Having a "peaceful" nuclear plant, means you can throw together a bomb pretty quickly if needed.
Hence countries like Japan/Korea, with active space and rocketry programs as well as a thriving domestic nuclear power industry, have been considered "quasi-nuclear powers" by many. Their "time to slap together an atom bomb," given a large national supply of nuclear physicists is not that long.
Germany, is very supporting of pacifism.
Hence, since the German approach to foreign policy is fundamentally "we don't want nuclear weapons because we really don't want to engage in warfare, because warfare is immoral." They don't want nuclear power.
Germany was told to be supporting of pacifism by the Americans after WW2.
But with the Americans signaling that they are no longer willing to play world police, a shift in that attitude is a matter of time.
> That is, it works as long as you don't have to face any real evil.
Also, lets not conflate national interests with good and evil. That's the propaganda talking.
There is enough spent fuel stored in America and around the world to reprocess and enrich fuel for thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads. There is also enough energy in spent fuel already stored that, if reprocessed, could fuel existing reactors for decades. Jimmy Carter broke the fuel cycle when he outlawed spent fuel reprocessing using the reasoning that it risked nuclear proliferation.
isn't the equipment to produce weapon-grade fissile materiel kinda different from those used in power production? So the time "time to slap together an atom bomb" would still be quite long. Also when talking talking about nuclear's price vs LNG, another factor to take into consideration is energy dependence on foreign suppliers
Nuclear power has been economically inefficient for a long time.
This is true for many, many economies. Even in places like Japan and South Korea, nuclear energy is more expensive than seaborn LNG.
The reason that nuclear energy has been supported is the "unspoken" externality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency
Having a "peaceful" nuclear plant, means you can throw together a bomb pretty quickly if needed.
Hence countries like Japan/Korea, with active space and rocketry programs as well as a thriving domestic nuclear power industry, have been considered "quasi-nuclear powers" by many. Their "time to slap together an atom bomb," given a large national supply of nuclear physicists is not that long.
Germany, is very supporting of pacifism.
Hence, since the German approach to foreign policy is fundamentally "we don't want nuclear weapons because we really don't want to engage in warfare, because warfare is immoral." They don't want nuclear power.