We Should Learn from the Germans on Nuclear Power

We Should Learn from the Germans on Nuclear Power
By Amitabh Pal
Managing Editor of The Progressive
May 9, 2011

Approximately 120,000 Germans demonstrated nationwide during the Easter weekend, using the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chernobyl to pressure Chancellor Angela Merkel to speed up her timetable for phasing out nuclear power. Much to my delight, the largest turnout was in Lower Saxony, the state I was born in and where I was visiting family friends during Easter.

The Easter mobilization was a follow-up to large-scale demonstrations in March, for which 250,000 people gathered around the nation, including more than 100,000 in Berlin alone. Indeed, anti-nuclear-power sentiment has become so mainstream in Germany that you can pick up “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” stickers and lapel buttons (souvenirs from my trip) at a completely apolitical chain store.

If only we were anywhere near phasing out nuclear power this side of the Atlantic. Instead, the Obama Administration, with the consent of Republicans, is pressing forward with more than $50 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors. For heaven’s sake, even the Chinese government has paused its nuclear power program!

The only way to get U.S. officialdom to change its mindset on nuclear power is to mobilize in similar numbers to the Germans here—half a million people for a country our size.

Read the full article at:

http://www.progressive.org/ap050911.html

Over time, it's guaranteed disaster. We need them like we need bio-resistant germs.

--imm