Timeline for Why did Germany hurry to phase out nuclear energy usage increasing the risk of fossil power use and Russian gas dependency?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
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| Apr 8 at 12:25 | comment | added | haxor789 | Merkel has studied Physics and has worked as a physicist in the department for physical chemistry. There is no such thing as a PhD in Quantum Chemistry there is only a Dr. rer. nat which covers all of the (natural) sciences. So if anything she has a doctor in physics and it's reasonable to assume that she knows more about the subject than your average politician even if it's not the particular topic of her thesis. Also as the accepted answer states it has more to do with political calculation than physical ones. | |
| Apr 7 at 10:11 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 27 at 12:24 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 8, 2021 at 10:46 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @Jan The article supports my impression from back then that it was Merkel's lone snap decision. Whether it was connected to her being a scientist is anybody's guess -- but we are looking for something that sets her apart from the vast majority of her colleagues who did not make that decision. | |
| Dec 8, 2021 at 10:26 | comment | added | Jan | I strongly disagree with this answer, ascribing the decision to the person of Angela Merkel, especially connecting it in any way to her scientific education. For details ... well, I wrote my own answer which as of writing this comment is the accept answer, according to which Merkel always tended the other direction (more nuclear) and it makes much more sense to see the decision as a reaction to public pressure and opinion rather than any changed scientific risk assessment. | |
| Nov 27, 2021 at 16:47 | comment | added | tj1000 | I suspect that Merkel the politician was reacting to public opinion. Merkel, the scientist, would have known that Fukushima didn't result from a problem with the reactor, but a problem with it's location: on a sea shore in an area known to be prone to tsunamis. This is roughly akin to building an oil refinery in an area known to have massive forest fires. Since Germany has never experienced a tsunami and for geological reasons probably never will, the comparison is factually invalid. | |
| Nov 20, 2021 at 10:16 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 19, 2021 at 18:23 | comment | added | Michael Kay | Scientists in any field are familiar with numerical reasoning, with probabilities and statistics and estimation and margins of error, in a way that non-scientists are not. I would think the impact of Fukushima on anyone accustomed to this way of reasoning would be that the rationale based on probabilities had been shown to be wrong, because it was based on a model that turned out to be incomplete; and that it was not enough simply to make these decisions based on a model, there needed to be confidence that the model was correct. | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 10:18 | comment | added | Wag the mainstream media dog | @Peter-ReinstateMonica let's not get abusive. Some scientists do think that having mastered their own field makes the eligible to judge about other sciences, politics, economy, etc. without having ever learned them. But some of us do know better and adopt more humble attitude. As for the people writing for Spiegel and other media - these typically have their knowledge limited to a course Science for journalists :) | |
| Nov 19, 2021 at 10:12 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @RogerVadim Only not in the myopic eyes of specific scientists or engineers. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 20:40 | comment | added | Wag the mainstream media dog | @Peter-ReinstateMonica Only in the eyes of laymen. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 20:33 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @RogerVadim It gets you substantially closer than a law degree ;-). | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 20:04 | comment | added | Wag the mainstream media dog | Having a PhD in quantum chemistry doesn't really make on an expert in nuclear physics - the two fields are rather far apart. Moreover, we are dealing here not with nuclear physics, but nuclear engineering, since all the relevant physics was done by the 50s. If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew it. He would never have allowed himself to speak Syriac, which he did not know. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 19:09 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 18, 2021 at 18:27 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 18, 2021 at 18:22 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @leftaroundabout I have found a 10 year old article in the preeminent German political magazine that describes the story pretty much as I remember it. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 18:21 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 18, 2021 at 17:18 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @leftaroundabout I don't see a contradiction there. It simply and clearly was her decision. Sure, it was (obviously, with the benefit of hindsight) politically doable; but so was the opposite! No other country exited nuclear power production, even though many could have. Merkel's turnabout was surprising even in the light of the events. Not even Japan committed to ending nuclear power production, even though public opinion was much more hostile. They had a moratorium and decided to continue. Both countries could have gone either way. The difference is Merkel. | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 17:06 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | Although it's true that Merkel took responsibility in this (and that's probably one of the reasons why the decision hasn't faced serious challenges since, what with her big respect across multiple parties) it certainly wasn't just her scientist's assessment that made the decision. On the contrary, Fukushima caused a widespread and sudden change of mind in large parts of the population as well as many politicians (whether because of conviction or populism is up for speculation). | |
| Nov 18, 2021 at 15:06 | history | answered | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |