Nuclear Disaster ‘Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11′

Spiegel
March 14, 2011

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima makes it hard to ignore the vulnurabilities of the technology. It could spell the end of nuclear power, German commentators argue on Monday. The government in Berlin may now cave in to mounting pressure to suspend its 12-year extension of reactor lifetimes, they say.

The nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima plant following Friday’s earthquake and tsunami has led to anxious questions in Germany about the safety of its own nuclear reactors and is putting the government under intense pressure to rethink its decision to extend plant lifetimes by an average of 12 years.

German media commentators across the political spectrum are saying the accident in a highly developed nation such as Japan is further evidence that nuclear power isn’t safe. One commentator in the conservative Die Welt went as far as to liken the global impact of the Fukushima explosions to that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition of conservatives and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) reversed the planned phaseout of the 17 nuclear reactors by 2021, amending a decision taken by a previous center-left government in 2002 to end nuclear power generation in Germany.

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