Germany is a land of vast historical significance. I've spent a fair amount of time there, while wearing Uncle Sam's colors, in 1996 and 1997. I was in Heidelberg, working on the staff of the Command Surgeon, U.S. Army, Europe (USEUR), and I really enjoyed Germany. Heidelberg isn't very far from the small Bavarian town from which came my last ancestor to come to the New World, one Johann Riesse, my great-great-great-grandfather, who left Germany in 1850, bringing his wife and ten children (!) to New York City and hence to Wisconsin, where he started back as his accustomed profession: Farming.
My wife and I visited Heidelberg again in 2020, staying in the same residence hotel I lived in in '96 and '97. We had a lot of fun, but boy, have things changed. My favorite German restaurant was now an Ethiopian restaurant. Hijabs were visible almost everywhere. But one really damaging policy Germany has pursued in those intervening years was a perfectly idiotic "green" energy policy, which saw Germany's nuclear power plants shuttered and the German government going all in for renewables. That may be changing; there is a right-of-center, populist party rising in Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, and they are all in on getting Germany on a sounder footing where energy is concerned.
German right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) wants to see the Nord Stream gas pipeline back online and also proposes reactivating nuclear power.
That is the content of a position paper presented by the party’s parliamentary group, according to Welt. The proposal, seen by AFP, states:
We will further diversify the supply of gas and oil in Germany’s interest, avoid new import dependencies, and enable the commissioning of existing supply routes such as the Nord Stream pipeline.
Diversifying is pretty much always the smart practice. Doing business with Russia may not be quite as smart, especially for Germany; there is some bad blood between Germany and Russia, historically, and some people in that part of the world have long memories. But Germany's current path isn't sustainable.
Here's the smarter part:
The AfD also proposes reactivating nuclear power after Germany decommissioned its last nuclear power plant in 2023—a decision EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen, who supported the decision at the time, now says was a “strategic mistake.”
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has criticized the country’s decision to exit nuclear energy, saying it has deprived Germany of cheap and reliable electricity. Rather than reopening conventional nuclear power plants, he has proposed investing in new technologies, including small modular reactors and nuclear fusion.
AfD’s parliamentary group also rejects phasing out fossil fuels and wants to continue using coal and gas. In addition, the party wants to end subsidies for wind and solar and repeal a number of ‘green transition’ laws.
It's worth taking a look at how all this started.
Read More: Why Are Climate Scolds Against Nuclear Power?
Is Europe Now Seeing the Light on Nuclear Power?
Germany dabbled in alternative energy starting in the 1970s, but the shutdown of Germany's nuclear program got speed-boosted after the 2011 Fukushima reactor disaster, which prompted then-Chancellor Angela Merkel to accelerate the shutdown of Germany's reactors, which we might note were not in areas where they were in danger of being flooded by a tsunami, which is what happened in Fukushima. Be that as it may, after Fukushima, Merkel accelerated the shutdown of Germany's reactors, managing to get 8 reactors shut down almost immediately, with the rest to be closed by 2022. The 2014 passage of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act sealed the deal on nuclear and fossil fuel policy in Germany. That act added subsidies for solar and wind installations, and aimed to phase out coal, which Germany has historically relied on, by 2038.
Of course, Germany still used Russian natural gas. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine caused some problems here, not the least from the cutting of the Nord Stream pipeline. Still, Germany persisted; the last reactors, Emsland, Isar II, and Neckarwestheim II, were closed in 2023.
That's where Germany is. But AfD, seeking to make Germany great again (Deutschland wieder großartig machen) is looking to reverse that. They seek not only to return Germany to its days of being an industrial powerhouse, but also a livable, affordable place, powered by clean, reliable, high-density nuclear power. Germany could - should - once more be a country of industry, and AfD would seem to understand that vital first step: Scratch the stupid, wasteful, and expensive "green" energy programs, and develop the most modern, high-energy-density, reliable, and clean source of energy: Nuclear power.
Germany, since their 1871 unification under King Wilhelm I of Prussia and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, has been a nation of great influence in central Europe. That history hasn't always been a pretty one; in fact, within living memory, the country was under the boot of one of the most brutal regimes in the history of Western Civilization. But those people are all gone now, and Germany has now come dangerously close to slipping into irrelevance. If they stay on their present course, in another generation or two, Germany will no longer exist as such. The AfD, on energy, has the right answers. Now, if only German voters could be made to understand the questions.
