The Atomausstieg was decided by the SPD/Green coalition in 2002. Getting rid of the nukes was primary reason for the founding of the Green Party, it was an off

The Atomausstieg was decided by the SPD/Green coalition in 2002. Getting rid of the nukes was primary reason for the founding of the Green Party, it was an off-shoot of the German anti-nuclear movement. That SPD/Green coalition was the first time the Greens were in power, shutting down the nuclear reactors was their precondition for entering into the coalition with the SPD. So for the Greens it was their raison d'être. For the SPD under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder it was expedience in order to obtain and maintain power. And, as we later discovered, personal enrichment: Schröder, or Gazprom-Gerd as I call him, was handsomely rewarded after he stepped down with a seat on the board of Russia's Gazprom energy giant. A seat he retains to this day. The corruption is so blatant, it still boggles the mind: a former head of government of one country given a seat on the board of the state-run energy company of a different (and not entirely friendly) country after enabling major deals for that company with the country he was the leader of. The Nordstream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany via the Baltic was approved and started soon after the Atomausstieg was inked, by the same government. The CDU-led government that followed immediately after (Merkel 1) did not touch this, because it was a grand coalition that included the SPD who had made the original decision. The second Merkel government did not include the SPD, and so they actually had planned to reverse the shutdown. Then Fukushima happened and Merkel, always the triangulator of popular opinion, flip-flopped. In the end, nothing of substance was changed compared to the original law passed in 2002, just the times were pushed back a little.