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https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/20/germany-nuclear-power-energy...

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    https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/2...nato-russia-ukraine-war-energy-crisis-greens/

    Deep Dive

    Germany Confronts Its Nuclear Demons

    Opposition to all things nuclear was the bedrock of the modern German political psyche. Then came Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    June 20, 2022, 7:00 AM
    By Allison Meakem, an assistant editor at Foreign Policy.
    In this long-exposure photograph, steam rises from the cooling towers of the Grohnde nuclear power plant in Emmerthal, Germany, on Dec. 29, 2021, days before it was expected to be taken off the grid after 36 years. Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images
    On March 30, the German Council of Economic Experts, a group of five leading economists who evaluate German government policy, made a recommendation that broke a long-standing cultural and political taboo. To confront the looming energy crisis linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the economists wrote, Germany should consider delaying the phaseout of its three remaining nuclear power plants, slated for the end of this year.
    The country is heavily dependent on imports of Russian natural gas, and most experts agree it is only a matter of time before Germans—whether through their own political will or that of Russian President Vladimir Putin—are cut off for good. The European Union has already finalized plans to embargo most imports of Russian coal and oil, which make up a much smaller—but still significant—share of Germany’s energy mix. Though gas remains the last unsanctioned holdout, Putin in May cut 3 percent of his country’s gas exports to Germany in what was largely seen as a power move. They were reduced further last week.
    Officials in Berlin are scrambling to concoct an emergency plan should Moscow turn off all the taps. Policy responses have ranged from pleading with the general public to curb private energy consumption to courting Qatar for exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). But one idea that has so far eluded any official government endorsement is to use Germany’s existing nuclear power infrastructure to stave off an energy shortage.
    Though the proposal may seem obvious—the power plants are quite literally in plain sight—Germany’s deep-rooted anti-nuclear orthodoxy has rendered such suggestions political heresy. This is why it was so revealing to hear the country’s most prestigious economic body—whose economists are sometimes referred to as the “Five Sages”—resort to such a refrain. It was a rare show of helplessness on the part of the German intelligentsia. Fear of a nuclear meltdown runs high in Germany, and the specter of such a disaster is often enough to discredit good-faith arguments in favor of nuclear power.
    A sign reading “A warm welcome to Gundremmingen” is pictured in front of the nuclear power plant in Gundremmingen, southern Germany, on Feb. 26, 2021. LENNART PREISS/AFP via Getty Images
    Energy is not the only area where the German debate on the efficacy—and ethics—of nuclear technology has been thrown into flux by the war in Ukraine. Germany participates in NATO nuclear weapons sharing and has been home to an arsenal of U.S. nuclear warheads since the mid-1950s despite fierce public opposition that continues to this day. Now, with those weapons closer to possible deployment than at any period since the Cold War, the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz—which vowed in its coalition agreement to work toward “a Germany free of nuclear weapons”—is being forced to question whether that arrangement is still strategically sound or even to be desired.
    Popular opposition to all things nuclear in many ways forms the bedrock of the modern German political psyche, providing principled guardrails to a people who are rightfully risk averse, and Berlin has in recent years moved closer to the publicly demanded imperative of eradicating nuclear power and working toward the disarmament—and ultimate abolition—of nuclear weaponry.

    But Russia’s war in Ukraine has cast an uncomfortable realist shadow over these campaigns, which were allowed to flourish largely unchallenged for decades by the dual comforts of U.S. security guarantees and Russian pipelines. Now, the anti-nuclear movement is facing an existential moment. German politicians and civil society must decide whether to continue down the anti-nuclear path or reluctantly acknowledge that nuclear technology will be part of Germany’s future. Either path will be risky and will have the potential to change the balance of power in both Europe and the world at large.
 
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