The origin of the German discourse about nuclear power is linked to a) nuclear proliferation and b) Chernobyl The generation born after WWII developed a deep d

The origin of the German discourse about nuclear power is linked to a) nuclear proliferation and b) Chernobyl The generation born after WWII developed a deep desire to not repeat the slaughter of WWII and many felt that their parents essentially lied to them about their experiences during the Nazi era and their responsibility for it. This mistrust transferred to government policies that would rebuilt the German armed forces, join NATO and by extension come under the "nuclear umbrella" of the US. Nuclear power was seen by many of these people as a bridge technology into nuclear weapons. Regarding Chernobyl, it might be difficult for Americans to understand how scary and personal that crisis felt for many Germans. I personally can't remember the incident, but our parents shaved our heads and kept us indoors for days and weeks out of fear of potential nuclear fallout. It is comparable to the psychological impact of the COVID-epidemic for many of that generation. My wife is from Eastern Bavaria and forest mushrooms and wild boars over there still have elevated radiation levels and are not recommended to be eaten in many cases. The phaseout of the last nuclear power plants was essentially decided more than two decades ago under a green-left government. A bit more than ten years ago, a center-liberal government came to power and would have been able to reverse the decision (many politicians in the two parties would have liked to) but Fukushima happened and this became politically untenable. To remove the topic from the political discourse, Angela Merkel pushed through an acceleration of the phaseout schedule. Today, even the companies running the power plants have lost interest. Re-certification was not done in recent years and would take the remaining power stations offline for months or years, anyway. All of them are many decades old now, beyond their original life span. So is all of this "rational"? Maybe not in hindsight, but I would argue it was for many people at the time and given that nuclear power never contributed more than roughly 25% to Germanys power production (I think), renewables are growing rapidly and no nuclear power station has been built without massive government subsidies, I personally think that re-entering the nuclear arena does not make any sense for Germany at the moment.