Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 281 posts

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#11

Post by heckerhut »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

Nope. The numbers are such that Germany cannot go back on this. We are committed to the non nuclear path now. And that’s okay. We’re going to make up the lost technology leadership in nuclear with competency in renewables. It’s fine and not the end of world.

I wouldn’t have done it the way Merkel did, I would’ve switched off coal first. But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. It’s what it is.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#12

Post by fock »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

could you tell me, how long Uranium reserves last? Climate change aside (which will kill us all), Uranium-based fission power plants are just not solving the problem at hand: We are using far too much energy and increasingly have depleted the cache earth history hid for us.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#13

Post by daniel-cussen »

I blame the Simpsons. Nonstop slander against nuclear science in every single episode, for almost thirty years. Literally every single episode, it's in the opening sequence. How can you watch the Simpsons, if you think they're funny, and you trust them, and not think nuclear science is shit?

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#14

Post by chrisseaton »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #13

I blame the Simpsons. Nonstop slander against nuclear science in every single episode, for almost thirty years. Literally every single episode, it's in the opening sequence. How can you watch the Simpsons, if you think they're funny, and you trust them, and not think nuclear science is shit?

> and you trust them

Who's trusting the Simpsons? The whole joke is they're dysfunctional.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#15

Post by Gravityloss »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

Maybe the German nuclear power industry isn't doing so great at the moment either. So if you don't have a horse in the race or jobs on the line...

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C_Siemens_quits_the_nucle...

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#16

Post by emptyfile »

heckerhut wrote: post #11
s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

Nope. The numbers are such that Germany cannot go back on this. We are committed to the non nuclear path now. And that’s okay. We’re going to make up the lost technology leadership in nuclear with competency in renewables. It’s fine and not the end of world. I wouldn’t have done it the way Merkel did, I would’ve switched off coal first. But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time. It’s what it is.

> But I understand why that wasn’t an option at the time.

explain

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#18

Post by hannob »

s_dev wrote: post #4

This is something many people in the EU simply don't get -- I don't get it. Germans have a basically a positive stereotype of being a scientific nation and all around clever lads -- this has enormous soft power and gives leverage to things like "Made in Germany" as a brand. This anti-nuclear stance in Germany is absolutely caustic to that projected image. It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and repl…

> It's absolutely insane they want to shut down Nuclear and replace it with fossil fueled plants.

That's not what's happening...

Nuclear has been mostly replaced with renewables, while fossil fuel generation has been in slow decline as well. You may disagree with that policy, but please get your facts right.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#19

Post by tokai »

haunter wrote: post #6

The Wikipedia article gives more answers than this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...

I remember the blockades of transports of nuclear waste. One of the arguments was that it was dangerous to transport said material. But I never understood how complicating the transport helped anything.

Re: Why Germans remain so jittery about nuclear power

#20

Post by fock »

eckesicle wrote: post #9

In my opinion Europe's decommissioning of nuclear plants, particularly in Germany, is the greatest geopolitical blunder in recent history. The EU is now completely dependent on Russian goodwill to power their infrastructure for the next few decades, and have given up all leverage they had to push back on Russian power plays. At the very least they should've kept the plants operational and operating at minimum capacit…

Could you tell me, where we get our oil from? And how we heat our homes with nuclear? We never had any leverage except for the mighty dollar (and nukes and the fact that socialism doesn't need to kill before) and the US is working steady on removing that lever.
Post reply on HN