Nuclear phase-out "Germany makes a courageous decision that entails risks"

Ex. German Chancellor and Physicist Angela Merkel at that time took a bold and correct decision to abandon Nuclear power production. The last German nuclear reactors go offline tonight. This decision also caused a stir abroad. Spanish climate researcher Antonio Aretxabala believes that Germany should have started the energy transition much earlier. Now there would be a lot of collateral damage. Antonio Aretxabala is a man of clear words, a frequent guest at international conferences on energy and climate change and advisor to institutions and companies. In short: He is someone who is familiar with the world's energy economies. However, according to the Spanish scientist, he has never really understood German energy policy. The blind expansion of wind farms just as little as keeping the coal-fired power plants. However, he considers the exit from nuclear energy to be courageous. As a professor of soil mechanics, geomorphology and geotechnics, he believes that the scarcity of resources will ultimately bring all states onto the German path. WirtschaftsWoche: What do you think of the fact that the last nuclear power plants in Germany will be shut down on Saturday? Antonio Aretxabala: It is a bold decision that will entail many risks and sacrifices in the short term, but benefits in the long term. The rest of the states will follow, sooner or later. It would have been wiser, however, to initiate the energy turnaround in the 1970s, then it would not now be necessary to act so irrationally that nuclear energy is replaced by coal. Let's not be naïve - there are hard facts behind this German decision to phase out nuclear energy: There is less and less uranium. And it's not really efficient energy either - nothing compared to the cheap and highly efficient fossil fuels that we are also running out of and that are making us politically dependent. The German decisions are based on studies and have less of an environmental policy background. Incidentally, the enrichment of uranium takes place to a large extent in Russia, which also led to this step. What sacrifices will Germany now have to make? The country will no longer be able to grow. On the contrary: the economy will shrink because not enough cheap energy is available. The furnaces of German heavy industry cannot be kept running to this extent with wind energy and green hydrogen, that is an illusion. Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive, are scarce and lead to unwanted geostrategic dependencies. Of course, all this has social and economic consequences for the Germans. But we will all get to this point. https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/atomausstieg-deutschland-trifft-eine-mutige-entscheidung-die-risiken-mit-sich-bringt/29094184.html