Post a Comment Print Share on Facebook

How nuclear energy divided German society

Whoever hits a defenseless person on the head with a spade wants to kill.

- 5 reads.

How nuclear energy divided German society

Whoever hits a defenseless person on the head with a spade wants to kill. There are only a few pictures from peacetime that document an attempted murder as directly as the picture taken by the photographer Tobias Heldt on February 28, 1981: Two “autonomous”, i.e. left-wing extremist violent criminals, attacked on the sidelines of the civil war-like “demonstration” against the planned Brokdorf nuclear power plant a police officer.

Officer Rolf Sch. survived thanks to his helmet; the two perpetrators, Michael D. and Markus M., got away with moderate sentences of three and five and a half years, respectively, for dangerous bodily harm and breach of the peace instead of attempted homicide. Both the NDR magazine “Panorama” and “Spiegel” played down the attack on the police officer as best they could. The major demonstration at Brokdorf in 1981 was the low point of the left-wing struggle against nuclear power.

Almost exactly 42 years later, probably in mid-April 2023, the last three German nuclear power plants are to be shut down; the supply crisis caused by the energy transition has given this CO₂-neutral type of power generation a brief reprieve. In a democracy, the will of the majority is one of the decisive criteria for shaping politics. But how has the attitude of the population in the Federal Republic to nuclear power developed?

This can be reconstructed using representative surveys. Of all German opinion research companies, the Institute for Public Opinion Research (IfD) in Allensbach on Lake Constance has the most comprehensive collection of such results extrapolated to the population average. On the other hand, the research group Wahlen, which is close to ZDF, although it has been active since 1974, says it does not have "methodologically comparable time series data". The analysis of the Allensbach data, the reliability of which can at least be checked selectively by comparison with the results of other institutes, provides exciting insights.

For a decade and a half, nuclear energy was not only not controversial in the Federal Republic, but was almost without exception considered a technology of the future; since 1955 there was even a Federal Ministry for Atomic Affairs. Two years later, the first research reactor went into operation, in 1961 an experimental nuclear power plant fed electricity into the West German grid for the first time, and since 1968 the first commercial reactor in Obrigheim am Neckar has been supplying energy.

The turnaround began with an article in the Hamburg weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". On April 24, 1970, the science journalist Theo Löbsack published a warning about the planned expansion of nuclear energy under the title "When the Rhine is steaming". The necessary cooling of the reactors could allegedly heat the river to "40 to 50 degrees Celsius" - with catastrophic consequences for flora and fauna.

The article became the starting point of the German anti-nuclear movement. The residents of the southern nuclear power plant planned near the small town of Breisach in southern Baden forced the construction project to be relocated to Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl, about 20 kilometers downstream. Although 55 percent of the residents of Wyhl voted in a referendum for the sale of the planned property and preparations for construction began, the administrative court in Freiburg imposed a freeze on construction in 1977. It was the anti-nuclear movement's first major victory.

According to IfD data, around one eighth of the West German population was "strictly opposed to nuclear energy" at that time; almost a third approved of the expansion, and around 45 percent spoke out in favor of the continued use of nuclear energy. In the spring of 1977, the Bonn polling institute Infas came up with a figure of twelve percent opponents, while the "Zeit" wrote vaguely of "depending on the survey 20 to 40 percent" in the summer. At that time, 18 commercial reactors were in operation or under construction (not counting research reactors). On a scale from plus five (very much in favor of nuclear energy) to minus five (very much against it), the average attitude of the West German population was 0.7, according to the Allensbach researchers.

The first significant change in this attitude was brought about by an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg in the US state of Pennsylvania at the end of March 1979. When the reactor core partially melted, radioactivity escaped, although according to a long-term study of 30,000 residents by 1997 this had not led to any health consequences . According to IfD data, the number of West Germans who described themselves as "strict opponents of nuclear energy" doubled immediately after this accident; accordingly, the values ​​​​of the followers of the continued operation as well as the expansion fell sharply.

But after short, violent deviations in the values, the previous normal value was restored: around 35 percent of the population were in favor of expansion or continued operation, and around 15 percent called for an exit as quickly as possible. This Allensbach result was confirmed by a representative survey by the University of Mainz, according to which two-thirds of Germans were in favor of continued operation, even if they saw risks. This study also took into account how far away the respondents lived from a running or projected reactor - result: "The number of nuclear energy opponents increased with the distance from the site of the power plant."

The violence in the dispute over Brokdorf an der Elbe in 1981, including the attack on the policeman Rolf Sch., led to the next clear shift: the number of supporters of further nuclear energy expansion fell sharply; At the same time, the proportion of those who supported the continued operation of the active reactors and those under construction increased. Apparently, in view of the excesses of nuclear power opponents, more and more Germans considered the social dangers of the expansion to be too great - they gave way to violence. Despite this, supporters of nuclear power still accounted for more than two-thirds of those eligible to vote. The average posture, which was still minus 0.2 a few months after the Harrisburg incident according to IfD data, rose again to a value of plus 0.6.

The effects of what was actually the worst accident in a nuclear power plant were surprisingly small: on April 26, 1986, unit four of Chernobyl exploded in what was then the Soviet Union, north of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. The nearby planned city of Pripyat had to be evacuated. Decades later, it is still disputed whether 50 people died as a result of the catastrophe or more than 100,000. In any case, the catastrophe only had a major impact on attitudes in Germany in the short term: the number of declared opponents of nuclear energy rose to around 36 percent, but this figure soon fell again to 28 percent; the advocates of further use remained at almost two thirds.

At a conference in June 1987, IfD boss Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called the assumption "wrong" that a "majority of Germans were against nuclear power". However, the claims of "self-proclaimed but often clueless 'experts' have led to deep uncertainty among the population". The pollster's statement that "just 39 percent of those questioned on security issues still believe the scientists, but 53 percent believe the television" triggered "incredulous to desperate laughter from the assembled experts".

In the GDR party dictatorship, there was naturally no open discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy. All six reactors in operation in Greifswald and Rheinsberg were shut down in 1990, one of which did not last more than a good three-week trial run. After reunification, the attitude towards nuclear energy in East Germany was significantly less negative than in the old Federal Republic: the values ​​on the scale from plus five to minus five were quite stable at around minus 0.1, while the IfD pollsters in the west at the same time pointed to minus 1 .0 to minus 0.2 came.

The nuclear phase-out, the politically most important goal of the red-green federal government since autumn 1998, brought the topic back into the public eye. The acceptance of nuclear energy fell significantly across Germany: Shortly after Gerhard Schröder (SPD) was elected Chancellor, the Emnid opinion research institute came to 14 percent in favor of an immediate exit and 45 percent in favor of an exit by around 2013; just under a third were in favor of continuing to operate the existing reactors for a longer period of time. At the same time, however, 64 percent of those entitled to vote saw the danger that “Germany would become even more dependent than before on suppliers in neighboring countries due to the need to purchase foreign electricity”.

After the "nuclear consensus" between the red-green federal government and energy suppliers in June 2000, which envisaged a flexible remaining service life of the existing reactors of up to 25 years, the topic receded into the background. By March 2010, even the average attitude of Germans towards nuclear power rose to a value of 0.0. That was a factor why the black-yellow coalition, the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), decided this year to extend the nuclear phase-out. However, she obviously did not expect the vehement protests of the anti-nuclear movement.

Under the immediate impression of the triple meltdown in the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima at the end of March 2011, after which up to 150,000 people were evacuated (the information on the number of fatalities from radiation varies between exactly one and 1260), Merkel made a U-turn: Eight running reactors were shut down immediately, six more by the end of 2021; the remaining three should only run for one more year. According to the plan, the inevitable supply gap will be closed by natural gas imported primarily from Russia.

The Forsa pollsters determined that 55 percent of Germans were in favor of this exit plan in 2012; four years later, Emnid even got 77 percent. But with the rising electricity prices, support decreased: In August 2022, a representative study for the “Spiegel” showed that 41 percent of the population are now in favor of the construction of new nuclear power plants. "Energy transition?", the magazine then asked: "These new survey figures rather show the desire for an energy turnaround." Results from pollsters are always good for surprises.

You can also find "World History" on Facebook. We are happy about a like.

Avatar
Your Name
Post a Comment
Characters Left:
Your comment has been forwarded to the administrator for approval.×
Warning! Will constitute a criminal offense, illegal, threatening, offensive, insulting and swearing, derogatory, defamatory, vulgar, pornographic, indecent, personality rights, damaging or similar nature in the nature of all kinds of financial content, legal, criminal and administrative responsibility for the content of the sender member / members are belong.