Springtime for nuclear power

By Rein F. Deer

Date: 27/10/05

One of the many double standards of European political conversation can be found in the deafening silence surrounding nuclear power. The hypocrisy and confusion are now a standard part of what is laughingly called a 'debate'.

The Lisbon Strategy deftly avoids mentioning nuclear energy at all; so does the Wim Kok Report. A weird political correctness seems to have descended on the subject like a radioactive cloud; it has long been thought wisest not to mention it at all. Until now.
The Latvian Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has finally pronounced the dirty, glow-in-the-dark words. "I expect investment in the nuclear sector in Europe and in the rest of the world will grow," he said recently, speaking on behalf of the Commission.

The impact of hurricane Katrina gave some boost to this new thinking. Oil prices will stay high in the foreseeable future. The cold truth is that poor people suffer most when there is a shortage of energy.

Socialist group leader Martin Schulz, of all people, admitted that "energy policy has become a central part of social policy". But how soon reality penetrates the thick wall of champagne Socialist pretensions remains to be seen.

The renaissance of nuclear power has received support from some unexpected quarters. The famous environmentalist and creator of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock, argues that nuclear power is the only green solution.

"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies, and media," he wrote for the Independent last year.

David King, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, describes climate change as a "worse threat than terrorism". The UK needs one new generation of nuclear power stations for two reasons, he argues: growing energy consumption and fighting global warming.

Jeremy Rifkin, that starry-eyed, born-again apostle of Europe, claims that within 25 years the EU should become the first integrated hydrogen economy in the world. But meanwhile Europeans have to heat their houses and Europe's remaining mills and factories can hardly be closed down pending the realisation of hydrogen happyland.

The former International Atomic Energy Agency director, Hans Blix, praises Finland's decision to build a new plant which will come on-stream in 2009. But his native country Sweden lives in a very Swedish cloud cuckoo land of having-it-every-which-way: since the referendum in 1980 which decided to get of all nuclear energy, Sweden has tripled nuclear capacity.

I predict that the class of 2004 EU member states will go (more) nuclear, either by fixing up old Soviet-built plants, or by ordering new ones from the West as soon as they can afford them. As for Bulgaria and Romania, without nuclear energy they would simply close down or freeze to death or both.

Comment taking a look at what the author calls the renaissance of nuclear power across Europe.