Putin’s invasion challenges green aversion to N-power

Ever since the 1970s, European Green parties have argued passionately for cutting carbon emissions from the continent’s energy, while at the same time reflexively shunning the world’s only reliable source of zero-carbon electricity: nuclear power. Russia’s Ukrainian invasion is punching big holes in the logic of this position. That is especially true in Germany and Belgium, countries where the Greens sit in coalition governments committed to the phaseout of all nuclear power. Germany closed three of its last six reactors last year and the rest will follow by the end of 2022. Belgium has promised to close all of its seven units, which generate half its electricity, by 2025.
In Germany, the need to replace its heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas at the same time as nuclear is roiling the governing coalition and leading to the bizarre situation where a Green-dominated economic and energy ministry would rather burn dirty coal than operate zero-carbon atomic reactors. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, the minister of economic affairs and climate action and a former co-chairman of Germany’s Greens, has announced the creation of a coal stockpile, and stations are being kept open to burn it should they be needed, which they certainly will if Russian gas pipelines close along with the three last reactors this year.
In Belgium, where the final decision on phaseout has yet to be taken, the government is wriggling uncomfortably on the hook. The Green energy minister, Tinne van der Straeten, tweeted that she had an “open mind on nuclear,” and an energy security override built into the phaseout plan could yet allow her to reprieve the two most modern reactors without totally losing face. The coalition’s plan has been to replace the lost plants with renewables and gas, but that would weaken Belgium’s energy security as well as raising both prices and emissions — hardly the ideal outcome. Research by the climate think tank Ember suggests that, if nuclear power is abandoned, the carbon intensity of Belgium’s grid could go up by a quarter by 2030. The phaseouts are not inevitable. Even in Germany, experts believe that at least two of the three recently closed reactors could be restored to action, albeit with a time lag, as well as the three unclosed ones saved from the chop. In Belgium, the nuclear regulator has developed the safety case for life extensions. One barrier is a European Union requirement to carry out a cross-border public consultation on continued operation, although few regard that as a deal-breaker.
The biggest barrier is dogma. The European Green movement has long cherished an almost theological aversion to nuclear power. (Prior to the 1970s, environmentalists had a more nuanced view, often seeing nuclear as preferable to hydroelectric schemes which dammed rivers and flooded habitats.) It is an antipathy that has even spilled into violence. Before Russia’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant last week, the only time an atomic facility had been attacked came in 1982, when a Swiss Green party activist, Chaim Nissim, shot several rocket-propelled grenades at the (then unfinished) Superphenix fast-breeder reactor near Chambery in France, almost hitting some workers.
The statistics may suggest that nuclear power is one of the safest energy sources, responsible for just 0.07 deaths per terawatt hour generated, compared to 24.6 for coal and four for natural gas. But at their 2017 conference, the European Greens reaffirmed their opposition to nuclear on grounds of safety and risk. “The technology of nuclear power is uncontrollable, can at worst be poisonous and even deadly,” they said.
Established political parties in Europe have long indulged this hostility, needing to build governing coalitions in which Greens perforce play a part. Seven European nations at the last count included Greens in their administrations, and both the German and Belgian governments are sustained by their support. The real question now is whether Greens can look beyond the dogma to the wider issues in play, such as Europe’s lack of energy security, so glaringly exposed by the crisis, and the contribution existing nuclear plants can make to emissions reduction. Some think the Greens will find it hard to drop their blanket opposition. Mark Lynas, a British environmental activist who underwent such an apostasy more than a decade ago, believes many will worry that such a shift could be existential. “Being anti-nuclear is just so firmly fixed in their DNA,” he says.

—Bloomberg