“It’s a dead end”: astrophysicist breaks down atomic energy in 57 seconds

“Germany Shuts Down – Is Nuclear Exit the Right Decision?” the presenter had titled her show – and started with a feature that briefly reminded us that it was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s black and yellow federal government that, impressed by the 2011 reactor disaster in Fukushima, Japan, decided to depart after they initially stopped the 2002 first red-green turn and extended running times again.

To open the discussion, Anne Will threw in a quote from Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, who recently described the closure of Germany’s last three nuclear power plants as an “energy policy phantom trip” by the traffic light coalition. “On the contrary,” replied Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt, as expected, “we all have much more certainty now.”

The guests

Reiner Haseloff was more reserved. “The exit has always been a consensus,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s CDU prime minister, “it was always about timing.”

And there, if he had “personal responsibility for this decision”, with a view to the Ukraine war, he would “wait and see for now and then look ahead to next winter to see how we can control the security of supply and also the price development in Germany received”.

Johannes Vogel saw it the same way – not without first handing out to Söder who gave the quote: “Söder changes position like a pair of underpants,” said the FDP Vice. He recalled that the current prime minister, then the Bavarian environment minister, had threatened to resign in 2011 if his state government did not phase out nuclear power by 2022 at the latest.

“I would not want to entrust the responsibility for energy policy to someone so capricious,” said the parliamentary leader of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, in view of Söder’s demand that the Länder be allowed to build power stations. continue to operate on their own.

With regard to decommissioning, he also spoke out in favor of not “making the nuclear power stations inoperable” in any case. He thinks that is “a matter of common sense”. In the transition period to renewable energy sources, it is the wrong order to switch off the nuclear power plants first and then the coal plants.

Lesch is reminiscent of the waste that has to go underground

“Welt” journalist Dorothea Siems, on the other hand, gave the impression that she would like to completely review the exit: she expressed dismay at the learning process initiated by Fukushima by physicist Angela Merkel, arguing that ” circumstances” “had changed fundamentally” “since then, and that even stricken Japan itself does not renounce nuclear power.

Since we are now “carbon heavier”, “our carbon balance is devastating”: “We are as dirty as only Poland and the Czech Republic are,” says the business journalist. She also expressed her concerns about price developments: “A nuclear power station that already exists” produces cheaper energy than coal and gas.

So it was reserved for the astrophysicist Harald Lesch to recall the basic principles of the risky technology. The mere fact that there are no nuclear reinsurers worldwide should tell us: “Hands off, never again!” demanded the science journalist. “1,900 wheeled containers that must one day go underground” is something we have left to future generations. Ultimately, nuclear energy is a “dead-end technology”.

And with a view to a nuclear-friendly France with its nearly 60 reactors, Lesch predicted that climate change will force some reactors to shut down next summer due to water shortages, just like last year.

Haseloff issues the warning: “Buffer Received”

Nevertheless, Reiner Haseloff again acted as a warning: “One must keep the possibility of a buffer,” said the prime minister. After all, the base load of the electricity grid must also be maintained in “dark silences”, ie when no solar energy is fed back.

“You don’t get out until you get in somewhere else,” said the CDU man – Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s calculation that four to five wind turbines should be set up a day is “unrealistic given the current circumstances”.

Johannes Vogel and Harald Lesch would not deny that the challenges are enormous. The FDP man believed it was now necessary to “turn three levers”: pull out all the stops in the expansion of renewable energy sources, “widen the gas bridge”, i.e. also use domestic gas reserves, and finally “new forms of reactors, which can be inherently safe”.

Scientist Lesch, who had previously described reliance on such reactors as “nonsense”, instead referred to the prevailing shortage of skilled labor in the wind turbine sector: “We are running out of crane operators,” says the astrophysicist.