A German regional court in Hannover has turned down a €382m ($425m) claim by German utility E.ON over the March 2011 forced closure of the Isar-1 and Unterweser NPPs, which were subsequently taken permanently offline in August 2011. E.ON was claiming damages from the Free State of Bavaria, Lower Saxony and the Federal Republic of Germany over the closures. Martin Schulz, the judge presiding over the Hanover regional court, said E.ON had failed to seek “immediate legal action against the initial decision”. Reuters said the court made a preliminary announcement in April indicating that it was likely to adopt this line of reasoning. According to Reuters, E.ON responded at the time by saying that bringing legal action to a successful conclusion would have taken longer than an initial three-month moratorium on nuclear energy imposed after Fukushima-Daiichi in March 2011. That moratorium was then extended into a permanent shutdown of nuclear plants. In April 2016, a Bonn regional court dismissed a €261m damages claim by German utility EnBW over the shutdown of the Philippsburg-1 and Neckarwestheim-1 reactors. The court used the same reasoning, saying EnBW’s did not use “all legal means available” to interrupt the shut-down when it was happening in 2011.
