4 ms·

Here's a good article to give context about this decision and why Germans - who were affected by Chernobyl, btw - support this. https://www.cleanenergywire.org

• uniqueuid 5y ago
  This is an important point. People don't easily forget when they had to avoid fresh fruit, vegetables and meat for a year because it was radioactive.
  • RivieraKid 5y ago
    It makes the decision to shut down nuclear power plants understandable, but not right.
  • this_user 5y ago
    And parents replacing the sand in their children's sandpits. There are parts of southern Germany where you are not supposed to collect mushrooms or hunt and eat game, because there is still enough residual nuclear contamination to be harmful to humans. Proponents of nuclear energy like to pretend that it is almost completely safe. But if we look beyond the, admittedly relatively low, confirmed number of immediate casualties of nuclear accidents, there are serious long-term consequences that remain an issue for decades and more. And Chernobyl was still far from the worst case scenario as most of the fallout hit sparsely populated areas.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      Germans love to be panicked though, I think that's a much larger part of it than actual fallout. The recommendations for self-harvested mushrooms and game are to not eat them excessively in the areas that were affected more strongly. Contrast that with the damage that was done by decades of coal power plants polluting the air you breathe. Coal is more damaging each year than chernobyl was, it just gets much less attention.
      • ben_w 5y ago
        People in general are bad at risk assessment. In many countries, roughly 30% don’t want vaccines, citing the 1:10,000 side effects, ignoring the roughly 1:1,000 fatality rate (as a fraction of global population, 1:55 of infected[0]). Same deal with playing lotteries in the expectation of getting rich, or fearing terrorists more than dangerous drivers. [0] https://covid19.who.int/ https://covid19.who.int/
        • luckylion 5y ago
          Certainly, but imminent doom is essentially a hobby in Germany. We have the term Angstlust which I always found quite fitting: deriving pleasure from fear. It's an interesting realization when you've grown up in Germany and then live outside of it for a while and realize that not everyone is constantly worried about the world ending tomorrow.
          • ben_w 5y ago
            Curious, I’ve not noticed that moving to Berlin from the UK. Where did you go? In wondering if the U.K. is just as bad, or if Berlin is unusually chill.
            • luckylion 5y ago
              Denmark. I didn't have the impression that Berlin is different in that regard (though it's very different in many, so maybe?).
    • KptMarchewa 5y ago
      This is the effect of stupid scare, not any real danger.
    • sgift 5y ago
      I often wonder how different perception would be if people ran around with the equivalent of a Geiger counter for air pollution. It's easy to argue that parts of Germany are still contaminated by nuclear radiation, but they are by air pollution too, which is also incredibly dangerous. But no one would think about not letting their children play outside because of it.
• outworlder 5y ago
  > The nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl (in today’s Ukraine) in April 1986 caused widespread fear of nuclear power and strengthened the anti-nuclear sentiment That was a really unfortunate point in the history of our species. Not only because of the lives that were lost or the land that got irradiated, but that event will be indirectly responsible for countless deaths over decades. Not because of anything related to the radiation, but for putting the brakes on deployment of nuclear reactors. We could have safe and plentiful energy by now, with very little downside. If that sounds ludicrous, consider this: imagine someone saw the wright flyer and said "we'll be using those things to transport millions of passengers at hundreds of miles per hour". That would sound insane as those things were dangerous. Not so much now (although we have paid a price). Similarly, nuclear tech has advanced significantly. We have designs that cannot meltdown. We have designs that don't cause weapon proliferation. We can reprocess the 'waste'. We can use different types of fuels, some more plentiful than uranium. Instead, we are stuck operating old clunkers. There are still RBMK reactors in operation today (although they have been retrofitted, but still). Chernobyl was a criminally flawed design one step above what the radioactive boy scout managed to build. That abomination should have never seen the light of the day - and if it did, it should have had a contention building. If we were really worried about safety and health we should have a planetary-wide ban on coal plants. Not just for global warming, but for all the health issues they cause. Including radiation. I am a huge fan of renewables (specially solar) and very hopeful on battery storage technologies. But we do have extremely power intensive processes (think aluminum plants) for which we need reliable power that's difficult to satisfy with renewables. Fusion is always 10 years away. Hydro is not available everywhere and can be disrupted as the climate changes.
• zajio1am 5y ago
  Yet people in neighboring Czechia, while being closer to Chernobyl, are generally pro-nuclear.