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- cross-posted to:
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German political leaders have reacted with alarm to U.S. President Donald Trump’s bombshell announcement that his administration will conduct peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the head of European leaders.
“To be clear, peace must last over the long term. It must secure Ukraine’s sovereignty,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday. “That is why we will never support a dictated peace. Nor will we accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of European and American security. Only one person would benefit from that. President Putin.”
Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party (SPD) is in third place according to polls ahead of a Feb. 23 national election, called for more spending on Germany’s defense and military aid for Ukraine, and urged conservatives to relax the country’s strict spending rules — a theme he has touched on repeatedly during the election campaign — in order to do so.
Arguing about Chernobyl is about the dumbest thing to do.
It was very old reactor, no other like that is in Germany, therefore it’s unfounded.
So what you’re saying is that no German reactor would ever be online for years while its backup power supply, critical for safety, was offline? Because yes that happened. Or that this is a proper way to store nuclear waste? Because that happened, too. Just as the water incursions into that salt mine.
Long story short humans can’t be trusted with this shit. If you think we can, you’re naive.
No, fear doesn’t work like that. Just because something is unlikely doesn’t mean it can’t happen, and fear tends to be about just those things.
Again, you can call it irrational, but it is objectively not unfounded. There is a foundation, even if it’s unlikely. You don’t get to change the meaning of the word “unfounded” just because you think something isn’t likely to happen.
Again, there aren’t those reactors in service. End of story.
Coal puts out more radioactivity into air, yet nobody mentions that. So fuck this ‘founded’ fear. It’s not real.
I don’t know if you’re trolling. Of course people aren’t afraid of exactly these reactors blowing up again. They are afraid of nuclear accidents in general. There’s always a chance for things to go wrong, otherwise we wouldn’t have had Fukushima a couple of years ago. Some link in the chain can always fuck up.
“Coal puts out more radioactivity into air” is an incredibly stupid point. “More radioactivity” than what? People aren’t going through the same precautions they had to when they lived through the last fallout. That’s not real in this context.
Were there any precautions in Germany after Chernobyl? I’m from eastern Europe and there weren’t any.
Nuclear disasters are not happening despite there being hundreds of plants in operation. It’s all just FUD spread by the fossil lobby.
Yes, lots. After the accident a bunch of places in Germany measured far higher-than-normal radiation levels. There were lots of unclear signals going through the government and media - the different states had different recommendations and there were lots of confusing/opposing signals going through the government and media. Some examples:
All of this happened during the formative years of a large part of our population. Can you understand how this does give a foundation to the fear?
One happened a couple of years ago, and I guarantee you more will happen - as long as humans are involved in the cycle, things can and will go wrong. Modern designs make this far less likely and hopefully reduce the worst outcomes by a lot, but how sure are you that all our reactors are secured against e.g. sabotage? What if an enemy nation invades and gains control of the reactor? What if individual systems get attacked by drones? We’re entering a new age - don’t underestimate what terrible things can happen this time around.
Also, Fukushima happened due to natural disasters. Climate change is changing what magnitude of disaster happens where, so they might hit reactors that aren’t prepared for these disasters. Is every nuclear reactor worldwide safe from a Fukushima-type accident under all possible conditions?
I’m not that well versed, but I would expect modern designs be unable to be used as a weapon, at least easily. When someone brings heavy equipment (and I will file Fukushima under a ‘very heavy forces’), they can do anything. Putting the blame on nuclear is again just fearmongering.
Thank you for providing me more info about the Germany at that time. Did that happen throughout, or just the west part? Because IIRC the east block was celebrating First May like it was no big deal.
I get that people may be scared, but again that’s now how things work. Coal is 100 times more radioactive than nuclear plant, so building them to 100% put radioactive material around them is absolutely stupid, when the same people are scared of one nuclear plant blowing up 39 years ago.
Dude, the places that measured 50x the normal amount of radiation aren’t measuring 50x the amount right now. I’m aware that coal adds radioactive material to the air, but that’s just not relevant to the topic. But I’m tired of explaining that, have a good one.
I consider it relevant when the topic is germans being scared of radioactive fallout replacing nuclear with coal.