Germany's and other countries' reactors are decades old designs that are fundamentally unsound, often enough built on tectonic faults or (in the case of Japan) at the sea. They are not secured against terrorist attacks or even the crash of a passenger jet. In the case of Germany's reactors, the containment is built to sustain the impact of a Phantom fighter, nothing more.
Reactor operators have constantly proven to be unworthy of trust, be it in Chernobyl, Harrisburg or Fukushima. Both their handling of operations as well as their handling of crisis never was up to standards - and every disaster was an exception to the rule.
Ridiculing the German outphasing of nukes with the argument that it is not a tsunami-prone country is both childish and irrational - irrational because it turns a blind eye to the risks that endanger nuclear power plants here - and the far more severe consequences of an accident. In Germany, the nukes are located straight in the most densely populated areas.
Ironically, Germans seem to have bought into the antinuclear frenzy that was sold to them by The Greens. Fukushima was massively overblown by the media and critical thinking went out the window during that time.
Now Germany imports nuclear from France, has the biggest investment in green energy with little to show for it, and is clammering onto their belief that nuclear is the bogeyman.
It doesn't seem as if many Germans saw further than their nose and fear when they voted against nuclear (and still continue to do so)
You're ignoring the suicide missions, the betrayed promises of the electric company, the endless coverage on the news, the anxiety and fear, and the government blatently lying about the health consequences. You're ignoring the long term consequences of habitability, of raw fish being a vital food source and the nuclear core having melt straight into the ocean. You're ignoring the media censorship. And that many of the "few" victims of cancer were children.
The public's rejection of nuclear is about terror. With terrorists, we're willing to turn foreign policy on its head and wage war and go as far as travel bans. And with the terror of nuclear, Germany has shut down all of it's plants. The consequence? Germans feel safer.
And no, no one has forgotten the Tsunami. That's blatantly offensive. I'm talking about nuclear to stay on topic.
I don't think anyone who didn't live through Tschernobyl, WAA, Castor and the NATO Double-Track Decision with the SS-20 scare can understand why Germany doesn't want nuclear power.
Germans simply won't admit this. I talked to some people who are in high positions in the Green Party, and they all have this obviously stupid belief that we will simply switch to renewables instead of reactivating nuclear. What they don't grasp is there is no such option. It's either nuclear or coal/gas. Any argument against nuclear must take into account the extreme damage Germany is doing to the environment with their current strategy.
No, nobody will admit to that or change their minds, the end of nuclear in Germany will be celebrated as a success for the environment.
No, changing the opinion now would not matter. Germany killed its nuclear industry decades ago. Being right about this would have mattered in the 80s and 90s. You don't get the CO2 or methane that has been emitted back into the ground or the people that died out of the ground by being right in 2022.
I live in Germany. It's really sad to me how completely willfully ignorant even highly academic scientists here (some of which I know personally) decry nuclear on grounds of decade-old information or simply by citing Fukushima or Chernobyl.
There is a strong anti-nuclear sentiment here but the issues facing Germany are more to do with political incompetence and underinvestment. Nuclear is just one part of the whole mess.
I'm a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear sentiment real here. There have even been fights - physical altercations - between Green Party members at rallies for having differing viewpoints about nuclear.
Unfortunately, it seems those who are against are working on very outdated information and 'tropes' w.r.t. nuclear safety and whatnot. Quite unfortunate.
Its simple, the German population has a very strong anti nuclear bend going back to the Cold War. That is why no politics have the will to oppose this total idiocy.
They rather burn more coal and gas while pretending that renewables will do it all.
I started this talking about nuclear policy only, but I wrote more on all the issues I have with German environmental policy. I'm gone lay out a case on why German is a negative player in the global movement against climate change.
Their removal of perfectly well functioning nuclear plants that could have run for another 50 years is nothing less then criminal, Ill talk more of that later. Their strong anti-nuclear position influenced the countries around them to also get ride of their perfectly well functioning nuclear plants.
Belgium for example turned of a perfectly well functioning plant in the middle of the energy crisis. Switzerland stopped investing in its own energy production because Germany would just produce so much cheap energy that can easily be imported, yeah great policy.
Even France had been persuaded that nuclear is bad and in 2015 they basically also followed Germany and tried to do a nuclear phase out far earlier then technically possible. All in blind trust that they can just replace 20+ nuclear plants with a few solar panels. They also forced the potential profit of the utility (from nuclear) to be reinvented into solar (not to mention forcing them to support fossil as well).
All nations around Germany have to breath the coal ash that Germany distributes over all off Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and Eastern France. And have done so for decades and it has measurable effect on air quality and health in all those places. Somehow Switzerland (where I'm from) doesn't get coal ash from France, funny how that works.
France on the other hand has had clean energy for 40 years. Even home heating in France is usually done with electric. Its baffling to me that people see Germany as this great success, when their coal plants are still going strong and will be for another 10 years at least. Housing in Germany is still often oil and gas as well.
Anti-nuclear people love to just ignore the last 50 years of coal use in Germany and have for over 30 years insisted that nuclear is to expensive and slow, despite the evidence from France that you can change a economy to nuclear in 20 years and having paid very little for it. Don't believe people who claims France has high taxes because of nuclear, that is nonsense.
Its countries with the cleanest energy use the most nuclear, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Finland. Some countries with a lot of wind do decently well but also build a lot of gas capacity so it isn't as cheap as people claim.
611 gCO2eq/kWh right now, France 28. And that is with all the idiotic anti-nuclear policy France has adopted in the last 20 years. Germany currently has almost 25 GW of coal on the network, and only 2.7 GW nuclear. At peak, Germany had enough nuclear capacity to replace all the coal use they have today, but they made the choice to shut down all nuclear before all coal, and this was widely supported by Greens and environmentalists.
How anybody can call this a success, because they invested in some solar panel production is beyond me. Germany played itself up as the environmental savoir nation in the international press, everybody around the world tried to 'be like Germany'. And yet, France had literally already achieved more then Germany decades earlier but of course that was never mentioned anywhere.
I'm genuinely baffled why people are so positive about Germany. They have been selling themselves as this green nation for decades. But reality this is not supported by any evidence what so ever.
They didn't do very much to get away from oil and gas heating. Their strongest industry is the car industry, and they are backwards in terms of the new green urbanism. Their high speed rail network is still patchy, sub-optimally designed and incredibly delay prone. 'Die Bahn' the German railway operator is generally regressive in its European policies, opposing many major European rail reforms. The Autobahn high speed is polluting. Their car makers are currently trying to prevent the adoption of laws EU laws that push EVs.
They had international obligation and agreements to increase cargo rail transport North-South in Europe. A real all electric rail cargo highway, from North Sea ports all the way to Italy. Switzerland build the longest rail tunnel in the world and everything else. Even f*ing Italy build its part of this project. Germany, mmmhh, maybe they will do it next decade. Well I guess at least the Autobahn will be used for more diesel trucks instead, thanks Germany.
I can't think of a single area of environmental policy where Germany is actually leading. Germany is everything that is bad with the environmental policy. Its a success of marketing over results. 3rd world nations around the world should not look to Germany, they should look to France (in the 70/80, not so much lately) for electricity, to Netherlands for urban policy, Switzerland for public transport.
Germany is a very densely populated country (go take a look at map). Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Germany also does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Currently, nuclear does not look like the sane option for Germany.
Germany had a 30-year long public discussion on nuclear. There is an overwhelming majority who rejects it. And for good reasons, too. If there is no other way to achieve our goals, we may have that discussion again, but I doubt it.
Germany didn't think rationally. Nuclear was strongly associated with cold war and nuclear bombs.
Berlin is incredibly anti-nuclear. When I lived there, even when there was little going on, you would see constant anti-nuclear propaganda. Lots of anti-nuclear footmats and stickers.
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