Germany's Green party has defined itself with an anti-nuclear stance since its inception and campaigned so effectively against the energy that proposals to shut it down earned widespread acceptance in the country, culminating in the announcements of the final shutdowns scheduled for December of this year.
The reality of green energy doesn't always match the rhetoric.
Germany and the Greens have built out extensive wind and solar capacity but Germany is neither a sunny nor windy place and intermittency is a problem without green solutions. Gas has filled the gaps but with pipelines increasingly cutoff, the Greens are grappling with the new reality and polls show a swift public re-think on nuclear as well.
Now the FT reports that Greens have concluded that extending the life of the power plants has to be on the table, something the environment ministry ruled out as recently as March.
So far an extension would only be for a few months but it a world suddenly realizing the importance of reliable, carbon-free energy, nuclear has new life.
