51–60 of 222 posts
I love Kraftwerk, but contributing to anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany hasn't been a major success. If only more European countries had followed the French example and developed substantial nuclear fleets.
I, for one, am glad we don‘t have yet another 2600 square kilometers exclusion zone in densely populated Germany, like the one around Chernobyl.
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> anti-vax liberals Just a small correction, but the anti-vax arguments are very conservative, not liberal.
There is undeniably a middle class anti vax wellness leftist movement whether it was originally conservative or not, unfortunately.
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coal kills more people, this is a fact. so with blocking nuclear lead to coal, so they indirectly supportered killing thousands, incredible stats really. who said art can't be bad for the public?
A hidden danger of coal is ironically the radioactivity of its waste, which gets put into concrete products and contribute to indoor air quality issues. The paranoia around nuclear power is tied to generational fear mongering of governments during the Cold War. The oddest part is why not use safer reactor designs; water reactors make sense for the US Navy and not on land.
And Chernobyl. And Fukushima. Nuclear is great but it has some very real risks
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I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades. Will it actually get encased successfully, will it be stored onsite in environmentally sensitive areas because it’s too much trouble to move, will your children’s children uphold the commitments you foisted on them through the political and…
> I distrust techno-optimist promises to manage ever-growing collections of spent nuclear fuel over millennia. We can hardly trust plant operators to manage it safely over decades. Nuclear power plants have been extremely safe for many decades! Fuck, even the worst disasters related to nuclear power plants have killed less people than coal or oil disasters, even including Chernobyl which was a fuck up beyond comparis…
Rectang explained it very well, and all their points stand imo.
If you like Kraftwerk and you're not aware of this book, I recommend it: "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany", by Uwe Schütte. It's packed with details of albums, songs, tours, equipment, and people. The anti-nuclear message in "Radio-Activity" certainly came later and was repeatedly updated, right into the Fukushima era [2011], but this was not the original sentiment [1976]. From the book: "At the time, Billboard…
Great story. Had no idea. Still love the name Uwe. One of those German names that doesn’t have an English equivalent unlike, say, Pieter.
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Like most backward looking judgements these days, such things require understanding the culture and zeitgeist of the mid 70s. I'm pro-nuclear as well, but understand that for many decades the "smart" thing to do was to oppose it. I wouldn't expect a musical artist to have a more nuanced opinion than most of their contemporaries.
More like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.
The debate has always been about what to do with the waste. Our government misrepresented the "Asse" as a solved solution for a final repository, even though it was always only a test repository for low and intermediate-level radioactive waste. But hubris or corruption led to one scandal after another, forever tainting the discussion about nuclear waste in Germany.
Everything that follows is just a reaction.
My counterclaim to your unsubstantiated take: Pro-nuclear sentiment is what has been manufactured. Anti-nuclear is grassroots.
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I think it came from peaceniks and hippies mostly. You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism. There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.
> anti-vax liberals Just a small correction, but the anti-vax arguments are very conservative, not liberal.
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Not anymore than the US being able to strike worldwide to this very moment. They are the only country that has used nuclear bombs against civilians. The big problem is having one country be able to do it without deterrents and with impunity. MAD is a good thing, if anyone will have those things at all.
One of those things is scarier to American school children and their teachers than the other.
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Like most backward looking judgements these days, such things require understanding the culture and zeitgeist of the mid 70s. I'm pro-nuclear as well, but understand that for many decades the "smart" thing to do was to oppose it. I wouldn't expect a musical artist to have a more nuanced opinion than most of their contemporaries.
More like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.
It had nothing to do with for example chernobyl, where children were not allowed to be outside on the playground for weeks and where you had to pay attention where your food came from and it also has nothing to do that you still have to have the meat of wild boars checked and be careful with eating mushrooms. Totally unrelated.
Seriously, the anti nuclear crowd might have not been rational from the start and still is dogmatic, but it formed exactly, because people did not trust the manufactured state's sentiment of nuclear will provide cheap and clean energy without risk.
Because it is not a clean energy, it is incredibly dirty and dangerous. And those dangers can be handled, if companies and regulators act responsible. But people simply do not trust that they are. And they do have some data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accid...
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Being against nuclear only kept the world on coal longer.
And perhaps meaningfully contributed to a reduction in the quantity of radioactive waste products requiring custodianship on a timescale that humans can barely conceive of let alone commit to or execute responsibly.