By Julio GodoyCourtesy of IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
Photo Credit: AVERA
BERLIN (IDN) - Practitioners of realpolitik would not claim they are poets, very much in the way that they do dismiss they are utopians. As former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, neither a poet nor utopian, once famously put it: If you have visions, you better go to the optician. In any case, stay out of politics.
Such a maxim is valid for the realpoliticians' diction: Their message must be clear, free of impenetrable lyricisms or rhymes. In other words, the least you can expect from realpoliticians is that their language, per definition supposed to be matter-of-factly, has at least some discernible relation to reality, and is neither wishful thinking nor full of stock phrases. Nor, God forbid, propaganda.
But once and again you come across realpoliticians' wordings and you wonder. For instance, the present German ruling coalition -- formed by the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party, none of their leaders poets or utopians -- declared in its government programme of last fall nuclear energy to be a "bridge technology" indispensable "until the time when it can be reliably replaced by renewable energy". The metaphor was supposed to pave the way for the prolongation of the life-span of the nuclear power plants, and for the reversal of their phasing out, adopted ten years ago by the former Green-Social Democratic government.
The idea is not wrong. Until renewable energetic sources can meet the total demand of electricity in a country such as Germany, another dependable source is necessary. Nuclear power is already here, and if, and this is a big if, though, if you count out the environmental pollution and security risks associated with it, is a clean source, at least compared to coal and oil.
This idea was already present in the phasing out of nuclear energy, as decided by the Green-Social Democratic government ten years ago. This phasing out foresaw that the country's most modern nuclear power plants continue to operate until 2021, when they reach 32 years of operation. In the mean time, Germany was supposed to invest massively in renewable sources -- what it did -- to prepare the way for the nuclear-free years after 2021.
It is thanks to these twin decisions -- the phasing out of nuclear power and the massive investment in wind and solar energy -- that Germany shut down some of the oldest nuclear power plants, and at the same time boosted the supply of clean energy. In other words, and to use the "bridge technology" metaphor: In terms of energy policy, the phasing out of nuclear power does not leave Germany in the middle of nowhere.
It is also indisputable that much more is needed to connect our nuclear times with those nuclear-free to come -- to begin with, more installed capacity in solar and wind energy and biomass and the like, and, more important, the renewal of the grid, which, under the present conditions, cannot manage the fluctuations typical of renewable sources. Practically all energy experts say that smart grids are the missing link between the wind and sun energy and the steady, sufficient supply of electricity.
Another important pillar of the bridge towards a nuclear-free energy supply is education: Consumers -- in private households, in the industry, in the transport sector, in one word we all -- have still to learn that, environmentally speaking, the best energy is the one we do not consume.
BLIND ALLEY
But, despite all the right connotations of the "bridging technology" idea, in the months gone past since the German government issued its programme, its leaders have become prisoners of the semantics of their own wording. For some of its members, close allies of the nuclear lobby, nuclear reactors may run for as long as possible. For them, the bridge must be quite long -- a contradiction in more than one sense, not only in statics and engineering.
In fact most expertises and experiences show that nuclear power crowds out other sources, especially renewables. Nuclear power also hinders the development of the smart grids, indispensable for the future. In that sense, nuclear power is not a bridge, but a blind alley.
Furthermore, nuclear power forces upon society insurmountable, or at least unacceptable challenges: The pollution it causes, from its very beginning to its very end, and the security risks it represents, both in the environmental, technical, and economic aspects, and in its geopolitical implications.
The exploitation of the uranium mines in Niger illustrates the first environmental downside of nuclear energy. Niger, the world's third-largest exporter of uranium, faces radioactive pollution in big, highly populated areas surrounding the uranium mines.
The pollution goes beyond the physical world -- it pervades the country's politics, and has helped to corrupt these. Who is the main beneficiary? Areva, the world's largest nuclear corporation, partly owned by the governmental French Atomic Energy Commission. A neo-colonial power, so to speak.
At the other end of the uranium exploitation is the disposal of radioactive waste, relentlessly produced in nuclear power plants. Because nobody knows what to do with it, operators apply the most crude measures to pretend they are disposing of it. France either piles it up in fragile stores, or sends some of it to Russia, where it is deposed open air in the vast prairies of Siberia. Germany has been since decades searching for a so-called Endlager, a final storage zone. But in vain.
In between, nuclear power plants can break down, as all human-made devices do. To name just a few examples of nuclear accidents: Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, Three Miles Island in the U.S.A., Forbach and Civaux in France, Monju in Japan, all in our lifetime. It has happened, it will happen again.
You also have the financial risks: As the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in Finland proves it, construction of nuclear reactors is most tricky. The plant, under construction since May 2005, was supposed to start operations as late as mid 2009. But numerous technical difficulties have delayed the project until at least 2012, and its construction costs have doubled, triggering a bitter judiciary quarrel on who is going to pay for them, between the Finnish operator and the French constructor -- Areva again. Areva has made provisions for write-down for at least 2.7 billion euros, from the original 3.3 billion projected in its accounts.
That's why private investors avoid putting their money in such projects That's why financial analysts and nuclear lobbyists call governments to waste the taxpayers' money to pay for such adventures. That's why it is cynical of international organisations, themselves financed by the public, to lobby for nuclear power without saying where the money should come from.
As for the geopolitical issues: Nuclear power plants constitute a temptation for terrorists. And last but not least: Nuclear power supports the proliferation of the material for the bomb. For all these reasons, nuclear power is at least a bridge to nowhere, at worse a road to perdition.
