Brian, you are completely wrong. There is a wide front of peoples' dissent with nuclear power. WE DON'T WANT IT. So politicians are afraid to lose votes if they speak in favour. On the other hand, they try to work in favour of it because they get payed by the nuclear companies.
Mankind is not yet able to rule nuclear power. Also the Japanese plants were quite modern. DOWN WITH NUKES, for whatever purpose!

I was just going to suggest exactly what George said. Our governments pretend like electricity is some hot commodity, when in actuality the availabilit y of global abundanc e of electricity is already there and being implemented in countries like China. We could in effect fuel the entire world, everything that uses electricty or energy, off a Thorium reactor. Cadillac introduced the "WTF" a year or 2 ago which was a car designed to run on thorium, however an engine is not ready to be mass produced for vehicles. (Research and development is underway) 

Imagine a rock the size of a marble producing an energy equivale nt of 7,500 gallons of gas. 

This is utter nonsense. As someone else pointed out already those power plants aren't NPPs and the reason reason why they are reactivated is because of the cold winter and the wide spread of electrical heaters in france which results in all time high demand, which the frensh NPPs can't keep up with. The german power plants are reactivated to stabilize the power grid that is destabalized by france, selling electricity to france is very profitable right now.

Germany could use LFTRs. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) have inherent safety, including:

- coolant remains liquid far above the reactor temperature (700-1000 degC vs 1400 degC); reactor operates at atmospheric pressure, no high pressure to explode, loss of coolant accidents are not possible. The coolant is chemically stable (unlike water or sodium cooled reactors), doesn't react with air or water.

- The coolant is strongly chemically bonded to the fuel. It cools to a glass-like solid, won't stay in the air, won't dissolve in water, won't travel far in water.

- Chance of radiation leakage in any accident is greatly reduced, compared to solid fueled reactors, since fuel is 1/250 of a solid fueled reactor. (A conventional reactor starts with 250,000 kg natural uranium per giga-watt-year, extracts a rare isotope, and only fissions about 1% of that before the fuel rod has to be replaced. Molten salt reactor would use 800 kg of fuel (any isotope of uranium or plutonium (from nuclear waste, weapons, or converting thorium to uranium in the reactor), circulates the molten fuel for 99%+ fissioning, and has very low waste: 83% of 800kg completely safe in 10 years; remaining 135 kg (300 lbs) completely safe in 350 years. Compare to PWR or LWR: 250,000kg for thousands to millions of years.

- Rate of fission slows as molten fuel expands from heat, increases as the molten fuel cools, very stable operation.

LF TRs also passive safety, including:

- Allow a frozen salt plug to melt, and fuel drains quickly to passive cooling tanks where nuclear reaction is impossible

- Fuel can be passively cooled with no water and no power, simple heat radiators, with radioactive materials completely contained.

My blog covers design, safety, nuclear waste, economics, development and testing to be done, proliferation, how LFTRs would fare in accidents or attacks, http://liquidfluorid ethoriumreactor.gler ner.com/

From what I've read about the different nuclear technologies, the thorium-fuelled molten salt reactor is definitely the way to go. It's proliferation resistant; the waste from it is comparatively shortlived and becomes nonhazardous within 300 years; it can achieve high thermodynamic efficiencies due to its high temperature operation. The biggest advantage though is that the radioactive fission products are continuously removed from the reactor during normal operation, so even in a worst case scenario of the thing blowing sky high, there is never much radiation in it to be released.

Just looking at the level of unfounded opposition to nuclear and the way the media has portrayed events like Fukushima, it's clear there are vested interests at work who are trying their utmost to prevent nuclear from being adopted as our energy source of choice. I used to think it was just the oil companies, but recently I've come to think that zionists and the state of Israel are actually the prime movers behind the whole antinuclear propaganda campaign. Israel absolutely depends on the USA for both financial and military support, without which it would be forced to negotiate a peace settlement with its neighbours that would result in it ceasing to be an exclusively Jewish state. The financial and military support only continues to be forthcoming because the USA is so heavily dependent on oil, and with the middle east containing nearly half the world's remaining oil reserves, that makes Israel of vital strategic importance to the US. If nuclear were ever to be widely adopted, the US (and world) dependence on oil would end, Israel would no longer be of any strategic importance, and the financial and military support would end.
It is just a theory, but it explains a lot. Certainly, most of the antinuclear stuff seems to have come out of (Jew-dominated) Hollywood, along with opposition to other things that might threaten US dependence on imported oil (such as shale gas and the Keystone pipeline).

My gut feeling is that they are re-starting this as a cover for thier intention towards developing NUCLEAR WEAPONS! They want to attack Israel soon! The US national security is at stake here! World peace is smashing into pieces very soon! The world should unite and strangle Germany's economy! We should destroy their economy! We should attack and take out all their facilities asap! The world is sooooo in danger! Tomorrow may be too late, We should attack Germany now! Yeaaahaaa! ;-) :-)))))

I agree, Michael. The problem is that all these pseudo-enviromentali sts try their hardest to quench research in the area, hindering development and forcing old, unsafer plants to remain in operation for longer than necessary (which in turn continously increases the risk of large-scale issues)... It's so short-sighted that it's easily on par with animal rights activists releasing animals from fur farms, causing ecological devastation in adjacent areas, as these often non-native and unfit animals try to survive (most of them don't, however, and to make matters worse - before they inevitably succumb they screw up their surrroundings on their way down)...

We need to continue researching and upgrading our nuclear industry. More efficient, cleaner and safer plants are just around the corner already. The current problem with waste storage (which is highly exaggerated, anyway) practically disappears with these modern technologies... But people have always had an affinity for emotional arguments, they don't seem to even realize how irrelevant a megatsunami striking an obsolete plant is to a modern European plant far from any geological risk zone... They don't seem to realize that a Soviet plant built by military safety standards (that is, much riskier than civilian ditto), of an old inherently unsafe design with  faulty management and Soviet bureaucracy screwing up the response is irrelevant to a modern Gen IV reactor... And so on.

I, for one, believe that there is great potential in nuclear power still. As long as it's done right, which is fairly easy to make sure of, we have a great energy source at our fingertips. Of course there are risks, but these are not too hard to deal with, evidently. There are more than 450 reactors in operation in the world today, I don't know how many historically. Out of these, only a tiny, tiny fraction have experienced any serious issues such as meltdowns or major leaks. If you look at death tolls vs energy production/time, nuclear power appears much safer than say hydroelectric power... It's potentially risky to build a dam as well, but I think it's the radiation that scares people. Most people scared witless of radiation don't even know what it is or how it works, anyway....

Ju st my few cents.

The world does not need to abandon nuclear power, it just needs to modernize.  There is a new generation of reactor designs called Gen IV whch are very safe, produce virtually no waste, and can actually recycle existing nuclear waste.  A few Gen IV reactors have already been built in various countries, but nefarious political forces are suppressing it.