I'm German. I'm an electrical engineer. I'm not an expert. If you would ask me if I'm qualified to give advice if we should continue with nuclear power, I'd say

I'm German. I'm an electrical engineer. I'm not an expert. If you would ask me if I'm qualified to give advice if we should continue with nuclear power, I'd say no. But if you ask 1000 people on the street, than my opinion is as good as any other. So why do I think that it's a good idea to quit with nuklear power? It's quite easy: We German like it to be on the safe side. If I get ill I've got an assurance for that. If my car burns down, I've got an assurance for that. If a railway train hits my house (there are no railway tracks even close to my house) but guess what: I've got an assurance for that. If a nuclear power plant blows up and makes the whole country within 20 miles radius a radioactive no-go area I've got... wait - there's no assurance for that. Tepco in Japan was not able to compensate the people who had to move. Not even close. But there's good news: There is no nuclear power plant active anywhere in the radius of 20 miles around my home any more. Now let's talk a completely different unrelated topic: Russian gas. Why unrelated? Because nearly nobody in Germany uses electricity to heat their homes (yet). We have gas lines in most cellars of our houses. Those who don't use oil. There's even hardly electric air conditioning anywhere in the private housing sector. The people fear that the heating will fail in winter due to the gas shortage. They now buy electric heating and we expect outages of the electrical power supply if they happen to use them, not because of missing power plant capacity, but because the grid is not strong enough to allow replacement of gas heating for the next winter. But there are gas powere plants which are used to generate electricity from Russian gas. So it's all related, right? Yes and no. Yes we have gas power plants. We built them to help in situations of high demand because the Nuclear power plants are too slow to adopt on changing loads. Then over the last 20 years when wind power took over a major share of the power supply luckily we had those gas power plants to step in when a storm forces all wind mills to disconnect at the same time. But no. Gas power plants are not the solution as I stated. Even if we had enough power plant capacity to heat the houses we would never be able to distribute it. And more nuclear power does not help there either. So nuclear power is not the solution if Russian gas is your problem. But why do we use Russian gas at all? Why did we get into a situation like that at all? Well, that's not by accident. We fought and lost two world wars. Most people consider it a good idea for the German not to start another one. In the 1970s and 80s when the military presence of foreign forces in Germany declined it seemed a good idea to make Germany dependent on the mercy of the victorious countries. It worked quite well for nearly half a century. It's a good strategy as long as the German is the bad boy in town. It fails of course if the other bullys are even worse. We could have emancipated from gas long time ago. Unfortunately our politicians especially from the CSU actively blocked regenerative energy. So now the Germans have finally come to their minds and now want nuclear power back? No. The ARD (biggest German TV station) asked similar questions: Q: Do you think we should do Fracking in Germany? A: Only 27% say yes. Q: Do you think we should stick to nuclear power? A: 61% yes Q: Should we extend wind energy and introduce a maximum speed limit? A: 81% yes. That's my country and I'm OK with it.