ABSTRACT
This chapter extends the constitutional dimension of nuclear energy by presenting the core constitutional framework regulating various aspects of nuclear energy and how the German constitutional system developed new (unwritten) standards concerning nuclear power.
The chapter shows that nuclear energy is a constitutionally relevant issue. This results from the characteristics and significance of nuclear energy, which influences many areas. Constitutional relevance results primarily from the circumstance that the German Constitution in two clauses directly refers to nuclear energy. This chapter presents the understanding and significance of both clauses. Although those provisions regulate solely jurisdictional issues, during almost 70 years when they remain in force, the developed jurisprudence of the German Constitutional Court, multiple theses in legal doctrine, intensive public debate and years of political practice enriched those constitutional provisions with a broad normative content that have been reconstructed in this chapter.
Finally, the last part of the chapter analyses the military usage of nuclear energy. This fragment goes beyond the normative content of those two existing clauses in the German Constitution because they only regulate the peaceful application of nuclear energy. Meanwhile, the military application of nuclear energy has a long history of usage. The chapter thus analyses the qualification of potential military application of nuclear energy in the German Constitution and the Federal Constitutional Court jurisprudence.
