[Arnt]

Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster.

A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways.

Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear vote, after, against, because these people switched.

If you want to argue about safety, I think you might do well do focus on the safety issue that made the significant voter segment change their opinion.

[clemensley]

Did you know that most likely nobody died from radiation after Fukushima? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

[_ph_]

Well, people were evacuated in time. The big question is: can they come back, like ever? The threat isn't so much people dying from radiation if evacuated in time, it is that large regions of densely populated central Europe can become uninhabitable and not usable for agriculture.

[jhgb]

> Germany's shutting those down because of the Fukushima disaster.

No, they're not. The shutdown decision was made (and put into binding law!) almost ten years before Fukushima.

[turbinerneiter]

AFAIK, the Union/FDP government reversed that decision, made new contract with the plants, changed their opinion again after Fukushima and we now have to pay breach-of-contract fines to the nuclear power plants.

[Arnt]

That law wasn't the last word… it didn't prevent extending the allowed lifetimes of the already-built reactors a year or so before Fukushima.

[jhgb]

If twenty years ago it was decided in law that X would shut down about now, and X is shutting down now, then I don't see a reason to not say that the decision to shut down X now comes from a law twenty years ago.

[Arnt]

I suppose there are several ways to view that…

Mine is that the decision to stop was taken by a government with a parliamentary majority in general, but narrow popular backing in this specific case. So the law at risk of revision if the right/wrong parties won an election. Some politicians thought revising it might be a good campaign issue.

The reacter lifetimes were extended after such an election, and I think it was a first step. If that had gone well, one of the parties in the coalition would've proposed revising the law before the next election. But it did not go well: "Fukushima ändert alles", said Merkel, and I think she was right. From that point on, the law aligned well with a broad majority of voters. Noone proposed a revision as a campaign issue after that point.