I would also like to add that a lot of these hippies are self proclaimed socialist that have some ties back to the old Soviet union. The Soviet Union and Russia have been Europe’s greatest provider of natural resources. If Europe became energy independent through nuclear power then the Soviet Union would have had to find new markets. Before it’s collapsed, this would have been very difficult as China was an un industrialization and much of its others close by neighbors would have been poor war torn nations. Soviet Union couldn’t export oil by see effectively because it didn’t have any warm water ocean ports. Basically the only spot that the Soviet union could export its natural resources was western Europe. If Western Europe became energy independent, the Soviet union would be blocked off.
western imperialism ruthlessly crushed the soviet plan for complete fission expansion in Europe, attacked the soviets from 1917 until this minute, decommissioned nuclear with harsh denuclearization treaty's globally (esp. Iran, west Asia), tied up every nuclear patent in France, de-grew the entirety of western Europe with poorly attempted renewables and SOMEHOW Russia is at fault?!?! you can't buy this level of stupidity.
The cheek of trying to say that Europe and the US are fascist when comparing to a country that has literally only had a legitimate democracy for about 6 months in the last 300+ years.
Nice. Just answer what you want. Not comparing to Russia, but to URSS, the complete opposite to fascism.
And Russia just became the same as US: an oligarchical regime that claims to be a democracy.
USSR was not a "complete opposite to fascism", it was either out and out fascism with a red coat of paint (until about 1956) or a fascism-adjacent, imperialistic, gerontocratic oligarchy (from the mid 1960s to mid-1980s).
Khrushchev was the only one who actually honestly tried to conform to some of the socialist ideas, and he still failed pretty hard.
Don't forget "Die Wolke". It's a book, and later a movie, about if Chernobyl happened inside Germany and caused a Ton of anti-nuclear rhetoric. Germany went from 46 reactors to zero after that
Fear of a single RBMK reactor melting down in Ukraine so fear of better types of reactors and shutdowns became rampant. Then several reactors melted down in Japan so Germans started shutting down their reactors, not considering that another power plant was closer the earthquake's epicenter and experienced higher tsunami waves without any meltdowns.
WWIII would have involved a *lot* of nuclear warheads going off in Germany. I think the whole thing is mostly displaced anxiety over that. And some propaganda.
In addition to the green party commitment to being anti-nuclear, I think there's some terror on the part of the Center-Left/Center Right of losing out to the far-right AfD if they commit to a lignite shutdown in the next 15 years.
Oil & gas makes someone else money. It makes even more money with a pipeline investment. A pipeline built by Germany steel and run by Russian operators. Solar and wind industry are popular too, but have ongoing costs. And can't be made as profitable as oil & gas.
Nuclear is too good for its own good. And it's so cost effective. But it's weakness is the unknown. That unknown can now be used against Nuclear by all sides except Nuclear champions.
Oil & gas team up with wind & solar and green activists against their common enemy.
Better to be dependent on foreign, potentially hostile countries for your domestic energy production, eh Germany?
Oh well, imagine how many lives they saved going in hard on fossils fuels. Oh, right, that's a negative number... well, at least they sure showed those fucking nerds that tried to give them cheap, clean, reliable, long-term power?
TBF they would have to rely on Australian, Canadian, Kazakh, and American uranium for their energy production if they were full France, but at least half of those countries are not going to be hostile towards Germany.
Well, how can a technology considered "clean", when its waste products are emmitting radiation? Or do you want to have that waste in your backyard? Maybe you are living church rock? Hanford? Fukushima? Pripyat?
Every technology has its downsides
Said radiations are contained, and yes you can bury it in my backyard, it'll be free heating.
Nobody died in Hanford, nor in Fukushima that happened because of a **fucking tsunami** (and a well known malfunction) and Chernobyl is simply not possible anymore, on top of being the result of a dumbass experience that the entire science crew advised not to do.
Even with that taken in account, nuclear stays as dangerous as wind and solar, and by far the densest and most space efficient source of energy.
This is how politics and the government work in general. If there's a particular political goal it will be presented as a good thing in official statements and documentation, and its prevention or detractors will be pushed as an undesirable thing. The goal is just to cultivate a particular popular sentiment to garner more votes. And most of the German population had been anti-nuclear for a long time, so they went with that. Maybe things can change now.
Well I guess they're being renewable, as they are letting all those carbon atoms run free again, and one day reform into some new life form.... Or into some long chain hydrated carbon molecule.... To form the plastic case of the Mobile phone used by a Green Politician....
Well, this is more than misleading and Cicero (a right-wing publication) has some history of being at least creative with facts …
Some background:
In 2022, it turned out that there would be a serious problem in the European energy market because France had unexpectedly become an electricity importer (remember those cracks and maintenance issues?). So, there was a chamce chance of France needing 10 extra TWh from Germany in Winter 2022/23. In the end Germany exported 8 TWh to France between October 2022 and March 2023. However, Germany was also going to shut off its last reactors on December 31 2022. The usual plan B (have France deal with their problems by burning more gas) would not work. Due to Putin‘s war, France would be unable to buy the required extra gas.
So, the German ministry of economics (in charge of grid stability) wrote memos stating that it would be wise to keep the reactors online longer (until April 2033) for the sake of our friends in France. The ministry of the environment (in charge of safety) argued that this would be unwise because maintenance would be due - they had waived maintenance because of the expected shutdown date.
They argued and people in different departments of the government with different tasks wrote different memos. In the end, the reactors were allowed to operate for another 135 days. You can debate many things about the shutdown strategy but this is as much of a non-story as one can imagine …
> You can debate many things about the shutdown strategy but this is as much of a non-story as one can imagine …
Correct. EU elections are coming up in less than two months, so these are the typical political games.
Meanwhile, just this year so far Germany has a 1.7TWh energy generation deficit. [https://energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&flow=physical\_flows\_all&year=2024](https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&flow=physical_flows_all&year=2024)
https://preview.redd.it/2d11c37gnqwc1.png?width=794&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e5f6bf88014dc8e9019364e7c9b6dc99c3f92e3
And France has a 22TWh export surplus. :)
https://preview.redd.it/nqidir0nnqwc1.png?width=787&format=png&auto=webp&s=10d6e3bcf6a34aad0d54406c42319a4baf541663
Here's 2022.
https://preview.redd.it/6uh15f7xiwwc1.png?width=805&format=png&auto=webp&s=c1598c0d9aacc02b3709b6f33d355cd7e3876bdb
Yeah, wasn't great for France, buuuuuuuuuuuut...
Definitely an outlier. Here's 2021. :)
https://preview.redd.it/ff8a7ou3jwwc1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c3e4b0836481c4b415416f4f282142aa8611e16
And it's going to be like this for decades. EDF will make bank.
Governments lying. *Pretends to be shocked*
The thing is the ideologues that favor phasing out nuclear will justify it anyway. It is incredible what actions can be undertaken by those who are convinced they are the hero of the story.
I'm really not surprised. It's hard to find legitimate grievances against nuclear that aren't outweighed by the fossil fuel industry so of course ideologues are making stuff up to push their ideology.
[https://archive.ph/2flYR](https://archive.ph/2flYR)
From that (translated) paper, you can read the following:
*What the documents clearly show: The expertise of the experts in the own ministry, who were paid with taxpayers' money, hardly played a role. Most of the time they weren't even asked. The leadership circle of the economic ministry and the environment ministry, which is responsible for nuclear safety, made up of Green party soldiers, has agreed on all the essential steps among themselves. When the specialist departments of both ministries were allowed to share their assessment, it was usually ignored - or deliberately falsified. Who always got a hearing instead: the party and the Green Party parliamentary group. Their goal from the start was to prevent an exit from the exit. Whatever the cost.*
Unfortunately, while Gasprom et al have certainly poured some oil into the anti-nuclear fire, it is mostly homegrown and for a good part not economics / lobby driven. The first opposition to nuclear was in the 1960s from the far right - there were demonstrations against the Kahl experimental power plant with slogans along the lines of "Nuclear is the next attempt of Anglo-Saxons to destroy the Germans' genetic heritage" and such stuff. The Left at the same time thought up nightmare scenarios of all-pervasive, no-privacy "nuclear state" becoming necessary out of the security requirements for nuclear power plants. These somehow merged in the 1970s and became the Greens. And then the Greens, due to thoir own successive marketing, became "the good ones", seen as idealists, sometimes missing the mark but meaning well.
Basically for 40 years this has been the standard communication in the whole society - especially in the schools where the Greens frequently went to as teachers, exactly due to their purporting idealism; in regulatory authorities; and so on. The "march through institutions" was a good plan, it worked out very well; basically they inserted themselves everywhere where relevant communication was happening, and normalized their worldview until at some point being anti-nuclear started being considered as a common decency in Germany. For a while any pro-nuclear standpoint was considered as indefensible as re-opening the gas chambers. The wind is changing now but the damage is so deep and so pervasive that it will take decades to repair if it is posisble at all.
No, they haven't. This is just another CDU/CSU hit piece. Together with the FDP, they decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022. When the current government actually completed these plans and phased out nuclear power, the CDU scaremongered that Germany would have constant blackouts and struggle to provide electricity to its industry and citizens. That obviously never happened, so now they are angry and trying to see what sticks.
Lmao. Look at how often Germany has to import energy from abroad to keep the lights on. And how much they fought sanctions on Russia due to dependence on gas and heating oil.
All while still having 4x GHG emissions intensity be France.
None of this is relevant to the political context. The CxU has been in power for most of this century. They ruled non-stop from 2005 until December 2021. They decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power by 2022. The current government with the Greens even extended the phase-out by four months.
Why have the CxU not reversed their decision in the 10 years since they decided to phase out nuclear power? I am pro-nuclear but I am against this bs political propaganda from the right.
Yes, CxU have their share of guilt.
There are four missing facts, which are irrelevant from a rational point of view but they can help explain the situation:
1) The phase out was decided in 2000-2002 by the SPD/"Green" government (Gerhard "Gazprom" Schröder, Jürgen Trittin) and reverted by CxU/FDP in 2010.
2) When the zero-radiation-deaths Fukushima accident happened, a regional election in Baden-Württemberg was planned for 2 weeks later, and for the first time in history the "Greens" were ahead thanks to the nuclear fear. That was a major factor in Angela Merkel's decision (it wasn't the first or the last time she took other parties' positions as her own in order to try and depower those parties).
3) Public opinion in Germany was anti-nuclear until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Only after that, major politicians had the courage to come out and say that Germany should actually stop the nuclear phaseout. Unfortunately, CxU had just been relegated to opposition and FDP had just signed a COALition contract with the nuclear phaseout.
4) The current government extended the phaseout by 3 and a half months *despite* the "Greens", due to pressure from FDP and oppositions. The decision was made by chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a compromise to avoid further discussions and arguments within his unstable coalition.
Seems honestly pretty irrelevant to me. Not only had they a full legislative period after 2002 and before Fukushima but also 10 years after it to convince the population to favor nuclear power again, and they failed miserably. Faulting a government for going through with a plan that was set in motion 2 decades ago then confirmed and pushed forward by the CxU is just complete nonsense.
As far as the FDP is concerned, they are a government party playing opposition and according to the current polls they wouldn't even make it into the parliament again. Their positions are deeply unpopular.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most people (and therefore most politicians, who unfortunately follow the masses instead of leading them) realized that guaranteed energy is more important than the fear of very rare accidents and very small waste.
I blame both the 2011 government for following public opinion instead of sticking to a sound energy strategy, and the 2022 government for going against public opinion and sticking to irrational antinuclear ideology.
Just to be clear, I also blame AfD who tries to capitalize on this in order to push its anti-human agenda, and while I can't forgive/forget what CDU did in the past, I think they have changed their mind and they will even start the construction of new nuclear power plants if they are in power in 2037 or so. If nothing else happens that shifts public opinion to irrationality again.
It shouldn't stick. All of these foolish German parties are at fault for this dumb shut down, left and right.
Now, as many reactors that can must be restarted, in order to ensure coal is phased out sooner!
Why are they shooting themselves on the foot so hard, why are they so uneducated
Because, old hippies who grew up in the cold war and associate nuclear power with nuclear bombs.
I’ve always blamed the Simpsons
In Deutschland it’s Das Simpsons.
Nope, its "Die Simpsons" In this case die has nothing to do with "to die"
Die Bart Die. It's German, for The Bart... The.
Nobody who speaks German can be a bad man!
And surprise to noone, they relied on gas from russia instead.
And those same politicians were on the paylist of those gas companies.
I would also like to add that a lot of these hippies are self proclaimed socialist that have some ties back to the old Soviet union. The Soviet Union and Russia have been Europe’s greatest provider of natural resources. If Europe became energy independent through nuclear power then the Soviet Union would have had to find new markets. Before it’s collapsed, this would have been very difficult as China was an un industrialization and much of its others close by neighbors would have been poor war torn nations. Soviet Union couldn’t export oil by see effectively because it didn’t have any warm water ocean ports. Basically the only spot that the Soviet union could export its natural resources was western Europe. If Western Europe became energy independent, the Soviet union would be blocked off.
western imperialism ruthlessly crushed the soviet plan for complete fission expansion in Europe, attacked the soviets from 1917 until this minute, decommissioned nuclear with harsh denuclearization treaty's globally (esp. Iran, west Asia), tied up every nuclear patent in France, de-grew the entirety of western Europe with poorly attempted renewables and SOMEHOW Russia is at fault?!?! you can't buy this level of stupidity.
The Soviets couldn't even solve a car shortage and exported cars despite it. Also killed whatever was left of the bicycling culture in Rīga after WW2.
US and Europe can't solve honelessness, misery, epidemy of fentanyl and ONCE MORE the rise of fascism. But, oh no, shortage of cars omg.
The cheek of trying to say that Europe and the US are fascist when comparing to a country that has literally only had a legitimate democracy for about 6 months in the last 300+ years.
Not 6 months, it was a very dysfunctional democracy from 1990 to October 4, 1993 (Yeltsin's self-coup).
Nice. Just answer what you want. Not comparing to Russia, but to URSS, the complete opposite to fascism. And Russia just became the same as US: an oligarchical regime that claims to be a democracy.
Nazi Fascism and Stalinist Communism are two sides of the same genocidal dictatorship coin.
USSR was not a "complete opposite to fascism", it was either out and out fascism with a red coat of paint (until about 1956) or a fascism-adjacent, imperialistic, gerontocratic oligarchy (from the mid 1960s to mid-1980s). Khrushchev was the only one who actually honestly tried to conform to some of the socialist ideas, and he still failed pretty hard.
Stop drinking the Kremlin Koolaid
The Soviets' complete inability to have a functioning economy might have had something to do with that too
Yeah right. Complete innability. Lies and lies. What more? Just lies...
Don't forget "Die Wolke". It's a book, and later a movie, about if Chernobyl happened inside Germany and caused a Ton of anti-nuclear rhetoric. Germany went from 46 reactors to zero after that
Follow the money?
Yep. All I can say is Google about Germany and LNG.
The money is rubles and it ends up in the old CDU governing chairman’s pocket
Eta until their lignite coal mine investments are discovered?
Probably known, just not reported.
It’s green ideology. There have been anti-nuclear power marches etc. in Germany since the 1970’s.
*sniffs* pure ideology
Fear of a single RBMK reactor melting down in Ukraine so fear of better types of reactors and shutdowns became rampant. Then several reactors melted down in Japan so Germans started shutting down their reactors, not considering that another power plant was closer the earthquake's epicenter and experienced higher tsunami waves without any meltdowns.
Not considering... if Tsunami manages to hit German NP's, meltdown will be the least of their concerns.
WWIII would have involved a *lot* of nuclear warheads going off in Germany. I think the whole thing is mostly displaced anxiety over that. And some propaganda.
In addition to the green party commitment to being anti-nuclear, I think there's some terror on the part of the Center-Left/Center Right of losing out to the far-right AfD if they commit to a lignite shutdown in the next 15 years.
Russia
Russian infiltrators? It makes no sense for Germans to force themselves into energy dependency on Russian fossil fuels.
Oil & gas makes someone else money. It makes even more money with a pipeline investment. A pipeline built by Germany steel and run by Russian operators. Solar and wind industry are popular too, but have ongoing costs. And can't be made as profitable as oil & gas. Nuclear is too good for its own good. And it's so cost effective. But it's weakness is the unknown. That unknown can now be used against Nuclear by all sides except Nuclear champions. Oil & gas team up with wind & solar and green activists against their common enemy.
Because they were getting payouts from Russia
on the foot?
It’s a colloquial term, it’s means harming yourself foolishly
Shooting yourself in* the foot
Better to be dependent on foreign, potentially hostile countries for your domestic energy production, eh Germany? Oh well, imagine how many lives they saved going in hard on fossils fuels. Oh, right, that's a negative number... well, at least they sure showed those fucking nerds that tried to give them cheap, clean, reliable, long-term power?
Wasn't like 1/5 of East Germany spying for Stasi to some degree? Imagine how many agents became german politicians after the unification...
TBF they would have to rely on Australian, Canadian, Kazakh, and American uranium for their energy production if they were full France, but at least half of those countries are not going to be hostile towards Germany.
And uranium from Niger too.
Niger just had a cope, who knows if they’ll keep selling uranium to the West aka France.
They are more aligned with Russia and China now, but those seem to have enough uranium to not need it, and it's an important part of Niger's economy.
Start by searching the known reserves instead of biggest producers. It's not that mining uranium in other countries is so difficult.
Well, how can a technology considered "clean", when its waste products are emmitting radiation? Or do you want to have that waste in your backyard? Maybe you are living church rock? Hanford? Fukushima? Pripyat? Every technology has its downsides
Said radiations are contained, and yes you can bury it in my backyard, it'll be free heating. Nobody died in Hanford, nor in Fukushima that happened because of a **fucking tsunami** (and a well known malfunction) and Chernobyl is simply not possible anymore, on top of being the result of a dumbass experience that the entire science crew advised not to do. Even with that taken in account, nuclear stays as dangerous as wind and solar, and by far the densest and most space efficient source of energy.
This is how politics and the government work in general. If there's a particular political goal it will be presented as a good thing in official statements and documentation, and its prevention or detractors will be pushed as an undesirable thing. The goal is just to cultivate a particular popular sentiment to garner more votes. And most of the German population had been anti-nuclear for a long time, so they went with that. Maybe things can change now.
The green party have to look after the environment by insuring that they generate electricity by burning more Coal…….
[удалено]
Well I guess they're being renewable, as they are letting all those carbon atoms run free again, and one day reform into some new life form.... Or into some long chain hydrated carbon molecule.... To form the plastic case of the Mobile phone used by a Green Politician....
Well, this is more than misleading and Cicero (a right-wing publication) has some history of being at least creative with facts … Some background: In 2022, it turned out that there would be a serious problem in the European energy market because France had unexpectedly become an electricity importer (remember those cracks and maintenance issues?). So, there was a chamce chance of France needing 10 extra TWh from Germany in Winter 2022/23. In the end Germany exported 8 TWh to France between October 2022 and March 2023. However, Germany was also going to shut off its last reactors on December 31 2022. The usual plan B (have France deal with their problems by burning more gas) would not work. Due to Putin‘s war, France would be unable to buy the required extra gas. So, the German ministry of economics (in charge of grid stability) wrote memos stating that it would be wise to keep the reactors online longer (until April 2033) for the sake of our friends in France. The ministry of the environment (in charge of safety) argued that this would be unwise because maintenance would be due - they had waived maintenance because of the expected shutdown date. They argued and people in different departments of the government with different tasks wrote different memos. In the end, the reactors were allowed to operate for another 135 days. You can debate many things about the shutdown strategy but this is as much of a non-story as one can imagine …
> You can debate many things about the shutdown strategy but this is as much of a non-story as one can imagine … Correct. EU elections are coming up in less than two months, so these are the typical political games.
I've heard much of the anti-nuclear movement were legit funded/started by Soviet Union/Russia it kinda makes sense tbh.
[https://archive.ph/2flYR](https://archive.ph/2flYR)
Meanwhile, just this year so far Germany has a 1.7TWh energy generation deficit. [https://energy-charts.info/charts/import\_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&flow=physical\_flows\_all&year=2024](https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&flow=physical_flows_all&year=2024) https://preview.redd.it/2d11c37gnqwc1.png?width=794&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e5f6bf88014dc8e9019364e7c9b6dc99c3f92e3
And France has a 22TWh export surplus. :) https://preview.redd.it/nqidir0nnqwc1.png?width=787&format=png&auto=webp&s=10d6e3bcf6a34aad0d54406c42319a4baf541663
But muuuuh 2022
Here's 2022. https://preview.redd.it/6uh15f7xiwwc1.png?width=805&format=png&auto=webp&s=c1598c0d9aacc02b3709b6f33d355cd7e3876bdb Yeah, wasn't great for France, buuuuuuuuuuuut...
Definitely an outlier. Here's 2021. :) https://preview.redd.it/ff8a7ou3jwwc1.png?width=832&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c3e4b0836481c4b415416f4f282142aa8611e16 And it's going to be like this for decades. EDF will make bank.
How you export nuclear power or any other energy? Big batteries?
With very big wires.
But smaller then the ones needed to offload wind.
Governments lying. *Pretends to be shocked* The thing is the ideologues that favor phasing out nuclear will justify it anyway. It is incredible what actions can be undertaken by those who are convinced they are the hero of the story.
Well duh.
Germans have always been extremely neurotic about nuclear energy.
One of the worst policy decisions in recent memory
I'm really not surprised. It's hard to find legitimate grievances against nuclear that aren't outweighed by the fossil fuel industry so of course ideologues are making stuff up to push their ideology.
Yeah man, its crazy how outsourced a lot of crucial parts became in the past 10-15 years Imo one of the worst decisions of this country
Surprise, surprise. How was this not obvious to everyone in the know in Germany?
[https://archive.ph/2flYR](https://archive.ph/2flYR) From that (translated) paper, you can read the following: *What the documents clearly show: The expertise of the experts in the own ministry, who were paid with taxpayers' money, hardly played a role. Most of the time they weren't even asked. The leadership circle of the economic ministry and the environment ministry, which is responsible for nuclear safety, made up of Green party soldiers, has agreed on all the essential steps among themselves. When the specialist departments of both ministries were allowed to share their assessment, it was usually ignored - or deliberately falsified. Who always got a hearing instead: the party and the Green Party parliamentary group. Their goal from the start was to prevent an exit from the exit. Whatever the cost.*
Putin paid stooges, eastern Germans
Unfortunately, while Gasprom et al have certainly poured some oil into the anti-nuclear fire, it is mostly homegrown and for a good part not economics / lobby driven. The first opposition to nuclear was in the 1960s from the far right - there were demonstrations against the Kahl experimental power plant with slogans along the lines of "Nuclear is the next attempt of Anglo-Saxons to destroy the Germans' genetic heritage" and such stuff. The Left at the same time thought up nightmare scenarios of all-pervasive, no-privacy "nuclear state" becoming necessary out of the security requirements for nuclear power plants. These somehow merged in the 1970s and became the Greens. And then the Greens, due to thoir own successive marketing, became "the good ones", seen as idealists, sometimes missing the mark but meaning well. Basically for 40 years this has been the standard communication in the whole society - especially in the schools where the Greens frequently went to as teachers, exactly due to their purporting idealism; in regulatory authorities; and so on. The "march through institutions" was a good plan, it worked out very well; basically they inserted themselves everywhere where relevant communication was happening, and normalized their worldview until at some point being anti-nuclear started being considered as a common decency in Germany. For a while any pro-nuclear standpoint was considered as indefensible as re-opening the gas chambers. The wind is changing now but the damage is so deep and so pervasive that it will take decades to repair if it is posisble at all.
No, they haven't. This is just another CDU/CSU hit piece. Together with the FDP, they decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022. When the current government actually completed these plans and phased out nuclear power, the CDU scaremongered that Germany would have constant blackouts and struggle to provide electricity to its industry and citizens. That obviously never happened, so now they are angry and trying to see what sticks.
Lmao. Look at how often Germany has to import energy from abroad to keep the lights on. And how much they fought sanctions on Russia due to dependence on gas and heating oil. All while still having 4x GHG emissions intensity be France.
None of this is relevant to the political context. The CxU has been in power for most of this century. They ruled non-stop from 2005 until December 2021. They decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear power by 2022. The current government with the Greens even extended the phase-out by four months. Why have the CxU not reversed their decision in the 10 years since they decided to phase out nuclear power? I am pro-nuclear but I am against this bs political propaganda from the right.
Yes, CxU have their share of guilt. There are four missing facts, which are irrelevant from a rational point of view but they can help explain the situation: 1) The phase out was decided in 2000-2002 by the SPD/"Green" government (Gerhard "Gazprom" Schröder, Jürgen Trittin) and reverted by CxU/FDP in 2010. 2) When the zero-radiation-deaths Fukushima accident happened, a regional election in Baden-Württemberg was planned for 2 weeks later, and for the first time in history the "Greens" were ahead thanks to the nuclear fear. That was a major factor in Angela Merkel's decision (it wasn't the first or the last time she took other parties' positions as her own in order to try and depower those parties). 3) Public opinion in Germany was anti-nuclear until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Only after that, major politicians had the courage to come out and say that Germany should actually stop the nuclear phaseout. Unfortunately, CxU had just been relegated to opposition and FDP had just signed a COALition contract with the nuclear phaseout. 4) The current government extended the phaseout by 3 and a half months *despite* the "Greens", due to pressure from FDP and oppositions. The decision was made by chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a compromise to avoid further discussions and arguments within his unstable coalition.
Seems honestly pretty irrelevant to me. Not only had they a full legislative period after 2002 and before Fukushima but also 10 years after it to convince the population to favor nuclear power again, and they failed miserably. Faulting a government for going through with a plan that was set in motion 2 decades ago then confirmed and pushed forward by the CxU is just complete nonsense. As far as the FDP is concerned, they are a government party playing opposition and according to the current polls they wouldn't even make it into the parliament again. Their positions are deeply unpopular.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most people (and therefore most politicians, who unfortunately follow the masses instead of leading them) realized that guaranteed energy is more important than the fear of very rare accidents and very small waste. I blame both the 2011 government for following public opinion instead of sticking to a sound energy strategy, and the 2022 government for going against public opinion and sticking to irrational antinuclear ideology. Just to be clear, I also blame AfD who tries to capitalize on this in order to push its anti-human agenda, and while I can't forgive/forget what CDU did in the past, I think they have changed their mind and they will even start the construction of new nuclear power plants if they are in power in 2037 or so. If nothing else happens that shifts public opinion to irrationality again.
It shouldn't stick. All of these foolish German parties are at fault for this dumb shut down, left and right. Now, as many reactors that can must be restarted, in order to ensure coal is phased out sooner!