Go tell the marines about energy policy

Every third lamp in Europe is powered by nuclear energy, yet most politicians still want to close the remaining 400 nuclear plants down. And their voters pretend to take them seriously. Maybe, on warm, early summer evenings, they even believe them.

But the cold truth is that no other energy source can or will replace nuclear in the foreseeable future - not if we want to tackle global warming. Despite all the grand declarations about developing renewables, our economies are, fortunately, growing, and need more emission-free energy, as soon as possible.

The ex-communist member states agreed to shut down their Soviet-style plants as a condition of joining the Union. Now they claim, accurately enough, that they will not survive without their existing, or even more, nuclear energy.

The decommissioning of Latvia’s Ignalina plant has led the three Baltic countries to join forces in building a brand-new plant as a joint venture: three front-line NATO members can hardly depend on Russian energy indefinitely, especially since Vladimir Putin’s by-now traditional way of wishing the neighbours Happy New Year is by switching off their lights and heating.

The Kozlovy nuclear plant in Bulgaria has also been decommissioned, even though according to the experts, it is - following renovations and numerous inspections - one of the best-run in the world. Existing British nuclear plants are, for instance, more old-fashioned than the condemned Bulgarian one.

The Swedes, being always in the right, are of course nuclear-free, except they are not. Around half their energy comes from nuclear power, and that will remain the case for at least another 40 years.

On the face of it, Austria is another sanctimonious nuclear-free zone. Except that it imports electricity from neighbouring countries which make the stuff from nuclear power. These inventive mountain people may well have developed a filter to convert this nasty stuff into something more organic at the border. If so, I am sure the Swedes would be in the market for a licence.

The European Union, it is said, is on the verge of a common energy policy. ‘Tell this to the marines’, I am told is the International English expression. The other member states were not even consulted when the deal to build a 1,200km-long underwater Baltic Sea pipeline between Gazprom and E.ON/BASF was made.

It is interesting that the German Greens and Scandinavia are quiet as mussels about the pipeline, the vulnerable ecosystem of the shallow Baltic Sea, or the modern Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which the pipeline represents for the Baltic States and Poland.

But hey, at least it’s not radioactive.

Every third lamp in Europe is powered by nuclear energy, yet most politicians still want to close the remaining 400 nuclear plants down. And their voters pretend to take them seriously. Maybe, on warm, early summer evenings, they even believe them.