> Politics and industry have demonstrated that they can't ensure safe nuclear operation in Germany. USSR (1986) and Japan (2011) just drove the point home that it's not a specific German failing.
Politics and industry have repeatedly demonstrated that nuclear power generation is one of safest industries in the history of humanity. One terawatt-hour of nuclear causes on average one premature death in 33 years, even safer than wind and hydro.
The issue isn't as much as the realized damage, it's the way it's been handled. Ask the people in charge at the time and Jülich never had any issue: it's deny, deflect, deter all the way.
So we're dealing with an industry that cuts corners whenever it feels like it, and received unlimited backing of politics by sweeping incidents under the nearest rug, and trampling over communities at will (see how the Wentland region was chosen to become a permanent storage site for nuclear waste).
In such an environment at some point any statistics are meaningless, even harmful: they drive home the point that in face of the nuclear industry and its political handling, the people are just a statistic. Why should the people put up with that?
Nuclear power in Germany wasn't a technical failing (for the most part), it was politics colluding with the industry in a way that evaporated any trust.
Nuclear technology is highly regulated for good reason (enriched uranium 235 isn't simply available "over the counter", for example), which increases the amount of trust required. It wasn't any particular incident that killed nuclear power in Germany, it was the inability to act responsibly.
That is true, but it also plagues all other energy-generating industries (both green and fossil), and in general I'd say virtually all industries. Incidents are denied and swept under the rug, environment and health effects are severely underestimated, both politicians and business are corrupt and alike. Humans are flawed and we have no others.
And then, the fact remains that air pollution kills millions of people every year and nuclear plants do not. "Acting responsible" in this circumstances means more nuclear.
That was the claim for the technology they developed at Jülich, too. And it does look good on paper.
Seriously, as long as you try to argue on technical merit, you're missing the point of the debate on nuclear power in Germany. It all came down to having to trust people who have demonstrated that they're not at all trustworthy.
Politics and industry have repeatedly demonstrated that nuclear power generation is one of safest industries in the history of humanity. One terawatt-hour of nuclear causes on average one premature death in 33 years, even safer than wind and hydro.