Germany decided to begin decommissioning of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011.
Three plants still operate in the country but are in the process of being decommissioned.
Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck told local media on Monday night it was part of his ministry’s task to investigate whether the life of the country’s remaining nuclear power plants could be extended and he would not reject the idea on ideological grounds.
But he said preliminary examinations had shown that it would not help the country in the short-term because plans for the plants to be shut down were too far advanced.
Germany has come under pressure from other Western nations to be less reliant on Russian gas in the wake of the country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The trade of gas is seen as an economic lifeline for the pariah State, which the West is desperately trying to cripple with economic sanctions and monetary restrictions.
But Germany’s plans to phase-out coal-fired power plants by 2030 and to shut its nuclear power plants by the end of 2022 have left it with few options.
However, Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday spelled out a more radical path to ensure Germany would be able to meet rising energy supply and diversify away from Russian gas, which accounts for half of its energy needs.
The plan includes the construction of two new LNG import terminals.
The uranium spot price, which has been in the doldrums since 2011, has recently ticked higher on the back of sustained physical buying of yellowcake by Canada’s Sprott Physical Uranium Trust.
The fund had its highest inflow on record on Friday of $US82.9m, prompting it to buy 1.4 million pounds of the energy metal.
Questions have also emerged about whether Western sanctions against Russia could be extended to the world’s biggest producer of uranium, the Russian-aligned Kazakhstan.
Uranium bulls see nuclear power as a way of generating emissions-free baseload power but environmentalists remain bitterly opposed to the industry because of the radioactive waste it emits, the risk of nuclear accidents and the use of enriched uranium in nuclear warheads.
