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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

Being the front line of the Cold War, while both the US and USSR developed battle plans for where nuclear weapons would be detonated in your country during a war, probably lends shades to the debate that aren't present in other countries.

(Yes, nuclear power / nuclear weapons, but in the 70s that wasn't a clear distinction)

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Plus parts of Germany were actually impacted by Chernobyl with measurable radiation in their food / water / livestock. Low levels to be sure, but in the context of the cold war I'm sure there's a long memory for a massive nuclear coverup by a antagonistic neighbor that pollutes your land.

They were close enough (and downwind-enough) to experience direct effects from Chernobyl, no? Destroying contaminated produce, taking iodine pills as a precaution, that sort of thing, and, I'd guess, worries, for a time, about much worse consequences before the emergency was contained.

https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/accident-management/emergen...

"To date, there is no evidence that the reactor accident has caused adverse health effects due to radiation in Germany."

Well, I heard the same statement for Belarus, the most impacted country by Chernobyl (with still-in-effect Evacuation Zone). The key? How to calculate "health effects".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#/medi...

As a result of the Chernobyl reactor accident, certain species of mushrooms and wild game are still highly contaminated with caesium-137 in some areas of Germany.

https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mush...

Imagine them end up exported

A lot of the fallout on land in Western Europe was in Scandinavia and Austria due to the prevailing winds and the places where clouds happened to precipitate into rain.

In some regions they are still today monitoring the cesium content of grass and moss, and bringing sheep and reindeer in for the weeks before slaughter to be fed hay from other regions to ensure the meat is within acceptable dose limits.

Edit - link to map: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy-Mousseau/public...

This. That map explains why so many people people are afraid of nuclear.

In 1986 one plant had a major accident, and look at all that contamination across western and northern Europe, thousands of kilometers away. Hundreds of millions of people were affected, and the consequences are still quite real, 35 years later.

Yet, Finland is ok with operating nuclear plants, and is building a new one (still). Sweden likewise. Belarus and Ukraine were the ground zero, and the most impacted regions, yet you don't see anywhere close to the militant anti-nuclear sentiment as in Germany

And lockdowns. First lockdowns in my life. We weren't even allowed to play in the garden.

> both the US and USSR developed battle plans for where nuclear weapons would be detonated in your country during a war

Do we know if younger Germans are more open to nuclear power than Cold War era ones?

Anecdotally, no. Young Germans (at least, mid-late twenties into the thirties) tend to have the same sort of sentiments.

Considering MAD existed and most nukes would have been dropped on the US and USSR, not Germany, I don't think that's the issue. We and the russians had far more to worry about than the germans. Of course MAD pretty much ensured a 0% chance of nuclear war so really nothing to worry about. Nations truly worried about nuclear weapons develop them, not fight against them. Think about it.

Considering that Germany is an american vassal with significant russian influence, it's more likely political factions tied to US and Russia. US doesn't want Germany to develop nuclear energy because nuclear energy research is the same thing as a nuclear weapons research. A nuclear armed germany is pretty much an independent germany which is something no empire desires. Empire and freedom/independence/sovereignty don't mix. And russians don't want germany to develop nuclear energy because they want to sell more oil/gas to germany and gain more influence over germany/europe.

>Considering MAD existed and most nukes would have been dropped on the US and USSR, not Germany, I don't think that's the issue. We and the russians had far more to worry about than the germans.

Completely wrong. A NATO-Russia war could have been (and still could) be fought entirely in central Europe. This might include tactical nuclear weapons, delivered by short- and medium-range missiles and aircraft. This is why it was said that "In Germany, the towns are only two kilotons apart" (<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/12/11/n...>).

To put another way, it's possible to realistically imagine a war in which Germany is hit with nuclear weapons but the US and Russia aren't. It's not realistic to imagine a war in which the US and Russia are hit with nukes but Germany isn't.

> might include tactical nuclear weapons, delivered by short- and medium-range missiles and aircraft

Also, people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams

US/NATO doctrine was to use tactical nukes in the event of an invasion of West Germany. There were tactical nuclear mines, tactical nuclear bridge demolition charges, tactical nuclear artillery shells, etc. In the 50s the US reorganized around a Pentomic division [1], which was effectively highly mobile battlegroups too small to be worth nuking since the assumption was that any reasonable sized formation would get plastered.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomic

Russia will gladly sell/build nuclear plants to Germany or any other country. I can imagine that it's politically infeasible. But the capacity is there.

Maybe you missed the part in Cold War doctrine where Germany is the battlefield intended to be used up to stop the invasion before the Rhine.

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