Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
I guess I'm not familiar with Merkel's flip-flopping on this. But the part that really galled me was the same as Fuzzy. The idea that this will be an economic boon is something beyond wishful thinking.
Well her flip-floping is a major issue. We speaking about literally billions of Euros that must be invested on a replacement or not. And her stance was not a change on the nuclear stance but on the deadlines for the current reactors. So what she did was to push the deadlines far into the future, which of course changed the whole situation for investors in the energy sector. And then after Fukushima she suddenly changed her mind again, and shut down some of the reactors that she wanted to run longer.
Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
Cutting waste isn't "crap". A huge part of US energy consumption is chalked up to inefficiency and waste. You can criticize Italy and Switzerland for moving away from nuclear, too.
In Swirterland nothing has been decided yet, but there are plans from a group of politans from different parties. So far the FDP,CVP and SVP were always pro NE, but now most of the CVP switched and many politicans in the FDP too. But the SVP is still pro. Italy has (thankfully) never got any nuclear power plants, I really don't wanne see the Mafie to handle that waste too.
The article says only 15% of global electricity comes from nuclear. Germany's is 22% nuclear currently. But it's still Germany's choice on how they want to make their national energy policy moving forward. It's not like they've ignored economic impacts, availability, rationing, imports, costs, science and technology, or environmental damage/risk.
Yeah it's their decition in the end, I don't think it will have such a impact on the economy either but Germany doesn't need a boost anyway, they have a solid growth, not sky-rocking booming, but solid.