German poll: Majority for return to nuclear energy – DW – 04/04/2025
www.dw.com
Some 55% of Germans favor a reversal of nuclear policy according to a marketing poll. The issue has been a point of contention between parties seeking to form a coalition government.

Summary

A new Innofact poll shows 55% of Germans support returning to nuclear power, a divisive issue influencing coalition talks between the CDU/CSU and SPD.

While 36% oppose the shift, support is strongest among men and in southern and eastern Germany.

About 22% favor restarting recently closed reactors; 32% support building new ones.

Despite nuclear support, 57% still back investment in renewables. The CDU/CSU is exploring feasibility, but the SPD and Greens remain firmly against reversing the nuclear phase-out, citing stability and past policy shifts.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    21 hours ago

    And what exactly would that be? Essentially everything has insurance.

    Here’s a list of one type of that kind of disasters where, despite of insurance, various kinds of environmental damage has been left behind which may or may not completely heal, or at least it takes a long, long time.

    Here’s a pretty public different kind of disaster which I guarantee was not 100% covered by insurance either. Here’s another. I’m not building a comprehensive list, there’s just too many and their impacts vary wildly.

    Then there’s the waste management in poorer countries which also cause immeasurable damage to the environment all the time by using a nearby river as a sewage for everything. Here’s one example which made into the headlines back then. And here’s a list of similar examples.

    “they replaced nuclear with coal”

    Go read yourself:

    A 2020 study found that lost nuclear electricity production has been replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately €3 to €8 billion annually, mostly from the eleven hundred additional deaths associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.

    And remember that the pollution which kills people just because breathing smoke and ash is bad, it’s also radioactive.

    Let’s not see which one’s marginally worse but instead maybe just push something that’s actually good for the planet?

    That would be really nice. We just don’t have the alternatives ready to go for that just yet. Here in Finland, on a good day, renewables produce more than nuclear, but those are exceptions. Feel free to look up the data in finngrid service. There’s currently over 7000MW worth of turbines around but it’s pretty common to have even less than 200MW of wind power in the grid and that unreliability needs to be stabilized with something else.