Fearing the Atom: How Chernobyl shook Germany

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Fear and the killer atom. These were the headlines in West Germany after the disaster at Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Although the site of the explosion was in the Soviet Union, its effects were felt almost 1,000 m away.

[00:00:12]German meteorologists tracked radioactive clouds and ordinary citizens found themselves learning a new nuclear vocabulary once reserved for scientists.

[00:00:20]Beckerel, iodine tablets, seesium.

[00:00:22]Expert commissions and politicians warned about radiation levels in vegetables, milk, and wild game. For many Germans in the east and west, this raised a simple question. What was still safe to eat?

[00:00:46]In the west, contaminated vegetables such as lettuce were thrown away on mass and authorities set limits for certain food imports from Eastern Europe. In East Germany, this had a surprising effect. Possibly contaminated vegetables from the east that were intended to be sold to the west were now sold at home.

[00:01:01]But soon stores overflowed as East Germans, many of whom watched West German News, were skeptical. In fact, if you only watched East German News, you might have thought that the radioactive fallout was nothing to worry about. GDRC TV echoed the line from Moscow that everything was fine and Western media was simply panicking.

[00:01:24]But in West Germany, the mood was shifting as the anti-uclear movement gained momentum. The Bundesag launched into a heated debate over the future of nuclear energy.

[00:01:37]Chernobyl. Within two weeks of Chernobyl, a poll commissioned by news magazine Deshbiga found that twothirds of Germans opposed the construction of more nuclear power plants. Prior to the disaster, opponents of nuclear energy had been a minority. Chernobyl did not bring about the end of nuclear energy in Germany. But it was a turning point. In 2023, the last nuclear power plant in Germany went offline.