For several weeks now, a topic has been creeping into the election campaign, which has been decried as empty of content and fixated on people, that deserves to be called monstrous.
A topic that is no longer allowed to be socially and even more so in terms of party politics, could only become one technically with great effort, but in view of the challenges posed by the energy and mobility turnaround is in fact one thing: the questioning of the nuclear phase-out.
Armin Laschet, the Union's candidate for chancellor, who has made a reputation for himself as a political reconciler, has been addressing this huge topic in his speeches for weeks. He does it cautiously, does not demand, for example, with rhetorical punches, the maintenance of nuclear power generation, which should finally end in the coming year. But with a certain penetrance he expresses his conviction that it was wrong to first abandon nuclear power and then abandon coal power. The other way round would be better.
In view of the enormous electricity demand that has to be met when there are no longer one million electric cars rolling on Germany's streets, but ten or twenty million, which would also arise if “green hydrogen” were to become the storage and drive means of the future, and anyway because of it The rapidly increasing penetration of the everyday world with power-guzzling computers has long existed, the question of where this power should come from is not only permissible, but imperative.
This could become the mega-topic of the election campaign.
Why isn't it?
A quarter consider the waiver to be wrong
An Allensbach survey from June of this year - commissioned, however, by supporters of nuclear power - came to the result that 56 percent of those questioned still agree that Chancellor Angela Merkel decided not to use nuclear power in 2011. However, 25 percent are convinced of the opposite. These are clear majorities, but a quarter of those surveyed are also not a quantity négligeable that one could only smile about. In addition, many other countries continue to rely on nuclear power plants - not very long before the exit, Merkel's black-yellow coalition also decided to extend the term.
Overall, there has been a social consensus since then that Germans no longer want nuclear power.
Since 1980 in the Greens' first program with a view to the monopoly position of the energy supply companies of the "dictatorship from the socket" was mentioned, the debate has developed in this direction.
"In the fully developed nuclear state, for compelling reasons, basic democratic rights and civil liberties are no longer possible," said the Greens, who at the time were completely focused on the nuclear phase-out in addition to the issue of peace.
That set the tone: From the start, it was not about a technical question of how best to generate energy in an economically high-performance country.
It was a question of faith.
Is the matter off the table?
A good three decades later, of all people, it was a CDU Chancellor, a physicist at that, who wanted to pull the plug not only on the nuclear power plants, but above all on the socio-political issue that was occupied by the competition. With success. Since then, the matter seems to be off the table. The last nuclear power plant has not yet been shut down, but the operators have long been living in a different present and future. Laschet therefore likes to add to his remarks on the “wrong” order of exit with the remark that the matter has been decided and belongs to the past.
Then why does he keep picking up on the subject? The attacks by the Greens, which accuse Laschet of not having acted decisively enough in phasing out coal-fired power generation, can be effectively countered in this way. The North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister not only has a lot to show for here, but can even turn the tables. Because the accusation is now: If the Greens had not so persistently created a social anti-nuclear power climate, one could do without electricity from coal-fired power plants to a much greater extent than is the case today.
In other words: a lot of time for timely climate protection was wasted pointlessly.
Last but not least, the pictures from the devastated Ahr valley may have raised the question of whether a strong reduction in coal electricity with a few additional years of nuclear electricity would not have been the wiser decision in the end.
The fact that Laschet has presented his analysis so defensively so far should not only be due to the fact that he is of the opinion that the matter is settled once and for all in Germany.
A sharp offensive against the 2011 exit would be open criticism of Angela Merkel in a rather spectacular case.
Laschet does not want to jeopardize their support during the election campaign.
Nuclear power generation will probably remain a forbidden topic for the time being.