Summary
A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.
While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.
About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.
Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.
— some pro nuclear guy
I was against shutting down already written off power plants early while coal power plants were still running. I was in favor of shutting down coal first, yes.
And the funny thing is that coal power plants are actually more radioactive to the environment than nuclear power. Sure, accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima change the statistics by quite a lot, but for the absolute majority of nuclear plants they are way less radioactive to the environment than any given coal plant around.
Also there’s not that many severe nuclear disasters in the history. Coal and other organic fuel plants cause far more casualties globally than nuclear ever did. But maybe it’s easier to accept slow death of a lot of people due to cancer and whatever caused by organic fuel power plant emissions than single large spike when nuclear power (very, very rarely) goes wrong.
Well, if that’s so rare and can essentially be ignored, I’m sure you’ll easily find insurance for nuclear plants that will cover the cost of a potential disaster. I mean, after all, it evens out over all the nuke plants, right? The market handles it, right?
There’s a ton of stuff going on all the time which no amunt of insurance will cover. Modern nuclear generators just can’t blow up like Chernobyl. Fukushima is a bit different, but maybe we shouldn’t build reactors in places where they can be hit by a tsunami in the first place. And even there the environmental impact was somewhat limited.
And that doesn’t change the fact that shutting down nuclear plants and replacing their energy output with coal caused more radiation in ash and other particles which are spread out of the chimney to the environment as a part of normal operation.
And what exactly would that be? Essentially everything has insurance.
Yeah. And what’s stopping other stuff to be “a bit different”?
Japan got damn lucky the wind blew everything seawards. If the fallout had hit Tokyo, this would have been a very different story.
And who did that? Nobody. There were no new coal plants to replace anything. That statement is straight up misleading. The old plants were kept running, yes, and they kept emitting, yes. And that’s always the thing that’s being brought up, “they could have taken the coal plants offline sooner had they just kept the nuke plants running a little longer”. But that’s an entirely different thing than “they replaced nuclear with coal”. Nobody did that. Had they not tanked the German market for renewables, the coal plants would have been taken offline earlier, too, but for some reason that’s never the sob story. Instead, people keep bringing up nuke plants time and time again, which is just weird. Yeah, coal and nuclear both destroy the planet. Let’s not see which one’s marginally worse but instead maybe just push something that’s actually good for the planet?