The German Social Democrats have, with their customary mixture of impatience and exasperation, swatted away Markus Söder’s latest flirtation with the nuclear genie—this time in the diminutive form of “small modular reactors.” These devices, we are assured by their Bavarian evangelist, promise cheap, clean energy, and presumably a return to the good old days when political fantasy required only a hard hat and a photo-op.
The SPD, alas, remains defiantly tethered to reality. Nina Scheer, speaking for the party’s energy faction, reminded Die Welt that nuclear power—large, small, or served on artisanal plates—remains the most expensive method of boiling water yet devised. The SMRs, those pocket-sized miracles of marketing, would not only replicate the safety hazards of their hulking predecessors but would, in a feat of perverse efficiency, produce more nuclear waste per unit of energy. One might almost admire the engineering.
To champion such contraptions, Scheer argued, while pretending these trifles could be insured—much less made harmless—is an exercise in political irresponsibility. Renewables, coupled with storage, already outpace nuclear dreams by being cheaper, quicker, cleaner, and inconveniently real.
Söder, ever the showman, attempted to bolster his case with a geographical flourish: Canada, he proclaimed, already has “mini-reactors.” A claim which—how to put it gently—has the same relationship to truth as astrology does to astronomy. Scheer calmly observed that Canada possesses nothing of the kind, merely a long-term construction permit and some very early groundwork in Ontario. Even the Canadian government concedes that an operational reactor is a distant hope, optimistically pegged around 2030.
In other words, the Bavarian premier is selling technological vapourware, dressed up as national strategy. And the SPD, to its modest credit, is refusing to buy a single share.
