The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. A life changing event for many Germans. Not beeing able to leave the house. Cutting a lot of foods from your diet because they are contaminated for decades (mushrooms, game meat, berries etc.).
East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption and it ending up in GDR school kitchens.
Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you'd die first in a new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human surival.
Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years (Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don't even know how they are build). Thats why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.
No, this fear is still very much alive, even in my generation who was alive back then, but too young to really remember.
Chernobyl is the defining moment of the anti-nuclear movement (and I'm not only talking about active protestors like in Lüchow-Dannenberg, most Germens have some of it inside themselves, even if they don't actively march on the streets).
It is really hard to overestimate the effect of the word "Chernobyl" in Germany.
> Chernobyl is the defining moment of the anti-nuclear movement
The movement is much older. I remember, that the anti-nuclear movement was already very active and in heat around 1980-82 (Biblis). The broad public, the mainstream, started accepting this threat with Chernobyl.
Not by the populace tough. I mean our politicians were happy to kill off the planet 30 years ago until many citizens started to protest for environmentaly concious politics. Now its mainstream in German politics and almost all other countries start similar programs currently. I mean even the US starts to hear the bells ringing in the last couple of years and is implementing policies that they shoul've implemented 30 years ago.
In addition I might add that we are sourrounded by countries that we don't trust to be able to feed their citizes reliably. Less so when it comes to reactor security.
Same here. Ofcourse when vast natural gas deposits were discovered nuclear energy was no longer needed.
Countries like France and Japan didn't have an alternative, they had to go all in on nuclear reactors. I think nuclear is a lazy cop out. Until every roof in Europe has solar cells we should not even be thinking about building new reactors.
Then there's the popular culture that feeds pretty much completely fictionalized views of nuclear. I'm pretty sure a lot of anti-nuclear attitudes stem from The Simpsons.
March 1972
Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska submitted to the Congressional Record facts surrounding a routine check in a nuclear power plant which indicated abnormal radioactivity in the building's water system. Radioactivity was confirmed in the plant drinking fountain. Apparently there was an inappropriate cross-connection between a 3,000 gallon radioactive tank and the water system.
East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption and it ending up in GDR school kitchens.
Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you'd die first in a new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human surival.
Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years (Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don't even know how they are build). Thats why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.