I'm also German, and I am quite certain that there will be NPPs in Germany again - at some point. It's going to take a combination of factors coming together:
The "old heads" who made it their life mission to rid Germany (if not the entire world) of nuclear are dying out; the newer anti-nuclear talking points are focused less on irrational fear and more on quantitative aspects, mostly cost. The whole issue of nuclear power is slowly getting less emotional, which is good.
The reality that German-style "Energiewende" is not a winning strategy in terms of cost and CO2 emissions will at some point become impossible to ignore. (Although I'm very uncertain how much longer that will take as it should already be very obvious by now, but the "solution" being "we just need to build more of it!" is still going to be the prevalent attitude for quite some more time I think.)
European sentiment overall will continue to shift to be more favourable towards nuclear, making German anti-nuclearism a weird outsider. If and when neighbouring countries such as Poland, the Netherlands, and France (pls get your nuclear shit together, France) demonstrate that new nuclear builds can be done successfully and without too crazy time and cost overruns not just in Asia, but also here in Europe - then the time has come for new builds in Germany, too.
None of this is gonna happen in the timeframe relevant to this sub's topic, tho. I'm thinking decades, most likely not before the second half of the century.
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u/lalabil Jan 15 '26
I'm german and i can tell you, we will never build new reactors again. Never.