Germany to remain anti-nuclear stronghold

Germany will uphold staunch political opposition to atomic energy, unperturbed by the mood swinging back in favour of nuclear power elsewhere.
Oil at record highs, climate worries, and the need to cut dependency on energy imports is due to move the British government to back new nuclear power plants on Thursday.
But Germany, Europe’s biggest and most central power market, will not follow suit.
Faced with a critical and vigilant electorate, no German government will be able to turn back a seven-year old nuclear exit programme for its 17 reactors which must be completed in 2021.
Nor will anyone suggest a new generation of power plants.
“There is no majority either inside the parliament or in the population to go back on the withdrawal programme, or to back new reactors,” said Rainer Baake, a Green Party politician and former state secretary in the Berlin environment ministry.
“The reasons are the same as ever, the unresolved nuclear safety and waste disposal issues. If civilian use is sanctioned, this could also invite military uses and terror attacks,” he said, naming hard reasons that unify nuclear critics.
What’s more, many German citizens combine their antagonism for nuclear power with dreams that their energy could be safe, clean and cheap, even if the current energy mix is far from it.
Conservative national newspaper FAZ recently polled Germans about where most power was likely to come from over the next three decades. A startling 63 percent believed it could be from solar energy, 50 percent banked on wind power while just 39 percent named nuclear, 35 percent gas, and 12 percent coal.
The reality, however, is that coal provides half of all German electricity, nuclear under a third and hot favourite solar only 0.4 percent.
Germans’ hostile stance on nuclear power, coupled with a somewhat romantic view of nuclear’s real contribution — which turns a blind eye to nuclear imports from France and the Czech Republic — reflects the Green movement’s strong influence.

Guardian