She did it again!

Angela Merkel's limited imagination

The question was not “if” but, rather, “when” – German Chancellor Angela Merkel did it again! This time it regarded today’s government announcement of the plan to phase out all nuclear plants by 2022. I will neither begin a fact check nor a political or ethical analysis of the German decision to abandon nuclear energy within a little more than one decade – generally, the decision is correct, but the path towards a 100% renewable energy supply may be questioned.

This post is rather about Merkel once again underlining the limit of her imagination and, thus, of her competence as a decision-maker. Once more she used the expression “not imaginable” to explain (or rather excuse) her political wavering. Today, she explained the government’s decision to make a 180° turn in its energy policy with the shocking events of Fukushima.

In her statement during a press conference, together with several ministers, Merkel explained that the “personally unimaginable disaster” of the Japanese nuclear plant prompted her to generally reassess the role of nuclear energy. Indeed, these events are shocking and they will have an unquestionable effect on future energy policies around the world. However, it is unacceptable for a Chancellor, or any other key political decision-maker (and in this case even a graduated physicist), to say that a disaster at a nuclear plant, which has been built on the pacific coast in the vicinity of a high-risk fault line and in a country that has been battered by earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunami waves since its origin, is unimaginable. This is simply mind-boggling in every sense of the word.

Even if the plant had not been built in this particularly disaster-prone area, incidents such as in Chernobyl or Three Mile Island should have been proof enough that a disaster in a nuclear plant does not need earthquakes and tsunamis to jerk more shit at the fan than any energy company or government could tackle without risking the lives in the thousands.

Each time a politician uses this expression, I can feel my head almost explode from anger. Human mind has very few limits to its imagination and, in particular, someone who bears the responsibility over an entire country should be able to push these limits as far as possible – even if it is only with the help a staff of experts. We pay our Chancellor a lot of money to do exactly that.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I accept that a person is shocked by disasters in a way that his or her mind could not anticipate. However, such persons should perhaps not be assigned to run a country. What if this disaster would have not happened in Japan but, rather, in Germany? What if an urban area such as the Ruhr area with a population of more than 5 million would be hit by the fallout from a damaged French or Belgian nuclear plant? How would Merkel call that? Would this also be “unimaginable”?

Wrong, it is not unimaginable! I just imagined it – and with me many people who live at the Franco-German border or anyplace near a nuclear plant. And believe me: it is a ghastly thought. And it is not that absurd, considering that Belgium operates the oldest nuclear plants in Western Europe and that France operates 59 (!) nuclear plants, which generate some 80 per cent of its overall energy supply.

So perhaps Merkel should give her imagination just a little impulse and start to give her voters (and the citizen of the country she governs, while we're at it) at least the slightest impression that she is prepared for the greater challenges of her office.