1. Being on the front lines of the Cold War, in the event of a hot war, most nuclear weapons would be used in West Germany. (Yes, weapons aren’t power plants, but they can be hard to separate in popular discourse.)

2. Plans to build a nuclear power plant at Wyhl were opposed by locals, who occupied the site, and were forcefully removed by police. This was broadcast on television and helped galvanize the anti-nuclear movement.

3. The Chernobyl accident led to fallout being deposited on German soil, which furthered opposition, and in my view, was the killing blow.

That's what I am often wondering about. A large part of Germans have developed a completly exaggerated fear of nuclear energy, acting almost like cult or if they are in a mass delusion.

One example: When I say to some of my friends that I would be perfectly fine living near an underground long term storage facility for nuclear waste, they do not believe me or think I am a moron. They really think that facility could either blow up or the radiation will kill you in your sleep. And those are doctors, judges and other people with higher education. One influential German politician even claimed, that the Fukushima incident killed 16000 people, simply attributing most of the deaths from the tsunami to the Fukushima powerplant. And those people are now in power of this country.

I have no idea if this development was controlled by interest groups or they spiralled into that mindset themselves, which would not even surprise me.

Disasters lead to a rethink

[…] the meltdown in Harrisburg in 1979, the Super-Gau in Chernobyl in 1986. The answer of the then Union-led federal government: Helmut Kohl creates a Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Also a demonstrative sign to the Greens, who first entered the Bundestag in 1983, with the clear demand for an immediate construction and operation stop to all nuclear power plants.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/atomausstieg-d...

Chernobyl.

there are many theories but I think being front-line for so long in any East-West confrontation is the most important factor - it was the reason Green / Anti-Nuclear / Pacific sentiment was much stronger in Germany than anywhere else in Europe. It's fashionable to dunk on Merkel these days but when she went against nuclear post-Fukushima it was with widespread support from the society.

Their environmental movement--and many others around the world--was against nuclear power. It's easy to forget now but fairly or unfairly nuclear came to be seen as a dirty energy source after stuff like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. Even now a lot of hardcore environmentalists are completely against any nuclear builds, favoring essentially only wind and solar (geothermal/hydro here and there but meh).