| Plenty of blame lies with the German Greens, but I'd also blame the German economy's stagnation from 1991-2004. People forget now because of the 2010s, but Germany was the sick man of Europe before the recession because the reunification of West and East Germany was extremely expensive - West Germany was averaging 3-4% GDP growth rates in the 1980s, and reunification led growth rates to collapse to the 1% range. It was in this macroeconomic climate that German firms like Siemens AG were unable to sustain nuclear energy operations and began either shutting down or selling off entire product lines and business units in order to weather the storm. Heck, much of Germany Inc's growth in the 2010s could be attributed to Germany's openness to export deals and JVs in countries like Russia (eg. Germany becoming one of the largest FDI sources in Russia both before [0] and after [1] the annexation of Crimea), China (eg. VW Group and SAIC since the 1980s [2]), and India (eg. Siemens Energy AG ToTing their entire renewables, gas turbine, battery energy storage system, and Hydrogen Electrolyzer IP to an Indian subsidiary that was then de-merged from Siemens Energy into it's own business that IPOed in India a couple months ago [3]). Essentially, Germany's nuclear industry collapsed for the same reasons why the German renewables industry collapsed in the 2010s, and why German automotive industry is in such dire straights today - Germany Inc basically sold out and transferred their IP to such a degree in the 1990s to 2010s that entire competitors were spawned within a generation using that know-how. Owning shares or generating revenue on IP licensing deals doesn't matter when you don't own the actual means of production, leaving you open to either nationalization (Germany Inc and Russia), JV partners building competitors to undercut the JV (VW and SAIC), or entire operations being directly regulated with IP access under their purview (Siemens Energy and India). [0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/business/international/as... [1] - https://www.economist.com/business/2021/03/27/deutschland-ag... [2] - https://www.ft.com/content/05db03d8-85c5-11e2-bed4-00144feab... [3] - https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/press-releases... |