Nuclear power in Germany

I want to give some ideas on the situation of public and utility acceptance of nuclear power in the Federal Republic of Germany and perhaps a little bit on Europe. Let me start with public perception. I think in Germany we have a general trend in the public perception of technology during the last decade that has been investigated in a systematic manner in a recent study. It is clear that the general acceptance of technology decreased substantially during the last twenty years. We can also observe during this time that aspects of the benefits of technology are much less reported in the media, that most reporting by the media now is related to the consequences of technologies, such as negative environmental consequences. hat development has led to a general opposition against new technological projects, in particular unusual and large. That trend is related not only to nuclear power, we see it also for new airports, trains, coal-fired plants. here is almost no new technological project in Germany where there is not very strong opposition against it, at least locally. What is the current public opinion concerning nuclear power? Nuclear power certainly received a big shock after Chernobyl, but actually, about two thirds of the German population wants to keep the operating plants running. Some people want to phase the plants out as they reach the end-of-life, some want to substitute newer nuclear technology, and a smaller part want to increase the use of nuclear power. But only a minority of the German public would really like to abandon nuclear energy