Talks of an End to Germany's Nuclear Industry Premature

摘要

There now remains hardly anyone in Germany who has not yet dropped in the last few years a single line about how the country is valiantly closing one by one its nuclear power plants. It was difficult to expect anything else, though, if one keeps in mind that the accelerated phase-out of nuclear energy announced by the German political establishment in 2011 became perhaps the most resonant energy policy decision in the country's recent history. At the same time, it is often overlooked that the "Atomausstieg" (the name given to Germany's denuclearization) is a like a hat that has a false bottom to it: the issue of disconnection from the grid lying on the surface of public discourse, while behind it (or 'under' it, if you will) lies a number of deeper and more far-reaching questions.