DFor the second time in Germany, nuclear power is being sacrificed to short-sighted tactical interests. The first time, twelve years ago, it was about the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in the context of the Fukushima disaster, from which the CDU (unsuccessfully) tried to get to safety. The term limit, only one year after the red-green exit had been reversed for good reasons, was one of the biggest mistakes of the Merkel years.
This time it’s about the balance in the traffic light coalition. The chancellor has to side with the Greens after he called them to order in the energy crisis and pushed through a “stretching operation”. This exit is also a wrong decision.
It’s wrong for one simple reason: Why do without the remains of climate-friendly technology when climate-damaging energy sources such as hard coal and lignite have to be reactivated at the same time? This is a contradiction that the Greens and the climate movement will have to deal with for a long time. They will no longer be able to fool anyone into thinking that they would do anything to stop climate change. They will also no longer be able to tell anyone that they are doing everything they can to replace fossil fuels.
Symptoms of a special path
The end of coal and gas burning should have come before nuclear power was phased out. The decommissioning of the last three nuclear power plants, which is now being completed, means: If it’s a big mistake, then it’s the right one.
The opponents of nuclear power are once again bringing out their old guns. It’s too expensive, too unsafe, and the garbage is too dirty. Nobody wants to invest in the technology anymore. No one? France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Great Britain speak a different language. In all of these countries (just to name the European ones), politicians expect nuclear power plants to continue operating well into the next decade, and further development or new construction are at least being considered. The costs and risks seem to be assessed very differently there than in Germany.
This is because Germany is one of the few countries in which the climate goals that the EU has set itself are also considered achievable if they are to be met solely with renewable energies. Robert Habeck, who thinks nuclear power plants (the “things”) are all right in Ukraine but all wrong at home, repeated the same thing. In just seven years, a multiple of the amount of renewable energies that has been achieved so far in two decades with great difficulty is to be built up.
Just a fossil safety net
Even if this feat should succeed, it is not certain whether Germany has correctly calculated its need for energy, electricity and storage, which it then needs to continue to call itself an industrial nation. German politicians have already miscalculated blatantly when it comes to this. The phasing out of nuclear power now shows a level of irrationality that does not necessarily inspire confidence that such illusions and miscalculations cannot be repeated again and again.
At the moment, the only safety net is to import more and more electricity and hydrogen – also from countries, of course, with nuclear power. A reasonably clean bridging technology, which was initially supposed to be nuclear power until the Fukushima exit, but was then replaced by Russian natural gas, no longer exists. Not that the continued operation of only three nuclear power plants could fundamentally change anything. But the traffic light coalition could have shown that it takes doubts about the turbo of the “great transformation” seriously and wants to protect the German economy as well as possible against unforeseeable turbulences, such as those currently being experienced in Europe.
Why it doesn’t do this is because this “transformation” never only meant climate policy, but also criticism of society and capitalism. In their anti-nuclear policy, the Greens, SPD and Left are united by the traditional aversion to “the corporations”, “the nuclear lobby” (where is it?) and to an industry that is not kept running by citizen wind farms but by large companies. The crack through the traffic light runs exactly at this point, between “capitalist” liberals and capitalism-critical Red-Greens.
In this respect, the end of nuclear power has very little to do with energy and certainly nothing to do with climate policy. Green politicians involuntarily summed up what is being done here in an authoritarian manner by exclaiming: I won’t let my life’s work be destroyed! The German phase-out of nuclear power is a sacrifice to the old green men.
