Why is Germany so anti nuclear?

There was a really public fight for years between the federal government and some states about the final repository of nuclear waste without any conclusion we officially still don't have one. Besides that we have a mine full of leaking radiation barrels because we were one of the few countries that did not drop their early nuclear waste into the ocean. There were also some pretty rough clashes between police and people demonstrating castor transports that were televised publicly. We also got a lot of fallout after Tschernobyl with mandates like don't eat forest mushrooms or lettuce from your own garden for years after the incident which helped our green party to establish themselves as a big part of our political system.

They were part of the government for 8 years under Schröder and again now. They are the third biggest political party in our country for a long time now.

All that combined made everyone pretty skeptic for nuclear power.

Perhaps it's because Germans are more responsible? Nuclear waste disposal is very much an unsolved problem that we are putting on the shoulders of the following generations. Just like

- climate catastrophe

- insane debt

- rampant pollution

- the ongoing mass extinction

- pensions during changing demographics

Other than that nuclear is slower and much more expensive to newly deploy than wind and solar. It also remains more dangerous because there is always the human factor (hubris and corruption!) as we have seen in Japan. Before Fukushima, people said it couldn't happen there, only in countries like Russia.

I think it's because there are several unsolved problems with nuclear, and they're nowhere near being solved.

In an imperfect world, which is what we live in, you're guaranteed huge disasters like Chernobyl happening.

In case you are not aware, areas in a radius of hundreds of kilometers all around Chernobyl are still affected by it, and will continue to be for hundreds of years.

There's some hidden assumptions in this question.

First, that Germany is extremely "anti nuclear". But, deciding over 20 years ago to close plants when their lifetime runs out and not replace them is hardly the drastic act of a maniac.

Germany is just doing what everyone else is doing, building cheap renewables. Only real difference is that many countries never built any nuclear plants in the first place and so they don't have old plants to shut.

Interesting: Ireland is even more anti nuclear than Germany.

There have never been any nuclear power plants in Ireland. They are even prohibited: „The production of electricity for the Irish national grid (Eirgrid), by nuclear fission, is prohibited in the Republic of Ireland by the Electricity Regulation Act, 1999 (Section 18)“. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ireland

But since you are pro nuclear just think for a moment where on your beautiful island you would like to store all the highly radioactive nuclear waste?

You probably will have difficulty answering this. And the same is true for Germans, even although Germany is much bigger than Ireland and it searched for decades for a suitable place and failed.

Lots of reasons no doubt, as with many other of life's questions - it's expensive though, for one.

The best individual metric I'm aware of as a way to compare costs of different types of energy production is called "Levelized Cost of Energy" (LCOE) - here's a Feb 2021 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration with a link to an estimated cost comparisons page:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

I think it's nearly impossible to learn the facts because the issue is so heavily politized. Too much money and too much votes.

If we can go on with renewables then it's great although I hope the tech is maintained somehow like for example space exploration.

I was reading about it some time ago.

In the 90s Green party of Germany built its identity around being anti-nuclear. Meanwhile Schroeder (who came from conservatives) had a problem with miners aggressively pushing to preserve coal mines.

They formed otherwise unlikely alliance against nuclear power. This resulted in lots of propaganda and actual laws being implemented in order to dismantle nuclear plants, which impacts Germany to this day.

Given ties that Schroeder has to Gazprom, he could have also other motives in not allowing Germany to be too energy independent.

Fukushima - still leaking