4 ms·

I grew up close to Kalkar and visited the theme park that is now located at the power plant a few times as a kid. If you read the timeline, you can see that th

I grew up close to Kalkar and visited the theme park that is now located at the power plant a few times as a kid. If you read the timeline, you can see that the protests started before the Chernobyl disaster. At that point, no government entity wanted the reactor to go online. Some of my family members went to protest there when they were younger. Our physics teachers discussed the plant with us on several occasions as part of the mandatory curriculum. I can just say, Germany's relationship to nuclear is and was always characterized by strange concerns about environmental issues and a drive just to oppose something for vague political associations. It's hard to describe, but feels very similar to virtue signaling.

xyzzy123 2y ago
Probably didn't help that for much of the cold war Germany was a likely candidate for "ground zero" of a nuclear exchange. I think living under that might reasonably influence people's attitudes.
- liotier 2y ago
  Conflation between weapons and generators was weird then - and it is fossil idiocy at this point. There was a grain of truth at the time when all civilian nuclear programs were the flipside of military programs, but even then the imagery of mushroom clouds over power plants was either ignorant or dishonest.
  - awesomeMilou 2y ago
    Yes, I agree, I think a large part of it came from people not understanding the physics. Even in my physics class in high school, when we spoke about the reactor in Kalkar and watched several documentaries about Chernobyl, our teachers made it seem like explosions from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons would be the same in yield. Which is an outright lie, given a nuclear reactor usually explodes from a steam or hydrogen explosion.
someguydave 2y ago
I am sure the Russians spent much energy and money to shape the public opinion in Germany to serve their interests.
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  Not sure if they sold much gas to Germany during the Soviet times. I really don't know if they did, but it was cold war times then after all.
  - fauigerzigerk 2y ago
    I don't know how much gas they actually sold at the time, but some major oil/gas pipelines were built during the 1960s, 1970s and early 80s. So the intention was clearly there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...
    - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
      That's interesting. Even if the volume was low, perhaps the Russians were nevertheless interested in sowing dissent in the German public opinion. In particular, making sure the energy sector is always dependent on some foreign source.
      - someguydave 2y ago
        That plus well developed civilian nuclear power gives the means to developing atomic bombs, and Russia has every reason to fear a nuclear-armed Germany
        fauigerzigerk 2y ago
        I doubt that this was a major concern as US nuclear weapons have been stationed in Germany since 1960. They remain under US control but the German army is trained to use them in the event of a war. And of course Soviet nuclear weapons used to be stationed in East Germany during the cold war. So for practical purposes Germany was already nuclear-armed. But who knows. This was 15 years after the end of WW2. It wouldn't be too surprising if there had been lingering fears in Russia about what Germany might be up to outside of NATO.
qngcdvy 2y ago
To me, the opinion about nuclear power kind of feels like the subject of homeopathy in Germany. It feels like in the general population there is a whole that can only be filled by non-science and quackery. The most reasonable people that usually believe in science just get emotional and ignore facts in favor of a vague feeling of defending their beliefs no matter what.
- Mashimo 2y ago
  Yes, indeed. But there are still parts of Germany where you should not pick wild mushrooms because of Chernobyl. And the whole Asse II we still have to fix. Which is a bit more tangable.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    Sounds like an overblown myth. I've never heard of any places where you can't pick mushrooms because of Chernobyl in Poland
    - ttepasse 2y ago
      If I remember correctly that was a result how the fallout was transported via the jetstream - and if it did rain, hence a rather non-uniform distribution. The first fallout cloud went from Ukraine over Poland to Scandinavia but it did not rain down. A second cloud went westwards over then Czechoslovakia and then southern Germany, hence the impact. The German Agency for Radation Protection has this map of Caesium ground contamination in 1986: https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschutz/tschernobyl-bodenkontamination-d.jpg https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschut... The mushroom thing is because of bioaccumulation: Mushrooms seem to ingest the particles from its surrounding ground/ground water, hence a higher concentration of radioactive material in a smaller volume. And then wild boars eat those mushrooms, concentrating it even further. Caesium 137 has a rather short half life of only 30 years, but through the process of accumulation/concentration still today meat from wild boars shot in that region gets tested and is often over the allowable limit to eat.
    - weinzierl 2y ago
torginus 2y ago
It's so amusing to see that German anti nuclear policy can be essentially summarized as different eras of 'Russia bad'.
weinzierl 2y ago
I can confirm that the protests were already hot before 1986. Chernobyl was just the final nail in the coffin. But this is often forgotten. Another thing that is often forgotten and at least partially contributed to the outcome of Kalkar never going online, is a substantial change in the political climate regarding the question of nuclear proliferation. It might seem strange now, but 40 years after WW II Germany was probably closer to getting its own nuclear inventory than today. While it was far from uncontroversial at the time it was not a heretic idea either and widely discussed. A fast breeder like Kalkar would have been an important step in that direction, as would have been the heavy-water reactor in Niederaichbach, which only ran for about a year. To complete the nuclear fuel cycle and to produce the plutonium for Kalkar a reprocessing plant would have been necessary which again had enabled Germany to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. The planned and partially completed facilities in Wackersdorf were abandoned in the 80s too.

xyzzy123 2y ago

Probably didn't help that for much of the cold war Germany was a likely candidate for "ground zero" of a nuclear exchange. I think living under that might reasonably influence people's attitudes.

liotier 2y ago
Conflation between weapons and generators was weird then - and it is fossil idiocy at this point. There was a grain of truth at the time when all civilian nuclear programs were the flipside of military programs, but even then the imagery of mushroom clouds over power plants was either ignorant or dishonest.
- awesomeMilou 2y ago
  Yes, I agree, I think a large part of it came from people not understanding the physics. Even in my physics class in high school, when we spoke about the reactor in Kalkar and watched several documentaries about Chernobyl, our teachers made it seem like explosions from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons would be the same in yield. Which is an outright lie, given a nuclear reactor usually explodes from a steam or hydrogen explosion.

someguydave 2y ago

I am sure the Russians spent much energy and money to shape the public opinion in Germany to serve their interests.

karmakurtisaani 2y ago
Not sure if they sold much gas to Germany during the Soviet times. I really don't know if they did, but it was cold war times then after all.
- fauigerzigerk 2y ago
  I don't know how much gas they actually sold at the time, but some major oil/gas pipelines were built during the 1960s, 1970s and early 80s. So the intention was clearly there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_...
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    That's interesting. Even if the volume was low, perhaps the Russians were nevertheless interested in sowing dissent in the German public opinion. In particular, making sure the energy sector is always dependent on some foreign source.
    - someguydave 2y ago
      That plus well developed civilian nuclear power gives the means to developing atomic bombs, and Russia has every reason to fear a nuclear-armed Germany
      - fauigerzigerk 2y ago
        I doubt that this was a major concern as US nuclear weapons have been stationed in Germany since 1960. They remain under US control but the German army is trained to use them in the event of a war. And of course Soviet nuclear weapons used to be stationed in East Germany during the cold war. So for practical purposes Germany was already nuclear-armed. But who knows. This was 15 years after the end of WW2. It wouldn't be too surprising if there had been lingering fears in Russia about what Germany might be up to outside of NATO.

qngcdvy 2y ago

To me, the opinion about nuclear power kind of feels like the subject of homeopathy in Germany. It feels like in the general population there is a whole that can only be filled by non-science and quackery. The most reasonable people that usually believe in science just get emotional and ignore facts in favor of a vague feeling of defending their beliefs no matter what.

Mashimo 2y ago
Yes, indeed. But there are still parts of Germany where you should not pick wild mushrooms because of Chernobyl. And the whole Asse II we still have to fix. Which is a bit more tangable.
- scotty79 2y ago
  Sounds like an overblown myth. I've never heard of any places where you can't pick mushrooms because of Chernobyl in Poland
  - ttepasse 2y ago
    If I remember correctly that was a result how the fallout was transported via the jetstream - and if it did rain, hence a rather non-uniform distribution. The first fallout cloud went from Ukraine over Poland to Scandinavia but it did not rain down. A second cloud went westwards over then Czechoslovakia and then southern Germany, hence the impact. The German Agency for Radation Protection has this map of Caesium ground contamination in 1986: https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschutz/tschernobyl-bodenkontamination-d.jpg https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/DE/ion/notfallschut... The mushroom thing is because of bioaccumulation: Mushrooms seem to ingest the particles from its surrounding ground/ground water, hence a higher concentration of radioactive material in a smaller volume. And then wild boars eat those mushrooms, concentrating it even further. Caesium 137 has a rather short half life of only 30 years, but through the process of accumulation/concentration still today meat from wild boars shot in that region gets tested and is often over the allowable limit to eat.
  - weinzierl 2y ago

torginus 2y ago

It's so amusing to see that German anti nuclear policy can be essentially summarized as different eras of 'Russia bad'.

weinzierl 2y ago

I can confirm that the protests were already hot before 1986. Chernobyl was just the final nail in the coffin. But this is often forgotten. Another thing that is often forgotten and at least partially contributed to the outcome of Kalkar never going online, is a substantial change in the political climate regarding the question of nuclear proliferation. It might seem strange now, but 40 years after WW II Germany was probably closer to getting its own nuclear inventory than today. While it was far from uncontroversial at the time it was not a heretic idea either and widely discussed. A fast breeder like Kalkar would have been an important step in that direction, as would have been the heavy-water reactor in Niederaichbach, which only ran for about a year. To complete the nuclear fuel cycle and to produce the plutonium for Kalkar a reprocessing plant would have been necessary which again had enabled Germany to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. The planned and partially completed facilities in Wackersdorf were abandoned in the 80s too.