SEven supporters of renewables can’t have escaped the notice that Germany is pretty much alone with its nuclear phase-out. Almost all neighbors go different ways. Everywhere they are building or planning new reactors, everywhere they are extending service lives. Countries like France, Poland and Holland have recognized that nuclear power solves two problems at the same time: it makes a state more independent, which has become more important after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it generates a lot of climate-friendly electricity.
Much more of this will soon be needed, because cars will be driven by it and houses will be heated with it. So it’s no wonder that fewer and fewer countries want to do without the most potent, climate-friendly energy that mankind has been able to produce to date.
That doesn’t mean that politicians there are dismissing the risks of nuclear energy or rejecting wind and solar power. They just want renewables to be supported where they are weak. That’s reasonable, it follows the “safety first” motto that Germans were once known for. But their government wants nothing more to do with it today.
It now depends on every wind turbine
She prefers to dream of a country that is to be powered solely by the power of wind and sun. In doing so, she is opting for a future in which electricity will become even more expensive. And she decides to burn tons of coal to keep the lights burning in the country. That’s how it was last year and that’s how it will remain for the foreseeable future. The sun and wind are not always available, and no one knows when their energy can be stored on an industrial scale. The government decides against effective climate protection because it rejects nuclear power.
In the long term, however, she also wants to get out of coal. That leaves you with only the renewables. They alone then have to supply the fourth largest industrial nation in the world with energy. In order for this to ever succeed, nothing must go wrong, because then there is no alternative. It depends on every single power pole, every wind turbine, every rotor blade. If even the smallest detail fails, the whole plan could fail. That shows you what it’s worth.
The Greens make clientele politics
All of this shows how little Germany has learned from its history. Technology has always been overly politically charged. First of all, this concerned nuclear power itself. In the 1970s, politicians exaggerated it as a Promethean fire that was supposed to break all earthly chains and supply unlimited energy. Now, renewables are the new savior. They satisfy the longing for a society that is self-sufficient in modern modesty and respects the limits of the planet. Wind turbines are not saviors, nor are nuclear power plants infernal machines. Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages. In truth, the country needs every imaginable climate-friendly energy: sun and wind, but also nuclear power.
The fact that Germany is now putting an end to this is mainly due to the Greens. The party emerged from the anti-nuclear resistance and it still holds it together. She has only exchanged the protests on the streets for the resistance of the institutions in which her people are based. Nevertheless, it was a mistake to stick to the nuclear phase-out. If she had been flexible here, she could have asked for a lot, including a speed limit. If you think in a climate-friendly way on a large scale, you can also remind us to do so on a small scale. But the Greens are doing what they usually accuse the Liberals of: patronage politics.
But the Union is just as responsible for the nuclear phase-out. For decades it was softened by protests against nuclear power plants and Castor transports, by pamphlets and books critical of nuclear power. After the reactor catastrophe in Fukushima, public opinion hardly had time to change, so quickly did Chancellor Merkel decide to shut down reactors. At the time, the party was flirting with a black-green coalition and finally saw the chance to accommodate the Greens. It would have been right to confidently defend her position. The Ukraine war would now have offered the opportunity to correct this mistake. Some members used them, but overall the CDU remained too timid, too quiet.
Now the end of nuclear power is sealed. It’s not final, as some claim. Of course, Germany could get back into nuclear power. It’s just a question of the political will that a majority of Germans have, according to the latest polls. But it would be much more expensive than keeping existing reactors running. And the technology would come from abroad, no longer from Germany.
