3 ms·

Shutting down nuclear plants surely couldn't have helped.

pgeorgi 3y ago
The last new nuclear plant to go online in Germany was Greifswald 5 in November 1989. For 23 days. Given the massive failure of AVR Jülich, whose design was supposed to be "fail safe" while it's now the most 90Sr-contaminated nuclear facility world-wide, and the corruption around it, there's little trust that even if the technology is safe, operations would be. That accident in Jülich was 1979, rumors that something happened were struck down with political support, and so the acknowledgement by the operator was 21 years later in 2000 and the government confirmed it only in 2010. The plan for decommissioning is to get it done by the end of this century, after we "develop some procedure during the next 60 years." (that is, we have no f'ing clue what to do with that thing right now). By that time, the incident has been 120 years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor (and even more so its German equivalent page) has the gory details of that mess. Germany likes to do things at industrial scale, and so it also messes up at industrial scale. As a result (and while Chornobyl didn't help the nuclear-power cause, the German anti-nuclear-power movement predates that incident by ~10 years), Germany moving away from nuclear power has been a long time coming.
- ulfw 3y ago
  Germany getting rid of nuclear power will not make Germany any safer at all. Cattenom and Fessenheim to name just two examples are French power plants within viewing distance of the German border. The latter even having a German name due to history.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    It's fewer operators that are full of shit and might mess up things. Cattenom, Fessenheim, Tihange etc are already getting their share of criticism and protest, but that's all German citizens can do about foreign reactors that happen to be built right across the border.
aaron695 3y ago
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The last new nuclear plant to go online in Germany was Greifswald 5 in November 1989. For 23 days. Given the massive failure of AVR Jülich, whose design was supposed to be "fail safe" while it's now the most 90Sr-contaminated nuclear facility world-wide, and the corruption around it, there's little trust that even if the technology is safe, operations would be. That accident in Jülich was 1979, rumors that something happened were struck down with political support, and so the acknowledgement by the operator was 21 years later in 2000 and the government confirmed it only in 2010. The plan for decommissioning is to get it done by the end of this century, after we "develop some procedure during the next 60 years." (that is, we have no f'ing clue what to do with that thing right now). By that time, the incident has been 120 years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor (and even more so its German equivalent page) has the gory details of that mess. Germany likes to do things at industrial scale, and so it also messes up at industrial scale. As a result (and while Chornobyl didn't help the nuclear-power cause, the German anti-nuclear-power movement predates that incident by ~10 years), Germany moving away from nuclear power has been a long time coming.

ulfw 3y ago
Germany getting rid of nuclear power will not make Germany any safer at all. Cattenom and Fessenheim to name just two examples are French power plants within viewing distance of the German border. The latter even having a German name due to history.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  It's fewer operators that are full of shit and might mess up things. Cattenom, Fessenheim, Tihange etc are already getting their share of criticism and protest, but that's all German citizens can do about foreign reactors that happen to be built right across the border.

aaron695 3y ago

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