The inspections caught it after almost half the barrel was gone from rust. That doesn't inspire confidence. Neither does the way Asse II is being handled curren

The inspections caught it after almost half the barrel was gone from rust. That doesn't inspire confidence. Neither does the way Asse II is being handled currently. People also tend to not believe "no danger" claims - such claims, especially when coming from the companies running those plants, provide very little information, as we have learned that we should expect to hear the same claims even if a reactor core is currently melting its way through the containment (both in Chernobyl and Fukushima, false reassurances were given long after the people in charge knew of the seriousness of the accident). Likewise, officials claim that nothing is leaking from Asse and it is safe, yet there is an unexplained but very significant (p<0.01) increase in various cancers. Even if this was just feelings (and I disagree with that - seeing partial failures that get caught by other layers of a multi-layered safety system does provide information about the risk that one day the "holes in the Swiss cheese" [1] will line up), it explains why people in Germany are so opposed to nuclear. Fukushima was particularly devastating for public trust, because Japan is seen as a developed, industrialized, "orderly" nation, so if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. Additionally, nuclear power plants in developed countries were portrayed as absolutely safe, so it's a "fool me once, fool me twice" situation. (Since this is usually countered by "they couldn't expect the Tsunami": that just means that when an unexpected event - e.g. a 300 year flood event, as has recently happened in Germany - comes, we should expect a similar outcome and similar attempts from the people in charge to weasel out of the blame. Again, not helpful for trust.) In short, people - me included - don't believe that the plants will be operated to the claimed safety standards. The trust in the industry is gone, and people don't want to take the gamble, even if rationally, it may be the lesser evil than e.g. coal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model