, operators and also empirical social research.

Assurance of the "Citizens' Dialogue on Nuclear Energy"

Hartmut Gründler broke off another hunger strike in Wyhl in June 1975, when Matthöfer assured the establishment of the so-called "Citizens' Dialogue on Nuclear Energy", in which he then took part several times. Dr. Klaus Lang, who was responsible for the “Citizens' Dialogue on Nuclear Energy” in the BMFT and who also tried to dissuade Gründler in Tübingen from another hunger strike in June 1976, later stated that it was “already an assertion-oriented dialogue by the federal government” sought to be open, especially in the ministry's brochures, e.g. B. the "Citizen Information" from October 1975, opponents of nuclear power have had their say.

Practice of citizen dialogue events

The citizens' dialogue began on July 22, 1975 in Bonn. For more than three hours, Matthöfer faced a conversation with 21 speakers from citizens' initiatives and agreed to a series of around ten public discussions with them. Over 20 journalists were present at the beginning of the conversation. A public dialogue event documented by the Battelle Institute took place on March 21, 1976 in Darmstadt shortly before the Biblis B nuclear power plant went into operation . In addition to numerous concerned citizens, the Federal Research Minister himself with his speaker, a NPP director and an RWE representative, on the other hand representatives of the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection and a group of students from the Environment Working Group at the TH Darmstadt were present.