Cranberry's latest series as you may have seen, had a wholly unrealistic result: a landslide victory (in Austria) for nuclear power. And that got me thinking. In the UK, Canada, the US, France and most of Scandinavian there is a fairly ephemeral movement opposing nukes; but they have never received significant attention from the public. But in, say, German speaking countries the opposition is persistent, strong and influential enough to swing elections. Why is this?
Of the countries in Scandinavia only Sweden got nuclear power (and Finland if you use the term more broadly), so in general there is not that much to protest against (though not having any didn't stop the Danes from complaining about Swedish nuclear plants..). Further Sweden had a referendum in 1980, the outcome of which was that we should get rid of our nuclear plants. So wouldn't say that the opposition is that weak.
More broadly speaking I would guess that it is associated with having a strong environmentalist movement and a general high regard for "natural" things. Not sure why the Germans generally have a stronger affection for things being "natural" though.. However it seems have quite some history with all sorts of movements appreciating the natural as opposed to the artificial/modern.
Placing a nuclear plant within a radius of 50 km of another country's capital is an obvious provocation.
How? That is basically saying that placing Malmų 20 km from Copenhagen was a provocation..
That is a stupid comparison.
Nuclear plants posses a certain danger and they should not be placed near major cities, that are difficult to evacuate and where the consequences of an accident would be tremendous - that is not hysteria, but prudent risk management. A country may decide to take that risk on behalf of its own citizens, but it is not reasonable to do so for other countries.
Btw Malmoe was obviously "placed" where it is while Scania was Danish.