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It's not at all surprising. Germany has for decades now been very environmentally conscious. This is why Germany is doing the Energiewende and have had plans to
by DasIch 10y ago
It's not at all surprising. Germany has for decades now been very environmentally conscious. This is why Germany is doing the Energiewende and have had plans to shut down nuclear reactors since long before Fukushima.
Given fracking in the US as an example, it's no surprise at all that you'd find broad support for heavy regulation or a ban of fracking.
What's surprising about this is that it took so long.
- fleitz 10y agoOil isn't a big industry in Germany, this is like Canada banning slaughtering of monkeys for palm oil, purely political, no one in Canada is going to have to shut down their palm orchards.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Fiahil 10y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but nuclear reactors have nothing to do with climate change. Reading GP then your reply seems ambiguous about the "environmentally conscious".
- patall 10y agoHe does not mention climate change at all. Germanys antinuclear movement is against nuclear reactors because it is still unclear what happens to the waste. Remind you that were are speaking of a country that is populated quite evenly, there is no space where you could leave it for ever with noone affected. Same for fracking: somebody will live in the area where fracking occurs. But big money does not care about these people. Therefore Germans are against it altogether.
- chris_va 10y agoWaste disposal is almost entirely political. That Germany is shutting down the objectively cleanest reliable source of energy is tragic. All of the nuclear waste Germany generates would fit in a single football stadium. Technically you'd pick something below the water table and geographically stable, like say, a salt mine. Burning coal produces more nuclear waste, it just dumps it all into the atmosphere.
- quakeguy 10y agoThe nightmare looks like this: https://antinuclearinfo.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/wastes-gorleben-salt-mine.gif https://antinuclearinfo.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/wastes-g... "Just dump it in a salt mine" and leave it there for a million years doesn't work. It can't work, be realistic.
- chris_va 10y agoThat's just stupid, no one is proposing criminal negligence.
- nisa 10y agoThat's not criminal negligence - that was the german test field for storing nuclear waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben_salt_dome
- Reason077 10y agoNuclear waste disposal is a serious issue. But compared to burning fossil fuels for energy, it's by far the lesser of two evils. Most of the more dangerous fission products will have decayed sufficiently to be "safe" after hundreds, or thousands of years. Nowhere near a million! Anything that lasts longer than that emits so little radioactivity that it's pretty much background noise. There are plenty of naturally occurring sources of radiation that are strong enough to be dangerous - like Radon in Cornwall, UK. Even if a future civilisation accidentally digs up one of our waste sites in a few thousand years time, it wouldn't really be any worse for them than digging up some natural radioactive source.
- nisa 10y ago> it wouldn't really be any worse for them than digging up some natural radioactive source. Really? That would be mostly oxidized uranium - white not really harmless it's something different than highly toxic plutonium - besides that you have extremly toxic decay products that e.g. pose a problem for the chernobyl area. Besides that there are more than enough isotopes used in nuclear energy that have a half-life of millions of years. If you look at the history of Europe in the past 2000 years it's not exactly been peaceful - also something to consider - especially as we have the knowledge to use nuclear reactors to weaponize this waste.
- DasIch 10y agoYou're right. However in Germany environmental and anti nuclear groups are basically one and the same. The German Green Party has evolved out of the anti nuclear movement and forced all other parties to adopt environmental and anti nuclear policy. Shutting down nuclear reactors, like the Energiewende, is a great example for the kind of power these groups have in German politics. That's why I mentioned it, to illustrate the power they have and that it's therefore not surprising that fracking would be banned.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y agoShutting down nuclear reactors is anti-environmental.