[Doubleslash]

Safety is not the only reason German wants to walk away from nuclear energy. The long-term, safe storage of nuclear waste that will radiate for decades to come is not something want to leave behind our future generations.

[campl3r]

The fear after Fukushima is what lead to Germany moving away from nuclear.

[AnonymousPlanet]

No it is not.

The biggest blow of confidence in nuclear power was very likely Chernobyl in 1986. It made the German public realise what effort you have to put in to contain a nuclear disaster. Have a look a the locations of German reactors. And now imagine an exclusion zone around them and note the cities that are affected. It would spell economic disaster for the entire country. On top of that Germany isn't even remotely capable of commandeering the amount of man power the Soviets had to.

Now let's look at politics.

The government under Gerhard Schröder decided to phase out nuclear energy. The next government under Angela Merkel put a stop to the full phase out and issued an extension for existing plants in 2010 [1]. In 2011 there was a "moratorium" that consisted of a reevaluation of existing plants with the possibility to close plants ahead of their extended time [2]. This is the only political action taken after Fukushima. The ball had been rolling long before that.

Please don't believe the simplified, sensationalist recounts that are popular in the American media.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laufzeitverl%C3%A4ngerung_deut...

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom-Moratorium

[majewsky]

As a German, I think Fukushima was a turning point because a lot of people believed the utilities when they insisted that "Our reactors are safe! Chernobyl was just the result of bad Soviet-era quality/safety standards." Then Fukushima showed a highly-developed industrialized nation standing in front of a cataclysmic dumpster fire of a reactor, going through increasingly desparate attempts at putting out the fire. Sort of like with Deepwater Horizon, but this one hit closer to home because Germany already had this collective angst about nuclear reactors in the back of their heads from the 80s, albeit shoved into the subconscious in the meantime.