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Cooling tower of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant near Landshut (2018)
Photo: Armin Weigel / picture alliance / Armin Weigel/dpa
In view of the energy crisis and possible supply bottlenecks, the Germans are much more open to nuclear power than before.
This is the result of a survey by the online survey company Civey for SPIEGEL.
78 percent of those surveyed were in favor of continuing to operate the three German nuclear power plants that are still in operation until the summer of 2023, a variant that is being discussed in politics as so-called stretching operation.
Even among the supporters of the Greens there is a narrow majority for this.
Particularly high approval of the new building among voters of the Union and the AfD
However, there is apparently also broad agreement to leave the remaining reactors connected to the network for much longer.
67 percent of those questioned were in favor of operating the nuclear power plants for another five years.
Only 27 percent clearly rejected this.
A particularly large number of supporters of the CDU/CSU, FDP and AfD were in favor of extending the terms by several years.
Even when asked whether Germany should build new nuclear power plants, something that is hardly ever discussed politically, 41 percent of respondents answered yes.
52 percent spoke out against such new buildings.
Support for new buildings was particularly high among supporters of the CDU/CSU and AfD.
There were many opponents of new construction among the Greens.
Civey surveyed around 5,000 people online on August 2nd and 3rd.
Read the background to the Civey methodology here.
These approval ratings for nuclear power are astounding, above all because after the worst case scenario in Chernobyl in 1986 and after the reactor catastrophe in Fukushima in 2011, there were clear majorities in favor of phasing out nuclear energy.
In a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Emnid for SPIEGEL in 1989, the year in which the last West German nuclear power plant, Neckarwestheim II, went online, only three percent of all respondents were in favor of building more reactors.
In recent years, however, after the decision to phase out nuclear power was made in 2011, support for the end of nuclear power has waned again.
On Thursday, the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz visited the Isar 2 nuclear power plant in Bavaria.
Söder advocated continuing to operate Isar 2 at least until 2024.
Merz called for quick political decisions about possible continued operation, but also said: "We don't want to go back to the old nuclear energy."