BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Shortly before the planned end of the use of nuclear power in Germany, Green Party faction leader Katharina Dröge has criticized calls for nuclear power to be extended. "You would not get a continuation of nuclear power plants for free," Dröge said Friday on ARD's "Morgenmagazin." The nuclear power plants in Germany are old and no longer correspond to the latest state of the art, he said. "Keeping them running would not work without massive additional safety checks, and someone would have to pay for them." The CDU/CSU is hiding the fact that the taxpayer is bearing the costs, the Green politician added.

Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) had spoken out on Thursday in favor of longer operating times for Germany's nuclear power plants in light of the energy crisis. He called shutting down at the present time a mistake and a sin.

According to Dröge, no company would operate nuclear power plants without massive government subsidies. Nuclear power, he said, is an extremely expensive form of energy production. "This waste of taxpayers' money, we'll put an end to it tomorrow. And by doing that, we're also creating price certainty for people at the same time."

On Saturday, the three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany are to be

- Isar 2 in Bavaria, Emsland in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in

Baden-Württemberg - are to be finally taken off the grid. This was actually supposed to happen at the end of last year. However, because of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the energy crisis it triggered, last year, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) put his foot down, the coalition government decided to keep the three reactors running through the winter./slb/DP/mis