Germans’ Deep Suspicions of Nuclear Power Reach a Political Tipping Point

"BERLIN — Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in March, stores in faraway Germany began selling out of radiation-tracking Geiger counters. Sales of iodine pills to limit the absorption of radiation surged briskly, too, propelled by anxiety that people might find themselves engulfed in clouds of long-range radioactive fallout.

No matter that the incipient nuclear catastrophe was about 5,500 miles away, or that Germany, unlike Japan, did not lie on known tectonic fault lines. On the streets of major cities, hundreds of thousands of protesters, casting events in Japan as a portent of what might happen here, turned out ahead of state elections to demand a halt to Germany’s own nuclear power program, the source of nearly a quarter of the nation’s electricity."

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'Just as creationists attempt to ban the theory of evolution from the school books,' said a physicist, Peter Heller, in a Web posting that challenged the national nuclear orthodoxy, 'it almost seems as if every factual and neutral explanation in Germany is now in the process of being deleted' from the nuclear debate."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/europe/02germany.html?_r=2

by Arne Jungjohann
Why is the United States so obsessed with nuclear power?
31 May 2011 7:00 AM

After the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, as a German living in the U.S., I often get asked these days: What's going on in Germany with the shutdown of nuclear power plants -- is that all mass hysteria? There are good reasons why Germany is moving away so quickly from nuclear power. Certainly, fear is a factor. However, this angst in the face of a nuclear catastrophe has a rational core. Fukushima provides enough grounds to take every single nuclear power plant on the face of the Earth off-line. Regardless of whether the cause is an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood, a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or simple human error, failure of the emergency power system leads to uncontrollable consequences.

There is also an energy reality in Germany that differs from the United States. In Germany, the economic success of the renewable energy economy is visible between the North Sea and the Alps. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs have been created for steel workers, carpenters, technicians, architects, bankers, and farmers. Foreign companies have heavily invested in manufacturing plants for wind turbines, biogas systems, and solar panels in Germany. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is viewed as a constraint on this development. Nuclear and renewables are not perceived as allies, but as conflicting and competing energy sources. One is centralized, capital-intensive, ponderous, outdated, and anti-democratic, whereas the other is flexible, smart, labor-intensive, and open for community participation. Thus, in recent polls an overwhelming 85 percent of Germans favor a nuclear phaseout as fast as possible or at most within 10 years. To them it seems simply outdated to stick with a 1950s technology like nuclear that is risky, dirty, and blocking new investments in better technologies. It is like to holding on to your rotary phone instead of switching to a cell phone.

...Following Fukushima, the German government announced a three-month shutdown of eight of its 17 nuclear power plants and a review of its nuclear strategy. That's 8,400 megawatts of capacity off the grid. In mid-May, another five nuclear plants are down for maintenance with a capacity of 6,600 megawatts. That leaves four nuclear plants together supplying 5,400 megawatts of power. Are the lights still on? Are the trains still going? Are the car factories still humming? Yes, yes, and yes. No blackout followed; the power supply is stable. Nuclear power capacity is replaced by reducing surplus electricity exports, by using the reserve capacity of traditional back-up power plants for peak times, and by temporarily importing electricity from neighboring countries if necessary.

Some analysts have argued that the nuclear scale-back in Germany would prevent the country from reaching its long-term climate and energy goals. In reality, and as discussed here, Germany is already well on its way to transitioning from nuclear and fossil-fuel power to renewable energy. It is aiming for 35 percent renewables by 2020, and 80-100 percent by 2050. Not despite, but because of shutting down nuclear power, investments in renewable energies accelerate...

http://www.grist.org/nuclear/2011-05-31-why-is-the-united-states-so-obsessed-with-nuclear-power

looks like the top of the Brandenburg gate to me.
Sorry about your apologists fail, though.